Study of Transitions into Teaching
Pamela Grossman, Stanford University
Sheila Valencia, University of Washington
This study investigated the ways in which the policy environment affects subject-specific teacher learning at the beginning of teachers' careers. Using individual case studies of five elementary and five secondary language arts teachers through the last year of teacher preparation and into the first three years of full-time teaching, the researchers analyzed explicit and implicit policies to determine how those policies influence teachers' thinking and practice in language arts.
This project for CTP, an offshoot of research supported by the national research Center on English Learning & Achievement (CELA), traced the ways the policy environment affects subject-specific teacher learning in the first years of their teaching careers. The study focused particularly on how policies support teachers' opportunities for learning in the first years of their careers and also on how policies regarding the subject matter (in this case, language arts) shape teachers' classroom practice.
Main Research Questions
- How do stated and implied policies and practices in the teacher education program contribute to teachers' conceptual and pedagogical understanding of their subject matter and teaching in general?
- How do the stated and implied policies and practices (e.g., mentoring, professional development, class assignment, school culture) of various schools and school districts facilitate or hinder teachers' transition from preservice to professional teaching?
- How do different school contexts influence teachers' reconceptualization of concepts and pedagogy acquired during their teacher education program?
- What beliefs about teaching and learning are reflected in schools' and school districts' policies and practices directed at beginning teaching?
Case study research
Publications to Date
Hint! Click on a title to see more information about it. Click on that title again to hide the information.
Curriculum Materials: Scaffolds for New Teacher Learning?
A Research Report by Pam Grossman and Clarissa Thompson, January 2004.Description:
Derived from a study of beginning language arts teachers (see District Policy and Beginning Teachers: Where the Twain Shall Meet, elsewhere on this web site), this Research Report captures the ways curriculum (or its absence) guides what is learned level about instructional practice, and how, by new language arts teachers in secondary schools. The report underscores how potent curriculum policy can be for shaping teachers' early attempts to establish a secure professional repertoire.Abstract:PDFAbstractOriginal Study
This report looks at how three secondary English teachers responded to the curriculum materials they encountered as new teachers. The authors were particularly interested in knowing how the materials helped the new teachers learn about teaching language arts. To this end, the authors explored the teachers' perception and use of two sets of curriculum materials—Teaching the Multiparagraph Essay and Pacesetter English. The authors examined the materials to see what, if any, opportunities for teacher learning were embedded in them. They also considered how the teachers' prior knowledge, both of the subject matter and of approaches to teaching language arts, affected how they responded to and used the material. The authors found that the teachers in the study spent an enormous amount of time searching out curriculum materials for their classes and that the curriculum materials they encountered did, indeed, powerfully shape their ideas about teaching language arts as well as their ideas about classroom practice. The authors describe a trajectory for the teachers' use of the curriculum materials. New teachers begin by sticking close to the materials they have at hand. Then, over time, as they learn more about both students and curriculum, they adapt and adjust what they do, and their use of the materials opens up as they become more willing to play with and take liberties with the materials. The authors argue that new and aspiring teachers need opportunities to analyze and critique curriculum materials. This would begin during teacher education and continue in the company of their more experienced colleagues. Such curricular conversations are helpful to all but especially to new teachers who tend to latch on uncritically to whatever curriculum they are handed.
District Policy and Beginning Teachers: Where the Twain Shall Meet
A Research Report by Pamela Grossman, Sheila Valencia, and Clarissa Thompson, June 2001.Description:
This Research Report looks at the role that policies concerning curriculum, professional development, and mentoring in two reform-active districts played in shaping the experiences and concerns of three first-year language arts teachers.Abstract:PDFAbstractOriginal Study
This analysis considers what role district policy environments play in the lives of beginning teachers. As part of a longitudinal study of teacher learning in the language arts, the authors followed 10 teachers from their final year of teacher education into their first three years of teaching. In this paper, they examined the role that policies concerning curriculum, professional development, and mentoring in two reform-active districts played in shaping the experiences and concerns of three first-year language arts teachers. The questions asked in the study locate it at the intersection of two distinct literatures—the literature on beginning teachers and the literature on the relationship of policy and practice. Whereas other studies on beginning teacher concerns have taken a psychological perspective, focusing on the individual teacher as the explanatory factor, this study employs a more sociocultural view, looking at the broader contexts in which individual teachers work. The authors found that the two districts served powerful roles as teacher educators. The tasks the districts assigned the teachers, the resources they provided, the learning environments they created, the assessments they designed and the conversations they provoked proved to be consequential for what the teachers came to learn about language arts teaching and teaching in general.