Fictional narratives as didactical tools: using Frank McCourt's Teacher Man in pre‐service teacher education

Abstract

In this article we describe a teaching project that focuses on the introduction of fictional narratives as basis for critical reflection about major issues in the teaching profession. Our main aim is to help pre‐service teachers to make appropriate decisions at particular moments of interaction in their classroom. From a theoretical perspective we are inspired by the cultural and narrative turn in the humanities and the social sciences. In our project pre‐service teachers were invited to read Teacher Man by Frank McCourt, a major novel about teaching, and were asked to comment on key topics and scenes. We argue that using fictional narratives offers a unique opportunity for imaginative engagement, perhaps even empathy in the ways that theoretical textbooks do not provide.

Keywords:

• pre‐service teacher education
• narratives
• language teaching
• fiction
• teaching methodology

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our students who allowed us to reproduce their tasks in this article, and Geert Vandermeersche for the translation of the student reactions.