Teachers learning to teach: Stories teachers tell

This qualitative study explored the stories two teachers told about why they taught as they did. Each teacher was interviewed and observed to inform the question of how teachers' beliefs, knowledge, and experience influence their actions or practice. Two scholarly paths--teacher thinking and learning-to-teach--were used as guide posts for constructing a framework to analyze the beliefs, knowledge, and experience evidenced in the teachers' interviews and observations. The analyses revealed three categories of sources for beliefs. The first were those sources for beliefs emerging from personal experiences. The second type were those sources for beliefs originating from pre and inservice education. The third type were those sources for beliefs emerging from experiences associated with the context in which they taught. The breadth and depth of beliefs were revealed and verified by the observations.The findings suggest that there is a strong connection between beliefs and practice. Teachers hold beliefs which guide their practice. Teachers tie what they do in their classrooms to beliefs they hold about teaching and learning.Furthermore, this study suggests that there are three levels of influence of beliefs on practice--fundamental, curricular, and formative. Fundamental beliefs dominate curriculum decisions and serve as the theoretical center from which the other beliefs stem. At a second level, curricular beliefs guided by the fundamental belief are more stable in practice than other beliefs. Formative beliefs are less stable in practice. The curricular and formative beliefs are linked to the fundamental guiding principle by the breadth and depth of its influence. The study foregrounds a very different view of why teachers teach the way they do when beliefs and practice are explored in depth and from a practitioner's perspective.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio