Emerging as a teacher: Student teachers reflect on their professional identity

The purpose of this chapter, in line with the overall theme of the book, is to use the student teacher voice as a basis for exploring the underlying fragmentation, or otherwise, of teacher education. We argue that fragmentation arises because teacher education has been unable or unwilling to make connections between the vast amount of in-depth research conducted at the level of the individual teacher, and the world of policy in which education is essentially seen as a systemic, industrial activity. In other words, a nuanced understanding of individual teacher characteristics and values does not translate into policies which acknowledge these characteristics and values. In this chapter, we argue that student teachers do not enter the world of teaching via teacher education, but are always already within it as a result of their own schooling. In relation to student teachers, teacher education is, therefore, a "phase change" between school-as-pupil and school-as-teacher, rather than "entry into a profession". This tension will emerge as we explore the autobiographies of the student teachers that form our data.