Estrategia: antes de leer.

A strange thing happened when I began to consider the context and functions of these stories. The structural analysis left me wondering if these stories were significant or not. When I began

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image of how these stories are being used by this group of teachers emerged. It‟s not the stories themselves that are important but when and how they are shared that is significant.

At the beginning of this study, I wanted to know what were the sources of stories these teachers told and with whom and where they shared their stories. I expected to find that most of the stories would come from classroom teachers or fellow pre-service teachers and that the teachers would share them in their classes. The conversations these teachers had during the interview did reveal that they did share many stories with fellow pre-service teachers. Surprisingly, however, was the fact that there were few instances of these teachers sharing stories with other classroom teachers.

These teachers seemed to share more stories with university teachers they perceived to be trustworthy than they did classroom teachers. This could be a function of the amount of time they spent with the university teachers as opposed to the classroom teachers, the hectic teaching activities that had to occur during the field experiences, or the setting in which interactions took place. What‟s more, the sharing that did occur with university teachers seemed to be focused more on university survival than actual teaching. Although strategies such as debriefing are almost universally advocated as a necessary part of making learning pertinent (Amobi & Irwin, 2005), there is little indication that these teachers engage in this in any productive way in their classes. It may be possible that there were debriefing activities happening but the teachers did not recognize them as useful or that debriefing happened after the interviews were conducted.

It also became apparent that interpersonal relationships with others in the group played a large role in with whom and what kinds of stories where shared. Those teachers with the closest affiliations and similarity of experiences were more likely to share more regardless of function. In other words context was more important than function. Hannah and Sally were not in the same classes as Alice, Betty, Cheryl and Donna and shared fewer stories. Even the non-narrative text is dominated by the four who were in similar classes.

Even more surprising was the fact that these teachers chose to share their stories with family and non-education workers more often than university-related personnel. This is not to say, however, that this sharing was productive. In other words, the number of times a participant chose to share a story has no connection to how it helps or hinders their ability to think reflectively about teaching (Bullough, 2008).

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The stories these teachers told in the interview served a range of explicit and implicit functions in the context of the interview that are just as interesting. I expected to find that the stories would function to divest the pre-service teachers of responsibility for not mastering certain skills, mark milestones of

achievement in learning how to teach, synthesize what the teller knows about teaching, or make others look incompetent. While some this was supported by the data, other functions arose when the stories were analyzed. These teachers did not seem to tell stories that specifically targeted skills or

achievements acquired in learning to teach. Instead they were more generalized views of teaching. While some classroom teachers were portrayed as incompetent, the teachers portrayed themselves as incompetent about as often as they did others.

These teachers seemed to tell these stories that served four specific, overlapping functions within the context of the interview: steer the conversation, warn others that teaching is hard, emotional release and project certain identities. The first function was explicit and the teachers were fully aware of them. They seemed to be somewhat aware of the second and third but were less explicit. The most implicit function was projection of certain identities. This is consistent with findings of other researchers such as Bruner (2000), Bullough (2008) and Danielewicz (2001).

Interestingly, clear patterns in story characteristics emerged for each participant which matched the identities portrayed in the stories these teachers told. Alice, for example, presented clearly

contrasting identities as capable teacher and frustrated university student while Cheryl and Sally presented identities as frustrated teachers. Hannah offered only one story of herself but it was one that showed someone who was confident in what she was learning and able to apply to real classroom situations.

In stepping back and looking more generally at the interview transcripts, one identity emerged that overshadowed everything these teachers said and did. It was clear from these conversations that these teachers see themselves as teachers without having the benefit of being sanctioned as such by the authorities. They are teachers as far as they are concerned. Furthermore, these teachers saw sharing stories as an important part of the process needed to become a teacher as exemplified in the following discussion from the group interview:

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Interviewer: Okay, good point, I hear you telling me that you tell stories, you enjoy them, but you think field experiences are more important than sharing stories?

Sally: I‟d like to think so.

Cheryl: It all depends on who the story is coming from.

Donna: Well most of the things that people talk about, it has or will eventually happen to you so one experience goes with another.

Interviewer: Would you like to see more storytelling incorporated in methods courses? Betty: I would. I like it when the teacher tells the stories. I know I remember them better like when one teacher told us about how to go through a classroom like a child and think about what a child goes through so you know how to set up your classroom like that. I just remember things like that. So if I had stories like that yeah.

Donna: Yeah, if it‟s relevant and worthwhile stories too. If it‟s something off the wall then story, you know, or if it‟s a class and it‟s story after story about things kids say, well that gets kind of redundant cause all kids say crazy things, you know.

Sally: I like the stories because it makes the class more fun and the stuff we learn is easier to remember.

From this brief discussion and other comments made during the personal interviews, it became clear that these teachers saw experience as the best way to learn to teach but saw stories as being equally as valuable. Stories were valuable because they would match what others experienced and would be able to be recalled more easily than other kinds of information. It was at this point that I began to consider what these stories mean for these teachers.

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Chapter Six