Attachment, identification, emulation, and identity: distant teachers and becoming a teacher educator

ABSTRACT

Only recently have researchers and practitioners become interested in teacher educator development and identity formation. The author explores the place of ‘distant teachers’ – giants of the past whose lives and works prove powerful in self-formation. John Dewey and Boyd H. Bode are offered as examples of distant teachers; the development of the teacher–student relationship with Dewey and Bode is described. The author argues that ‘Great teachers, distant teachers, grab and hold us because they stretch us and in stretching we re-imagine ourselves and begin to remake the world that holds us and that we, in turn, uphold.’

KEYWORDS:

• Self-study
• teacher identity
• distant teachers
• becoming a teacher educator

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert V. Bullough

Robert V. Bullough, Jr., is Emeritus Professor of Teacher Education, Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling (CITES), Brigham Young University and Emeritus Professor of Educational Studies, University of Utah. His recent work focuses on the ‘manners of democracy’ to be practiced and taught in schools. His most recent books include Essays on Teaching Education and the Inner Drama of Teaching: Where Troubles Meet Issues (2019), Schooling, Democracy, and the Quest for Wisdom: Partnerships and the Moral Dimensions of Teaching (with John Rosenberg, 2018), and a book on preschool teachers’ well-being, Preschool Teachers’ Lives and Work: Stories and Studies from the Field (with Kendra Hall-Kenyon, 2018).