ABSTRACT
The historical awareness and reflective practice are key parts of the development of teachers' professional identities. The project tested the introduction of the historical component in the form of excerpts from three texts: Kate Douglas Wiggin's The Story of Patsy; a Reminiscence; Kate Douglas Wiggin's My Garden of Memory and Lileen Hardy's The Diary of a Free Kindergartner. The project sets out to assess the potential of self-designed curricular materials to improve the awareness and reflective practice of trainee teachers. It was intended to test the waters for a larger project about the use of narratives, biography and autobiography in understanding and undertaking Froebelian education in the past and present. According to the Teacher Training Authority, in order to attain Qualified Teacher Status, all teacher trainees must be "able to improve their own teaching, by evaluating it, learning from the effective practice of others and from evidence".
