Disrupting the Apprenticeship of Observation

Abstract

This book set out to analyze how teacher candidates and teacher educators construct professional knowledge from teaching and learning experiences during a preservice teacher education program. Several decades ago, Zeichner and Tabachnick (1981) published an article with a title that many seem to take as suggesting that school experiences overwhelm or “wash out” the effects of preservice teacher education programs. A closer reading of the paper suggests that the authors are posing the possibility that there may be few, if any, effects of teacher education coursework to be washed out by the culture of the school during practicum experiences. One of the major findings of this study, however, is that the manner in which the physics methods course was taught had a substantial impact on the nature of the participants’ learning about teaching.