Implicit perceptions of teaching
For many of us, the journey towards becoming a teacher started long before we embarked on a teaching qualification. To a beginning teacher, teachers are already familiar creatures; they have worked alongside them in educational settings since their early years. Britzman[1] argues that, alongside the acquisition of a formal curriculum, this extended observation period equips beginning teachers with a hidden curriculum. Exposure to repeated examples of teacher practice develops an understanding of ‘typical’ teacher behaviour.
As students ourselves, we learn to ‘read’ the behaviour of our teachers and to anticipate their responses to classroom activities. We see the confident way that they settle a class and admire their ability to make their voice heard across a playing field or transfix a group by reading aloud. This early familiarity with the surface aspects or the public face of teaching can lead to an assumption that this can be easily replicated.
The view from the other side of the desk
For many preservice teachers, the metaphorical move from one side of the teacher’s desk to the other brings with it the uncomfortable realisation that there is much more going on beneath the surface than they originally anticipated. The magical ability to establish a calm atmosphere is the result of multiple factors: the group’s engagement with routines, their comfort with each other, the fact it’s the first lesson of the day and often, the teacher’s relationship with the group.
As a preservice teacher new to all the above, this epiphany can be overwhelming. Part of this realisation stems from the fact that often, our initial perception of what teachers do is procedural. As learners, we only see the surface. We do not see the mechanisms beneath, the pedagogies, the careful construction of learning, the pastoral engagement. We realise that we have not seen the whole person, we have seen something of their professional persona.
In becoming teachers, we take on different identities. This can be challenging, particularly as the adoption of an identity may mean suppressing something of the self. Through the process of ‘becoming someone you are not’, the student teacher becomes a ‘site of conflict’.[2]