Learning to Think of Learning to Teach as Situated: A self-study

Abstract

Teacher educators are expected to help their student teachers learn how to teach. How teacher educators do this depends on their beliefs, particularly on how they think about teacher learning. Earlier in my work as a teacher educator I thought of teacher learning as a psychological process or phenomenon and this view guided my work with my student teachers. Subsequently, I have been drawn to pragmatist and sociocultural views that portray human thinking and acting as intimately linked to the physical, social and cultural environment. Adopting such views helped me to see teacher learning in a new light, less as a mental issue and more as a social and cultural issue. Here I reconstruct my transformation of coming to see learning to teach as situated.