Teaching to Learn: A Graphic Novel

This graphic novel is about pedagogy. It is not a work of fiction. Rather, this is a representation of the critical encounters between two teacher educators, twelve pre-service teachers and thirteen Year 8 and Year 9 secondary students as they consider what it means to learn to teach. Situated in a government high school over a one-year period, high school students were asked to take on the role of mentors to a cohort of primary and secondary pre-service teachers as issues of teaching/learning and curriculum/assessment were explored. The graphic novel is drawn from actual data: fragments from journals, letters, emails, photographs, drawings, and field notes from an ethnographic research project. The reader is brought into a ‘classroom’ and acquainted with the often tangled and fragmented nature of living pedagogy. In this way the discourses of identity and power, practices of schooling, and the wonder of praxis are made visible and open to scrutiny. It brings to life stories of learning to teach and learning to learn.