Living in, Learning from, Looking Back, Breaking through in the English Language Arts Methods Course: A Case Study of Two Preservice Teachers
Pamela Crosslin Stockinger
Preservice teachers often enter English language arts teacher preparation courses with untapped fears of writing and teaching writing due to null or bad experiences as K-12 students. In this article, I follow two preservice elementary teachers through a semester long methods course and reveal how they developed positive, clear images of themselves as writing teachers through active reflection and engagement in the course. The course included authentic writing experiences, extensive modeling of writing by me, the instructor, peer group discussions, extensive opportunities for reflection, and a thirty hour field component in a local elementary school wherein they worked with small groups of elementary writers. Authentic experience, opportunities to reflect on experiences, exposure to writing and writers, opportunities to plan and implement writing instruction in the field, and opportunities to engage in peer dialogue supported the formation of identities as future writing teachers. I discuss the findings of this study as evidence for the need to develop teacher education programs that provide opportunities for preservice teachers to examine prior and developing beliefs within the context of the university classroom and the field setting. The study crosses the boundaries of early childhood, elementary, and secondary English language arts teacher preparation.
English Education, Volume 39, Number 3, April 2007
|
|
 |
|
 |
