Mastery of teaching in a school-university partnership: a model of context-appropriation theory

Abstract

This study explored the experiences of six pre-service teachers who participated as intern teachers in a professional development school program between a research university and a public school district in Northeastern United States. This research offers a substantive-level theory of learning to teach in the context of a schooluniversity partnership. The research question driving this study was: How do intern teachers experience learning to teach in the context of a professional development school? Congruent with the qualitative methodology of grounded theory, a model of context-appropriation theory is presented, that was generated from the findings of this study. Two central categories are illustrated – learning about teaching and how to teach, and learning how to be a teacher. Additionally, strategies and states of intern development are described with examples of evidence, happenings, and instances. Five assertions were amassed from this model of learning about teaching and how to teach, and learning about how to be a teacher, and correlated with the literature on learning to teach and pre-service teacher development.