Frustrated Returns: Biography, Parental Figures, and the Apprenticeship of Observation
Source: Curriculum Inquiry, Volume 44, Issue3, June 2014, pages 306–331.
This paper examines the processes by which the past experiences of undergraduate teacher candidates with their parental figures return in the present, thereby shaping both the nature and the meaning of the experiences offered to them in their initial field placement.
Using phenomenological and psychoanalytic lenses, the author analyzes findings from an ongoing, multiyear study of four aspiring teacher candidates, exploring the life experiences that these teacher candidates brought with them to their teacher preparation program, and how these experiences determined what they could and could not learn in their first formal field experiences.
The author concludes the article by theorizing the special challenges teachers face in separating out their own childhoods from the childhoods of those they work with, and suggest ways institutionalized teacher education might do a better job of working with such challenges.