Teachers and their Career Story: A Biographical Perspective on Professional Development

Abstract

The biographical perspective gives a central place to the subjective interpretation of the teacher. In order to understand career changes over time, we decided to study the professional development of teachers from the ‘biographical perspective’. Several authors make clear that being a teacher is a job that strongly involves the teacher as a person. A very important part of the professional self is constituted by the knowledge, opinions and values a teacher holds about his or her professional activities. Professional self and subjective theory mediate between past experiences and the actual professional behaviour. The concepts were made more concrete and meaningful. The ‘critical’ character of an event is defined by the respondent himself and the way he or she copes with the situation. An important completion of the original framework was the identification of the ‘critical persons’.