Sociological and pedagogical research has identified that pre-service teachers experience a long “apprenticeship of observation” (Lortie 1975) in advance of entering initial teacher education (ITE).  It is argued that this apprenticeship of observation has a powerful influence, shaping pre-service teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and conceptions of good teaching based on what they experienced in their schooling (Darling-Hammond 2012; 2006; Sugrue 1996).  While the concept of the apprenticeship of observation has been enormously beneficial in understanding the uniformity of pedagogical practices across the generations, it could be argued that this conception perceives the pre-service teacher as a rather passive recipient of educational experiences during schooling dependent on the nature, range and quality of experiences offered by an individual’s schooling.  This research paper offers an alternative perspective; that pre-service teachers have a significant level of agency in determining the educational practices they choose to engage with and the subsequent experiences they carry with them when leaving school.  From this perspective, the apprenticeship of observation might instead be seen as an active journey by the pre-service teacher where they selectively determine the educational practices that are congruent with their beliefs and values.  Notwithstanding the contribution that research investigating the apprenticeship of observation has made to understanding pre-service teachers’ practices, this research contends that solely viewing the apprenticeship of observation from primarily sociological and pedagogical perspectives underestimates important psychological influences at play.

In this context, this research integrates an alternative and potentially enriching psychosocial perspective focussed on the autobiographical memories of pre-service teachers in relation to their working selves (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce 2000) during the apprenticeship of observation period.  Autobiographical memories are very important to the working self, a cognitive structure made up of goal hierarchies and self-conceptions which are crucial to developing a stable self and forming an identity (Conway 1998).  The working self is oriented around self-defining memories which connect to an individual’s goal hierarchies and self-conceptions.  It is recognised that goal-related experience is prioritised in autobiographical memories as they are used to encode subsequent experiences (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce 2000) to an individual’s schema.  It is also evident in research that in retrieving autobiographical events, a significantly higher number of memories laid down between ages 10 and 30 years are recalled as this period is abundant with novel and self-defining experiences (Ruben et al 1998) thus playing an important role in the construction of the working self. 

It can therefore be argued that from the perspective of the ‘working self’ autobiographical memories from this period will not be chronological, but rather, a purposeful selection of key experiences important to an individual’s goal hierarchy and self-conception.  To this end, this study aims to explore pre-service teachers’ memories of schooling with a view to identifying what were selected as significant memories and exploring possible reasons why these memories were chosen in the context of the construction of the working self.  The study explores common themes, such as self-defining moments, anchoring and analogous events (Pillimer 2001) through a discursive psychological analysis (Wetherell et al 2001).  It is hoped that this analysis can inform how we understand the role of the working self and the subsequent active construction of the apprenticeship of observation with a view to identifying the potential implications for ITE.

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