Teacher socialization is primarily examined as an institutional-based phenomenon, with particular focus on individuals' PK-12 schooling experiences, teacher education programs, or workplace-based socialization. This study situates professional socialization experiences of African-American teachers within teaching families, examining how culturally…

This article examines the ways in which the desire to teach is often thwarted within contemporary pedagogic practice by a set of discursive constraints that draws heavily on both progressivist notions of teaching and learning and neoliberal forms of governance. In many Western countries teaching is conceived more as facilitation rather than…

This article presents a case study of Mark Westin from his first to his fifth year of teaching fifth grade in an urban public school. Despite extreme management challenges and limited administrative support in a school with unusually high turnover, Mark persevered through his difficult novice years to become among the most respected and dedicated…

The authors report an investigation of a five-step structured study-group approach to promoting a self-sustaining learning community that supports teachers in developing the "habits of mind" necessary for improving literacy acquisition and development for urban African American students attending a low-performing, high-poverty elementary school.…

Teachers are the single most important resource in any classroom. As a result, few institutions hold as much potential and responsibility for improving schooling as those who prepare, hire, develop and retain teachers. Children's school experiences of success or failure, acceptance or rejection, and equity or bias often depend on the teachers'…

Teachers' lives have been the focus of much recent research on teaching, and we now have rich, detailed understandings of how teachers develop a 'teaching self,' in the context of concrete details of biography, school settings, relationships and educational systems within which teachers work. What we lack is a sense of the teacher in a place--a…

Reports on field study of school rituals in two U.S. southern private schools. Finds one school's rules and procedures promoted scientific analysis, abstract thinking, and individualism, whereas other saw itself as nurturing community, seeking organic and interdependent relationship with world. Concludes both schools engender commitment and belief…

Reports on an ethnographic study of primary level science classes in Kenya where English is the government-mandated language of instruction. Finds that important ideas were conveyed more easily when teachers did not adhere to the policy of English-only instruction. Concludes that the importance of sociolinguistics in instructional processes should…