The school we live: the spatial dimension of experience in teacher education

Abstract

This article presents a segment of an ongoing doctoral research developed within the Graduate Program in Geography at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (POSGEA/UFRGS). It aims to reflect on the school as a formative spatiality for teachers, investigating how this dimension contributes to the construction of teacher identity. In this sense, it asks: in what ways does the school, as a lived space, shape teacher formation? The study is grounded in the (Auto)biographical Method and its methodological devices, developing through literature review and the (auto)biographical narratives of a Basic Education teacher, regarding her experiences and the meanings attributed to school spaces. The analysis shows that teacher formation occurs across multiple times and spaces, extends beyond the university, and is built through reflective experience. In this process, the school emerges as a central formative instance, where lived, material, and relational spatiality produces learning, senses of belonging, ethical tensions, and reconfigurations of pedagogical practice. Between belonging and estrangement, teaching is shaped in dialogue with contexts, relationships, and trajectories that traverse everyday school life, confirming that the school is not a mere backdrop but a constitutive force in teacher formation.