The link between teacher professional identity and how teachers perceive and carry out their role is widely acknowledged. According to Beijaard, Verloop and Vermont (2000), it relates to how teachers perceive expertise in terms of subject matter, didactic and pedagogical expertise. It is contextual, multiple relational/emotional and storied  and is central to teachers’ in-class practices and beliefs (Day et al, 2005).

The impact of a student teacher’s “apprenticeship of observation”  (Lortie,1975) and the impact of initial teacher education on the construction, deconstruction and re-construction of that fertile experience, is, however, under-researched. Based on the analysis of the teaching credos (reflective essays) of one hundred student teachers undertaking a one year diploma programme in a university in the Republic of Ireland, this paper will examine the long-term impact of this apprenticeship of observation on teacher identity. 

The central research question for this study is: how do student teachers recall, interpret and negotiate their prior experiences and beliefs about schooling, and how does this school experience impact on their professional identity?

The study looks at the effects of prior school experience around three dimensions of professional values, professional knowledge and professional skills. Whilst teacher education focuses on all three, the study shows that the effects of school experience on each of these dimensions are not equal. In particular, professional knowledge is something largely acquired post-school, whereas values and, to a lesser extent, skills are significantly affected by the school experience. The analysis reveals, however, that   because the 'backstage' work of teachers in lesson preparation and planning goes largely unnoticed by pupils. A certain amount of so-called 'practice shock' is therefore caused by the realisation that what seemed effortless in teaching is anything but. 

From a European perspective, the study is significant because this aspect of teacher identity does not come from academic or policy discourses but is inescapably bound up with the nature of teaching itself as an extension of learning. It would therefore be useful for larger transnational studies to be conducted in this area. No other professsion has this unique continuity between developmental and professional learning, and we should make the most of it.

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