Professional Growth Among Preservice and Beginning Teachers

Abstract

I began this review with three objectives: (a) to determine whether recent learning-to-teach studies form a coherent body of literature, (b) to use any common themes that emerged from these studies to construct a model of professional growth for novice and beginning teachers, and (c) to draw inferences from the model concerning the nature of preservice teacher education programs likely to promote growth by capitalizing on naturally occurring processes and stages. I review 40 learning-to-teach studies published or presented between 1987 and 1991: 27 deal with preservice teachers, 13 with first-year or beginning teachers. All were naturalistic and qualitative in methodology. Studies within each of those divisions are clustered and summarized according to major themes that emerged from findings. The model I ultimately infer from the 40 studies confirms, explicates, and integrates Fuller’s (Fuller & Bown, 1975) developmental model of teacher concerns and Berliner’s (1988) model of teacher development based on cognitive studies of expertise. Preservice and first-year teaching appears to constitute a single developmental stage during which novices accomplish three primary tasks: (a) acquire knowledge of pupils; (b) use that knowledge to modify and reconstruct their personal images of self as teacher; and (c) develop standard procedural routines that integrate classroom management and instruction. In general, preservice programs fail to address these tasks adequately.