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In this paper we explore the phenomenon of "shattered images" in the learning to teach process. For our presentation and discussion we draw on: reflective accounts of preservice teachers written prior to, during, and following periods of field experience; our experiences as teachers and teacher educators; and, on our own and other research on teacher education and development, particularly on our ongoing work which focuses on field experiences. We highlight and examine some of the discrepancies between preservice teachers' expectations and experiences, identify and discuss circumstances contributing to the discrepancies, and consider ways in which such inconsistencies might be taken into account in order to develop and maintain productive preservice teacher preparation programs. 'Most names used are pseudonyms. Some preservice teachers, however, wished to be identified by their own names.

Our purposes in writing this article are to reflect on our own research practice and to raise for discussion some of the issues associated with “alternative” approaches to studying teaching and teacher development. Situating our work within a personal and contextual research framework that is built on the foundations of a hermeneutic perspective, we briefly review the progress towards alternative approaches to research on teaching and teacher development, and then focus on the researcher-teacher relationship in discussing collaboration in partnership research. We use three organizing frameworks: (a) examples of our own research with teachers; (b) a matrix displaying the phases of research activities and the roles of researcher and teacher; and (c) a matrix displaying the phases and scope of the issues in teacher development partnership research that suggest a series of guiding questions that we think need to be asked at the outset and throughout any inquiry.

This is a postmodern article that is nontraditional in its form, content, and mode of representation. Upon recognizing that we share interests and common experiences as artists, we decided to collect life history information from each other about our artistic experiences. Thus we have become, simultaneously, "the researched" and "the researcher. " In these conversations, we explore the ways in which we were each guided by our past, very strong aesthetic and artistic experiences. We also include the voices of other researchers and artists in our conversations as we explore the influences of art in the formation of our worldviews.The transcribed narratives in this text-representing portions of our conversations-are intensely personal accounts of how we (Susan and Gary) have each experienced similar kinds of feelings (affective knowing) as part of both research and artistic activity. As collaborators in a life history research project exploring the experiences of untenured university teacher educators, we are engaged in framing and reframing concepts appropriate for uncovering personal history influences on professional lives-ours included. Thus, in the process of reflecting on our joint, separate, and emerging research projects, we discovered that we were each guided in our research by our past, very strong aesthetic and artistic experiences. Upon recognizing that we share interests and common experiences as artists, we decided to collect life history information from each other about our artistic experiences. We would each become, simultaneously, &dquo;the researched&dquo; and &dquo;the researcher&dquo; (Cole, 1994). Our dual, reciprocal, and reflective roles would give us, we anticipated, insights into our practice as researchers and into other elements of our professional and personal selves. We were especially interested to discover and make more explicit how artistic and aesthetic experiences and events have shaped our thinking about research. We attempt to draw parallels between elements of our lives-between our artist and our researcher selves.