Teacher identity has been recognised as critical to the practice
and development of teachers. However, there remains a paucity of
scholarship capturing the voice of pre-service teachers’ meaning
making of their own development as teachers during initial teacher
education. This paper sets out to explore seven pre-service teachers’
meaning making of becoming a teacher. Reflections gathered using
autobiographical narratives and teaching metaphors, were prompted
by video clips of practice during School Placement. Results suggest
that pre-service teachers’ were initially drawn to the physical depiction
of what a teacher looks like. Their meaning making then turned
towards instances of dissonance between their prior meanings
of what it is to be a teacher and their lived experiences of School
Placement. These sources of dissonance challenged the pre-service
teachers’ ongoing construction of their teacher identity. The findings
of this paper are discussed in terms of relevant literature.