ABSTRACT
To speak educationally about teacher education means “to express an interest in freedom . . . the freedom of the other” who is the newcomer, the teacher, and to preserve her capacity to renew the educational conversation (Biesta and Säfström 2011: 540). While the teacher’s freedom is foregrounded in terms of individuality, that is, originality, creativity, and the capacity for dissent, it is always relational – at once socially structured and historically primed. As such, the newcomer is always belated, heir to a particular history and yet new to it (Levinson 2001). Aspiring teachers are charged with becoming recognizably professional by demonstrating the requisite knowledge, skills, and attitudes. However, if teacher education is to be more than normalization – a repetition and reaffi rmation of what already is – each new teacher must have the opportunity to question, to defi ne what matters to her, and what she rejects. If teacher education is to be educational , it must confront and engage the difference that each new teacher introduces; its capacity to do so is the central concern of this book.
