Abstract
This article explores the contribution that a teaching strategy, such as metaphoric body-mapping, can make towards the discourse on the development of professional teacher identity. Second-year students in a Life Orientation methodology module in a B.Ed programme were offered the opportunity to validate their local knowledge and make new meaning together, through bringing their lived experiences into the classroom. In a contact session, groups were tasked with using body-mapping to conceptualise metaphoric superhero and villain characters of both effective and ineffective teachers. In a subsequent discourse, the characteristics of these metaphoric characters were explored to set the stage for inter- and intrapersonal reflection on students’ own social construction of their developing professional identities. This student experience clearly indicates that metaphors can be a rich and stimulating way for prospective teachers to talk about their perceptions, experiences and expectations of teaching, and the method accentuates the importance of tertiary institutions that contribute to the emerging conversation about the development of professional identity in pre-service teachers. This article pioneers the use of body-mapping as a group-based technique, where a group of people works together on the same body-map, rather than the traditional individual approach to this method. Keywords: body-mapping; Life Orientation; metaphor; pre-service teacher; professional identity; reflection
Highlights
In 1938 cultural theorist, Johan Huizinga, coined the phrase homo ludens, which translates literally as ‘the playing human’ (Huizinga, 1938)
Phase Three of the project attempted to create a safe environment, where students could access and explore their own lived experiences, local knowledge, aspirations, and even fears. They were encouraged to reflect upon their experiences during Work Integrated Learning and look back upon the observations they had completed in reflection of their body-maps, and the lessons they had already presented during that time
The combined results of experience at tertiary level, as well as during Work Integrated Learning, and what they had learned from this activity, offered the opportunity for developing the necessary skills to improve their own teaching practice through critical thinking and analysis to identify alternative, more sufficient teaching methods
Summary
In 1938 cultural theorist, Johan Huizinga, coined the phrase homo ludens, which translates literally as ‘the playing human’ (Huizinga, 1938). Valuable deductions could already have been made, the students in this module were such a diverse group of individuals, representing a myriad of ways to learn and teach, pedagogical and methodological approaches, prior life experiences, cultural and historical backgrounds, and familial relationships, that it is suspected that the interpersonal reflection during this process might not be enough to impact on their own identity as teachers They may have had a good idea about characteristics that would indicate excellent teaching practice and professionalism, but it might not yet have spoken to their own social construction of identity, and influenced their apprenticeship of observation on their own development as teachers. A teaching assistant compiled a list of all the common positive and negative characteristics that students had listed on their body-maps and had reiterated during the group discussion (refer to Table 2)
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