Amplification and Diminishment of Contextual Systems in Teacher Education: Learning to Teach in Distinctive Pathways

• In Event: Honoring What They Bring: Preparing Teachers to Center and Sustain Students' Backgrounds, Cultures, and Experiences

Abstract

Drawing from a longitudinal comparative case study that investigated novice teachers’ learning from two programs, this paper examines the learning-to-teach experiences of two novice teachers–-one enrolled in an urban residency program and one enrolled in the residency’s partnering university-based program–and considers the role that context plays in preparing teachers. Using complexity theory and critical realism, we investigate how the layered systems of context in which these novice teachers were embedded shaped their learning to teach experience. Our findings highlight how multiple systems of context interacted with one another in dynamic ways to influence novice teachers’ learning. Our data reveal how different contextual systems were amplified or diminished in each novice’s learning to teach experiences and to what effect.

Authors

• Hilary Gehlbach Conklin, DePaul University
  Presenting Author

• Lauren Gatti, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Kavita Kapadia Matsko, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author