Teachers are in a position where they have to mediate between different worlds. This is then seen as something which represents a basic condition of being a teacher. One of the relations where teachers have to act as principal mediators is between the world of the student and the world of education. We then assume that if the world of education is something which has a meaning it is not as a concrete world, but more in line with a notion of it representing a lot of different worlds, that themselves are mediated through different texts used in education. 

We do not think the problems that could be related to this mediation can be read in any way that offer the one  good model or models for understanding teaching either in the teacher’s world or in their way of doing education. This study is about the theoretical grounding of teacher’s training in their own education and their work with these mediations in teaching. Our work will develop an analysis of the potentialities of using narrative theory as a central mediator between the theory of action and ethical theory. In this analysis we will be  confronting two major works using narrative theory: Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory and Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative 1-3.

In Ricoeur’s work on narrative as a potentiality, he asks in what sense it is legitimate to see “in the theory of plot and of character a meaningful transition between the ascription of action to an agent who has the capacity to act and its imputation to an agent who has the obligation to act?” (Ricoeur, 1994:152) Our idea and hope, is that we can show how we think there are openings and possibilities in bringing some of the complexities of teachers actions to their own attention as teachers (and students) through a narrative transition. This is a perspective which might challenge or expand the concept of MacIntyre in his construction of what he calls “the narrative unity of life”.

Our assumption is that there must be a space for aesthetic work for teachers related to what we have called the world of education. This place of aesthetics in education and development as a teacher-self in teacher education is opting for (an)other way(s) of working with students. We have seen that there is a critique of (teacher)education for not being serious or academic enough. On the other hand, we think that it is important to ask if it is playful enough. The theoretical grounding for this playfulness is in our construction thought to be in this narrative mediation which we will elaborate in this study.

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