Through an exploratory qualitative, interpretive frame that employed an ethnographic methodological approach, this research focuses on teaching assistants (TAs) teaching in a lab, tutorial, or discussion group. Nine TAs share their learning journey as they begin teaching in higher education. The theoretical lens that frames this research is workplace learning. Interviews, observations, video-recordings, field notes, and learning diaries were subjected to thematic analysis, looking for dominant themes associated to TAs’ characteristics, their learning process related to teaching, and the knowledge they developed about teaching and student learning. Key findings include the recognition that TAs bring robust conceptions and dispositions to their first teaching position that is approached from a student subject position as they are becoming teachers. As TAs are being teachers, they control their self-directed learning process as they make decisions on-the-fly within a diverse learning environment that ranges from expansive to strategic to restrictive affordances. Coupled with a discretionary reflective practice, TAs’ knowledge development about teaching and student learning is solely dependent upon their experience, making forthcoming development of knowledge about teaching and student learning relegated to chance. This focus on TAs’ learning in the workplace illuminates the need for a deep learning approach to learning about teaching and student learning that needs to begin with graduate students’ first appointment as a TA. In addition, this deep learning approach needs to be encased in an expansive learning environment that provides opportunities for continuous support through various forms of mentorship, instruction, and development of reflective practice. / Graduate

This dissertation represents a product of research conducted in 2004-2005 examining the curriculum network of an elementary teacher education program at a large public university in the United States. Using ethnographic data (e.g., interviews with preservice teachers and faculty, observations in and outside of coursework, and other artifacts), I address the questions of how preservice teachers characterized relationships between teacher education program components, how those characterizations varied and changed, and how preservice teachers explained the value or relevance of program components to teaching. I discuss how preservice teachers shaped their understandings of main program emphases. I describe how they tended to experience closer correspondence between program recommendations and the policies and philosophies in certain schools and classrooms in suburban county schools near the university compared to the policies and philosophies in certain schools and classrooms they identified as having, for example, fewer resources (e.g., funds, manipulatives). I make the case that the program-based philosophies developed by and for the preservice teachers helped to coordinate context-specific meanings and relevance for program components and further to construct failures of the kind where either (1) schools interfered with the accomplishment of program objectives or (2) program objectives proved unrealistic for schools. Without intending to, and perhaps even contrary to certain program intentions, program suggestions treating instruction as context-independent tended to favor middle-class White children and to marginalize urban or diverse schools and classrooms, or schools having more limited resources, as viable places to engage in program-recommended practices for good teaching. These results have potential implications for practice in teacher education and mathematics education and also have relevance to discussions of ongoing standards-based teacher education and mathematics education reforms. I offer that these results help to reveal certain limitations of popular ways of defining and researching preservice teachers' learning and teacher education program coursework and fieldwork relationships. I raise the question of whether teacher educators or researchers might benefit from considering how to more substantively integrate curriculum and give greater attention to place and to the broader socio-political goals we aim to accomplish through our work. / Ph. D.

Thesis advisor: Patrick J. McQuillan / Most would agree that pupil learning is a fundamental purpose of schooling. Differences arise, however, when conceptualizing what form that learning should take and how it should be assessed. In recent years, there has been increased pressure to improve pupil achievement through educational reform initiatives intended to ensure that all pupils meet high academic standards through strict accountability measures. This dissertation seeks to understand how teacher candidates/beginning teachers, working in this era of accountability, focus on pupil learning over time. An interpretive qualitative approach was employed to complete cross-case analyses on 55 interviews conducted with five participants over a 3-year period. Based on a sociocultural framework, and drawing on constructivist assessment theories and prior research on learning to teach, this dissertation argues that the end objective of improving pupil learning led teachers to enhance their teaching practice by holding high expectations for pupil learning, building personal relationships with pupils, maintaining strong classroom management strategies, and utilizing formative assessment practices. However, engaging in these practices was often a result of a complex process of negotiation between aspects of the school context that functioned as obstacles and the teachers' moral sensibilities Overall, contrary to claims made by stage theory, the beginning teachers in this study demonstrated that focusing on pupil learning was possible with perseverance, commitment to social justice, development of an inquiry stance and an understanding that learning to teach is a life-long process that involves continuous reflection and professional development. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This longitudinal case study followed a beginning teacher from the first semester of her teacher education program into her fifth year of teaching. Using situated learning theory, this dissertation reports the influences on her journey in becoming a literacy teacher before, during, and after her teacher education program. Data sources included interviews, classroom observations, and documents that were collected over six and a half years and across multiple contexts (e.g., tutoring, student teaching, community-based learning, coursework, two elementary schools). Using constant comparative (Glaser & Strauss, 2009) and longitudinal coding methods (Saldaña, 2009), the analysis suggests that the participant developed the following understandings over time and across contexts: she intends to be a lifelong learner; she values and validates students’ interests, histories, and contributions; she is committed to teaching for social justice; and she believes a safe, trusting, and flexible community is essential to learning. Findings indicated that her ability to enact these understandings in practice, even in difficult school contexts, was made possible by her reflective stance and her commitment to surrounding herself with communities of like-minded people to support her in similar ways as had been the case in her teacher education program. The results of this study provide evidence that over time the understandings developed in a teacher education program have the potential to fully emerge in practice inside teachers’ classrooms. This study has implications for how we prepare teachers, how teacher education programs can continue to support their graduates, the types of school communities that seem to support beginning teachers, and how policy makers might direct future funding towards responsible teacher education. / text

The focus of this phenomenological research project is to delve into the question of ‘what it is like’ for teacher candidates to experience the phenomenon of learning to teach-in-relation in the context of a community service learning project. A sense of the phenomena of learning to teach-in-relation emerges as the five teacher candidates make and play with hula hoops beyond the initial intention of cultivating joyful physical activity on campus. This research is guided by van Manen’s (1997) phenomenological approach to researching lived experience, as well as an Indigenous research framework based on the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the medicine wheel. Within the relational and embodied framework of the medicine wheel, the following six significant themes shifted perceptions of what it means to teach: 1) waiting to learn; 2) shaping community; 3) learning in movement; 4) sitting with students; 5) learning with students; and 6) embodying a flexible practice.

California needs high quality teachers, particularly in schools that are located where well- prepared teachers who are committed to teaching urban youth are in short supply. Only 15–18% of traditional teacher candidates state a preference for urban settings. In contrast, the percentage of interns who state that they would prefer to teach in an urban school is 70%. Because of its ability to produce teachers willing to teach in urban schools, the California District Intern Program has been able to help alleviate the shortage of teachers willing to teach in urban settings. A key feature of district intern programs is the requirement to establish cohort structures within each program. The purpose of this study was to describe cohort support as it exists in district intern programs currently in operation in California. This included understanding what effect, if any, cohort participation has on interns' sense of personal teaching efficacy and determining to what extent the relationships formed within the cohorts provide support in both teaching and non-teaching contexts. Additionally, this study provides insight into practice and offers recommendations for improving the cohort system in district intern programs. California district interns affirm the need for cohort groups in learning to teach. There is strong agreement that participation in a cohort is a positive experience and seen by interns as being essential to their success within district intern programs. Additional analysis provided evidence that interns participation in cohort activities specifically tied to reflection is linked to a higher sense of personal teaching efficacy. This is crucial information as there is a direct relationship between teaching efficacy and higher student achievement. Regardless of whether internships exist as a result of a teacher shortage in California or because intern programs are seen as a high quality program for preparing teachers, these novices are expected to learn to teach on the job. There is clear evidence that participation in cohort groups provide interns with the support they feel is necessary for them to be successful in this endeavor. Current programs provide ample opportunities for this to occur, new programs are encouraged to provide the same variety.

The research described in this dissertation has its antecedents in my own experiences as a student and teacher of history in both England and the USA. Reflecting back on such experiences as a teacher educator in the US has led to a hypothesis that history teaching is conceptualized and performed differently by teachers in England and the US. This study used contrasting case studies of two English and two American preservice history teachers to illuminate and compare how the development of their understanding of history and evolving construction of self as history teacher influenced their everyday pedagogical performances as they began to teach history. Detailed portraits of teaching developed for this study show how the pedagogical approach to teaching history with an emphasis on developing historical understanding through learning the skills of the discipline of history in England contrast with the American emphasis on content coverage through the pedagogy of telling the tale of the past. The study revealed the participant's adherence to these two contrasting traditions in the teaching of history. This can be understood by examining two continually interweaving components: 1) well remembered events, and interactions associated with learning history and history teaching that form a "biographic conception" of history teaching, and 2) ongoing experiences and expected outcomes of planning and teaching history in a particular way. Within the scope of this study, particular attention was given to the participant's contextual understandings of: A) official history curriculum, B) their cooperating teacher and C) their students as they began to plan and teach history within their internship. The case studies compare and describe how the participants' biographic conceptions of both history and history teaching act as a filter through which the differing expectations of their respective history curriculum, their cooperating teacher and departments were mediated and negotiated. While the biographic conception of history exerted an enduring influence on their understanding of what it means to learn and study history in high school, the study revealed that the participants' ongoing classroom interactions with their students in conjunction with meeting the expectations of their cooperating teachers and departments constrained and limited the participants' perspectives as to what they believed was possible within the history classroom. The case studies here highlight the interactive forces and complexity of learning to become a teacher of history and have further implications for exploring the possibilities and constraints of two competing traditions in the teaching of history. This comparative study raises questions and opportunities for examining such epistemological questions as What is history? and How should it be taught in high school? The work shows that the role of history teacher can be and should be more than a teller of the tale of the past. It also highlights the problems faced by teachers and students when the primary goal of history is focused on the difficult task of learning historical skills and concepts. However, if the goals of history teaching in the US are truly for the development of knowledgeable, critically thinking citizens, then teacher educators must begin to provide opportunities and create communities of practice which encourage preservice teachers to not only break their attachment to the pedagogy of telling but also develop their skills to think historically to the end of organizing learning experiences that emphasize the doing of history within their classrooms. / Ph. D.

The process of ‘learning to teach’ is still not well understood. In particular, existing research does not fully reflect the complexities of the process; how student teachers’ level of subject matter knowledge influences their teaching, or how their placement affects the process. This study provides an alternative nonlinear, relational model for understanding the process of ‘learning to teach’. I study the ways in which 66 BEd students teach during eight school-based Teaching Experience sessions, conducted over the four year duration of their preservice teaching degree. I primarily draw on evidence obtained from lesson observation reports written by university tutors as they respond to lessons taught by this cohort of student teachers. I cluster their comments into five facets necessary for enabling learning, namely, student teachers’ knowledge and understanding of content; their preparation; their teaching strategies; their classroom management; and the ways in which they monitor learning. These five facets have links to the process of teaching described by Shulman’s (1987b) Model of Pedagogical Reasoning and Action. Within each of these five facets, varying levels of competence were demonstrated by the student teachers in this study. I develop an analytical tool that describes four developmental levels of student teaching over each of the five facets of the teaching process. An in-depth study of the developmental teaching portraits of five student teachers illustrates that they are often more advanced in some facets of their teaching, and less so in others. The portraits highlight the ways in which certain facets affect teaching in other facets. The interactions between these differing levels and facets give rise to particular challenges that student teachers experience as they ‘learn to teach’. Some of these challenges are more significant than others, as certain inter-facet relationships are essential to the development of pedagogically reasoned action, and other relationships are less crucial. My findings suggest that although ‘learning to teach’ is a non-linear process, there nevertheless exists a logical hierarchy within the facets, whereby some facets create conditions of possibility for others. In particular, I find that the way in which student teachers use their knowledge and understanding of the content to inform other facets, establishes the 2 logical conditions necessary for the development of teaching as pedagogically reasoned action.

Esta dissertação teve como objetivo geral investigar os indíícios do desenvolvimento profissional na atuaçaão de uma professora de muísica iniciante por meio dos gestos profissionais. Como objetivos especííficos, buscou: identificar e caracterizar os gestos profissionais na atuaçaão da professora de muísica iniciante; e compreender o processo de transformaçaão dos gestos do trabalho ou ofíício (sentidos) em gestos profissionais (elementos) singulares e contextuais na atuaçaão da professora de muísica iniciante. Para alcançar esses objetivos, foi adotado como referencial teoírico o conceito de funçaão e profissionalidade docente de Maria do Ceíu Roldaão, que defende a funçaão de ensinar como elemento fundante da profissionalidade, e o modelo de atuaçaão profissional de Anne Jorro, que apresenta os gestos do trabalho ou ofíício, como caracterizadores socialmente construíídos da profissaão docente, e os gestos profissionais, como um alargamento dos gestos do trabalho ou ofíício para uma perspectiva particular e contextual. Por meio desses conceitos, foi desenvolvido um estudo de caso instrumental, com observaçaão e gravaçaão audiovisual de sete aulas de Paloma, a professora escolhida para participar da pesquisa, e oito entrevistas de estimulaçaão de recordaçaão. Os dados coletados passaram por procedimentos de transcriçaão, codificaçaão, categorizaçaão e interpretaçaão, para, entaão, serem explicitados os indíícios de desenvolvimento profissional de Paloma. Como resultado, saão explicitadas as dimensoães (açoães) transformadoras da atuaçaão de Paloma, passando de um sentido para um elemento de atuaçaão, sendo os gestos profissionais expressos por meio dos gestos da linguagem, da encenaçaão do conhecimento, do ajuste na açaão e da eítica. O processo de transformaçaão dos gestos do trabalho ou ofíício em gestos profissionais se daí a partir da experieência adquirida pela professora no contexto de atuaçaão e eí impulsionado pela realizaçaão de treês açoães: flexibilizaçaão de pressupostos anteriores, viveência no ambiente de trabalho e reflexaão sobre a praítica. A conclusaão propoãe o entendimento do desenvolvimento profissional como o processo de aprender a ensinar com duas perspectivas em relaçaão aà atuaçaão docente em sala de aula: a perspectiva interna, que foi descrita como constataçaão desta pesquisa, e a perspectiva externa, que diz respeito a polííticas puíblicas educacionais e aàs condiçoães de trabalho a elas relacionadas. / This MA dissertation aimed at to investigate signs of the professional development in the performance of a beginning music teacher through her professional gestures. More specifically, it aimed at to identify and to characterize the professional gestures in the performance of the beginning music teacher; and to understand how the gestures of work or métier (senses) are transformed into singular and contextual professional gestures (elements) in the performance of the beginning music teacher. The theoretical framework was constituted by the concept of function and teaching professionality, by Maria do Ceíu Roldaão, who claims teaching function is a founding element of professionality, and by the model of professional performance, by Anne Jorro, who presents the gestures of the work or métier, as socially constructed characterizers of the teaching profession, and professional gestures, as an extension of work or métier gestures to a particular and contextual perspective. An instrumental case study was carried out, with data being collected through observation and audiovisual recording of seven classes of Paloma, the music teacher that engaged in the research, and eight recall stimulation interviews. Data collected underwent procedures of transcription, codification, categorization and interpretation, so that the signs of professional development of Paloma could be explained. Results make explicit the transformative dimensions (actions) of Paloma's performance, moving from a meaning to a performance element, being the professional gestures expressed through the gestures of language, the gestures of staging the knowledge, the gestures of adjustment in action and the gestures of ethics. The process of transforming gestures of work or métier into professional gestures is based on the experience acquired by the teacher in the context of her work and is driven by three actions: flexibilization of previous assumptions, living in the work environment and reflection on her practice. The conclusion proposes the understanding of the professional development as the process of learning to teach with two perspectives related to the teaching performance in the classroom: the internal perspective, which was described through the findings of this research, and the external perspective, which concerns educational policies and teachers´ working conditions related to these policies.

This study explores the influence of mentor teachers in the meanings and practices that two elementary preservice teachers adopted about eliciting and using student ideas, while learning to teach science in the university science methods course and in the field placement classroom. Prior research on teacher development has shown that the high-leverage practice of eliciting and using student ideas can support preservice teachers in thinking about common problems of practice. I used four core problems of practice to examine the meanings and practices that preservice teachers adopted in eliciting and using student ideas as they planned, enacted and reflected on methods course assignments in the field placement classroom. Using sociocultural and situative perspectives on learning, I identified two factors that influenced the sense that preservice teachers constructed and the practices that they adopted about eliciting and using student ideas. These factors were mentor teacher's perspectives on learning and goals for student learning. I also examined three mechanisms by which mentor teacher's perspectives and goals influenced preservice teacher meanings and practices about eliciting and using student ideas in instruction, including mentor teacher's classroom practice, the nature and foci of mentor teacher and preservice teacher conversations and mentor teacher's use of preservice teachers' ideas in their conversations about instruction. The results suggest that preservice teachers come to make sense of and use student ideas in their instruction in ways that closely align with those of their mentors. They also indicate that preservice teachers' integration of experiences from different learning-to-teach contexts in making sense of student ideas may be related to the degree of alignment between mentor teachers' perspectives and goals and the perspectives and goals of the science methods course.