ABSTRACT
The practitioner research project to be reported in this chapter tracked a group of English language and literature graduates aspiring to be secondary school teachers of English. Despite the researchers’ involvement in a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) secondary English course, the research methodology employed is neither age- nor subject-specific. Teacher development in England is framed in alternative and competing ways, representing a shift away from universities to a vocational route located primarily in schools. This is in contrast to models followed in continental Europe subject to the Bologna process, where many student teachers follow a university course of some four or five years. The research perspective is influenced by hermeneutic phenomenology, involving a focus on “how individuals experience the world and make sense of it rather than any notion of underlying truth”. In this perspective, the research subject’s existence in language is key in determining her relationship with herself and with the world.
