My paper, which is a part of my ongoing doctoral thesis, deals with memories Finnish people have on their teachers. Based on the memories I ask what and how former pupils tell about the relationships between a teacher and a student. Teacher memories reveal information about the school and its practices from a historical point of view, as they are part of our collective memory. Through memories we get a hold of former pupils’ experiences and what has been so significant for them that they still remember the issues and tell about them (Paul, Christensen & Falk, 2000). As Smith and Paul (2000) have pointed out, if we want to restructure education we must be willing to confront our histories; in order to create new futures, we must be aware of our educational histories. My study is methodologically committed to narrative teacher research (e.g. Elbaz-Luwisch, 2005). Narrativity shows in the way of analysing the memories and in the form of material. The teacher memories could be characterised as “retrospective reconstructions” of school experiences (Pérez, 1998). I understand teacher memories as stories of the past that are yet always told through our current life situation and as we picture our life in the future (Kerby, 1991). As people tell we can learn from their memories; through story we breathe meaning into experience (Smith & Perez, 2000). In the remembering we recreate the event as we saw it, felt it, as it impacted us (Paul, Christensen & Falk, 2000). Teacher memories are autobiographical; connected to our lives (see Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber 1998; Widdershoven 1993) and what is central is that when recalling we actively try to make sense of our experiences (Crawford, Kippax, Onyx, Gault & Benton, 1992). Based on my previous research on teacher memories, it seems that the memories do not tell just about teachers, but above all about teachers in relationship with their students (Uitto & Estola, 2008; Uitto & Syrjälä, in press). Thus theoretically I analyse the teacher memories in the framework of teacher-student relationship and emphasise this relationship as the core of being a teacher (e.g. Hansen, 2001; van Manen, 1991). The paper is based on a memory material that was collected by publishing a writing request in a Finnish magazine. The request evoked 140 responses from both women and men. By their age the recallers were from early twenties to late eighties. In the paper the memory material is read from the point of view of how the memories are told against expectations set at teachers and students and at their relationship. I will also discuss where these expectations arise. Image of teachers is produced culturally (Salo, 2004) in time and in place. In the memories the recallers bring up what is expected of the teachers, of their appearance and of their relation to the students. Similarly, the stories include descriptions of what is expected of the pupils, what they are allowed to do and what not and how they come to know these rules. However, there are also contradictions – of how students (and teachers) rebel against the expectations set at them. The recallers themselves interpret these expectations in their memories by moving between past and present – when recalling we have an active attempt to understand and explain (Crawford et al., 1992). Through this way of reading the memories I aim to discuss what the memories tell about students in relationship with their teacher, in the context of other people, schools, society, culture, power, and morality (see Smith and Perez, 2000).

Narrative research; the material consists of written teacher memories by 140 Finnish recallers of different ages. The memories were collected by publishing a writing request in a Finnish magazine.

The study looks at memories of teachers in the context of teacher-student relationship. The point of view are the expectations set at teachers, students and their relationship. It is emphasised that teacher memories are personal experiences, but also part of our collective memory. Reading the teacher memories through expectations reveals their social, historical and cultural connections and how the memories are always told in time and place.