Teaching is characterised by a high density of challenging situations that require decision-making; on average, teachers make a decision every second minute of teaching (Russ et al., 2016). These teaching situations also have moral implications, as teachers’ actions influence students in ways that may be beneficial and/or harmful (Hansen, 2001). The process of pedagogical decision-making reflects teachers’ pedagogical thinking, perceptions and beliefs, which are not immediately observable. One way to examine these processes is through teachers’ narratives of such situations, as these narratives reveal teachers’ emotions, thoughts, and interpretations (Elbaz-Luwisch, 2005). These beliefs are often shaped by their own school experiences and studies and may therefore be deeply rooted and difficult to verbalize or even change (Fives et al., 2016). How to study decision-making of pre-service teachers who may not have much teaching experience and when their knowledge of teaching is mainly informed by their own experience as students or general discourse of teachers? To this end, we have applied the method of empathy-based stories in studies conducted in Austrian, Finnish, and Japanese contexts (Hyry-Beihammer et al., 2022). We prepared a research-based, realistic description of a teaching situation, referred to as a frame story (Wallin et al., 2019). Pre-service teachers were asked to read the frame story and to imagine themselves in the teacher’s position. Their task was to describe in detail how they would act in the situation, the thoughts and emotions the situation would evoke, and the reasons underlying these responses. Analysing the students’ written stories through narrative and positioning analysis (Bamberg & Georgapoulou, 2008) showed that they proposed diverse solutions to the frame story, for example by suggesting a variety of teaching methods, while also revealing misconceptions that did not align with research-based knowledge. They also used moral imagination to approach the situation from multiple perspectives (e.g., teachers, students, parents, and multi-professional experts), highlighting the importance of a multiperspective view in today’s highly diverse socio-cultural landscape. In our presentation, we discuss how writing and unpacking stories produced with different prompts can reveal pre-service teachers’ thinking and support both self- and joint reflection by making their perspectives and beliefs about learning and teaching visible and open for discussion. Reflecting on deeply held beliefs about teaching and teacher identity supports professional development across career stages. Imaginative writing, in particular, offers an emotionally safe way to explore what matters without speaking about oneself directly (cf. Hyry-Beihammer et al., 2021).

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