Upon entering teacher training, students often expect their training to provide a 'method' on which they can rely in their daily work as teachers; something that is scientifically researched and proven to ’work’, something that removes uncertainty from teaching. Yet when teaching in classrooms, student teachers are often confronted with aporiae in which they lack a rationale and the means to orient themselves. In Finnish teacher education, it has been repeatedly pointed out that no universal ’method’ can be provided. Instead, it has been emphasised that each student has to build his or her own teaching philosophy or theory during the course of their studies. It combines the scientific research knowledge acquired during courses, practical teaching activities and critical reflection on one's own actions and thinking. This allegedly prepares teachers to act in an autonomous way, something that has traditionally been respected in governing the Finnish education system. Following Taubman (2009), it is possible to interpret the hopes and fears of student teachers in relation to a ’method’ as a relation to a ’subject supposed to know’. This refers to a transferential relationship (Lacan 2017) in which the subject projects onto the Other an expectation of uncovering the basis and meaning of his/her own actions. The Other, however, has no answer as to what the subject should do. Failure to meet such impossible demands may cause frustration in students which cannot be completely avoided, but must be worked through. In this presentation, I will describe becoming a teacher from a Lacanian perspective as an apprenticeship in failure. It is a deeply a personal process where a new rapport with one’s fantasies can be established. Apprenticeship entails a temporal relationship called ‘afterwardness’ (Nachträglichkeit, après coup), in which the subject constructs the truth of its fantasies in hindsight. This result can only be achieved by first failing to achieve the ideal one is after and only through such an error, coming to see one’s own embeddedness in fantasy and learning to act without guarantees.

Lacan, J. (1977). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. Hogarth Press. Lacan, J. (2017). Transference The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII. Polity. Taubman, P. M. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. Routledge.