Who I am in how I teach is the message: self‐understanding, vulnerability and reflection
- 1 April 2009
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis Ltd in Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice
- Vol. 15 (2), 257-272
- https://doi.org/10.1080/13540600902875332
Abstract
The person of the teacher is an essential element in what constitutes professional teaching and therefore needs careful conceptualisation. In this article the author argues for this central thesis, presenting a wrap up of his theoretical and empirical work on the issue over the past decade. These studies have been inspired - both conceptually and methodologically - by teacher thinking-research as well as the narrative-biographical approach to teaching and teacher development. The result is an empirically grounded conceptual framework on teacher development and teacher professionalism. Central concepts are 'professional self-understanding' and 'subjective educational theory' as components of the personal interpretative framework every individual teacher develops throughout his/her career. This personal framework results from the reflective and meaningful interactions between the individual teacher and the social, cultural and structural working conditions constituting his/her job context(s). As such the framework is the dynamic outcome of an ongoing process of professional learning (development). Furthermore, it is argued, that the particular professionalism or scholarship of teachers is fundamentally characterised by personal commitment and vulnerability, which eventually have consequences for the kind of reflective attitudes and skills professional teachers should master.Keywords
This publication has 28 references indexed in Scilit:
- Workload and willingness to change: disentangling the experience of intensificationJournal of Curriculum Studies, 2008
- INTERROGATING “TEACHER IDENTITY”: EMOTION, RESISTANCE, AND SELF‐FORMATIONEducational Theory, 2003
- Taking Learning SeriouslyChange: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 1999
- Teaching Career: Between Burnout and Fading Away? Reflections from a Narrative and Biographical PerspectivePublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1999
- Teachers' Moral Purpose: Stress, Vulnerability, and StrengthPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1999
- Teacher Vulnerability: understanding its moral and political rootsCambridge Journal of Education, 1996
- Thinking about Feeling: the emotions in teachingCambridge Journal of Education, 1996
- Chapter 5: The New Narrative Research in EducationReview of Research in Education, 1995
- Teaching and nurturing: changing conceptions of self as teacher in a case study of becoming a teacherInternational Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 1991
- Stories of Experience and Narrative InquiryEducational Researcher, 1990