Exploring the teacher’s professional knowledge: Constructing identity and community

But the self, whatever its age, is subject to the usual laws of optics. However peripheral we may be in the lives of others, each of us is always a central point round which the entire world whirls in radiating perspectives. (Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs, 1984.) A starting point for this article is a belief that if we are to develop valued models of teacher development, we first need to listen closely to the teacher’s voice. We need to continue, almost obsessively, that act of listening. Hence, it is judged that the best way to develop sensitive models of professional develop-ment is first of all to listen to the professionals at whom the development is aimed. This process of sensitive listening has been advocated at a number of levels recently. For instance, an emerging body of work has suggestively recommended the develop-ment of collaborative case studies, life stories, and narratives that seek to elicit the teacher’s “personal practical knowledge ” (e.g., Connelly & Clandinin Ivor F. Goodson is a professor in the Facult