Developing Rhythm in Teaching: The Narrative Study of a Beginning Teacher's Personal Practical Knowledge of Classrooms

Abstract

This article explores the development of one novice teacher's personal practical knowledge during his first year of teaching. The work offers an account of personal practical knowledge, particularly of image, as nonpropositional in character; as having experiential origins and as having emotional and moral dimensions. The article analyzes the dilemmas that were created when one of the novice teacher's images, in its practical expressions, conflicted with the cyclic ordering of school time. Through the analysis we see a reconstruction of the novice's experience in a process of growth and change in his rhythmic knowledge of teaching. The article makes recommendations for programs of teacher education that allow for the reflective reconstruction of novices' narratives of experience.