Understanding Teacher Practice using their own Narratives

This paper discusses ways of understanding teacher practice in educational settings. An educational setting consists of cultural, social and historical elements that all influence the teacher’s practice and, how she experiences this practice. It is argued that teaching science and technology is a socially conditioned practice. The teachers’ practice are formed by their previous education and experience but also influenced by their private life. This way of looking at teacher knowledge and experience requires attention to teachers’ perception of these aspects. Teachers seldom talk about their knowledge of teaching, but they willingly tell their experiences from being a teacher. Therefore it is argued that narratives and life history of teachers can give insight into teachers experience, knowledge and practice. The notion of habitus is used to merge the former experience with the actual practice.
The paper discusses pitfalls and steppingstones in the process of using narratives to understand teachers’ experiences and knowledge. Important steppingstones are few questions, teacher written contributions, careful analysis and supplementary collection of observations. Important pitfalls are ideologism, psychologism, exclusion of teachers’ perspective and lack of distance to practice. Pitfalls and steppingstones will be illustrated in relation to narratives of Danish science teacher.