Schoolhouse Teacher Educators: Structuring Beginning Teachers' Opportunities to Learn About Instruction

Megan Hopkins*, James P. Spillane

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

While few would disagree that a key component of educating teachers to teach happens on the job, research rarely explores the schoolhouse as a site for teacher education. This study thus focuses on inservice as distinct from preservice teacher education and explores how beginning teachers' learning about mathematics and literacy instruction was supported within 24 elementary schools in two midwestern school districts. A mixed methodology was used in this exploratory study, including social network and interview data analysis, to examine beginning teachers' advice- and information-seeking behaviors related to mathematics and literacy. Findings revealed that formal organizational structures inside schools were critical for shaping beginning teachers' opportunities to learn about instruction, including grade level teams and formal leadership positions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)327-339
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Teacher Education
Volume65
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Work on this article is supported by the NebraskaMATH Study and the Distributed Leadership Studies ( http://www.distributed-leadership.org/DLS/projects ). These studies were funded by research grants from the National Science Foundation (DUE-0831835, REC-9873583, EHR-0412510). We gratefully acknowledge our collaborators at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, including Jim Lewis, Carolyn Edwards, Ruth Heaton, and Wendy Smith. Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and Institute for Policy Research also supported this work.

Keywords

  • elementary teacher education
  • mixed methods
  • social network analysis
  • teacher learning

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education

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