The Study
Mary M. Kennedy, professor in the Department of Teacher Education, sought to understand the ideas teachers espouse about teaching and how they respond to immediate concerns in particular classroom situations, and to show when and where teacher education programs influence those ideas.

The Findings
Kennedy based her findings on data from the Teacher Education and Learning to Teach (TELT) Study, which was designed to examine the relationship between teacher education and teacher learning. It focused on eight teacher education programs in an effort to see when and under what circumstances they were able to influence teachers' interpretations and responses to a particular set of predefined classroom situations. The TELT study interviewed faculty and preservice teachers in the context of particular subjects. For her book, Kennedy focused on situations having to do with teaching writing. What she found was a discrepancy between what teachers "espoused" as teaching ideals and the ideas they "embraced when interpreting particular situations." The differences, Kennedy says, were substantial. For instance, many of the preservice teachers espoused the ideal of caring, saying they wanted to be nicer to their students, to demonstrate understanding and sympathy, and to ensure that students felt safe in school. "But when they were faced with the particular situations we presented, this ideal rarely appeared. Instead, teachers' immediate concerns were to ensure that the students complied with their lesson formats or with some set of writing prescriptions." She found the same type of discrepancy in other quarters. Despite their espoused caring, the teachers "showed a marked tendency not to try to discern the student's point of view." The result, for Kennedy, is clear: "This complex of ideas trap teachers in a traditional grammar school ideal. Their ideas about the teacher's role in the classroom, about students as learners, and about the nature of the subject matter itself compliments one another and combine to reinforce traditional practices." And what about teacher education? Does it have an influence? Kennedy found that it did. The data showed that the orientation of the programs made a difference. Students who attended traditional management-oriented programs became even more concerned about prescriptions by the end of their programs than they had in the beginning. In reform-oriented programs, the focus on prescriptions was reduced and Kennedy found an increase in concern about students' strategies and purposes. "The influences were not universal, or often dramatic, but they were consistent enough and sizable enough to warrant attention. And virtually all of the changes in teachers' interpretations of these particular situations were consistent with the programs' substantive orientation."

More Information
Kennedy, M.K. (1998). Learning to teach writing: Does teacher education make a difference? New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

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