Spaces and physical education pre-service teachers' narrative identities

Stories or narratives are integral to meaning making in relation to selves, others and the choices we make in living. It follows that pre-service teachers' narratives can provide a means for understanding experiences and processes of becoming teachers of physical education (PE). This paper reports on an interview-based inquiry from which biographical information was collated and constructed as narratives. The specific focus of this paper is demonstrating how Ricoeur's [1991a. Narrative identity. In D.Woods (Ed.), On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and interpretation (pp.188-199). London: Routledge; 1992. Oneself as another. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press] theorisation of narrative identity can generate understandings about incipient PE teacher identities as developed in various spaces and temporalities. Data are presented through a cluster of significant spaces: sport, families, schooling, PE and Teacher Education plus narratives. Findings indicate that in constructing narrative identities, participants activated links between spaces, their past, present and aspirational futures as teachers. Given this, I conclude by identifying possibilities for PE teacher educators in using personal narratives as resources for exploring significant lifeworld spaces and subjective possibilities.