ABSTRACT
In contrast to the previous chapter, this chapter focuses on one dimension of pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge: their knowledge of themselves as teaching professionals. In this chapter, I investigated the professional identity of pre-service teachers via visual metaphors. Sixteen pre-service teachers from different disciplines participated in this research. They conveyed and shared their identities through drawing visual metaphors. Their paintings were analysed based on the visual grammar theory propounded by Kress and van Leeuwen. Then, the annotated interviews focusing on interpreting their visual metaphors were analysed as well. As a result, 28 core visual metaphors were elicited from the pre-service teachers’ paintings, which manifested their practical knowledge about themselves. This chapter implies that visual metaphor as a handy tool of knowledge visualisation helps pre-service teachers to ‘know thyself’.
