Purposeful tensions: Lessons learned from metaphors in teacher candidates' digital stories

Abstract

In this qualitative study we present a brief overview of a digital story project and discuss how two teacher candidates’ implicit metaphors of teachers and students within this project made visible their negotiated and evolving visions of their future classrooms. The tensions present in the teacher candidates’ metaphors allowed us, as researchers and teacher educators, to view these tensions in response to our own teaching practices. This study served as a launching pad to modify our methods courses to support teacher candidates to begin the negotiation of their professional identities as they explore multiple experiences about teaching and learning. Implications include how the digital stories challenged us to find ways to enhance our courses by providing more intentional class engagements providing our students with opportunities to explore the tensions between the industrial and inquiry model in the classrooms we visit and work in, as well as the ones we hope to create.