This is a working conference about research in progress. We encourage the creative use of photographs, videos, multimedia, school supplies and other artifacts from classrooms within the sessions. As part of a cohort group, for an academic year my students and I share journeys. The year begins with the writing of a life history or education-related autobiography that becomes the first entry in a Personal Teaching Text, an evolving record coupled with written interpretations of the journey. Drawing from the life history, personal teaching metaphors are identified that capture some elements of who the beginning teacher is and longs to be as teacher, an imaginary teaching self projected into an uncertain future.
Teacher education is supposed to help socialize beginning teachers to teaching.
Put differently, it's supposed to give them a place in a story. A lot of research has been conducted on how neophytes become teachers. But, the view from the students' and teachers' side of the desk are radically different. It is a dangerous seduction, procreator of poor practice. The familiar must be made strange.