This multicase study employs sociocultural theories to analyze the learning to teach process and identity development of six novice elementary school teachers, who were immersed in a semester-long democratic field placement. Broadly, this study explored the field experience as part of democratic teacher education, and how the field experience can further democratize teacher education; that is, how can teacher education situated within universities attend to the multiple sources of knowledge about teaching and learning? Findings and implications of this study include the following: (1) An examination of how the novice teachers experienced, conceptualized, and enacted democratic education in early elementary (grades 1-3) classrooms. For each novice teacher, the democratic education that they experienced in their field placement shaped the type of democratic education that they enacted. The five elementary classrooms in this study exhibited a variety of emphases, from instilling an ethic of care to promoting problem solving for the common good; however, critical examination of society through curriculum and inculcation of particular discussion and deliberation skills necessary to be an engaged democrat were the most salient and clearly enacted instantiations. (2) The cooperating teachers in this study enacted a parallel democratic practice in their work with the novice teachers; in other words, these cooperating teachers' democratic ethos in teaching their elementary students extended to their role as a teacher educator. The democratic character of the relationship emerged primarily through questioning and presenting teaching as inquiry, an emphasis on equality in participation and decision-making in classroom instruction and management, and attention to the connections between knowledge of social issues and teaching. (3) The development of a democratic teaching identity faces similar challenges to the development of any teaching identity; however, it faces the particular issue of balancing authority as a teacher with membership in the democratic classroom and requires the social legitimation of a teaching identity from the community of students. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]