Using Cartographies to Map Time and Space in Teacher Learning in and Outside School

Abstract

This article explores the relations between teachers’ visual cartographies and oral narratives to better understand the spatial and temporal relations on teacher learning. It builds on a research project whose main questions were: 1) How and where do secondary school teachers learn to teach? 2) What are the consequences of this learning in their pedagogical relations and their students’ learning processes and results? Since narrative research has been a common way of approaching the subject and have led to an emphasis on learning as a journey across contexts and over time, some of its contributions to explore teachers’ learning paths are theoretically discussed, and visual methods, particularly cartographies, are also examined. Furthermore, the article presents the analysis of cartographies and video recordings of 29 secondary school teachers focusing on the interactions in different spaces and moments in time described by them. Findings suggest that learning to be a teacher may happen in interactions with objects, people and spaces beyond the boundaries of school, university and formal places of training and learning. They also show that the rhizomatic character of the cartographies may not prevent teleological thinking or the idea that any kind of learning is purposeful. Finally, this paper concludes that teachers’ learning does not fit the representational frame that distinguishes between formal contents and leisure activities, classrooms and private spaces, lessons and bodies, emotions and knowledge.