Times of transition can be viewed as times of crisis -- epistemologically, morally and socially. They also can come to be seen as fortuitous junctures where the impossibility of preserving old patterns gives rise to a leap into new, productive configurations. In the teaching and learning situations presented here, it is assumed that such a leap is possible among members of a pluralist society. Diversity must work as an asset rather than a liability for minority as well as mainstream candidates. The curriculum needs to be inquiry-based and should be engaging emotionally and imaginatively, as well as intellectually.

In this book we demonstrate a mode of teacher education that is practical in a non-technical sense and relies on Dewey's notion of curriculum as the reconstruction of experience. We present a curriculum that emerged through collaborative self-reflection and seeks to reconstruct personal histories of schooling. As four former preservice teachers and their instructor, we engaged in jointly constructed autobiographical inquiry in order to generate data on our own past and on our current histories of teaching and learning. We wanted to illuminate parts of our lives in schools that until now belonged to our 'normal' and taken-for-granted past. We did this in order to enjoy certain degrees of awareness and choice as to which of our living stories to reinforce and which to "let run out" in our classrooms today.