“The Person Behind the Student”: Learning from Early Career Teachers’ Entanglements with the Initial Teacher Education Curriculum

Initial teacher education is a significant site for learning to become a teacher. Central to this phase of becoming are issues around “What do the teachers think, feel, want; what are their ideals, what inspires them, what kind of teachers do they want to be? And above all, What is their potential?” For the past few decades, initial teacher education has not shown much deviation from its framing of teacher education. The core components of the teacher education framework remain a theory-driven on teaching practice, subject specialisation and disciplinary knowledge, and education foundations. This evidence-based policy framework within which individuals are prepared to become teachers does not work. The question driving our inquiry is, what are we learning from early career teachers’ lived experiences about initial teacher education as a productive space for negotiating the personal in the teacher and teaching? Framing the teacher education curriculum as a creative, critical and collaborative space, we argue that preservice teacher education often reduces the complexity of becoming a teacher. By not considering the person and what they bring into teacher education, preservice teachers’ complex lives are effaced. We draw on early career teachers’ storied lives to highlight how beliefs and formative experiences influence perspectives and decisions to shape their thinking and practice as they struggle to mediate their reimagined teacher self and the complex world of the educational practice. For teacher education to move beyond the theoretical dimension of learning to become a teacher, we propose an ethic of relationality, collaboration and dialogue, and care for self-others. This has the potential to understand the material nature of the educational experience as interconnections of the who, the how and the what. Understanding the material nature of teacher education can enable a holistic view of learning to teach and may enable a fuller view of the world of teachers’ work.