This article analyzes how Sharon, a student teacher, negotiated the different conceptions of teaching that provided the expectations for good instruction in her university and the site of her student teaching and how her effort to reconcile the different belief systems affected her identity as a teacher. The key settings of Sharon’s experience were the university program, her third-grade class at Harding Elementary, and her first teaching job. During student teaching, Sharon experienced frustrating tensions because her cooperating teacher provided little room for experimentation, mentoring instead with a mimetic approach. When in her first job, Sharon had the opportunity to resolve instructional problems with greater authority. We see tensions that require a socially contextualized intellectual resolution rather than simply one of relational accommodation as potentially productive in creating environments conductive to the formation of a satisfying teaching identity.

This article reports a case study of an elementary school teacher moving from her university teacher education program into her first full-time job teaching a K/first-grade class. Using activity theory, we analyzed her conceptualization of teaching as she moved through the key settings of her university program, student teaching, and first job. This conceptualization began with the university's emphasis on constructivism, a notion that diffused as she moved from the formal environment of the university to the practical environment of the schools. Data for the study included preteaching interviews, classroom observations, pre-and postobservation interviews, group concept map activities, interviews with supervisors and administrators, and artifacts from schools and teaching. Data analysis sought to identify tools for teaching and the ways in which those tools were supported by the environments of teaching. Results center on 2 aspects of constructivist teaching: the teacher's use of integrations and the decentering of the classroom. The analysis showed that the teacher, rather than developing and sustaining a concept of constructivist teaching, instead developed what Vygotsky calls a complex, that is, a less unified understanding and application of the abstraction. Implications of the study concern ways of thinking about the common pedagogical problem teacher educators face when students of their programs abandon the theoretical principles stressed in university programs.During her elementary teacher education coursework, Tracy, described by her university supervisor as being "first or second in her class" in terms of accomplishment, spent an entire semester in a language arts methods class learning ways to help students construct their own knowledge. The professor in the course encouraged Tracy to design lesson plans that gave students choices in their reading and conduct. Tracy

The purpose of this study was to better understand how to prepare teachers for a diverse student population. The study addressed the significance of field experiences by focusing on the following research question: How do preservice teaching experiences at an urban, culturally different school affect teaching practices? Using several data sources, four conceptual categories formed the study's interpretive themes: (a) attitudes toward culturally different people, (b) pedagogy, (c) career expectations, and (d) senses of preparedness. Findings indicated that this experience positively affected the cultural attitudes and practices of the participants, increased cultural awareness, altered career expectations, and influenced the preservice teachers' sense of preparedness to teach culturally different children.

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