Attachment, identification, emulation, and identity: distant teachers and becoming a teacher educator

ABSTRACT Only recently have researchers and practitioners become interested in teacher educator development and identity formation. The author explores the place of ‘distant teachers’ – giants of the past whose lives and works prove powerful in self-formation. John Dewey and Boyd H. Bode are offered as examples of distant teachers; the development of the teacher–student relationship with Dewey and Bode is described. The author argues that ‘Great teachers, distant teachers, grab and hold us because they stretch us and in stretching we re-imagine ourselves and begin to remake the world that holds us and that we, in turn, uphold.’