Evolving Conceptions of Teaching: Reflections of One Teacher

ABSTRACT

This article is one teacher's story of her development as a teacher. It was written as she prepared to implement a new teacher certification program for secondary science and mathematics teachers. One underlying assumption is that our ways of naming and describing the world shape and limit the lives we can live. A second assumption is that many of our ways of naming are learned as we grow and are educated within our societies. Therefore, those of us who share backgrounds are likely to share ways of naming the world and will tend to envision potentials in similar ways. If we can identify some of our common assumptions and trace out some of their origins, we can develop our abilities to envision a wider range of possibilities for the future.

Specifically, the author explores how as a new teacher she so enthusiastically and uncritically accepted a technocratic view of teaching and learning, a view she now rejects. In the process she identifies some experiences that contributed to the development of her views as a beginning teacher and describes conditions of practice that led to the evolution of a more constructivist view of learning and teaching. The hope is that other readers can relate this story to their own work in education, as teachers, as teacher educators, and as learners.