Construction of Boundaries in Teacher Education: Analyzing Student Teachers' Accounts

This article analyzes student teachers’ interactions in different practices over a period of one semester. We use Cultural-Historical Activity theory as a theoretical framework to address how interactions at the boundaries in teacher education are constructed and made relevant to the participants when they are working on object constructions. In the analysis, we show how an object, conceptualization of goals in education, emerges and develop in interactions, and how the object’s trajectory differs as the students move between practices. In the analysis we call these practices learning spheres. Our findings indicate that the participants’ positions are of importance. In teacher-led situations, such as supervision and mentoring, the teachers influenced the construction of the object, whereas in group work, the student teachers pursued and explored a variety of object constructions. Meaning emerges in the dialectical relationship between activity and action, and is regulated by the enactment of rules and norms, and the division of labor. An important finding is that the student teachers’ learning trajectories vary across the different parts of the teacher education program.