This case study focuses on one beginning English teacher's work toward eupraxia, i.e., good practice informed by reflection in a setting in which a degree of free choice is available. The study uses a Vygotskian framework for studying concept development that focuses on the settings of human activity and how ambiguous social concepts are developed…

This article argues that the instructional scaffolding metaphor may be reconceived as distributed scaffolding when multiple means of influence are provided in a service-learning setting. In the service-learning course described here, the professor's role is largely as designer of activity settings for preservice teacher candidates, through…

This case study follows a teacher candidate through her semester of student teaching English in a suburban high school in the U.S. Southeast. The study is part of a line of inquiry that investigates the factors that contribute to teachers' development of "concepts" to guide their instruction. In particular, this research focuses on the…

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…

This case study investigates the decision making of Joni, a high school English teacher, during her student teaching in an Applied Communications II teaching assignment, comprised of students in the lowest tier of a four-track senior English curriculum. This course served as a "contact zone" for a set of competing interests: Joni's stated beliefs…

This article reports a study of coauthor Laura Wright as she learned to teach secondary school grammar in four settings: university teacher education program, student teaching, her first job, and second job. Data for her university program came from Laura's journals and projects from her course work. Data from student teaching and her first job…

This paper describes research that is part of an effort to understand the transition made when teacher education students leave university programs and enter the workforce. The emphasis in this study was on the alignment between the pre-service teacher's university preparation and the actual work of student teaching. The theoretical framework for…

This article analyzes how Sharon, a student teacher, negotiated the different conceptions of teaching that provided the expectations for good instruction in her university and the site of her student teaching and how her effort to reconcile the different belief systems affected her identity as a teacher. The key settings of Sharon's experience…

In this study the authors investigate the experience of Sandy, a nontraditional university undergraduate whose student teaching took place in a small, impoverished rural community in the southwestern U.S. They focus on her student teaching experience with third graders in a community whose youngsters, living in rural poverty, were at-risk in their…

Studies the ways in which three graduate students applied theoretical and pedagogical tools in a collaborative independent study course. Concludes that the students' use of research tools was more consistent with the teacher's understanding of profitable uses than was their appropriation of the conceptual tools advanced in the course readings. (TB)

Explains how learning the benefits of doing classroom research during student teaching can give aspiring practitioners an opportunity to appreciate the benefits of classroom investigation and gain knowledge of research methods. Proposes that such investigations be undertaken as a collaborative venture between a student teacher and a cooperating…

In this paper the authors focus on one early-career teacher, co-author Natalie Gibson, whose initial teaching experiences were mediated by educational settings shaped by these different and often conflicting traditions. Their study of Natalie's early-career trajectory is concerned with understanding her effort to develop a conception of…