The Teacher‐as‐Stranger as Model and Metaphor
Source: Teacher Development, Volume 14, Issue 1, 2010. pages 45-56.
In this article, the authors investigate the heuristic potential in the image of the teacher‐as‐stranger. The authors also use this image as a frame for reflecting on teacher change and growth.
Drawing on the sociological figure of the stranger, the authors conduct a qualitative study of a sample of teachers who are not only strangers in a metaphorical sense, but who, because they take up four‐year fixed contracts in foreign schools, experience the ambiguous consequences of being strangers in the classroom.
This research provides concepts with which to describe the educational potential in the ‘strangeness’ experienced by all teachers. The research points to the possibility that pedagogical insight comes not only from familiarity but from difference.