Learning from the First Years of Classroom Teaching: The Journey In, the Journey Out

Featherstone, Helen

doi:10.1177/016146819309500103

Cited by 36 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Among the exemplar teachers, both AR and CB teachers provided examples of negotiating their workplace settings in a variety of ways. Consistent with other research (see, e.g., Blasé, 1985;Featherstone, 1993), some teachers who remained in teaching appeared to reshape their expectations to varying degrees to conform to perceived expectations of their new environment. Others moved from setting to setting, finally settling in where they appeared to be most comfortable.…”

Section: Negotiating the Workplace Culturesupporting

confidence: 85%

Exploring Options: From Preparation to Placements

Randi

2017

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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This article describes and compares the preparation experiences of the 25 exemplar elementary, secondary English, and math teachers entering teaching through college-based (CB) programs or the New Jersey Teacher Education Project, one of the nation's first alternative routes (AR) to certification. The article then follows these teachers into their first experience “on the other side of the desk.” For CB candidates, their initial foray into teaching occurred in a classroom “borrowed” from a mentor teacher, who worked side by side with the novice. For AR candidates immediately assigned to a classroom of their own, the initial placement extended throughout the school year, and mentors were at times difficult to find. The article continues to follow these novice teachers through their first six years and presents data on those who remained in their initial placement setting and those who chose to leave teaching or move on to a new school. The article highlights the challenges novice teachers face when teachers’ preparation and expectations are mismatched with school culture and work assignments.

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Section: Negotiating the Workplace Culturesupporting

confidence: 85%

Exploring Options: From Preparation to Placements

Randi

2017

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…Since 1998, my colleague, Katherine Schultz, and I have been involved in an ongoing collaborative research project with the Teachers' Learning Cooperative (Buchanan, 1994;Featherstone, 1998;Kanevsky, 1993;Schultz, in press;Strieb, 1985). 6 Born in 1978, TLC is an urban teacher network that uses a set of structured oral inquiry processes (see Himley, 2002) to describe children, children's work, and teachers' practices in order to deepen their knowledge about teaching and learning and to develop new approaches to curriculum and pedagogy.…”

Section: Research Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…TLC primarily employs a set of structured oral inquiry practices developed by Patricia Carini and her colleagues at the Prospect Center for Education and Research in N. Bennington, Vermont, in conjunction with teachers from across the country 9 (see Carini, 2001;Featherstone, 1998;Himley, 2002;Himley & Carini 2000;Kanevsky, 1993). At the forefront of the growing tradition of teacher research (Anderson et al, 1994;Carr & Kemmis, 1986;Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993;Himley & Carini, 2000;Zeichner & Nofke, 2001) Prospect's descriptive processes call on practitioners to recognize and specify, in detail, children's strengths as learners and thinkers in order to build practices that respond to their capacities as human beings.…”

Section: Professional Development Through Oral Inquiry Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practicing for Equity from the Standpoint of the Particular: Exploring the Work of One Urban Teacher Network

El-Haj

2003

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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This article examines the work of one urban teacher network (TLC) and analyzes the ideas about educational equity and inequality that evolve from its professional development practices. Drawing on archival and ethnographic materials that span 24 years, the author explores how TLC's oral inquiry processes—grounded in a phenomenological approach—make visible two different, but interrelated, ethical obligations that undergird practitioners’ work to build equitable educational practices within contexts saturated with inequality. Seeking to build equitable educational practices for all children, TLC's work begins with the particular, often a single child. Beginning its analysis from what feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith has called “the everyday world as problematic”, TLC's work envisions social change that is deeply situated and attends to the multiplicity, complexity, and uncertainty that characterize human learning. Thus, the grounded knowledge that TLC practitioners collectively develop constitutes a kind of critical social theory that can speak back to and inform those universalist policy approaches to equity that stress uniform and standardized education. As educational reform efforts across the country appear to be turning increasingly to top-down initiatives that direct the work of teachers, it is ever more urgent to consider this grounded epistemological standpoint on equity. It was 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon. Eighteen women were gathered around Lucy's dining room table, passing cheese and crackers, fruit and cookies, coffee and water. Bags full of papers and books hung from the chairs and crowded the floor. Before the meeting officially began, the room was filled with the stories of schools and children, family life and work. The women in this room had a lot in common. Most were, or had been, elementary school teachers. Some were administrators, counselors, teacher educators, and researchers. Most of the women were White. The majority worked in the public schools of a large city in the United States. The meeting started with brief introductions and announcements before the group turned its attention to one teacher, one child and one question. For a full 2 hours, the group engaged in a process called The Descriptive Review of the Child. Theresa, a third grade teacher, spent the first 45 minutes giving an uninterrupted description of her observations of a 9-year-old boy, Matthew. As she spoke a rich portrait unfolded of Matthew as a scientist, visual artist, and poet. As she painted this picture, she noted concerns and posed the question to the group: “How can I help Matthew to be more focused and organized in order to benefit more from classroom instruction and to pursue his interests independently ?” After listening carefully to Theresa's description of Matthew, the participants asked Theresa questions to clarify and extend their understandings of this child. Finally the group made a series of recommendations for how Theresa could change her practice to address her questions in a manner that accounted for Matthew's passions, interests, and styles of learning. These recommendations embodied a central tension for practice in their suggestion that Theresa must walk a fine line as she figured out how to help Matthew meet essential requirements of the official curriculum while at the same time supporting his strongly held standards and values.

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“…Many researchers have represented this phenomenon as a "sink or swim" scenario (Hill, 2004;Lundeen, 2004;Street, 2004;Howe, 2006;Cobold, 2007). Featherstone (1993) also regards the early teaching experience as a time of "struggle to understand and change the self", proposing that the "complex and personal learning" of beginning teachers should be given due attention by paying attention to how the teacher professional identity is constructed (p. 94). This is especially relevant as, teachers are often motivated and enthusiastic towards their profession initially, but nearly 33% teachers leave their jobs within the first three years (Roulston, Legette, and Womack, 2005, p. 70).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Employing James Gee’s Analytic Lens for Identity to Investigate Teacher Identity Development

PJE¹

2023

PJE

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The current article is an exploration of the construction and development of teacher identities at the tertiary level in Pakistan. Identity is the sense of who one is as a professional, and it is becoming evident that it is important for teachers at all levels to develop a clear sense of identity which is at harmony with their inner sense of self and personal values. There is evidence that successful identity construction leads to better practices and high level of commitment to the profession.

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Learning from the First Years of Classroom Teaching: The Journey In, the Journey Out

Cited by 36 publications

References 5 publications

Exploring Options: From Preparation to Placements

Exploring Options: From Preparation to Placements

Practicing for Equity from the Standpoint of the Particular: Exploring the Work of One Urban Teacher Network

Employing James Gee’s Analytic Lens for Identity to Investigate Teacher Identity Development

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