Browsing by Subject "Teacher socialization"
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Item Learning to teach a foreign language: a student teacher's role identity negotiation(2013-05) Martel, Jason PeterTraditional foreign language remains a conservative and underdeveloped subject. Change-promoting efforts like ACTFL’s National Standards have had a limited impact on teachers’ pedagogies (Glisan, 2012), and program-exiting student proficiency levels remain relatively low (CASLS, 2010). Given the reciprocal shaping relationship between identities and classroom practices (Kanno & Stuart, 2011), documenting the ways in which budding teachers construct their identities may help in supporting the implementation of much needed educational innovations. Using symbolic interactionism (Reynolds & Herman-Kinney, 2003) and teacher socialization (Zeichner & Gore, 1990) as complimentary theoretical lenses, the present study adds to the paltry amount we know about foreign language teachers’ identity development. It employs ethnographic methods associated with qualitative case study to deeply explore the identity construction processes of a student teacher seeking Spanish licensure in a preparation program that emphasizes content-based instruction (CBI). Data sources include interviews, classroom observations, digital journal reflections, documents, and post-observation conference recordings. Findings show that the participant negotiated her identity at the interface of competing messages from significant others (e.g., students, university supervisors, mentor teachers) in her preparation program and student teaching placements and that she demonstrated agency in appropriating or rejecting these messages. She grappled with two principal “designated” (Sfard & Prusak, 2005) identities encoded in these messages: (a) provider of target language input and (b) enactor of a particular approach to foreign language teaching. It also surfaced that she left the program with a weaker Spanish teacher role identity than when she started, which may be attributed to concerns she had with her Spanish proficiency, a strained connection with her secondary-level students, and the lack of opportunities for validating her Spanish teacher role identity—i.e., for inhabiting the role in a comfortable fashion that reinforced a positive sense of self. Important discussion topics for foreign language teacher educators stem from these findings concerning student teaching placement timing, mentor choice, and opportunities for developing language skills. Above all, they call us to ponder the following question: How can we as teacher educators support student teachers in constructing the identities they want to have for themselves as new foreign language teachers, all while encouraging them to acquire identity positions that improve the state of foreign language teaching?Item Who can do it? New science teachers with reform-based teaching strategies.(2008-09) Hick, Sarah RachelDespite consistent calls for pedagogical changes in the teaching of science since the 1989 publication of Science for All Americans (Rutherford & Ahlgren), most science teachers still teach in traditional ways. This is most surprisingly true even for new science teachers whose teacher education programs have emphasized reform-based instruction. In order to understand how reform-based teaching can be done by new teachers, I examined the experiences and beliefs of three reform-based new secondary science teachers. Research in teacher socialization has shown that three separate phases--"life history," teacher education, and in-service-shape--a teacher's beliefs and practices. Findings from this collective case study suggest that the ability to teach in reform-based ways in the "rough and tumble of practice" (Crawford, 2007) may be linked to a teacher having a "belief in" reform rather than a "knowledge of" reform. Findings from this study also provides evidence of teachers relying on their own learning style as a guide for teaching; drawing on authentic inquiry experiences in their instruction and their conceptions of the nature of science; and benefiting from having digital forms of lessons available, regardless of level of reform, to use as a springboard to crafting reform-based lessons. A possible link is explored between a disposition towards stewardship of the environment and disposition towards stewardship of children as learners. Recommendations are made for research, teacher education, and teacher in-service with regards to selection, preparation, and in-service support of new science teachers who can teach in reform-based ways.