Self-conscious narrative and teacher education: representing practice in professional course work

There is little consensus about the nature of programs to prepare novices f or teaching and there often appears to be a lack of coherence between what education professors claim to be desirable pedagogy and the means that are sometimes used to teach these pedagogical skills. In this paper, we explore the use of a strategy we call self-conscious narrative that helps to provi de preservice students with insight into the thinking and pedagogical inten ts of the instructor and provides away to monitor the coherence between wha t we profess, and how we profess it. The case study reported seeks to provi de insight into the practice of university teacher educators. One lecture o f an experienced teacher educator which uses a metacommentary along with a modelling of effective teaching behaviours (which we call self-conscious na rrative) is analysed in detail. The analysis illustrates its use in helping students see how to manage peripheral tasks while teaching developing and using questions in a lesson context; and, beginning the process of moving s tudents to pedagogical thinking. The analysis and description of the techni que provides a. detailed look at how the pedagogical intentions of this ins tructor were realized in practice and how the practice of teaching and the theory behind it might be used in a complementary rather than a dichotomous fashion. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.