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Prior research has shown that touch has an important role in preschools. However, less is known about early childhood educators' views on touch in their work. Hence, we ask what different views of touch early childhood educators narrate as a part of their work. The research material consists of three multiprofessional group discussions with educators working in Finnish preschools. The findings show how educators balanced between different views of touch. Occasionally they spoke from personal points of view: touch is intimate while an important part of their work. However, educators also spoke from professional and practical points of view: circumstances and practices influence touch, and they must tolerate touch because of the nature of their work. Additionally, educators spoke about how culture, rules, habits, and other people affect touch. The study suggests that practices of touch must be intertwined with tactful practice and treated as a multisided phenomenon in education.

This article explores how student teachers use moral imagination when writing about an ethical dilemma. Moral imagination refers to the ability to consider a situation from a distance and to understand different perspectives through imagination. An ethical dilemma was presented in the form of a framing story, which the participating Austrian and Finnish student teachers continued writing as they chose. Through positioning and narrative analyses, we uncovered how the students' moral imagination on the ethical dilemma centred on one or more of the following foci: (1) the pupil; (2) themselves as teachers; or (3) other actors. This moral imagination manifested through different storylines. The implications of these results and the relevance of the method for teacher education are discussed.

This article focuses on what student teachers tell about the emotional dimension of their identities with self-portraits. Narrative interviews with self-portraits were conducted with two student teachers in the final stages of their studies. The interviews were analysed by using narrative analysis, followed by a thematic cross-analysis of the two emplotted stories. The findings emphasise the importance of vulnerability as a significant emotional dimension of student teachers' identities, showing them to be vulnerable in relation to themselves, to others and to cultural teacher stories. From the perspective of student teacher identity construction, it was notable that the student teachers described moments of feeling unsuited to being a teacher, which made them feel vulnerable. The article discusses the meaning of self-portraits for research and for teacher education; telling stories with self-portraits can be used to understand the emotional dimension of student teachers' narrative identities.

This article focuses on children's perspectives of belonging to a place, in this case a Finnish preprimary school setting. This study explores "place-belonging" in photographs originally taken by the children in their preprimary school activities. "Photo-telling" was applied as a methodology to link narrative and visual approaches. The research data consist of 13 children's photographs and group discussions, in which the children viewed the photographs with the researcher. The study shows that children's belonging in the preprimary school was intertwined with various elements of the setting, including the people, activities, materiality, and institutional and cultural practices. The findings show how the children can make places of their own and contribute to the setting, how they build their own places, and how these places and associated structures affect the children's actions. Play allows the children to gain familiarity and attachment to places, materials, and peers, hence building a sense of belonging to the preprimary school as a setting. Children's photographs and storytelling activities provide educators with a significant means to support and understand children's perspectives on place and belonging.

The article discusses parent-teacher relationships in school micropolitics based on beginning teachers' stories. We employ a narrative approach and investigate how micropolitical conditions and strategies are portrayed in beginning teachers' stories of parent-teacher relationships. The research material consists of narrative interviews with seven Finnish primary school teachers in the first and second years of their careers. The findings indicate that micropolitical processes play a part in constructing parent-teacher relationships. These micropolitics both enable and limit these relationships and influence how beginning teachers learn to cope with parent relationships. The findings reveal various micropolitical strategies that beginning teachers use to enact and construct parent-teacher relationships. Furthermore, the findings show that parent-teacher relationships do not necessarily include just parents and teachers, but are multidimensional, encompassing several intertwined relationships that micropolitically condition parent-teacher relationships. The implications for pre- and in-service teacher education and school leaders are considered.

This article addresses emotions involved in encountering classroom diversity as appearing in beginning teachers' stories. Previous research has pointed out that teachers' emotions related to growing classroom diversity are seldom addressed, although increasing classroom diversity has been distinguished as a significant emotional challenge for teachers. In this article, teachers' work is viewed as relational and moral work, in which emotions are inherently present. We conceptualise emotions as simultaneously social and individual. Instead of predefining the term 'diversity', we are interested in what kind of classroom diversity seems to become meaningful in teachers' stories. The data consists of narrative interviews with seven Finnish beginning teachers. The findings illustrate how, in beginning teachers' stories, students are both categorised and approached as unique individuals. Furthermore, the findings show diverse ways that emotions are present in teachers' stories about classroom diversity, and how the working community also affects teachers' emotions. We argue that teachers' stories related to emotions and classroom diversity can be interpreted as moral negotiations, in which teachers' own values and ideas of teaching are challenged. The findings of this article may add understanding of teacher-student relationships in diverse classrooms, and are also significant for teacher educators and teacher education programmes.

The need to improve teachers' abilities to respond to the needs of diverse students has been widely acknowledged. To acquire these abilities teachers need ongoing reflection and opportunities to learn in practice in various contexts. However, earlier research has not extensively theorised teachers' intercultural learning as a holistic life-long learning process. This article discusses teachers' intercultural learning as a lifelong process in which emotions play a significant role. The article is based on the findings of an analysis of biographical interviews with 10 Finnish teachers. The research question addressed here is: How does the significance of emotions for teachers' intercultural learning appear in teachers' stories? The findings present four ways in which the emotional dimensions of intercultural learning was present in the teachers' stories: emotions shook the teachers' values and perspectives, emotions triggered action, the teachers' own feelings of otherness enabled sensitivity towards others, and the emotional climate supported the teachers' intercultural learning. Finally, the article discusses the pedagogical conditions for teachers' intercultural learning as an emotional process.

It has been increasingly acknowledged that emotions are a significant dimension in teachers' work and professional development, and an inseparable part of reflection promoted in the research-based teacher education. However, at the same time the difficulty of prompting student-teachers to reflect on their emotions in teacher education has been recognised. This article focuses on this difficulty by examining how emotionally loaded stories about teachers' work were dealt with by soon-to-graduate Finnish student-teachers attending peer group mentoring sessions. We illustrate this group-level phenomenon (the challenge of discussing emotionally loaded stories) through the examples provided by one of the participants, Hannele (pseudonym). Our results revealed that emotionally loaded stories in this peer group were often responded to with laughter and humour or via masking or silencing. Participants seemed to avoid deeper emotional reflection on uncertainty related to oneself and to the teaching profession, therefore maintaining an image of a proper (student) teacher. Our results have implications for both peer group mentoring and pre-service teacher education.

This article focuses on teacher identity. Based on two small stories told in a peer group by a beginning teacher, we ask: How does a beginning teacher tell about her identity as part of the micropolitical context of school? Theoretically and methodologically, the research is committed to a narrative approach in understanding teacher identity. The material consists of small stories based on videotaped peer group discussions of 11 Finnish teachers. The results of the research illustrate the micropolitical context at the heart of how a beginning teacher's identity is constructed through diverse emotionally significant relationships. Narrative ways of working, such as group discussions, can offer teachers an opportunity to recognize different dimensions of their identity.

This article employs a narrative approach in examining the intertwining of the personal and professional in teacher-student relationships. A total of 141 Finnish people of various ages wrote about their teachers; specifically, the article focuses on memories related to their teachers' personal lives. Such memories illustrate the inevitable presence of teachers' personal lives in schools and show how teacher-student relationships develop in private contexts during and after the school years. Teacher education should provide tools and means of supporting teachers to consider the personal and professional in teacher-student relationships. Nowadays, social media challenges teachers to reconsider these aspects.

A Finnish magazine published my request that people remember and write about their teachers. Many writers recalled teachers who, for example, had humiliated, favoured or laughed at their students. This article focuses on a study of such negative memories, examining what writers tell about teachers and students in power relationships and how students make sense of their recollections. Students described not only the teachers' more powerful position but also their recollections of teachers exercising that power in various ways. They recalled what happened between those teachers and themselves and how they (the students) experienced the situations, reacted and felt; they also considered the significance of their memories. Besides demonstrating how teacher-student relations can be loving and reciprocal, research is needed on relations that students recall as negative, unfair or hurtful. Students' memories need to be taken into account to help both teachers and researchers understand how negative experiences evolve in teachers' relationships with students, how complex those relations can be, and how teachers' actions can impact both on student learning and on the students' personal development. Such negative memories should also be addressed in teacher education. Both present and future teachers should have opportunities to work with their own memories. (Contains 8 notes.)

This narrative inquiry analyses the memories of a group of female teachers telling about their own teachers. We ask how gender and emotions are intertwined to teacher-student relationships. Gender was present in the stories where the teachers described being a schoolgirl in relationship with a teacher and told about their teachers as women and men. The collective process of recalling evoked the emotions experienced as students, but these emotions were also interpreted in the present context. When recalling, the teachers were reconstructing the past in the light of the present and the future. The article highlights the significance for teachers reflecting on their own educational histories. (Contains 6 notes.)

This narrative inquiry aims to look at teacher-pupil relationships through teacher memories. When 49 university students of education were asked to write their memories of teachers, they told about their teachers in relation to pupils. The data were analysed thematically and, based on that, re-read through the concepts of body, caring and power in order to answer the question of how these can be understood as elements of the teacher-pupil relationship. We will also discuss the potential for encounter in teacher-pupil relationships, since we noticed that students especially seemed to recall encounters and non-encounters in the relationship. By listening to former pupils, it is possible to elicit significant memories of what, from their point of view, is in the core of being a teacher. The meaning of recalling one's own teachers in teacher education is also emphasised.

Artefacts can evoke stories. This article explores the use of artefacts in narrative pedagogies in the context of teachers' professional development during the induction phase. The research question is: What kind of stories about beginning teachers' work does the use of artefacts in narrative pedagogies evoke? The article is based on two peer group meetings in which nine Finnish teachers working in day care centres and primary schools participated. The findings illustrate how the use of artefacts offers an entrance into teachers' daily routines, relationships and practices as well as how artefacts can become important actors in teachers' classrooms. This article contributes to the emerging literature on the meaning of artefacts in educational practices and beginning teachers' professional development. Additionally, the article contributes to the still not fully recognised potential that artefacts can have in narrative pedagogies in pre-service and in-service teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how student teachers use moral imagination when writing about an ethical dilemma. Moral imagination refers to the ability to consider a situation from a distance and to understand different perspectives through imagination. An ethical dilemma was presented in the form of a framing story, which the participating Austrian and Finnish student teachers continued writing as they chose. Through positioning and narrative analyses, we uncovered how the students' moral imagination on the ethical dilemma centred on one or more of the following foci: (1) the pupil, (2) themselves as teachers or (3) other actors. This moral imagination manifested through different storylines. The implications of these results and the relevance of the method for teacher education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs narrative as a theoretical perspective and methodological approach, looking at the current nature of teachers' work from the viewpoint of 25 Finnish basic education teachers. Several categories such as multiple teacher roles and fragmentation of teachers' work, teamwork and multi-professional cooperation, pupils' diverse backgrounds, changed learning skills and behaviour, opportunities and challenges of digitalization, schools' open architecture, and pandemic were identified. These categories illustrate teachers' work today as hectic and changing, involving relational intensification, and as challenging and redefining teachers' identities. The implications for pre- and in-service teachers' professional development are discussed. • Given societal changes, it is urgent to revisit teachers' experiences of their work. • This study explores the current nature of teachers' work from the Finnish teachers' viewpoints. • Teachers' narratives illustrate various aspects of teachers' work today. • Hecticness and change, relational intensification, and teachers' work as redefining teachers' identities are highlighted. • The current nature of teachers' work must be considered in pre- and in-service teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been increasingly acknowledged that emotions are a significant dimension in teachers’ work and professional development, and an inseparable part of reflection promoted in the research-based teacher education. However, at the same time the difficulty of prompting student-teachers to reflect on their emotions in teacher education has been recognised. This article focuses on this difficulty by examining how emotionally loaded stories about teachers’ work were dealt with by soon-to-graduate Finnish student-teachers attending peer group mentoring sessions. We illustrate this group-level phenomenon (the challenge of discussing emotionally loaded stories) through the examples provided by one of the participants, Hannele (pseudonym). Our results revealed that emotionally loaded stories in this peer group were often responded to with laughter and humour or via masking or silencing. Participants seemed to avoid deeper emotional reflection on uncertainty related to oneself and to the teaching profession, therefore maintaining an image of a proper (student) teacher. Our results have implications for both peer group mentoring and pre-service teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on teacher identity. Based on two small stories told in a peer group by a beginning teacher, we ask: How does a beginning teacher tell about her identity as part of the micropolitical context of school? Theoretically and methodologically, the research is committed to a narrative approach in understanding teacher identity. The material consists of small stories based on videotaped peer group discussions of 11 Finnish teachers. The results of the research illustrate the micropolitical context at the heart of how a beginning teacher's identity is constructed through diverse emotionally significant relationships. Narrative ways of working, such as group discussions, can offer teachers an opportunity to recognize different dimensions of their identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article employs a narrative approach in examining the intertwining of the personal and professional in teacher–student relationships. A total of 141 Finnish people of various ages wrote about their teachers; specifically, the article focuses on memories related to their teachers’ personal lives. Such memories illustrate the inevitable presence of teachers’ personal lives in schools and show how teacher–student relationships develop in private contexts during and after the school years. Teacher education should provide tools and means of supporting teachers to consider the personal and professional in teacher–student relationships. Nowadays, social media challenges teachers to reconsider these aspects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]