Theorizing and Describing Preservice Teachers' Images of Families and Schooling

This article examines how prospective teachers just beginning a professional education program think about working with parents. Through interviews with students in an elementary teacher education program, I explore how biography shapes dispositions toward families by setting expectations for the roles and the activities of participants. Merging cognitive, cultural, and narrative frameworks for teacher development, I suggest that prospective teachers must cross-traditionally consider cultural boundaries of race/class/gender but are also challenged as they move from being a child and student in family and school to the professional position of teacher. I argue that the role of teacher education is to manage the identity work necessary to integrate the tools of biography and the process of learning to relate to others in a new role.