Images of Teachers in Children's Literature: are there Messages for Initial Teacher Education?

This paper discusses the research ideas behind a seminar session from the recent UKLA conference (2011). The seminar identified a potentially rich data source, i.e. children's literature, in order to investigate the way teachers are represented and the possible link with initial teacher education (ITE) students’ conceptions of professional identity on entry to teacher education courses. This illuminative inquiry is based on the writer’s current PhD study into the range of representations children are actually given access to within the school context, particularly in key stages 1 & 2, through a review of the teaching of narrative within the last decade, which would draw upon the findings of the UKLA research on Teachers as Readers (2006-8). An examination of the characters found in familiar classroom texts such as Roald Dahl's Matilda are used in conjunction with a focus upon recent literature regarding the cultural construction of the primary teacher within the UK to investigate and explore the potential interplay between imagined teachers and the recruitment of teachers in training. While other aspects of media no doubt have an impact upon the changing construction of ITE students’ professional identity, I propose that the preceding literary influences within the classroom experience of ITE students have largely been ignored, and as a result valuable insights into their perceived professional identity upon entry to the programme, and a potential inhibiting factor for widening recruitment, has lain dormant and been thus far misunderstood.