Preservice Teachers' Professional Role Gestalts and Perceived Competence: Current and Future Constructions

• In Event: Teacher Knowledge and Cognition

Abstract

Retrieving an under-utilized construct in teacher education, this paper focuses on teacher professional role gestalts in the context of contemporary more broadly framed teacher competences/standards. Positioned within the literature on learning to teach, four professional role gestalts were employed in this study, that is, teacher as instructional manager, generous expert, caring-moral person and cultural-civic being. Drawing from a larger mixed methods study, pre-service teachers completed a narrative reflection on current and future self as teacher (n = 61) vis-à-vis the four role gestalts. Findings point to the ways in which pre-service teachers’ perceive their professional role via gestalts as current and future constructions of professional identity and competence.

Authors

• Paul F. Conway, University of Limerick
  Presenting Author

• Joanne O'Flaherty, University of Limerick
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ciarán Ó Gallchóir, National University of Ireland - Maynooth
  Non-Presenting Author