115them as individuals, not just as the second-year Professional Experience or Diploma
cohort.
Since this study, we have changed many aspects of our unit and have formally
evaluated our strategies, including obtaining direct feedback from the students com-
pleting the unit. We will continue to collaborate with our preservice teachers, to
adapt, to listen, to think, to ask and to invite them into our space so that we can
continue learning to be, together.
Vignette 3: When ‘Learning to Be’ Gets Personal
and Personally Difficult
This final vignette is drawn from current research into preservice teachers nomi-
nated ‘at risk’ during their professional experience placement. It is not uncommon
for preservice teachers to be labelled ‘at risk’ during a placement on the basis of
specific areas of professional knowledge and practice that are identified by mentor
teachers as in ‘urgent’ need of strengthening (such as classroom management, cur-
riculum planning and/or specific pedagogical practices). However the examples in
this vignette are distinctive in that they reflect areas of professional learning that can
be difficult to qualify and describe but that are nonetheless present and influential.
These are areas that teacher educators might describe as the preservice teacher’s
attitude, disposition or demeanour. These areas can overshadow or interfere with the
professional learning process. As examples of ‘learning to be’, these experiences
reflect quite challenging yet not unusual situations. Nevertheless they reflect authen-
tic ways of being, from both the mentor and mentee perspectives, and are real,
relational, personal and difficult. This vignette offers two ‘case stories’ for consid-
eration. All names are pseudonyms.
Zandra’s Story
Zandra is a preservice teacher in her second year of study. Zandra’s mentor teacher
(Ms. McManen) described her general demeanour as ‘bullish and slightly aggres-
sive’; she noted that her presence in the classroom was ‘unsettling’ and that their
professional learning conversations became ‘highly strained’ after the first few days
of the placement. Zandra was eventually asked by the school coordinator to leave
the setting well before the placement should have concluded. In the debriefing inter-
view with the first author (O’Brien) and the teacher educator (course convenor) that
followed, Zandra arrived wearing a black heavy-metal t-shirt, baggy shorts and
black, chunky-soled lace-up boots. She sat well back in a chair with her arms folded
tightly across her body and kept the ankle of one leg resting on the knee of another.
She shrugged and mumbled inaudibly when she was greeted by the course convenor
7 Reconsidering the Communicative Space: Learning to Be