Get real : making problematic the pathway into the teaching profession

Learning to be a teacher is a complex and very personal matter that involves transformation from student teacher (pre-service teacher) to teacher. The pathway to being a teacher is scattered with what appears to be competing tensions in various realities. This paper explores those tensions and realities through the context of two final year integrated field- and campus-based subjects that all pre-service teachers undertake as they complete their four-year teacher education journey into the primary (ages 5- to 12-years-old) teaching profession. We then propose a framework involving a variety of realities that pre-service teachers face through the recognition and resolution of the tensions these pre-service teachers experience in the workplace.