Teacher Socialization

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Teacher Socialization

• Theoretical and Practical
• Dimensions
• http//ncrtl.msu.edu/http/ipapers/html/pdf/ip897.p
  df

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What is teacher socialization?
TEACHER SOCIALIZATION The formation of teaching
perspectives and approaches as a result of
influence from any individual, group, or
institution sometimes stated as the process of
becoming a teacher, or learning to teach.

• Lortie, D. (2002). Schoolteacher A sociological
  study (2nd ed.)
• One cannot undo centuries of tradition with a
  few simple alterations (p. 230).

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Endemic Uncertainties

• Teaching is a complex job that looks easy

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Teaching is a complex job that looks easy.

• To a music lover watching a concert from the
  audience, it would be easy to believe that a
  conductor has one of the easiest jobs in the
  world. There he stands, waving his arms in time
  with the music, and the orchestra produces
  glorious sounds, to all appearances quite
  spontaneously. Hidden from the
  audienceespecially from the musical noviceare
  the conductors abilities to read and interpret
  all of the parts at once, to play several
  instruments and understand the capacities of many
  more, to organize and coordinate all disparate
  parts, to motivate and communicate with all of
  the orchestra members. In the same way that
  conducting looks like hand-waving to the
  uninitiated, teaching looks simple from the
  perspective of students and others who see a
  person talking and listening, handing out papers,
  and giving assignments. Invisible in both of
  these performances are the many kinds of
  knowledge, unseen plans, and backstage moves . .
  . that allow a teacher to purposefully move a
  group of students from one set of understandings
  and skills to quite another over the space of
  many months. (Bransford,
  Darling-Hammond, and LePage, 2005)

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Endemic Uncertainties

• Teaching is a complex job that looks easy
• Why is teaching so complex?
• Aim change the behavior of involuntary clients
• Conditions
• Isolationism (teaching is a lonely profession)
• Shared Technical Culture is elusive
• Cumulative effects of education
• Inability to measure the effects of teachers
• Contradictory goals of education (public and
  private)
• Broad-based clientele (students are not our only
  clients)

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Apprenticeship of Observation
ThinkWriteShare

• Think of some of your favorite/least favorite
  teachers growing up. List some defining
  qualities of those teachers.

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Apprenticeship of Observation from Zeichner
Gore (1990)

• I definitely will use a lot of different things
  like she did.
• I dont want to be like that.
• I wanted to do things for children that were not
  done for me.

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Apprenticeship of Observation

• By the time a person enters teacher education,
  she or he has spend approximately 13,000 hours
  observing teachers.
• Compared to other occupations, education students
  have much more opportunity to form preconceptions
  about the nature of teaching.

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Apprenticeship of Observation

• Reflexive Conservatism
• Provides students with a storehouse of practices
  to fall back on
• Individualism leads to Narrow Pedagogy
• Pre-service teachers tend to use themselves as
  the model for the students they will encounter
  (Grossman, 1991)
• Breaking with personal experience via
  Overcorrection
• Hollow Model
• Provides access to only a limited, passive view
  of teaching
• Teacher Education
• Low socialization impact

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Apprenticeship of Observation

• Critics
• Mewborn and Tyminski (2006)
• Empirical evidence not convincing
• Wideen, Mayer-Smith, and Moon (1998)
• Snark Syndrome
• Richardson and Placier (2001)
• Ecological forces of socialization

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Bronfenbrenners Ecological Systems Model
Occupational Socialization
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Discussion Questions

• 1. What kinds of changes, if any, do you think
  occur in most teachers philosophy of teaching
  and learning over the course of the formal
  teacher education program?
• 2. What factors seem to be associated with
  preservice teachers ability or inability to
  reify the concepts/approaches to teaching and
  learning imparted by the university teacher
  education program?

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Three Paradigms of Teacher Socialization Research

• Functionalist
• Generally positivistic approach based on rigorous
  scientific guidelines major assumption schools
  shape teachers, who are merely passive cogs in a
  machine seeks to explain things the way they
  are, not to problematize the way things are or
  could be
• Interpretivist
• Anti-positivistic, complex, humanistic
  individual choices, seeks to understand
  socialization as a phenomenon that is socially
  constructed
• Accepts the possibility that socialization is not
  top-down process
• Critical
• Criticizes what is taken for granted, rejects
  notion of socialization gender, race and class
  issues are central tenets.

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Pre-Teacher Education Influences on Socialization

• Evolutionary Forces (Stephens, 1967)
• Psychoanalytic Forces (Wright, 1959)
• Apprenticeship of Observation (Lortie, 1975)

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Christopher Columbus

• Admiral of the Ocean Sea
• In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue
• Discovered America
• Proved that the world was round
• Because of his voyages, American civilization
  began to flourish

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How sustaining are the effects of AOO?

• Jordell (1987) posits that the role that
  formative life experiences play in socialization
  of teachers diminishes over time.
• Nias (1986) claims that teachers continue to draw
  on personal experiences as students up to 10
  years.

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Forces in typical pre-service teacher education

• Core coursework although increases in cognitive
  development, general liberalization of values,
  sophistication which student reason about moral
  issues, not much is known about how this affects
  teachers.
• Methods courses studies show that such
  coursework has minimal effect on subsequent
  actions of teachers. Many researchers posit that
  the hidden curriculum in programs has the most
  significant effect on teacher socialization,
  although the empirical evidence is weak.
• Field Experiences socializing impact of limited
  preservice field experiences is weak and
  ambiguous.

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Different Breeds?

• Lacey (1977)
• 2 broad orientations of teaching candidates
• Professional
• individuals committed to a career as classroom
  teachers identified positively with traditional
  schooling experiences
• Radical
• individuals committed primarily to a set of
  ideals about social change that might be realized
  in or outside of the classroom identified
  negatively with traditional school experiences

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PARTING SHOT

• If teachers apprenticeship of observation are
  not consistent with the values espoused by the
  teacher education program or the school, what are
  the implications?
• Can teacher educators expect teachers to adopt
  radical views about teaching and learning without
  addressing the apprenticeship of observation?