Reflexivity and narrativity in pre service training programs: towards a guided professional self determination

Abstract

The proposal aims to integrate spaces and opportunities for thematising professional identityin the field of education, structuring the processes of university professional guidance of a transversalnature in the subjects and programs involved. The innovation-research scenarios have been theDegree in Primary Education (1st year) and the Master's Degree in Teacher in Educational Guidance(1st year) at the University of Zaragoza, and the Degree in Early Childhood Education (1st year) and theDegree in Pedagogy (1st year) at the University of Burgos. Objectives: 1) Analyse students'representations of the profession and latent criteria of professionalism; 2) Promote informedprofessional self-determination in the face of the diversity of professional models Method: Themethodology adopted is narrative techniques. Spaces are created to encourage the writing of storiesthat allow the students' educational trajectory to be analysed with the aim of identifying their beliefsystems and implicit theories about the profession. The resulting images and models are confrontedfrom the professionalising referents provided in training programs, promoting negotiations andprovisional positions on professional identity. A total of 217 narratives were constructed in the degreesof Primary Education (106), Early Childhood Education (50), Pedagogy (55) and in the Master's Degreein Educational Guidance (6). The professional images present the following characteristics: 1) flat andreductionist, linked to technical models that affect the management of contents, resources, materialsand an evaluation centered on accountability; 2) with a functional-structuralist approach toeducational action; 3) with a behaviourist-transmissive nature, with few nuances with respect to otherworldviews; and 4) with a predominance of an individualistic vision of the profession, corrective andinterventionist. The contextualisation of these images in the narratives point to the following issues:1) interdependence of initial models with socialised images of the profession (expectations mediatedby the imprint of clichés and stereotypes in the trajectory); 2) emphasis on the organizational andinstitutional dimensions of the profession, simplifying educational meanings to instructional andevaluative functions (restricted educational and curricular meaning); 3) tensions between the initialmodels and attempts to deconstruct training that result in incomprehension and frustration on thepart of students (cognitive rupture); and 4) convergence of the initial models with an essentialist,univocal and finalist notion of professional identity (control of uncertainty). The meta-evaluation of theresults points to the following issues: 1) High complexity to work from the students’ cognitive rupture,dragging affective components motivated by ignorance and the discomfort of entering into otherprofessional models and submitting them to reconstruction; 2) Need to improve the narrativetechniques and devices with formative purpose, adjusting the resources and support materials tofacilitate the processes of self-knowledge, regulation and formative-professional (re)positioning; 3)Need for greater articulation and continuity in the teaching scenarios involved in order to transfer it tothe academic tutoring and professional guidance processes throughout degrees; and 4) Disharmony ofthis thematization in degrees, reducing the transversal and professionalizing value of selfdetermination processes.