Everyday life and everyday learning: the ways in which pre-service teacher education curriculum can...

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Everyday life and everyday learning:the ways in which pre-service teachereducation curriculum can encouragepersonal dimensions of teacher identityAmélia Lopes a & Fátima Pereira aa Educational Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and EducationalSciences, University of Porto, Porto, PortugalPublished online: 01 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Amlia Lopes & Ftima Pereira (2012) Everyday life and everyday learning:the ways in which pre-service teacher education curriculum can encourage personaldimensions of teacher identity, European Journal of Teacher Education, 35:1, 17-38, DOI:10.1080/02619768.2011.633995

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Everyday life and everyday learning: the ways in whichpre-service teacher education curriculum can encourage personaldimensions of teacher identity

Amélia Lopes* and Fátima Pereira

Educational Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto,Porto, Portugal

This article presents and discusses the findings of a research project, the mainobjective of which is to identify curriculum components that promote personaldevelopment as a nuclear part of teacher professional identity formation throughpre-service teacher education. Curriculum is viewed as an ecological scenariowith different subsystems and both as formal and informal. Identity formation isconceived as an ever-provisional result of a double transaction: the biographicalone and the relational one. The curricula of four different historical periods ofpre-service teacher education in Portugal and the professional identity of teach-ers trained within them were characterised through collection and analysis ofdocuments and biographical narratives. Crossing results from the four periods,the quality of school climate emerges as an important variable to the quality ofthe teachers’ identity. The lifelong learning ethos seems to emerge when thetraining curriculum connects everyday learning with everyday life, namely byurging the students’ involvement in school life, peer learning activities and peerand teacher educators’ informal learning activities.

Keywords: pre-service teacher education curriculum; teacher identity; lifelonglearning; training climate

Introduction

The self-development that accompanies the formation of teacher professionalidentity is a nuclear topic in current research on pre-service teacher education(Sachs 2005; Korthagen 2004; Montero Mesa 2001; Lopes 2001, 2009; Connellyand Clandinin 1999). Actually, self-development is one of the most importantaspects of the professional constitution and development of teachers (Beauchampand Thomas 2009; Day et al., 2006).

This emphasis on the self-development of teachers who are students is related totwo central challenges in the education of teachers: on one side, student teachersalready have a well-established but simplistic preconception about teaching andhow to be a teacher, which must be noted and dealt with (Sugrue 2004; Korthagen2004; Montero Mesa 2001; Connelly and Clandinin 1999); on the other side, thecurrent conditions and aims of the teaching profession call for the personalempowerment of teachers regarding an attitude of lifelong learning (Korthagen2005; Buchberger et al. 2000).

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

European Journal of Teacher EducationVol. 35, No. 1, February 2012, 17–38

ISSN 0261-9768 print/ISSN 1469-5928 online� 2012 Association for Teacher Education in Europehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2011.633995http://www.tandfonline.com

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How can pre-service teacher education answer these challenges in a satisfactoryway? Several training devices involving narrative inquiry, reflection and case studies(see Beauchamp and Thomas 2009) have been identified to foster relevant self-development for continuous professional development. Without denying the trueimportance of reflection, it must be noted that few studies refer to the potential ofdifferent components of the pre-service teacher education curriculum (formal andinformal ones, such as subjects, methods, greater social, cultural and politicalcontexts, school climate, training climate) to foster self-development.

In this paper, we will present the results of the research that was carried out inPortugal, which had the main objective to relate pre-service primary teachers’education curricula to the professional identities constructed within them. Theresearch pursued two specific aims: (1) to relate teacher identity characteristics withpre-service education curricula features; and (2) to clarify the role of professionalcontexts on identity development paths. Results that focused on this second aimhave shown that the different and proactive initial professional identities of teachersbecame similar, defensive, and poor throughout their career (Lopes et al. 2009,2007). Nevertheless, there are some exceptions that may be due to pre-service tea-cher curricula. The results we will present in this paper focus on the features ofpre-service teacher education curricula that can make a difference, fostering lifelonglearning ethos. We begin by presenting the theoretical framework and the methodo-logical design of the study and then we will present and discuss the results.

Theoretical background and method

To pursue the research aims we chose four different periods of pre-service teachereducation in Portugal with the objective of comparing curricula and teacher identi-ties within those different moments: the period before the Carnation Revolution (thefirst period: from 1968 until 25 April 1974); the period shortly after the CarnationRevolution (the second period: from 25 April until 1979); the period correspondingto the 1980s (the third period); and the period corresponding to the 1990s (thefourth period).

These periods were identified prior to the study based on social and educationalpolicy milestones, as hypotheses that should be checked against the data.

As we have to deal with different historical moments, involving different culturemodels, educational policies and educational trends, in order to characterisepre-service teacher education curricula we adopted a theoretical orientation that bringstogether the ecology of human development (Bronfenbrenner 1979), and curriculumstudies.

As a developmental scenario, curriculum is seen as an interaction systemconstituted by different subsystems that are a part of each other: microsystem (whathappens within classes), mesosystem (what happens within schools), exosystem(educational policies and educational systems) and macro system (cultural modelsin a certain period). At the same time, according to curriculum theory, we distin-guished between ‘formal’ curriculum – laws and syllabus for example, definingobjectively what is to be learned – ‘informal’ curriculum – relating to what is reallydone by teachers and students through teaching and learning processes (handouts,class summaries and plans, student notes and exercise books, for example) – and‘hidden’ curriculum – focusing unintentional aspects of school and class climates

18 A. Lopes and F. Pereira

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which nevertheless have an impact on students’ learning and formation (Pacheco1996).

Professional identities construction is conceptualised by Claude Dubar (1995,2002) as a socialisation process that puts together the individual and their life con-texts. Identity construction is an ever provisional result of a double transaction: thetransaction of the individual with himself (the biographical one) and the transactionbetween the individual and their development scenarios (the relational one).Biographical transaction is a transaction between what the individual has been andwhat he/she wants to become. Relational transaction calls for agreement betweenidentity ideals and context conditions. Identity ideals and context conditions canmatch or not match. Teachers who are struggling for identity (recognition) can eitheradapt themselves to context conditions or adapt context conditions to their own ideals(Lopes 2002). Professional identity construction arises from this dynamic andcontinuous process of negotiation between wishes, opportunities and constraints.

The notion of the curriculum as an ecological development system and thenotion of the development of identity as a double transaction (biographical andrelational) come together in the ‘landscape metaphor’, which Clandinin andConnelly (1995, 4–5) employed to give greater attention to the contexts of teachers’professional knowledge and its plots:

. . . understanding professional knowledge as comprising a landscape calls for a notionof professional knowledge as composed of a wide variety of components and influ-enced by a wide variety of people, places and things. . . . We see the professionalknowledge landscape as composed of relationships among people, places, and things.

This view of the ‘landscape’ of professional development as being inherentlyrelational (in itself made up of relations), provides a gateway for relating the studyof identity with the study of curriculum. In analytical terms, just as with the rela-tions between figure/ground in the view of Gestalt, the curriculum is a document ofidentity and identity is an expression/manifestation of a curriculum.

The first professional identity (the identity of the teacher upon the completion oftheir initial training) depends on the articulation between primary socialisation –taking place early in the family, in the school and with peers – and secondary soci-alisation – referring to teaching as a well identified social activity and taking placeat pre-service teacher education institutions. According to Berger and Luckman(1985) this secondary socialisation should be experienced as a ‘house moving’,which ideally would lead the accomplished student to say ‘before I thoughtthat. . .but now I think that. . .’. This ‘house moving’ involves a change in the rela-tionships of the student with him or herself and with others and the world; essen-tially, it involves placing the student in a new landscape, with other paths, partners,dreams and narratives.

The first professional identity is also a provisional result of the interactionbetween the student’s psychosocial identity and the training curriculum. Severalauthors stress the idea in which the construction of the teacher’s first professionalidentity includes the transformation of personal identity (Sachs 2005; Korthagen2004; Montero Mesa 2001; Lopes 2001, 2009; Connelly and Clandinin 1999;Simões and Simões 1997; Simões et al. 1997) as a central part of teacher profes-sional identity construction. As has long been argued by Lacey (1977), it is duringthe pre-service socialisation process that a new student’s world perspective arises.

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The belief that the transformation of personal identity is a fundamental part ofthe construction of teachers’ professional identity is based on three convergingviews. The first involves the actual identity transaction (Dubar 1995, 2002). Stu-dents enter the training with a given (personal) representation of what the professionis, which was shaped during their initial socialisation. Faced with the context ofpre-service training, these perspectives are confirmed, transformed or rejected. Thesecond is related to a structural perspective of identity. According to the structuralperspective of symbolic interactionism (Stryker and Statham 1985; Turner 1988;McCall 1977; Rosenberg and Gara 1985), personal identity is made up of a core(trans-situational and, above all, emotional) and a periphery, comprising of all ofthe social identities of the person. These identities are emotionally influenced by thecore and are connected to one another, as in a kaleidoscope. Professional identity isone of the social identities of the individual which, when it is salient, reorganisesall of the other identities in a specific way according to the professional situation.When the profession has a strong relational character, the bond between the identitycore and professional identity becomes more important. Training can not only createthe basis (personal and professional) for professional development, but also promotepersonal development itself. The third interpretation can be well explained based onwhat Fred Korthagen (2005) refers to as ‘the onion’. In his 2005 paper, practice,theory, and person in life-long professional learning, Korthagen clearly argues forthe importance of personal unconscious aspects in teaching (such as wishes, feel-ings, thoughts and actions) and how the most inner circles of what he calls ‘theonion’ (in order, from the outside to the inside: environment, behaviour, competenc-es, beliefs, identity and mission) are the most important when appraising and train-ing a teacher. Essentially, in teaching, the technical component of the professionalbeing is of little worth without the personal component, comprising of past experi-ences, current conceptions and corporeities and future plans, on which practices arebased (Clandinin, Downey, and Huber 2009; Clandinin 2002).

The professional trajectory involves different landscapes of professional knowl-edge and, as a result, different teacher identities, visible in possibilities and impossi-bilities of being and in questions about oneself and one’s mission in the profession.Defining the first professional identity as a projection of oneself in the future, Dubar(1995) argues that it can later be analysed through illusions and disillusions alongthe teachers’ professional path, that is, through the various landscapes in the tea-cher’s professional history.

These illusions and disillusions come to light through the stories that teachersshare about themselves, their pre-service training and their professional trajectory.As Clandinin et al. (2009, 141) point out, ‘a narrative way of thinking about teacheridentity speaks to the nexus of teachers’ personal practical knowledge and the land-scapes, past and present, on which teachers live and work’.

Access to the first professional identity can happen through the way in whichthe ‘stories to live by’ (Connelly and Clandinin 1999) are told and retold through-out the professional path: ‘shaped in teachers’ past and present experiences, on andoff the landscape’, stories to live by, as ‘narrative understandings of knowledge andcontext’, are ‘a way to think about identity’ (Clandinin 2002, 2).

Consequently, to characterise teacher identities in this study, 40 biographicalnarratives were collected from teachers, using semi-directive interviews.

The interviewed teachers were trained in each of the four periods previouslydescribed (10 from each period), but they all came from the same pre-service


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teacher education institution. The 40 interviewees included three men (one whocompleted his training during the first period under examination and two from thefourth period under examination), and the proportion of men and women in thesample of teachers interviewed matches the proportion in the professional referencegroup. The teachers interviewed were contacted at random by the research team.The interviews were carried out using a set of guidelines (Table 1) made up of sixfields, each with a set of suggestions for questions which could be asked.

Table 1. Interview guidelines.

Fields/topics Suggestions for targeting the questions

Biographical detailsSummary of the biographical trajectory(Panoramic view)

Date and place of birthBackground (family, geographical, social andcultural. . .)Educational backgroundBasic professional trainingProfessional trajectoryCurrent situation

‘Memories/references’ as learningexperiences

Relational and communicational processMemorable references

Critical incidentsSignificant peopleRelevant episodesNuclear aspects of personal identityChoice of the professionSocial-professional trajectory

Training as a construction of the self and ofmeaning

Life and professionTraining and profession

Who am I? How would I like to be? How doothers define me? What is most important forme in my work?Relationship between current identity andtrainingValue given to a specific identityTraining as a process of symbolic construction(during training)Structuring the person and the professional

Pre-service training as a particularlyrelevant moment

Formal, informal and hidden curriculum

Learning experiences as a process ofunderstandingTraining as a process for learning andbuilding skills and technical knowledgeLearning and assessment programmes, meansand methodsProfessional idealsDreams and/or projects given upKnowledge, learning, subject-specific contents,relations, informal spaces

Rationales that connect teacher narrativeteaching work and conceptions of pre-service training

What relationships between work and pre-service training?Does theoretical knowledge legitimise andbuild a certain identity?What relationship between ‘the meanings ofthe work’ and ‘the conceptions of training’?The importance of pre-service training in thetrajectory and in the ways of being a teacherProfessional satisfaction/dissatisfactionAxiological dimension of the meanings ofprofessional/personal action


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We characterised pre-service teacher education curriculum of the selected teach-ers by collecting and analysing several types of written documents from each train-ing period – laws, syllabi, handouts, student notes, student pamphlets, brochuresand so on. Inspired by Molina (1993), we consider a document to be most benefi-cial in providing and preserving information because of its durability.

Biographical narratives and documents become material through language.Therefore, biographical narratives and documents can be seen both as discourses –this means that through language they refer to individuals interacting in situationsclearly identified (that can be inferred) and that, at the same time, they can expressthe social, psychological and historical background of the individuals (Maingueneau1991, 1995).

The biographical narratives provide access to the views of the person, who, inmaking his/her narrative selects and translates his/her social context according tohis/her own subjective psychological dimension. At the same time, through the nar-ratives, we have access to visions of the (social) reality from the historically situ-ated individual point of view (Connelly and Clandinin 2006; Bolívar, Domingo,and Fernández 2001; Clandinin and Connelly 1995; Ferrarotti 1988). It is the latterperspective that we emphasise in our analysis. The combination (triangulation) ofthe results from analysing the biographical narratives and the results from the docu-ment analysis provides the basis for identifying the aspects of the social reality towhich teachers give priority and to relate dimensions of identity and specificcurricular dimensions.

Analysis and results

Recognising the discursive (narrative) character of the data had implications for theelements that should be taken into account in the analysis and interpretation. Thedata were treated using a type of analysis we have coined ‘analysis in discourse’(Lopes et al. 2004). Technically, this type of analysis involves content analysis, buttakes into account the discursive character of the data being analysed.

The research team was divided into two independent sub-teams: one wasresponsible for analysing the biographical narratives and the other for the documentanalysis.

The documents were initially organised and indexed according to the level ofthe social and educational system they referred to (micro, meso, exo and macro)and the different periods being studied. Subsequently, for each case, we: (1) identi-fied its type (for example, legal document, brochure, opinion, publication, studyplan, lesson plan, etc), source (government, union, students, research, etc) and exactdate; (2) provided a general characterisation; and (3) systematised specific dimen-sions relevant to the study. This process of organising the information allowed us toidentify the documents on which we should focus our analysis and interpretation.The analysis (categorisation) involved the identification of thematic references andunits of meaning in each document, followed by the identification of recurringdimensions in the various documents. The documents do not all illustrate the vari-ous categories in the same way, nor do they contribute units of meaning to all ofthem. However, given the discursive nature of the data, we were able to establishsemantic connections that allowed us to identify the rationale of each category andits relations with the other categories. In this way, we confirmed the historicalperiods initially identified for the study and four categories defining curricula were


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identified: ‘society and its culture’, ‘educational policies’, ‘teachers’ training andprofessionalisation’, and ‘intended teachers’ profile’.

The interviews were analysed following a purely inductive process. First, thecoding system was identified. This was done by distributing the 40 narratives pro-duced across the members of the research sub-team, so that each narrative was ana-lysed by two researchers independently. A vertical reading of each interviewprovided the basis for the initial coding (descriptive–vertical analysis of each narra-tive). As this process was used for each interview, common clusters were identifiedand the coding was adjusted (transversal analysis). The coding systems of eachresearcher were then shared with the whole team, thus providing a basis for a com-mon coding system. In the coding system, a distinction was first made between‘objective information’ (for example, date and place of birth, parents’ occupation,schools attended, marital status, number of children) and ‘subjective information’.Subjective information was coded into three key periods in the life of the intervie-wees (Table 2): ‘Before pre-service training’, ‘During pre-service training’ and‘After pre-service training’ (up to the time of the interview).

The discourses which refer to the ‘During pre-service training’ period – focusedon in this article – were coded into five categories: ‘motivations to be a teacher’(when entering teacher education school); ‘appraisal of the curriculum’ (formal,informal and its theoretical/practical character: teaching experience with the chil-dren; learning specific teaching techniques and methods, particularly for the nativelanguage and mathematics; and the professional or academic character of training),‘appraisal of the training environment’ (overall appraisal, teachers’ and students’relationships and peer relationships), ‘personal change’ and ‘self image as a teacher’(at the end of the course).

The validity of the results comes from the triangulation of the two ways ofinquiry – the documental one and biographical one – but also from the triangulationof data arising from the four periods being examined. In fact, the ‘landscapes’ ofthe teachers who completed their training in a given period share common features,which are different from those of teachers who completed their training in anotherperiod. Triangulation helps shed some light on these differences.

To finish this topic, it is important to note that, as it is argued and addressed inLopes et al. (2007, 2006), this research could also be seen as an historical-educa-tional research, which is defined by Berrio (1997, 155) as an history of the ‘innova-tion process, of the way it is materialised, of its acceptance or rejection, of itsmechanisms, intensity or impetus’.

However, the focus of this article is not to draw a pattern of evolution of thepre-service teacher training in Portugal – its opportunities and obstacles, even if thefurther results’ presentation will follow an historical sequence. In fact, with thisresearch, as we have mentioned above, we expect to identify aspects of the curricu-lum that promote personal development, as a nuclear part of teacher professionalidentity.

Curriculum and identities before the democratic revolution: an austere andconformist identity

The Portuguese educational system was founded at the end of the eighteenth cen-tury, and until the beginning of the dictatorial regimen (1926) primary teachers’pre-service education was a polarised arena of two different ideological positions:


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Table2.

Codingof

thebiographical

narratives.

Beforepre-servicetraining

Duringpre-servicetraining

After

pre-servicetraining

Entry

During

Exit

Educatio

nalbackground

Reasons

forchoosing

the

course

Perceptionof

thecurriculum

:Formal

Inform

alTheoretical/practical

character

Personalchange

Firstprofessional

experiences

Fam

ilycontext

Perceptionof

thetraining

environm

ent:

General

feeling

Teacher/studentrelatio

nship

Relationshipbetweenstudents

Self-im

ageas

ateacher

Professionaltrajectory:

Professionalexperience

Further

training

Friends

Personaltrajectory:

Significant

experiences


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progressivism and conservatism (see: Nóvoa 1987, 1989, 1991; Lopes 2001). Thelatter position was stronger, with supporters who argued that knowledge was notvery necessary for teachers. Consequently teachers’ pre-service education was verypoor (in content and in time). It emphasised teachers’ moral education in a con-formist perspective while professional knowledge and autonomy were despised(Lopes and Ribeiro 2000).

Throughout the dictatorial regimen (1926–1974) this position became stronger.In 1936, the Normal Schools (Escolas Normais), which were leaders in primaryteachers’ pre-service education, were closed because it was argued that their exis-tence was useless (Benavente 1990; Stoer 1985). They reopened in 1942 with a‘renovated’ curriculum, which stressed moral character of pre-service teacher educa-tion and disregarded instruction.

In the late 1960s, the world was changing. Despite some attempts at change pri-mary teachers’ pre-service education was keeping its incipient, ideological and con-formist character. Documental analysis informs us of a curriculum tuned with anauthoritarian and stratified society and educational policies that were not concernedwith increasing the quality of training. Within the two-year course, teacher educa-tion emphasised, above all, loyalty to the regimen ideology. Its major characteristicswere low scientific exigency, pedagogical weakness and gender bias.

The majority of students were females who had nine previous years of schoolingand were in an ascendant social mobility process. When they chose a career inteaching, their motivations were almost all negative, such as: the training course israpid and easy (these were good reasons when they wished to be independent ofeconomic support of their families); teaching is a good job, with many holidays, ahigher status and is considered ‘nice’ for a woman (teacher income was low butenough for a woman who would most likely be married to someone with a highersocial status).

. . . when my mother remarried, my sisters and I. . . said: ‘Let’s finish a course quicklyso we can work’. (Interview no. 40, course of 70/72)

. . . I thought it interesting, because they had 3 months holidays. . . (Interview no. 35,course of 71/73)

. . . the parents said: ‘Look, you go because it is a nice course for a girl’. (Interviewno. 30, course of 72/74)

When speaking about curriculum, interviewees explained an easy, intuitive andtheoretical instruction process. The activities with children were almost restricted tothe final examination which consisted of a one-hour class strictly planned accordingto rules that were equal for all students and situations. They were not trained inmusic, dance, painting or drama. They were not instructed about methods to teachreading and writing, they did not learn about specific didactical materials or specificways of teaching basic mathematic reasoning.

. . . it was fairly intuitive, and what we heard in class was enough to write down a fewthings. It wasn’t really an in-depth education. (Interview no. 37, class of 1971)

[The course] was more theoretical and not at all related to practice, or practicalguidelines. . . (Interview no. 33, class of 1967)


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I remember that over at the Normal School there was also the primary school. . . Whydidn’t we go to those classes, that school, more often, and interact more with the chil-dren in order to gain more experience, which would then help us on our path, on ourtrajectory, in the future? That didn’t happen. (Interview no. 6, class of 1969)

. . . in the field of arts, music and drama, they didn’t give us anything, it was moretheoretical and not at all related to practice, or practical instructions, it was as if it wasan academic education of the individual, without addressing the need for instrumentsand tools to deal with the students, none of that. (Interview no. 33, class of 1967)

The school climate is remembered as very formal, austere and repressive. Rela-tionships between trainers and trainees were seen as distant and threatening andrelationships between peers were viewed as amusing and competitive. Peer groupswere the ‘coffee group’ – a place of self development in leisure times as well as asupport group to prepare examinations or to do homework.

. . . it was an extremely conservative school. (Interview no. 33, class of 1967)

It was them [teachers] in their place, teaching, and we listened. There wasn’t [an atti-tude] of helping, of exchange, no. (Interview no. 35, class of 1973)

Outside the classes we didn’t [look for the teachers], in the class we would raise ourhand, but not outside the class. They lived in a completely separate world from us; wedidn’t have access to anyone, not even to ask questions. (Interview no. 37, class of 1971)

Upon leaving the training school, teachers saw themselves as austere and severe,not worried about the affective dimension of the pedagogical relationship.

. . . I was a dictator teacher, at the beginning. (Interview no. 33, course of 65/67)

. . . there were teachers who were already at the school, and we, as we were younger,I. . . let myself be influenced a bit by the ones who were already there. . . even in theearly days of my career, I would hit the students because that was. . . Before the 25thof April people used to hit the kids. . . (Interview no. 39, course of 70/72)

The teachers were trained in a manner so that their work expectations were notdifferent from the way things actually were at school. They were not shocked bythe reality of the situation.

Curriculum and identities after the democratic revolution: an affective andtransformative identity

Democratic revolution began a new and important period for initial teacher educa-tion. The formal curriculum maintained its national character but with new socialand pedagogical references. During this period, democracy and transformativeeducation were at the core of the new society teachers were called to build; knowl-edge was seen as a means of social emancipation and empowerment for disfavouredpeople, and everyone was called to participate critically (see Fernandes 1977; Matos1977, 1978).

Not long after, in the ‘normalisation period’, initiated in 1976, political powerstried to contain these social and educational dynamics, as a means to stop communist


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forces. After the Socialist party’s victory as a result of the first period of universalsuffrage, all institutions came progressively to a new order, with new rules and legalfoundations (Reis 1994a, 1994b; Marçal Grilo 1994). However, this process did nottake place immediately. The transition was simultaneously a time of resistance to anew and constraint order and a period where first revolutionary proposals achievedtheir maturity. This was the case with the initial primary teachers’ education nationalcurriculum (1976/1977). This document strongly valued primary teaching as a crucialactivity to foster qualification and emancipation for the Portuguese people. At thesame time, educational and social sciences emerged as important fields of knowledge.Formal curriculum previewed interdisciplinary areas, optional seminars, specifictimes for curricular activities outside of the classroom and the development of pro-jects with the children’s families and communities. The curriculum development wasgrounded on professional tasks, team work, and research topics and on modalities ofassessment centred on the learning process. Objectives stressed the primary teacheras a critical and intellectual person, a pedagogue, and a transformative agent. There-fore, to dignify the teacher’s status and role was the central aim.

Students who chose teacher education schools at the time had a higher socio-cultural origin than in the past (Fernandes 1977). The vast majority had qualifica-tions to enter in the university, when nine years of schooling was still the minimumcondition to enter a teachers’ training school.

Their motivation was both the negatives (easier conditions and less years tostudy when compared with universities) and positives (the desire to do somethinggood and useful or a valued representation of the teacher’s role).

I had only one teacher from the first till the fourth year, she was the director of theschool, she was a person. . . I can say she is my idol, she has always been, I thinksince I was six years old the only thing I wanted to be was primary school teacher, Inever considered being anything else. . . a lot because of her influence. . . (Interviewno. 17, course of 73/75)

According to the ideals of the time, the school was something to transform. There wasalso, on my part, that whole rebellion of the past, of thinking that the school had tobe changed, the school needed new ideas. (Interview no. 27, course of 78/81)

As with all other interviewees, these teachers did not value the formal pre-ser-vice education curriculum. They considered their training course as theoretical (butless so than today). The relationships with children and the acquisition of ‘knowhow’ to use some methods and didactic materials had a place, but not to a sufficientextent.

The aspect that was truly valued was the new teaching and learning perspectivesof the school, which had a great influence in their professional identity construction.In regards to informal curriculum, they stressed teamwork and dynamics as thenuclear source of personal and professional growth.

I think that those moments [of social interaction] are, sometimes, better for learningthan the classes. I. . . studied more outside the classroom than in the classes themselvesor for the actual subjects. . . For example, we organised seminars through the board ofthe association, which were not directly related to the subjects A, B or C, but becausewe thought that, in cultural terms and in terms of training, they were necessary. . . Allof the sessions we had were definitely educational. (Interview no. 9, class of 1979)


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. . . we organised exchange trips, fieldwork weeks. . . It was not just a formal, academiceducation, in terms of contents, but in life terms as well. (Interview no. 15, class of1976)

Professional and academic learning occurred as they lived together. They alsostressed the importance of seminars, the activities with special communities andtheir children, field work, and trainers and trainees’ discussion meetings, as impor-tant sources of their identity.

. . . there were work groups outside the Teacher Training College with teachersand classmates who all got together to discuss all sorts of problems which werenot strictly academic. . . It was a strong school, it was a happy group, which wascommitted, interested and wanted to learn those things. (Interview no. 2, class of1979)

At the Teaching Training College we didn’t study for exams, we studied to learn, tolearn something that we were interested in, we worked in order to know what to do,how to find things out, already in an attempt by our teachers to encourage us toresearch things. (Interview no. 2, class of 1979)

There was a very close relationship; it was not just the academic aspect that wasimportant there, but the human aspect. (Interview no. 15, class of 1976)

Teacher–student relationships were described as involved and open, while thestudent relationships were cohesive, empathetic, and with a sense of organisation.All of this happened in a climate of novelty, joy and euphoria joined with the strug-gle for the quality of their training.

When they were interviewed, approximately 25 years after their training course,interviewees said that when they left training school they were teachers wishing toimprove the learning process of children as well as primary teacher professional sta-tus and role and to engage a process of lifelong learning.

. . . The school I idealised 30 years ago is still not a reality and [it] is increasingly nec-essary. . . a school with various teachers, where there’s this exchange of experiences.(Interview no. 17, course of 73/75)

I think that the main thing that [pre-service] training gave me was the desire toknow more, I acquired that spirit of wanting to know more, and that being a teacheris not static, that it changes with us, with the kids and with things that others dis-cover, and I’ve always had this idea of knowing something more. (Interview no. 2,course of 76/79)

I think this is what it means to be a teacher. This relationship I establish [withthe students], and then the family, because I worry about the child who is notjust my student, but is also a citizen of the future. (Interview no. 3, course of76/79)

The initial professional identity of these teachers was like a dream and conse-quently the ‘reality shock’ was very strong. Actually, they seemed to be trained forprofessional and school cultures that did not exist. Nevertheless, the training experi-ence gave them the strength to not only continue believing in their ideals but alsoto stay committed to lifelong learning.


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Curriculum and identities in the 1980s: a techno-affective and innovative identity

The third period of comparison is marked by the integration of Portugal into theEuropean Union. During this period, Portuguese society lost its political andideological bias to answer to the modernisation and economic competitiveness call-ings. In 1986, the Basic Law for Educational Systems was approved, whichincluded a requirement of nine years of compulsory education for students and anorder that teachers in training complete a degree of higher education. At polytechnicinstitutes, higher schools of education (Escolas Superiores de Educação – ESE)were created. Nevertheless, only in the late 1980s were these schools completelyfunctioning. Within this new frame, teachers’ education curriculum lost its nationalcharacter, despite some common structural aspects, such as the new teacher profile:this new teacher could teach in primary schools (then called basic education firstlevel) with three years of study, and he/she could teach in the basic education sec-ond cycle with one more year of study. In the first instance, she/he would be only aregular classroom teacher, while in the second instance he/she could also teach spe-cific subject matters (mathematics, language, science). Documental analysis reflectsthis transition, but also the new cultural and economic context. Assessment turnedinto evaluation with more examinations than individual or team work and research.From the analysed documents we can also say that initial teachers’ training becamemore technical, with a strong influence of ideas grounded in behaviourist perspec-tives. Nevertheless, at the same time, interdisciplinary perspective was still a chal-lenge. The teacher was simultaneously represented as a pedagogue and as an expertin educational planning.

These transition issues (between the old and the new times) were visible in themotivations in choosing to study to be a teacher. There were some positive motiva-tions, but the majority referred to old negative motivations. Higher educationschools were more difficult to enter at that time, and teacher training schools wereoften the last opportunity for some students to acquire a degree of higher education.Interviewees trained during this period reported that their coursework was very the-oretical and many of their classes were without a practical dimension. Training cur-riculum was seen as very intensive and exigent.

. . . it was a very intense course. (Interview no. 14, class of 1985)

. . . the only things that were helpful for my professional work were Corporal Expres-sion, the field of Expressions, and Arts, but the other theoretical subjects didn’t help meat all, not at all. . . I had no basis for dealing with a problem child, for example, how todeal with a child with special educational needs, the methods for teaching Portugueselanguage, for example, methods for mathematics. (Interview no. 10, class of 1985)

. . . and even in terms of mathematics, using the materials, we didn’t have classeswhere they got us to work with the materials for mathematics, which are so important;maybe there weren’t any in the teacher training college. I don’t know! I know thatthey didn’t get us to work with them, they talked to us about this and that, but theydidn’t show us what it was, I mean, that experimental aspect. (Interview no. 20, classof 1988)

These teachers emphasised the convivial nature of their peer relationships. Theschool climate was defined as liberal and trainers and trainees’ relationships werecategorised simultaneously as distant and warm.


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. . . I think that the social interaction was a very, very healthy social interaction. Ireally liked my class, in fact, I think we had a very good atmosphere in the class, wegot on well. . . (Interview no. 12, class of 1981)

. . . on a day-to-day basis it was a very liberal school, I think it was liberal. . . We [goton very well together], it was a group which enjoyed gatherings, sitting together, talk-ing, I think that our age helped, and we liked to form groups and talk and sing. (Inter-view no. 20, class of 1988)

In speaking about the kind of teacher they were when they left training school,these teachers (who had approximately 15 years of experience when interviewed),described themselves as teachers worried about the pupils’ academic achievement(the word ‘children’ was not as common with these teachers compared to the prece-dent ones) and efforts to maintain a pleasant pedagogical relationship. To improvethe quality of education was seen as a duty and not a project.

. . . I thought, at the beginning of my career, that I’d be teaching the children to readand write, that I was not a good teacher if they got to the end and didn’t know allthose things I had to teach them. (Interview no. 14, course of 82/85)

. . . and it’s the wanting to have reading and writing, and maths, playing a majorrole. . . And that idea that you have a job to do, which is important, that in a secondyear a child should master, minimally, the reading technique, were always present.(Interview no. 26, course of 77/80)

I think it’s all important, because both the relationships established and the conveyingof knowledge play a role. . . following the programme, naturally, and trying to conveythat knowledge that is prescribed in the curriculum, but also thinking of developingother capacities. . . (Interview no. 13, course of 85/88)

To teach and to relate to the pupils were two components that were not necessar-ily associated for these teachers in their first professional identity, which emphasisesthe instrumental use of several strategies to make teaching and learning possible.The reality shock exists but was not as significant as during the second period.

Curriculum and identities in the 1990s: a cognitive and civic-centred identity

This period was, mainly, a consequence of the precedent period’s stabilisation. Theimportant aspect to stress about this period, at this point, is that pre-service teachereducation at the analysed school had acquired a more academic and less pedagogi-cal and professional character.

In the second half of the 1990s, despite government trials to change Portugueseeducation into a coherent proposal and social shared quest, educational policiesbegan to resent globalisation and its worldwide education impact. Competitivenesswas a reference more and more used to justify educational decisions. Society ingeneral and educational policies stood in an ambiguous situation. If educationalpolicies were inspired by liberalisation and privatisation, at the same time socialinclusion was presented as the greatest challenge. As higher education institutions,pre-service teacher education schools deepened their scientific concerns. From docu-mental analysis, we can see that pre-service teacher education inherited the worstpart of the university tradition: curriculum (formal and informal) centred on contentand final examinations.


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The majority of the interviewed teachers chose teacher training school withpositive motivations, such as desiring a positive representation of teachers and thewillingness to do good things in the world.

Training curriculum was seen simultaneously as very theoretical, very practicaland very technical. The absence of articulation between these dimensions created atraining curriculum that was not relevant to the real school field (‘training andaction were divorced’). These teachers felt they had high expectations that were notrequired for their real job. As a whole, training curriculum was viewed as very dif-ficult, intense and even excessive. One reported positive feature was the instructionfor successful scientific research.

He was a teacher who talked to us about all the methods there were, but who didn’texplore any of them. He said, ‘This is the most widely used one’ and didn’t exploreany of them. (Interview no. 4, class of 1995)

. . . we choose a course, we want to become teachers, but then the knowing how toteach is either with us or it isn’t; you don’t learn to teach there, and no one gives youany recipes. (Interview no. 16, class of 1994)

I felt that, when we completed the degree, we weren’t at all prepared to teach how to readand write. . . I think we needed didactics and we had very little! . . . The part on method-ologies didn’t work for me! I didn’t learn anything! (Interview no. 21, class of 1997)

As in the second period, peer group was seen as an important aspect ofacademic learning and professional and personal development, but not for the samereasons. At this point, the peer group was seen as a place to cope with the stressarising from their academic work.

. . . those moments [of group work] were quite useful, I mean, they encouraged us toface new situations and perhaps helped relieve the stress we were experiencing. (Inter-view no. 16, class of 1994)

[It was] a learning process at every level. There was a lot of mutual support, wehelped one another a lot with our work. Above all, it’s a learning process from ahuman perspective, from the perspective of personal development, I believe so. Froma scientific perspective as well, of course, but especially from a personal perspective,there was a lot of learning. (Interview no. 8, class of 1994)

School and training climate were reported as very negative and unhealthy.Sociability was restricted. If the relationships with trainers were seen simultaneouslyas distant, formal and helpful, the relationships between peers were seen simulta-neously as competitive and friendly.

We weren’t very close. . . I think it was each man for himself. There was too muchcompetitiveness for the place where we were. (Interview no. 4, class of 1995)

The teachers were in their offices, they were very approachable, we’d meet a teacherin the library or in a corridor, we’d chat easily, they’d greet us. . . but most of themliked to keep that distance, we weren’t colleagues, that was unthinkable! It was almostlike ‘Your Excellency’ and that was that. They were never. . . unavailable or indifferentwhen we had a question or doubt, but the distance was enormous. (Interview no. 16,class of 1994)


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Upon departure from the training school, the central professional ideals of theteachers were: to foster children’s autonomy and willingness to learn, and to teachand train with and for ethical principles and democracy. Self-fulfilment was seen bythem as an important feature of a good teacher.

Most important, firstly, is. . . that they learn. And at the same level, to have a goodrelationship with them, knowing that apart from being a teacher I can be a friend, Ican listen to them, I can help them. And another important thing is the fact that I feelfulfilled. For me that counts a lot. (Interview no. 8, course of 90/94)

[The most important thing] is to give [the students], essentially, a panoply of situationsin which they can position themselves more in one or another. . . essentially, toawaken. . . my values are my values, what I try is for each one of them to build theirown values of democracy, justice, critique. (Interview no. 18, course of 93/97)

Learning, autonomy and citizenship were the main issues of the teachers’ iden-tity. Cognition and civility had an important place in a first professional identity,which was clearly embodied by constructivist and social constructivist perspectives.The shock of reality was evident and powerful for these teachers.

Results and discussion: day-to-day life and day-to-day learning

Mixing results acquired from the two ways of inquiry and the four periods of study,causes some significant conclusions to arise. Of the many conclusions, only thosemost relevant to the aims of this paper – to relate some features of pre-service teachereducation curricula with certain characteristics of teacher identity – will be stressed.

First of all, there is an effect of initial teacher training on the teachers’ firstprofessional identity construction. In fact, different training periods correspond todifferent identities. This effect seems to come from all the levels of the ecologicalsystem and from their interactions. If meso level (school, university, and institute)has its own effect, it is also visible that macro and exo levels interact with it. Thisdemonstrates that all of the system (landscape) interferes in pre-service teacher edu-cation character, both through societies and organisations’ structure and throughactors’ representations, inside and outside of the field (trainers or trainees, parents,families, media, and so on).

When comparing teachers’ first identities from different periods, it seems thatthe teachers’ identity, as stressed by Bolívar (2007), is also a question of generation.Therefore, when doing pre-service teacher education, teacher educators should knowthat they are not only working in a specific school with a specific class andstudents, but they are also dealing with a certain cultural system and historical per-iod and putting together different people from different cultures, and who belong todifferent generations.

This relationship, between the ecological system’s levels and the features ofpre-service teacher education curriculum as a development scenario and landscape,also remind us that to change habitus and ethos it is necessary to offer meso devel-opment scenarios capable of promoting identity conversion. The training climatemust be strong in order to induce changes in representations and into personal andsocial perceptions (mainly concerning knowledge and authority).

This training climate seems to depend also on formal curricula. Although it maybe that all interviewed teachers despised the impact of formal curriculum (which is


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represented as prescribed classes and syllabi), it is also true that the results of thesecond period indicate the importance of formal curricula as a reference both fortrainers and students. If a standardised curriculum is not recommended, an explicitinstitutional training project seems to be crucial. This is an idea stressed by Cunha(1998) when explaining the ‘political and pedagogical higher education school pro-ject’ to inspire collective action. When innovation is needed, institutional projectscan allow concerned individuals to share ideas and examine central aspects of cur-ricular organisation, such as different areas of interdisciplinary learning and teacherparticipation in daily activities and governance within the school. Similar argumentscan be made about learning and teaching methods and the content relevant to cer-tain teacher profiles and educational system quality.

In addition, some informal curriculum development also utilised formal curriculaas inspiration to development. If all interviewed teachers believe that pre-serviceteacher education does not help them to be teachers and they despise formal curric-ulum, the vast majority stress informal curriculum importance to their professionaldevelopment, which interestingly always refers to learning through innovative waysor to activities not directly related to instruction.

This outcome is relevant to the area of our study concerned with the relationshipbetween professional identity construction and training activities, tasks and situa-tions that can make a difference. The classes in which these teachers learned toteach were clearly not an ideal or elective option. The inspiring professionalmoments of the pre-service education always involved interpersonal relationshipsand personal commitment. The most important content received from the classeswas always related to activities and tasks that included personal participation.

At the same time, there is a clear relationship between the (first) professionalidentity construction and the psychosocial (personal) identity development. Appar-ently, personal commitment and participation are so important and relevant to learn-ing that it is easy for teachers to forget and despise the content or formal classes.This result is in line with Ribeiro’s (2007) assertion that training should take intoaccount the developmental stage of young adulthood, which involves social com-mitment as a development task.

Meanwhile, different generations of teachers seem to stress different informalcurriculum meanings. This is to say, teachers trained in different periods (with dif-ferent curricular experiences) give informal curriculum different meanings. Fromthis perspective, two training periods are especially of interest: the second and thefourth. Each of these periods corresponds to a historical period when there wasmore emphasis on well-defined boundaries and a real investment in the quality ofpre-service teacher education. The periods can also be contrasted in some relevantdimensions, to deepen the discussion about the connections between pre-service tea-cher education curriculum and teachers’ identities.

Abstracting from the results it is possible to say that the curriculum of the sec-ond period is a ‘professional’ one – teaching and learning arise above all from pro-fessional challenges and settings – and that the curriculum of the fourth is an‘academic’ one – teaching and learning arise above all from contents deliveredwithin the classes. Peer group work appears as an important descriptor of the resultsin comparison. During the second period, learning was connected with friendshipand took place both in peer group and in collective activities, through which stu-dents constructed and negotiated their own curriculum development. During thefourth period learning was separated from friendship – to live and to learn with the


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colleagues was not the same thing. The peer group was still a convivial place butonly to cope with the stress arising from curricular prescriptions.

Disconnect between friendship (with colleagues and with trainers) and socialparticipation and between friendship and learning seems to be strongly related tothe enhancement of academic character within the pre-service education for primaryPortuguese teachers. Apparently the second and the fourth periods are two distantpoles that should combine: the pedagogical and professional emphasising the partic-ipation of student learning, and the scientific and academic emphasising teaching.Upgrading the academic level and scientific character of pre-service primary teachereducation is an important condition for primary teachers’ professionalisation andeducational improvement. However it should not increase the distance betweentraining, work contexts and professional exigencies; or the solution will create abigger problem.

This problem is not specific to Portugal. Examining the pre-service teacher train-ing system in five European countries – France, Germany, Sweden, the UK and theNetherlands – in particular regarding the academic versus the practical character oftraining, Maandag et al. (2007, 168) conclude that in all these countries there is anenormous ‘struggle between on the one hand the demand to train teachers at a highacademic level and on the other hand to organise a satisfactory relationship betweentheory and practice’.

The neo-liberal inspired policies, which have become increasingly evident inPortugal since the beginning of 2000, further complicate the situation by couplingthe professional/academic dichotomy with two ‘problematisation forms’ of teacherprofessionalisation: a profession-oriented form and a market-oriented form (Simonsand Kelchtermans 2008). According to Bates (2008, 278), we can say that the mar-ket-oriented form develops based on a:

. . . strong argument. . . around the idea that education, and therefore teacher education,is currently being transformed to better serve the cause of competition in an emergingworld economy; markets and money are the dominating structures to which educationand teacher education must be subordinated in the ruthless competition for economicsurvival.

This argument leads to the replacement of ‘professional virtues’ with ‘entrepre-neurial virtues’: ‘a “good teacher” is an effective teacher, someone who can in aneffective and efficient way perform the tasks that others have defined’ (Simons andKelchtermans 2008, 292).

Since managerial professionalism also compels teacher trainers to adopt aca-demic values centered on the quantification of research outputs and to increasinglydistance themselves from the values that tie them to practice, teacher trainingbecomes even more exposed to the ‘academic drift’ (Grimmet, Fleming, and Trotter2009, 5).

The main contribution of the results in this study for the challenges and dilem-mas of teacher training today is to make clear that the ‘lifeworld’ (lebenswelt) oftraining – or the relational landscape in which it takes place – is an important partof its quality. Following Korthagen (2005), the study highlights a strong relation-ship between the learning (centered on personal involvement and on the interper-sonal relationships between peers, and between students and trainers) that fostersthe development of identity and the attitudes of lifelong learning. An important partof the quality of training, as noted by Tracey and Twes (2005), therefore depends


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on the training environment, in particular regarding interdisciplinarity, and studentinvolvement in the curricular decisions and in school life. The parameters of theassessment of teacher training should therefore include these components of thetraining environment, which seem to make a difference, without restricting them-selves to the objective components of study plans, the distribution of hours acrossteachers and their characteristics in terms of academic output tout court, as happensin most training accreditation systems (EURYDICE 2006). As a way of preventingthe ‘academic drift’ of trainers, or loss of interest in teaching because of an empha-sis on research, it is important that they develop research that is based on their dailypractice. This is the view adopted by Grimmet et al. (2009, 14) when they arguethat teacher trainers in higher education should focus on a:

. . . dual process of legitimacy creation and identity formation [which] requires teachereducators to re-invent any undertaking of research into an action that recognises theirdistinctiveness in the field of practice. . . . Research, then, becomes a powerful act ofinquiry within and into practice. It does not supersede practice but becomes an integralpart of its process.

Based on these reflections, we have identified two new lines of research, onerelating the main results with the assessment of training and the ‘paradigm of stu-dent voice’, and another centered on the construction of the identity of teachertrainers in the context of higher education. To these two lines we can add another,which along the lines of Ostinelli (2009), aims to relate choices in teacher trainingwith the historical and cultural specificities of the countries in which they occur. Infact, while many of the aspects of the debate on teacher training are common notonly to Europe but to the world in general, it also appears that some of the choicesare marked by particular historical, cultural and social characteristics of the societiesin which they emerge.

Notes on contributorsAmélia Lopes has a PhD in educational sciences and is an associate professor withhabilitation at the University of Porto. She was a member of the Executive Council of theFaculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences and president of its Pedagogical Council.She is vice president of the CIIE Research Unit and coordinator of the Research Subunit onTraining, Knowledge and Work and Educational Contexts. She is also vice president of thePortuguese Society of Educational Sciences. Her main research areas concern professions,higher education, training and identity. At the moment this research interest focuses on thetraining of professionals at the university underlying both the role of trainers’ identities andtraining climate. She is now the principal researcher of the project ‘Initial training of helpingprofessionals and trainers’ identities: a multi-case study on teaching and nursing’ (funded byPortuguese Foundation for Science and Technology).

Fátima Pereira has a PhD in educational sciences and assistant professor of the University ofPorto. She is a member of the Coordination Commission of The Research Centre Researchand Intervention in Education (CIIE) and of its Research Subunit on Training, Knowledgeand Work and Educational Contexts. She is also coordinator of the School Life Observatoryand vice coordinator of Teacher Training Office of Faculty of Psychology and EducationalSciences of the University of Porto. Her main research area concerns social construction ofchildhood, teachers’ work, teachers’ education and school mediation. At present, she iscoordinator of Identities’ Subteam of the project ‘Initial training of helping professionals andtrainers’ identities: a multi-case study on teaching and nursing’ (funded by PortugueseFoundation for Science and Technology).


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