Teaching about teaching is to reveal how to live with uncertainty

Abstract

Teacher educators demonstrate scholarship and contribute to professional development when they reveal to their student teachers how to live with uncertainty. The focus of this paper is a self-study where the aims were to contribute to my own professional development as a teacher educator and to understand if and eventually what student teachers could learn from reading my plans and reflections published online through my open journal. The self-study project lasted for 18 months and was carried out in close collaboration with a critical friend. Data collection is based on transcripts from mentor meetings, my personal and open journals, my critical friend’s observations and interviews with student teachers. Through the study I learned that access to my open journal made the student teachers understand more of the complexity of teaching, the possibilities for framing and reframing teaching and the importance of reflection. Different possibilities for getting access to teacher educators’ uncertainty are discussed.