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This article reports a case study of an elementary school teacher moving from her university teacher education program into her first full-time job teaching a K/first-grade class. Using activity theory, we analyzed her conceptualization of teaching as she moved through the key settings of her university program, student teaching, and first job. This conceptualization began with the university's emphasis on constructivism, a notion that diffused as she moved from the formal environment of the university to the practical environment of the schools. Data for the study included preteaching interviews, classroom observations, pre-and postobservation interviews, group concept map activities, interviews with supervisors and administrators, and artifacts from schools and teaching. Data analysis sought to identify tools for teaching and the ways in which those tools were supported by the environments of teaching. Results center on 2 aspects of constructivist teaching: the teacher's use of integrations and the decentering of the classroom. The analysis showed that the teacher, rather than developing and sustaining a concept of constructivist teaching, instead developed what Vygotsky calls a complex, that is, a less unified understanding and application of the abstraction. Implications of the study concern ways of thinking about the common pedagogical problem teacher educators face when students of their programs abandon the theoretical principles stressed in university programs.During her elementary teacher education coursework, Tracy, described by her university supervisor as being "first or second in her class" in terms of accomplishment, spent an entire semester in a language arts methods class learning ways to help students construct their own knowledge. The professor in the course encouraged Tracy to design lesson plans that gave students choices in their reading and conduct. Tracy

This study examined differences in secondary students' vocabulary learning from original and revised contextual information. Materials included two passages from a U.S. history text, each embedding 10 pertinent target words. One version left the original passage intact; a second version was revised for each target word according to four contextual characteristics: proximity, clarity of connection, explicitness, and completeness. Subjects were 55 high-ability and average-ability students enrolled in U.S. history classes. Prior to reading, subjects were asked to indicate their knowledge of each target word and to write a definition. Then, over a two-day period, they read an original version of one passage and a revised version of the second passage; text and version were counterbalanced within groups. Following their readings, the subjects were asked again to indicate their knowledge of each word and to provide a meaning. In addition, they were asked to write the significance of each word in understanding the topic. Results showed that the highability group outscored the average-ability group on all dependent measures, although both groups did significantly better on posttest over pretest tasks. On the revised text passages, subjects received higher scores on both the definition and significance measures but not on the indication of knowledge measure. These findings suggest that contextual information in natural text may be inconsiderate for word learning, but students may be satisfied with the partial/erroneous knowledge acquired.A primary source for word meaning is contextual analysis, the premise being that the learner will identify and connect familiar, relevant contextual information with an embedded unfamiliar word to aid in discovering its meaning. This method is

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