Emerging identity of Finnish nurse teachers: Student teachers' narratives in a group exam

In Finland students pursuing in Master's Degree Programme have a previous degree in nursing from polytechnics. Nurse teacher qualification also includes at least five year's experience of working in practice. This article concentrates on the conflicts student teachers brought up in a group exam as regards changing a nurse's identity into a teacher's identity in teacher training. The approach of the study on this group was narrative. The data were collected by videotaping two group exam situations (five hours in all) of volunteer student teachers (N = 5) during the last course (Nurse teacher's inquiring mind) of their nurse teacher studies in 2002. The material was transcribed and analysed using categorial-content reading to identify particular themes, storylines and messages within material. By abstracting these, stories that describe the content can be found. Three narratives emerged in the analysis: 1. Competence creates confidence; 2. Shared teacher identity; 3. Ethics of teacher identity. The narratives raised new ideas for developing nurse teacher education in the future. Nowadays, there are good prospects for developing a shared teacher identity if there is willingness to co-operate within a learning community of a new kind.