Vet 9. No. 5/6. pp.

443-4S6, 1993

0742-051X/93 S6t+0J

GETTING THE STORY, UNDERSTANDING THE LIVES: FROM CAREER STORIES TO TEACHERS' PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT GEERT KELCHTERMANS
Catholic University Leuven, Belgium

AbstractTo understand teachers professional development, the career stories of 10 experienced Flemish (Belgian) Primary School teachers were collected. The analysis of these narrative data culminated in the reconstruction of a professional self and a subjective educational theory, both conceived of as indicators for the professional development. These general concepts were differentiated to develop a conceptual framework for understanding teachers' professional development from their career stories. The comparative analysis of the stories revealed two important recurring themes, the strive for job stability and the feelings of vulnerability for the teacher. In this paper the "biographical perspective" is depicted as a general theoretical approach, and as a concrete research procedure for data collection and analysis. The author concludes that a narrative-biographical approach constitutes a viable perspective for understanding professional development from the subjective viewpoint of the teachers.

Teaching is a "craft profession", in which "embodied experimental knowledge" (Pratte & Rury, 1991, pp. 61-63) is far more important than technical-conceptual knowledge. In other words, teachers professional behaviour is largely determined by and has to be understood from their experiences throughout the career.1 Their professional development can only be understood properly if it is conceived of as a result in a lifelong process of learning and development This is a central idea in what I call the biographical perspective (Kelchtermans, 1993a) on teachers1 professional development. Understanding teachers' _behaviour implies exploring their professional lives. In this article the general perspective, as well as the way it was operationalised in a research project with Flemish Primary School teachers, will be described.

The Biographical Perspective: Theoretical Background The importance of teachers' "biographies" or professional lives is being acknowledged lately by a growing number of educationalists (see, e.g., Goodson, 1992; Hirsch, Ganguillet, Trier, Egli, & Elmer, 1990; Huberman, Grounauer, & Marti, 1989; Sikes, Measor, & Woods, 1985; Smith, KJeine, Prunty, & Dwyer, 1986; also Kelchtermans, 1989, 1990a, 1993a). As a theoretical approach the biographical perspective is characterized by five general features. It is narrative, constructivistic, contextuaiistic, interactionistic, and dynamic. Narrative (see, e.g., Fischer, 1984; Little, 1990; Polkinghorne, 1988) refers to the emphasis on the subjective, narrative form in which teachers present their career experiences. The professional experiences are organised into

This article reports on my PhD-study at the University of Leuven. I want to express my sincere gratitude to my promotor, Roland Vandenberghe, for his stimulating, critical, and helpful supervision, and to my wire and best colleague, Ann Deketelaere, for her professional and moral support and loyalty. 443

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in autobiographical story". This implies that he biographical apgroach not so much focuses on the facts, but rather on the meaning they haye_ or the respondent. The interpretative element, as well as the narrative structure of the data (i.e., recalled experiences) constitute the core element of the narrative discourse. The approach is also constructivistic (see, e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1985; Bruner, 1986; Gergen & Gergen, 1987; Markus & Wurf, 1987). The teacher actively construes his or her career experiences into a story that is meaningful to him or her. Also his or her conception about teaching and of him- or herself as a teacher are "construed" meanings. Story always implies context (Siegert & Chapman, 1987). In the narrative discourse events are always presented in their context. By context I mean the physical, institutional environment of the school as well as the social, cultural and intrapersonal "Lebenswelt". The contextualistic element is important because I also take an interactionistic stance (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1974; Nias, 1989a). Human behaviour always results from a meaningful interaction with the environment or context (social, cultural, material, institutional). This is closely connected to the constructivist element: Meanings are construed throughout the interaction with the environment. Especially the social (the other actors) and the cultural environment (opinions, the school culture see Staessens, 1993) play an important role. This way a conceptualisation of professional behaviour that is too cognitivistic, as well as an approach that is too subjectivistic (only looking at what happens "inside51 the teacher) is avoided. The dynamic aspect finally (Gergen & Gergen, 1987; Markus & Wurf, 1987) emphasises another core element in the biographical approach; the temporal dimension and the developmental dynamic. Teachers' actual thinking and acting constitutes one moment, a fragment in a continuous process of assigning meaning to the perceived and experienced reality. Professional environment thus also includes a temporal dimension. The biographical perspective conceives of context in a spacial and a temporal sense. Conceived of this way the biographical perspective allows a comprehensive in-depth approach of teachers' professional development

Research Questions, Preliminary Conceptual Framework, and Procedure This article reports on the main study of a research project, entitled "The professional biography of primary school teachers". The main study was preceded by an extensive exploration of the literature (Anglo-Saxon, French, and German; see Kelchtermans, 1990a; Kelchtermans & Vandenberghe, 1990) and two pilot studies (De Jaegher & Indenkleef, 1990; Kelchtermans, 1993d; Van Den Branden, 1991). In this project the main aim was to understand teachers' professional development by reconstructing and analysing their career experiences. According to the biographical perspective as characterised above, I was interested in the way teachers themselves experience their careers. The focus was explicitly on the personal perception and the subjective meaning of these experiences by the teachers. I therefore use the notion "professional biography or career story" instead of the (formal) "career", to refer to the way the teacher retrospectively reconstructs his or her career experiences as a story. In this story the facts, situations, and experiences are presented in their subjective meaning for the teacher and organised into a personally meaningful "Gestalt" (see a.o. Berk, 1980, p. 94; Bahrdt, 1982, pp. 24-27). The literature study and the two pilot studies resulted in a preliminary conceptual framework and a research procedure. According to the "grounded-theory" approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Wester, 1987) the conceptual framework was conceived of as a set of "sensitizing concepts". The tentative definitions of these concepts were specified and refined during the study (especially during the continuing analysis of the data). The pilot studies (and the exploration of the research literature) gave evidence that teachers during their career develop a professional self, a personal conception of oneself as a teacher and a subjective educational theory, a personal system of knowledge and beliefs about their job. The main study aimed at reconstructing the professional self and subjective educational theory from the career stories. Self and subjective educational theory were conceived of as valid indicators of the professional development. The central research question then was: Can one understand teachers9 professional development by reconstructing the career storid

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Indicators for the professional development are professional self and subjective educational theory. Professional self and subjective theory thus resulted form the analysis of the career stories. They are thus second-order constructs. For the reconstruction of the career stories a research procedure (Kelchtermans, 1990b, 1993c and 1993a, pp. 115-163) was developed in which several research techniques were combined: a career questionnaire (to list the formal career), biographical interviews, logs, classroom, and school observations.2 A cycle of three semistructured biographical interviews constituted the main research technique. The interviews aimed at stimulating teachers to reflect back on their career experiences and to tell their career stories. The research procedure was cumulative: It contained different steps in the data collection, that built on each other. Every interview or observation was preceded by and based on an interpretive analysis of the data already collected. The data collected with one technique were used to analyse other data (tri-angulation). Between May 1990 and July 1991 10 experienced Flemish Primary School Teachers (between 15 and 25 years of classroom experience) from four different Flemish schools were studied. At least two teachers from the same school were selected, to have an extra source for data triangulation. Four female and six male respondents participated in the main study. The data were analysed in two steps. The vertical analysis can be described as a chain of interpretive transformations of the data during the collection process (the analyses between the steps in the data collection), and resulted in a synthesis text, that was fed back to the respondent for communicative validation during the final interview. The respondent's comments were integrated in a final version of the synthesis text, that was called the "Professional Biographical Profile". All profiles had a common text structure and thus constituted the basis for the second analytical step, the horizontal analysis. The vertical analysis concentrated on the internal coherence and consistency of the individual teacher's story!, in the horizontal analysis the Professional Biographical profiles of all the respondents were compared systematically, looking for commonalities, remarkable differences, recurring patterns, and so on.

Teachers' Professional Biographies The Formal Career The life time teachers spend on teaching can be organised into a so-called "formal career", a chronological chain of positions, roles and so on, a teacher is involved in during his or her teaching years. This "actual" career3 functioned as a "skeleton", a starting point for the data collection. The career story, as a result of the collection procedure, was to give "flesh and blood" to that skeleton. Below I will sketch briefly the formal career of Leo, one of the respondents, whose story will be used as an illustrative case study.
LEO: born in 1951 1963-1970: Secondary School and Teacher Training College in City September 1970-January 1972: Interim-jobs in R. (Grade 2) and A. (Grade 2) January 1972-January 1973: Military service (compulsory) January 1973-June 1973: Three interim-jobs, in H. (Grade 2), in A. and in ST (Grades 4 and 5) September 1973-1974: One year in He. (Grade 1) June 1974: Marriage September 1974-June 1977: Remedial teacher at the Lark November 1976: Daughter K. is born 1976-1978: Intensive inservice-training (Higher Educational Institute) September 1977-June 1985: Grade 3 at the Lark (Boys School) training as librarian 1978-1979 lifelong assignment: September 1979 1979-1989: Freelance journalist (book reviews) for newspaper April 1983: Daughter E. is born September 1985 - now: Grade 1 at the lark (Girls School; mixed since 1986) October 1989-June 1990 inservice trainer.

Although presented only synoptically, this formal career already reveals a number of important issues. Leo is a teacher with very diverse professional expertises and experiences. He has taught in almost all Primary School grades, he worked as a remedial teacher and as an inservice trainer. He also is a librarian and worked as a freelance journalist. When confronted with new job demands or tasks, he looks for further professional-isation through inservice training (Higher Educational Institute, courses on learning difficulties and on working with groups). He also had to wait quite long before getting a lifelong assignment (see below).

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The Professional Biography: A Story Around Critical Incidents, Phases, and Persons

Earlier the professional biography or career story was defined as the retrospective and narrative reconstruction of the career by the teacher, in which his or her professional experiences are reconstructed in a meaningful "Gestalt". In this story certain events, phrases, or persons function as "turning points". They create a problem or question the normal, routine behaviour. The teacher feels forced to react by reassessing certain ideas or opinions, by changing elements of his professional behaviour, and so on. Sikes et al. labelled these experiences or periods as "critical incidents and critical phases" (Measor, 1985; Sikes et al., 1985). The pilot studies learned that these notions were very useful as heuristic tools in exploring the career stories. Based on the data of those studies however the notion of "critical person" was added to the conceptual framework (Kelchtermans, 1993d; Kelchtermans & Vandenberghe, forthcoming). Critical persons are referred to by the teachers as having had an important impact on their career. A fragment of Leo's professional biography In this example the concepts of critical incident, person, and phase are clearly illustrated. The can illustrate this: period as remedial teacher and the one in Grade 3 Leo has been a remedial teacher for 3 years. Because the are examples of critical phases for Leo. They had job of remedial teacher in Primary Schools was an important impact (positive and negative) on relatively new at that time and because he soon realised that his knowledge about learning problems and his professional commitment and job satisfaction. remedial teaching was insufficient, he decided to take a At the same time, the chair of the schoolboard is 3-year inservice course on learning difficulties. Through an illustration of a negative critical person: His this course and through the informal meetings with decisions directly influenced Leo's professional colleagues he got acquainted with remedial teachers from other schools in an atmosphere of dynamism and behaviour. First he ruined his perspective as a commitment Leo is enthusiastic when recalling those remedial teacher and then he took away the years of trying, studying, and exchanging with renovated classroom. The renovation of the colleagues ... It was **a wonderful period" and a "heroic classroom was an element of Leo's coping period" too. Those times gave him great personal satisfaction and stimulated him in his job. At the same process with the disappointment about the forced time it gave him a new perspective as a teacher. " 1 was changes in his job. In Leo's story, the classroom determined to be a remedial teacher for the rest of my becomes the symbol for his efforts to cope with life" and I was prepared to "engage myself very far in this specialisation7'. The authenticity of his commitment the situation and to give a new perspective to becomes evident from the fact that the inservice course, his job. The fact that he did not feel well in the that took place every Wednesday afternoon and situation (the lost job perspective) is symbolically Saturday morning during 3 years, did cost him a whole represented and at a symbolical level (partly) lot of his leisure time. Not to mention his personal study time. But he was really "fascinated by the domain of transcended by turning the unpleasant room into a learning problems and ... 1 was prepared to engage stimulating, good-looking environment This myself very far in it." interpretation makes it possible for the This euphorical period however was abruptly terlistener/reader to realise the personal tragedy of minated in 1977 when the schoolboard (with the parish Leo's last change in classroom. Metaphorically priest as chair) decided to put Leo in Grade 3 and to appoint as remedial teacher a colleague, who bad one could say: Even the hardly recovered feeling difficulties (for reasons of personal health) in of "being at home" in his job as

managing a full class. This event ruined Leo's perspective as a remedial teacher. Fortunately the pupils in Grade 3 were a motivated and pleasant group to work with. But the classroom was an old, ugly, and unpleasant room and Leo absolutely disliked it (* couldn't work in such a place"). Because the school board had suggested that he would stay in that grade and that classroom, Leo wanted to renovate it With some "artistic friends" he worked a couple of weeks to repaint the entire class, gave it a blue ceiling with while clouds and rainbows etc. But after 2 years Leo once again was moved, to Grade 3 in the Boys School. He didn't only lose his favourite classroom, but came into a room that was even worse than the former one. The colleague whose class was taken over by Leo had had a nervous breakdown, after having been incapable to run the grade for some months. **\ arrived in a real piggery ... that made things still worse. It was unbelievable". Because Leo at that time still had not received his lifelong assignment (the school board twice had selected a colleague when there was an occasion for such an appointment), Leo could not do anything against this decision. The years in Grade 3 (from 1977 till 1985) are described by Leo as a "career breakdown": He taught without any commitment or enthusiasm and tried to cope with the disillusion by doing things outside school (e.g., training for librarian and freelance journalist for a newspaper).

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a teacher is destroyed by literally putting him out of the house" (the preferred and creatively arranged room). Only from this symbolicbiographical background can the personal meaning and the impact or these experiences be understood properly. The fragment also shows how the narrative approach is able to cover the complex interplay f personal experiences and expectations of a ".etcher, his professional behaviour and the organisational context. It makes clear howJaj&L certain decisions in that organisational context can be for the developing professional perspectives of teachers. It is important to remark that the identification of critical incidents, persons, and phases as such is done retrospectively. Only afterwards does the teacher clearly realise the scope of the experience and attributes a significant meaning to it. In this study, the notions were used in the first place as heuristic concepts, namely as tools in the retrospective search for a meaningful coherence in the career experiences. The notions of critical incident, person, and phase did not only prove useful as heuristic tools in analysing the career stories- They also can be considered as theoretical concepts^ referring to events, persons, or periods that are perceived by the teacher as having a specific and clear impact on the development of his professional behaviour, his professional self, and subjective educational theory (see below). This definition is a formal one: The critical character depends on the subjective meaning that is attributed by the teacher. The specific content of a critical incident, phase, or person therefore can strongly differ among teachers and has to be understood from the entire career story. The Professional Self and the Subjective Educational Theory The career stories or professional biographies were the basis for the reconstruction of the teachers9 professional self and their subjective educational theory. Both the self and the subjective educational theory constitute the interpretive framework teachers use to give meaning to their professional situation and their behaviour. In other words, teachers' "professional development" understood as a learning process

throughout their career experiences, culminates in a personal interpretive framework, encompassing two major fields: a conception about themselves as a teacher and a__system of knowledge and beliefs concerning "teaching" as a professional activity.4 Several other authors have stressed the central role of teachers' self-representations (Ball & Goodson, 1985; Hirsch et al., 1990; Nias, 1989b) and of their subjective educational theories5 (e.g., Clark & Peterson, 1986; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Elbaz, 1981; eta) for understanding their professional behaviour. Recent studies argue for a more narrative-biographical conception of the self and the subjective educational theory. Markus and Wurf emphasize that the self-concept is not a monolithical unity, but rather a collection of different types of self-representations (Markus & Wurf, 1987, p. 301). Siegert and Chapman add to this the temporal dimension. People define themselves not only in terms of their actual life situation and the way they experience it. At the same time they look back to whom they have been in the past and who they could be in the future. The authors state that the temporal dimension in the self understanding strongly determines the perception and the"actual process of personal development (Siegert & Chapman, 1987, p. 144). In another article Markus and Nurius talk about "possible selves", namely "the cognitive manifestations of enduring goals, aspirations, motives, fears, and threats" (Markus & Nurius, 1987, p. 158). Since one never has access to the complete set of representations of oneself, Markus and Wurf use the term "working self-concept" or "self-concept of the moment", understood as "a continually active, shifting array, of accessible self knowledge" (Markus & Wurf, 1987, p. 306). The authors also make a link with the biographical perspective (and its narrative basis), when they state that people combine their different selfrepresentations in a "current autobiography", "a story that makes the most coherent or harmonious integration of one's various experiences" (Markus & Wurf, 1987, p. 316). Polking-horne, emphasizing and advocating narrativity, writes: "... we achieve our personal identities and selfconcept through the use of the narrative configuration, and make our existence into a whole by understanding it as an expression of a single unfolding and developing story. We are

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in the middle of our stories and cannot be sure how they will end; we are constantly having to revise the plot as new events are added to our lives. Self, then, is not a static thing nor a substance, but a configuring of personal events into a historical unity which includes not only what one has been but also anticipations of what one will be" (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 150). Reviewing the work on teachers' knowledge , Elbaz states: "'story' is that which most adequately constitutes and presents teachers' knowledge" (Elbaz, 1990, p. 32). Others argue that narrative is the organising principle in teachers knowledge. People are "storytelling organisms who, individually and socially, lead storied lives. The study of narrative, therefore is the study of the ways humans experience the world" (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, p. 2). Nespor and Barylske believe that the reflectively thematising by teachers of their professional, knowledge in a research context can best be understood as a "narrative discourse". The stories that axe thus presented should not be seen as reflecting specific mental processes (cognitions), but rather as instruments to represent reality as it is experienced (Nespor & Barylske, 1991, pp. 806-807). Butt and his colleagues emphasize the autobiographic character of teachers knowledge. An adequate conception of teachers' knowledge will reveal the deeper roots of this knowledge in the person's past experiences. It also shows how a subjective educational theory develops and is used by the teacher. According to them this implies a biographical approach, that conceives of the subjective educational theory as "grounded in, and shaped by the stream of experiences that arose out of person/context interactions and existential responses to those experiences. This knowledge and predispositions to act in a particular way at this moment... is autobiographic in character" (Butt et al., 1988, p. 151). Both the professional self and the subjective educational theory develop throughout the interaction of the teacher with his or her professional environment (interactionist, contextualised) and thus are conceived of as developing (dynamic). The approach from the biographical perspective thus matches these views. The data however learned that conceptions of teachers' self and of their professional knowledge should go together, since both are interwoven in

-Retrospective Professional self k Prospective

I Evaluative- Self e<esteem Job perception NormativeTask motivation V" ConativeJob moti -------------Future perspective

DescriptiveSelf image

Knowledge Subjective educational Iheory Beliefs Figure 1. Components of the personal interpretive frameworks.

the teachers' interpretive framework. This is possible by working with career stories. Through the narrative character of the career story the representations of self and of the subjective theory remain intertwined with each other. It is only in the final step of the analysis that both are separated. The results of this analysis are presented below. Figure 1 gives an overview of the concepts. The Professional Self How do teachers conceive of themselves as teachers? The answer to that question is not a static one, but evolves over time. The concepts of critical incident, phase4 and person proved again to be very useful in reconstructing the (development of) the professional self from the career stories. I refer again to .the example above: The school board's decision destroyed Leo's professional self as a remedial teacher. This also illustrated that the self is the product of the_ interaction with the env^onmentTlF also shows that professional self involves more than just an idiosyncratic construction by the teacher, although the subjective perception remains of central importance. The school board forced Leo to construct another professional self, namely as teacher of Grade 3 and thus no longer as the local specialist in diagnosis and remediation of learning problems. Acknowledging the central idea of the interwovenness of present, past, and future in the biographical perspective and the multidimen-

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sionality in recent theories about the self-concept, I developed two dimensions and five components in the comparative analysis of the professional selves, as reconstructed from the career stories.6 The retrospective dimension refers to conceptions about the self as they appear if one looks back from the present to the past The dimension is further differentiated in a descriptive, an evaluative, a conative, and a normative component that corresponds respectively with the self-image, the self-esteem, the job motivation, and the task perception. The prospective dimension becomes clear if one looks ahead to the future from the present This corresponds with the future perspective. The self-image is the global characterisation of oneself as is revealedTin self-descriptive statements. How does the teacher describe him- or herself as a teacher? The career stories showed that this self-description often is formulated in terms of the general principles that govern the teachers' professional behaviour. For example Miel says: "I don't easy label children. I give them chances for exploration, I offer opportunities and the children get the chance to make something out of itw Very often respondents also refer to the way they think they are perceived by others (colleagues, school leader, parents). Luke explicitly states, for example: "You're judged by the people ... the extern world, the parents. They come and tell you who you actually are..." Oosely connected to the descriptive self-image, the self-esteem refers to the evaluation of oneself as a teacher. How good am I as a teacher? In the study almost all respondents reported a rather positive self-esteem. Looking for the determinants of this self-esteem, the pupils appeared to be the most important factor, by their school results as well as by the quality of the personal relationship with the teacher. A relationship of personal confidence with the pupils is seen by many respondents as an indication of good professional performance. Nicole has a strong positive self-esteem, "because the kids usually come and visit me for several years after they've left primary school, to show me their school reports and so on. Well, I think that proves something, doesn't it? -.. and also the inspectors and my school leaders, they've always been satisfied with my work ... so I think it's okay when I feel satisfied myself, isn't it?

(laughs)". As for the self-image, comparison with others is important for the self-esteem: "when I see someone acting more firmly towards the kids in a moment that I don't, I feel I should be more demanding: make them enter silently or be more quiet. But on the other hand, when I see Colleague being jovial to a pupil, I often hate myself for being so severe" (Nadine). The self-esteem thus can also be defined as the result of balancing the self-image (self-description) and the implicit professional norms the teacher uses. This is the normative element of the task perception (see below). The judgement by others once again plays an important role in this balancing of ideal and reality. If the result of this balance is negative, it will cause demotivaSelf-esteem thus is also related to the job motivation: the motives someone has to choose the teacher job, to stay in the job, or to leave it. For most respondents the job motivation was not a problem. However, when a decrease in job motivation was reported, it almost always had to do with the increasing demands teachers experience during the years (extra-curricular activities, team meetings, innovations to implement, and so on), with the routine character of their job, but above all with the decrease in social status. This is a recurring theme, especially In the career stories of the male teachers. Marcel:
Yes, and in society, your position as a teacher has become worse and worse. People don't respect you anymore... Who goes to teachers' college these days? Someone who isn^t able to get another certificate in higher education or failed there ..."

tion.

Once again, the judgement of others appears to be very important. In the retrospective dimension, there is finally the task perception: the way teachers define their job. What's my job as a teacher? The answer operates as a personal programme and as a norm to evaluate their own professional behaviour. The quality of the relationship with the pupils and the strive for professional (didactical) competence are of crucial importance. Teachers formulate their task largely in terms of classroom activities. When other participants (school leader, colleagues, or parentfi) are mentioned, it is to stress the own professional autonomy in the classroom. An example: cooperation with colleagues, understood as mutual exchange of

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ideas, materials, or experiences is valued, but "The way you do things in your classroom, that's our responsibility. In this a teacher should be left free. No-one should meddle with that. As a teacher, you must have the chance to develop your own style" (Kris). A striking finding in the comparison of the career stories was that eight respondents did not include the need for inservice training nor a positive attitude towards educational innovations. The strive for stability was central to most reported task perceptions. On the other hand, the stories do report a shift in emphasis in their task from the traditional pure transmission of knowledge, to more "pedagogical work" (paying more attention to the social-emotional wellbeing of the children; understanding their personal problems and trying to take care). So, teachers see themselves forced to take over tasks that previously were part of the education by the parents. The future perspective or the prospective dimension in teachers' professional self contains teachers' expectations for the future development of their job situation and the way they feel about this. Here the tendency to the status quo is dominating. But the respondents also anticipate possible problems: decrease in physical condition, growing difficulties to exercise authority. Several respondents hope to be able to stop teaching the moment they cannot perform the job properly anymore, without being forced (e.g., for financial reasons) to go on. In the latter case they foresee a very low self-esteem and that is something they want to avoid. This conceptual differentiation, grounded in the narrative data, admits a more refined and indepth understanding of teachers' self and the way it influences their professional behaviour. The interwovenness of self-image, self-esteem, job motivation, and task perception is tersely formulated and illustrated by Leo in the metaphorical statement: "I never and nowhere want to be a grey mouse". It is the red thread that gives coherence to his career story and is the key to understanding it.8 The Subjective Educational Theory The subjective educational theory is the. personal system of knowledge and beliefs teachers use while performing their job. It is a personally

(''subjective") ordered system ("theory") of knowledge and beliefs that are relevant for education and teaching ("educational"). The subjective educational theory results out of the experiences a teacher has during his or her career and the way he or she more or less reflectively integrates them. The subjective educational theory constitutes the second major field in the personal meaning system (interpretive framework) of the teacher. In terms of the conceptual framework one could say that the subjective educational theory contains the knowledge and beliefs that are used by the teacher to implement the personal-professional programme implied in the task perception. A fragment from Leo's story can illustrate this subjective educational theory and its interwovenness with the professional self. It also shows the usefulness of a narrative approach for understanding a teacher's interpretive framework:
My oldest daughter, when she was in Grade 2, had a teacher who wrote rather negative comments in the children's exercise-books. And my daughter really suffered from that. It was terrible for her, even then in Grade 2 (This happened 6 years ago; K. is 14 years old now.) And now when we happen to speak about that teachershe only says: "Ob, that bitch!" That's her first reaction, even now, after all these years. ... You can imagine how such things remain in one's mind... * (1121)

Through this narrative fragment Leo describes and argues for his beliefs about the way a teacher should give feedback to the children. These beliefs are described by narratively sketching the opposite approach and to show its fatal consequences for children. The strong and very negative words K. uses when referring to her former teacher, support the implicit argumentation in the story, for they give an idea of how pervasive and lasting the impact of negative feedback can be for children. This way they constitute a strong negative argument in favour of a constructive approach of feedback, as is defended by Leo. Leo spends quite some time in writing individualised constructive comments on the children's work. When he wants to illustrate how serious his "career breakdown" was (after being removed as a remedial teacher) he chooses exactly this example: At that time he neglected the formulation of these feedback comments; be did not put any energy in finding "the right words" for every pupil (133). Once again a rather

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banal experience is narratively transformed into a strong exemplary case to argue for the teacher's belief. The fragment shows the link between biographical experiences, subjective educational theory, and the professional behaviour. The deep (often symbolic) significance of the idea or principle of practice (i.e., "constructive, personalised, and respectful treatment of children is of great importance for their learning and well-being") can only be understood from the narrative context in which it is embedded. These examples (that are exemplary for many others in the career stories) confirm the value of a narrative approach. The subjective theory, as reconstructed out of the career stories, was formulated in the form of principles of practice (narrative anecdotes) or images (metaphors), for example, Leo's "never and nowhere being a grey mouse" (also Kelchtermans, 1993b). With Elbaz I do agree that the content of the subjective educational theory can only be a reconstructed in a fragmentary way (Elbaz, 1990, pp. 36-37). One never gets the whole picture. Not only because it changes with new experiences, but also because the teacher per definition has no conscious access to his or her entire "theory".9 Further the reconstruction is bounded by the reflective capacity of the teacher and by the degree he or she is willing to share his or her ideas with someone else. With these restrictions in mind, I analysed the career stories looking for elements of the subjective educational theory and linking them continuously to their biographical "sources" (specific experiences during the career). The fragments of the subjective educational theory as reconstructed from the career stories almost exclusively refer to the micro level of classroom work, and more specifically to the quality of the personal relationship with the children on the one hand and the feeling of pedagogical-didactical competence on the other. Both are exemplary illustrated in the fragment from Leo's story. Another fragment from his story can make it even more clear. Leo's daughter appeared to have learning difficulties at school. Leo;
I've always said, since K. was in Grade 1: in fact, every teacher should have a son or daughter with learning problems. I know this sounds a bid crude... but only then I did realise what I actually was doing lo the children as a isacher, with things such as

homework, and lessons to learn. ... How exhausted children can be when arriving at home. [ didn't have any idea of all this before then Or how depressed children can be because of school. I didn't have the slightest idea about those things before... how could I? Well, and if you only have kids who are doing well at school, you'll never get an idea of it. But that experience definitely influenced my teaching, it certainly determined the way I use homework, the way I handle tests.... Yes, absolutely.

His daughter's experiences revealed to Leo the unintended side-effects of his common practices in school. He became conscious about certain domains of the children's life world that he had not paid much attention to until then. This insight initiated a reflective process that made Leo modify certain aspects of his classroom practice. K.'s learning problems appeared only after Leo's years as a remedial teacher. So he did have sufficient technical knowledge on learning difficulties and remedial teaching, but his daughter's experience made him see other dimensions of the problem, for example the impact on children's emotional development, self-esteem, motivation and so on. This fragment also shows the development of the subjective educational theory. The sources for new insights (knowledge and beliefs) are very diverse. There are of course the pre- and inservice training courses, but far more important are the personal experiences during the career. Not only experiences with school leaders, inspectorate, colleagues, or parents, but also experiences in the private sphere: family, friends, leisure time activities, and so on. The experience of parenthood is for most teachers very meaningful regarding their professional activities (see also Huberman et ah, 1989, p. 319; Kelchtermans, 1993d, p. 211; Pajak & Blase, 1989, p. 292; Zeichner & Gore, 1990, p. 334). Through the school experiences of their own children teachers come to see how children themselves actually experience the day-to-day life in school. The experiences often function as a kind of " mirror" that opens up teachers eyes for aspects of their professional behaviour they were not aware of yet. An interesting further question is: How is the subjective educational theory "grounded" by the teacher! How are knowledge and beliefs legitimated for? The analysis of the career stories confirmed Doyle and Ponder's (1977-1978) "practicality ethic" as an encompassing legitima-

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tion basis: instruction techniques, curriculum, practical suggestions, pedagogical principles (and their operationalisation), innovations, and so on, are judged on their value for the classroom. The experience by the teacher that "it works" is the most important criterium for including them in the subjective educational theory. Whether or not a new element is accepted in the subjective educational theory and in professional behaviour is further determined by its match with the already established practice (congruence) and by its cost in extra time and effort to spend by the teacher (Dolye & Ponder, 1977-1978). Apart from this pragmatic argument to legitimate one's subjective educational theory, the respondents also often referred to "authorities": colleagues, school leaders, or inspectors who advocated certain practices and were acknowledged authorities in the field by the teacher ("if he says so, one can believe it"). These authorities are often also critical persons for the respondent. Their authority provides a legitimation for one's practice. For example: A school leader is referred to as the source for certain insights or practices, and is depicted in the same narrative fragment as a very competent and highly valued professional. This is argued by referring to his participation in curriculum committees and research projects from a university or to articles he published. Short, the man gets the statute of an authority in the field, which makes him a legitimate reference person in accounting for one's classroom practices. These findings support the idea that teachers are "craftsmen" rather than "professionals". Only a very limited part of their professional knowledge is technical (one of the distinctive characteristics of a profession). To a certain degree teachers understand the technical structure of, for example, the methods or manuals they use. Most of that knowledge is what Pratte and Rury call "embodied (experiential) knowledge", that is typical for the "craft professions" (Pratte & Rury, 1991, pp. 6163): Teachers' subjective educational theory is developed mainly by reflection on classroom practices. Themes and Commonalities in the Career Stories The results of this study are two-fold. On the one hand, the preliminary conceptual framework for understanding professional development on

the basis of career stories was further elaborated and grounded in empirical data. The concepts (critical incidents, phases, and persons; professional self and subjective educational theory) were further developed and differentiated. The biographical perspective as an approach to study teachers' professional development was exemplified and illustrated. These results were presented above. The second group of results concerns recurring patterns, themes, and commonalities in the career stories, revealed by the comparative analysis. They get the status of working hypotheses for future research. I will confine my presentation here to two themes that seem to me of most general relevance. A first recurring theme throughout the career stories is the concern with stability in the job situation. This became very clear in the central importance of a "lifelong assignment7'. This lifelong assignment implied a formal stabilisation of the job situation. Since teachers in Belgium are statutory civil servants, their lifelong assignment makes it almost impossible to get fired or forced to change grades or schools. It is also a general custom that a teacher gets a grade and stays in it for almost the rest of his or her career (unless he or she asks for a change him- or herself or is forced to by circumstances, e.g., merger of two schools). Furthermore, the lifelong assignment by the school board also constitutes a formal recognition of one's professional competence. When this assignment took more time than perceived as normal, this had_a very_ negative impact on the teacher's job satisfaction and motivation, since without that appointment a teacher is rather powerless to all the decisions of the school board (e.g., yearly changes in the grade to teach; job insecurity, and so on; see Leo's story). With the lifelong assignment starts what Huberman et al. called the "stabilisation phase" in the teachers' career (Huberman et al., 1989, p. 143; Hirsch et al., 1990, pp. 86-87). Only two respondents told about deliberate, self-initiated changes in their job situation, for example, by choosing a higher grade (older children), or by accepting a job as a remedial teacher or an insenvice trainer (Leo).10 For most of the teachers their career development ends with the lifelong assignment. The quest for a stable job situation and the energy with which this status quo is defended is striking.

Getting the Story: Understanding the Lives

453

But there is more (and here the advantages of the narrative approach become apparent). The career stones showed that all but one respondent had what Nias has labelled "parallel careers' (Nias, 1989b, p. 399). They developed other "careers" parallel to their careers as teachers. The four female teachers had their family as a parallel job: raising children, doing the household, and so on. The traditional gender-based patterns showed up here. Five male teachers had parallel careers in "leisure time activities": board members of a local sport club, playing jazz music, and organising festivals, freelance work as a journalist (Leo), and so on. These activities, that are performed with high motivation and that give a lot of satisfaction, become (and remain) possible as long as the job situation of the teacher remains stable. This explains (at least partly) the strive for the status quo in the job situation. In their stories those teachers emphasize that the activities with and among adults are a compensation for the daily work with young children. In these parallel careers teachers can develop competencies other than teaching or can get a certain social status. The latter is important since all male respondents report a decrease in social standing of their job. The only male respondent without a parallel career is the one who is most of all frustrated by the decrease in prestige of the job and the lack of chances for promotion. A second recurring theme is that teachers perceive themselves as quite vulnerable to the outside world. This (perceived) vulnerability takes several forms. At the start of their career teachers feel they are at the mercy of the school board. As long as they do not get their lifelong assignment, they are defenceless against decisions or instructions of that board. This is still enforced through the importance of "good words" and mediations to get such an assignment. The respondents told about the extra community services (e.g., leading the parish choir, engaging in local associations) that were demanded to get a job. They also told about the kinship relations that were used for this purpose. The stories showed that these were common practices and that they were often implicitly accepted by the respondents as "normal". But for those who had no personal "advocates" this causes problems, as was illustrated in Leo's career.

The vulnerability, however, also exists in a more general and more subtle form. Teachers feel very vulnerable against the judgement of the outside world. They feel permanently observed and judged by others (e.g., school leader, colleagues, and certainly parents). This explains why the respondents spontaneously and amply thematised classroom authority (keeping order and silence, making the pupils obey ...). Authority is a very visible aspect of the job, since teachers have to show it outside their classroom (at the playground during the breaks; when entering the building with the kids, etc.). The study results of the pupils function in an analogous way. Teachers are concerned about these results, since making the children learn is an important aim in their task perception. But at the same time, teachers evaluate themselves by these results (self-esteem, job motivation). The experience of efficacy (having impact on the pupils' results) is very important to their self-esteem. But on the other hand, these results constitute only one element in teachers' task perception. Establishing a good personal relationship with the kids (considered as a crucial condition for good learning) is perceived as equally important But for the outside world, teachers' competence mainly (and almost exclusively) becomes visible in the learning results of the children. Teachers therefore feel themselves evaluated exclusively on that basis. This is a double source of frustration. On the one hand, teachers see these results as reflecting only one part of their job. On the other hand, teachers realise that their real impact on the results is limited, since there are a lot of other determinants. So being judged exclusively on the basis of their pupils' results is experienced as a double injustice and teachers feel very defenceless to do something against it. Moreover, if the pupils results are used by the school leader as an evaluation of a teacher's professional quality, the frustration becomes very high. Also the character of teachers subjective educational theory makes plausible those feelings of vulnerability. The findings showed that the experiential character of teachers professional knowledge, legitimated by a "practicality ethic" or by referring to "authorities", makes it a weak basis to account for one's practices when this is questioned by others (e.g., parents, the school leader). Teachers can only rely on their reflective experience, intuition and their personal commit-

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ment in trying to defend their professional behaviour and to convince others of its value. Their knowledge lacksat least to a very large ex-tent the legitimacy of scientific knowledge. These findings confirm the results of the work Blase did on teachers1 micropoiitical perspectives (Blase, 1988). Micropolitics here refer to the complex power relations in schools: the way people influence others to defend themselves against others or to proactively influence them. He observed that teachers' tendency to passivity and conservatism increased when the experienced vulnerability grew. I believe that teachers' perceived vulnerability is a very important topic for further research if we are to understand teachers' development properly. Conclusion This study gives content to the general and vague concept of "professional development" by reconstructing teachers' professional self and subjective educational theory from the career stories as indicators for that development. Further, some of the common themes in the career stories were discussed. They constitute perspectives for further research. I believe that this study showed the usefulness of the biographical perspective for a better understanding of why teachers are acting the way they do. This approach reveals the way teachers experience their careers themselves, the way they make sense of the numerous events and experiences during their career and integrate them in their personal teaching style. This research experience with the biographical perspective only deepened my belief that to understand the lives, one must get the story. Notes
This is confirmed by several studies on teacher socialisation, that showed a very limited influence of the formal teacher training on the actual classroom behaviour. Experiences as pupils, previous to the teacher training, proved far snore important as determinants of the teaching (Lortie, 1975; Zeichner, 1986; Zeichner & Grant, 1981). Lortie calls this the "apprenticeship of observation" (Lortie^ 1975, p, 81). - In the pilot studies, we did not do any school or classroom observations (see Kelchtermans, 1993d, pp. 203-205). We found out however that being around in school strongly facilitated the biographical interviews, for example, since the respondents could refer to pupils, colleagues, the school
1

leader, the school building, and so on, knowing that the interviewer had seen Ihem. The respondents were asked to list their formal career on a short questionnaire as a first step in the research procedure. This way the interviewer had ihe formal career available as a basis for the first interview. 4 Elsewhere (Kelchtermans, 1993d, pp. 200-201; Kelchtermans & Vandenberghe, forthcoming), when discussing the pilot studies the subjective educational theory was presented as a part of the professional seir. The analysis of the main study data and a revision of the pilot studies showed that there is no reason to subordinate both concepts and that it is meaningful to think of professional self and subjective educational theory as intertwined domains of teachers' personal interpretive framework. The distinction of between these concepts permits further a more differentiated analysis of the narrative accounts in teachers' career stories. 5 Other authors use the terms "implicit theories" (e.g., Clark & Peterson, 1986) or "personal practical knowledge" (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988,1990). Our notion comes close to the latter, but we want to emphasize the structured character of the knowledge system. 6 In accordance with the grounded-theory approach and the idea of sensitising concepts, the components I distinguish in the professional self are a revision of those that resulted out of the pilot study (Kelchtermans, 1993d, pp. 211-212; Kelchtermans & Vandenberghe, forthcoming): self-image, self-esteem, job motivation, job satisfaction, task perception, and future perspective were described as components of the professional self. The data of the main study did not allow a sufficiently distinctive definition of "job satisfaction". Satisfaction is a very general indicator of the way teachers experience their job, rather than a component of the professional self. It proved very hard to distinguish the data that referred to job motivation or to self-esteem, from those referring to job satisfaction. Since the aim was to develop notions that were conceptually differentiated and grounded in the data as well, the component job satisfaction was abandoned as a separate component. The dimensions and their components are conceptual differentiations of the general notion professional self. In reality they overlap to some extent, since they actually constitute different emphases to interpret and describe the same reality ( = conceptions about oneself as a teacher). This also illustrates the interwovenness of professional self and subjective educational theory in the career stories. 8The metaphor also is an example of what Elbaz (1981, p. 50 cv.) and Connelly and Clandinin (1988, p. 70) call "images**: powerful metaphorical statements in which feelings, beliefs, and insights on the one hand are combined vviih normative ideas about "good teaching" on the other. 9 The same is true for the professional self (see Note 5). 10In this regard Leo is an illustrative exception in our research group.

References
Bahrdt, H. P. (1982). Identitat und biographisches Bewus-tsein. Soziologische Oberlegungen zur Funktion des Er-zahlens aus dem eigenen Leben fiir die Gewinnung und Reproduktion von Identitat [Identity and biographical consciousness]- In R, W. Brednich et al. (Eds.), Lebenslauf und Lebenszusamnienhang (pp. 18-45). Freiburg i. Br.: