Abstract

This article relates the findings of the first phase of an ethnographic study which aimed to investigate: - the development within the student-teacher, of a sense of professional identity through a process of reflections on personal biography and observations of and discussions with their teacher-mentors; - the impact that such co-existence bears on practical knowledge. Inspired by the studies of Schmidt and Knowles (1995) the study was developed in two phases. First Phase. 300 Primary school student-teachers were asked to report (through sheets and short notes)on the activities of their respective teacher-mentors and to explore and resolve any disagreements on the basis of suggestions based on their own personal biography (“What did the mentor do / What would I have done instead”) (Thiessen, 2007; Gemma, 2010). The material, which was analysed with the grounded theory technique (Glaser-Strauss, 1967; Tarozzi, 2009) showed substantial differences between the actions observed and the memories evoked. Second Phase. Explicitation interviews have then (Vermersch, 1994) allowed to focussed on what caused the student-teachers to express generally positive opinions in support of their suggestions about the teaching actions and to explain their critical responses to teacher-mentor’ actions.