In my ongoing doctoral thesis, my interest is in memories that people have of their teachers. It appears that while recalling, the former students are not just telling about their teachers, but rather about the relationships with them (Uitto 2010; Uitto & Estola 2009; Uitto & Syrjälä 2008). Educational research does illustrate and emphasise the significance for teachers to construct relationships with their students. However, we also need to listen to students: how they retrospectively describe their teacher relationships and what they consider as meaningful. Therefore, I ask in my research: what can we learn from the relationships between teachers and students on the basis of teacher memories? This kind of perspective to teacher-student relationships is needed in teacher education. In addition to this, my presentation will approach teacher memories from another angle that requires attention in teacher education. (Future) teachers need opportunities to share with others their personal experiences of teaching, which includes memories of school and teachers (Paul & Smith (eds.) 2000). This is important both during pre-service and in-service teacher training. As we all have memories related to school, we can also have very deep-rooted images of what it is to be a teacher or a student. Through teacher memories, we can better understand the experience of being a student and how even somewhat similar kind of situation with the teacher can mean different things to different students.

Theoretically this study is connected to the relational aspect of teachers’ work: I understand the teacher-student relationships at the core of being a teacher (e.g. Bingham & Sidorkin (eds.) 2004; van Manen 1994). However, it is important to pay attention to both how teachers and students were recalled and told about in the relationships. The memories illustrate how teachers treated and related to the students, how they were and taught and how they behaved towards students. Also, the meaning of these teachers for the students is considered. The memories show that teachers and students encounter as bodies and through their gender (Paechter 2006). There were memories of both caring and non-caring teachers in the recalled relationships (cf. Noddings 1992). Recalling evoked emotions that had been experienced as students (Hargreaves 2002). Teacher-student relationships are always power relations (e.g. Lynch & Lodge 2002) and this includes the possibility for teachers to make a difference in the lives of their students (Flores & Day 2006).

Three memory materials are studied in this research. Firstly, students of education, most of them studying to be teachers, wrote about their own teachers in course essays. Secondly, a group of female teachers teaching in different educational fields met 16 times in a project related to in-service teacher training. During one of the sessions, they collectively recalled their teachers. And, thirdly, 141 people wrote as my request that asked people to recall their teachers was published in a Finnish magazine.

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