Complex Systems in Beginning Teacher Learning-Practice: A Literature Review

• In Event: Honoring, Unforgetting, and Humanizing Teacher Preparation: Acknowledging Complexity in the Process

Abstract

This literature review examines how complex theoretical perspectives illuminate beginning teachers' translation of preservice learning into practice. Our analysis of 55 empirical studies employing Cultural Historical Activity Theory, complexity theory, and posthuman/new materialisms challenges individualistic narratives that position teachers as autonomous agents who “transfer” their university-learned pedagogies into classrooms. Iindings illustrate how teaching practice emerges from interactions among nested systems: teacher, mentor, classroom, school, district/policy, and sociocultural-political levels. These system interactions produce contradictions that can also become generative sites for learning, producing various adaptations ranging from strategic compliance to creative emergence. These findings support reconceptualization of the learning-practice relationship as translation rather than transfer, and provides an empirical foundation for transforming teacher preparation toward supporting systemic navigation and productive contradiction engagement.

Authors

• Kathryn J. Strom, California State University - East Bay

• Celina Salvador-Garcia, University Jaume I

• Jennifer Ervin, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire

• Maverick Yunqiang Zhang, Hunter College - CUNY

• Alexis Ozuna, California State University - East Bay

• Kara Mitchell Viesca, University of Nebraska - Lincoln