Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa

Paula: a case study in the making of a teacher

“Schoolteaching remains notoriously hard to learn. The skills of teaching must be acquired at the same time as they are being performed. And this performance is typically surrounded with deep anxieties about control, authority, and identity.”

-Andy Hargreave & Noreen Jacka, “Induction or Seduction? Postmodern Patters of Preparing to Teach,” p. 41

Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa

The problem: “short-term seduction”

“short-term induction into teaching, can actually become seduction into particular kinds of teaching, leading people astray from the wider purposes that teaching might otherwise serve and towards the brink of frustration and disillusion ent as their newly acquired methods fail to mesh with the unchanged realities of schooling that await them in their first appointments.”

-Andy Hargreave & Noreen Jacka, “Induction or Seduction? Postmodern Patters of Preparing to Teach,” p. 42

Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa

Two inter-active aspects of the case study:

1. The theoretical framework: induction – vs. – seduction

2. The case study proper: Paula as person and as

teacher

Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa

Key Questions:• PERSON: Who is Paula? What formative

experiences does she bring to her classroom?• PLACE/SETTING: What factors in Paula’s work

environment challenge her experiences as a teacher and as a person?

• PRECIPITATING INCIDENTS: Which incidents crystallize the dilemmas that Paula faces in her first year of teaching? Why do they have this effect?

• CONFLICTs: Which personal and professional impulses meet which organizational constraints?

• ACTIONS: What might Paula do in order to at least calm the problems she confronts in her classroom, her school, and in her professional and personal life?

Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa

Theoretical ThemesBecoming a teacher morally, emotionally, and politically (43)

Biographical extension and archetypal confirmation (43-44)

Social recruitment and micropolitical accommodation (45-46)

Teacher preparation as “seduction” (58-61)

Prepared by Dr. Martin Barlosky, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa

Practical ThemesPaula: biography – personal, professional, and academic (47-48)

Paula: images of teaching – cooperation, cohesion, and support (48-50)

Paula: classroom experience – what happened (51-56)

Paula: conflicts between teacher “training” and the lived world of teaching, administration, and the school where she began her career (57-58)