The salience of space for pedagogy and identity in teacher education: problem-based learning as a case in point

Recently, issues of space and spatiality have been taken up in education, though less so in teacher education. This article examines the significance of space for pedagogy and identity in teacher education. Drawing on topological approaches to the study of pedagogy, it explores the potential of a problem-based approach to teacher education to link the professional knowledge produced through teacher education programmes in the academy to professional practice in schools. It promotes a theoretical and empirical imperative to look keenly to the pedagogic spaces created by students (here, student teachers) to challenge established hierarchies of theory and practice. Essentially interrogatory, these spaces open up the possibility of the negotiation of professional identity across differences of school and academy. Overall, the argument concerns the co-constitutive character of pedagogy, spatiality and identity. Pedagogy emerges as a threshold practice that involves a constant weaving to and fro between spaces and selves.