Becoming Somebody in Teacher Education

Becoming Somebody in Teacher Education explores the realities of contemporary teacher education in Kenya. Based on a long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it views the teacher training institution as a space to grow, become and be shaped as teachers in complex moral worlds. Drawing on a rich conceptual and theoretical vocabulary, the book shows how students in these teacher education institutions constantly negotiate and confront the complex constructions of ethnicity, gender and class, as well as moral, religious and academic issues and a lack of resources encountered in the different institutional cultures. It outlines a complex array of concerns affecting student teachers that shape what professional becoming means in a stratified and diverse culture. This story of the process of growing up and becoming a professional teacher in an African setting will appeal to researchers, academics and students in the fields of teacher education, organizational studies, international education and development, social anthropology and ethnography.

Kari Kragh Blume Dahl is an Associate Professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Denmark. She holds a PhD in Education and is a Licensed Psychologist and has published widely within the field of teachers, schools and educational practice.

Chapter 1. Fields of teacher education: Deconstructed Chapter 2. 'No time for us': Struggling for success to become professional, urban, and middle class Chapter 3. 'I have someone': Community learning in social space Chapter 4. 'I am someone': Self-display in capitalism and reversing the social order Chapter 5. Becoming somebody in institutional contexts Chapter 6. Fields reconstructed: Teacher education at a crossroad