Narratives as a vehicle for mentor and tutor knowledge during feedback in initial teacher education

Abstract

This paper argues that the central role of narratives in forming professional knowledge and identity in initial teacher education (ITE) has been overlooked in much recent research into feedback processes in ITE. The paper reviews a broad sample of recent research into mentor and tutor feedback in ITE and identifies that the role of narrating in feedback is either ignored or downplayed. The paper then uses Wertsch’s work on the co-authoring role of narratives in the ‘effort after meaning’ to suggest that narratives play a powerful and central role in shaping student teachers’ understanding of practice and what they learn from their experiences. Transcript data from actual feedback events is used to analyse the process of co-constructing narrations and role of co-constructed narratives in the feedback process.

Keywords:

• initial teacher education
• feedback
• narrative
• mentoring
• tutoring