Dissonance and Discovery: a narrative inquiry of two student teachers’ process of becoming a teacher

Abstract

Positioned within narrative ways of understanding teacher knowledge and the process of ‘becoming’ a teacher, this study focuses on two beginning teachers’ storied experiences of their capacity to integrate understanding of theory and practice through participation in mandatory experiential learning (EL) projects on a teacher training course in Hong Kong. Both teachers’ experiences were forged in disquieting learning contexts away from the relative safety of the university classroom, and their subsequent beliefs about education raises questions about what kind of teacher each will evolve into. While one saw EL as a process of discovery, the other teacher-to-be could not align the aims of the EL programme with his own deep-seated beliefs about how best to ‘become’ a teacher.