Doth The Lady Protest Too Much? Pre-Service Teachers and The Experience of Dissonance As A Catalyst for Development

Source: Teaching and Teacher Education, Volume 25, Issue 3, April 2009, P. 468-481

This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of 34 beginning pre-service teachers enrolled in a large U.S. teacher preparation program. Discussion focuses on participants' identity development as examined through the lens of the stories they learn and tell during and about their initial experiences of becoming teachers. Specifically, the analyses suggest that dissonance may play an important catalytic role in pre-service teacher identity development among the study participants. The stories participants tell illuminate their negotiations of conflicting stories about teaching, teachers work and themselves. These stories also inform a tentative theoretical model of identity development. The implications for teacher educators include immediate programmatic concerns as well as issues potentially related to teacher attrition.