Advocates the value and importance of asking prospective teachers to tell autobiographical stories about their teaching experiences. Describes in detail the story of one prospective English teacher's journey from recent graduate to professional teacher and her initiation into the English teaching discourse community. (HB)

Examines the relationship between past ways of understanding what it has meant to teach and learn in English classrooms and the present movement toward change. Argues that the central purpose of working in relation to the past is to guard against participating in a 'presentism' that denies the past. (NH)