In this article, the authors present (Lortie's, D. C. (1975) construct of the apprenticeship of observation--what people learn about teaching from having been students in school--as fundamentally conservative. Students, see teachers "front stage and center like an audience viewing a play," thus learning about teaching in a manner that is…

This longitudinal case study follows one high school English teacher's path of concept development over a two-year period encompassing her student teaching and first year of full-time teaching, both at the same rural school in the southeastern United States. The authors use a sociocultural theoretical framework emerging from the work of Vygotsky…

Many teachers are searching for that "silver bullet": the teaching method that always works. Many answers, often contradictory, are offered by educators far and wide, as evidenced by the 768,000 websites identified by a Google search for "best practices teaching." The quest for best practices has led many to seek ways to teach that defy even the…