ABSTRACT
For teacher educators, understanding better how pre-service teachers learn from initial teacher education programmes provides a frame for examining the degree to which teacher education programmes prepare student teachers for the role of a real teacher. The pre-service teachers’ responses suggest that establishing relationships with students is fundamental to both their students’ learning and their own learning and development as teachers. The ways in which teachers establish relationships grounded in trust and an ethic of care are certainly an important element of pre-service teacher education. The pre-service teachers’ responses demonstrate that becoming a teacher is an ongoing process that is initiated, not completed, in the formal pre-service teacher education programme. This suggests that the practicum, while typically identified as the most important part of the pre-service experience, is not, in hindsight, interpreted by these participants as an authentic experience of being a teacher.
