Narratives of the Power of Experience in a Teacher Educator’s Development

Abstract

Teaching teachers is a unique experience, rich in opportunities to make a difference but also rich in opportunities to contradict oneself by saying one thing and doing another. My teachers in school and university inadvertently taught me how to teach as I observed them. Then teaching experience and theories of education were added to the mix. Finally, as I began to teach teachers, I confronted the profound gap between my teaching experience and my students' lack of experience as well as the gap between what a teacher is teaching and what students are actually learning.