prospective teachers’ conceptions and values about learning from teaching

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Prospective teachers’ conceptions andvalues about learning from teachingChristine M. Phelpsa & Sandy M. Spitzerb

a Mathematics Department, Central Michigan University, MtPleasant, MI, USAb Mathematics Department, Towson University, Towson, MD, USAPublished online: 02 Jul 2014.

To cite this article: Christine M. Phelps & Sandy M. Spitzer (2015) Prospective teachers’conceptions and values about learning from teaching, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice,21:1, 61-73, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2014.928121

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Prospective teachers’ conceptions and values about learning fromteaching

Christine M. Phelpsa* and Sandy M. Spitzerb

aMathematics Department, Central Michigan University, Mt Pleasant, MI, USA;bMathematics Department, Towson University, Towson, MD, USA

(Received 1 February 2013; accepted 19 September 2013)

Although researchers and educators have suggested teaching prospective teachers(PTs) to investigate and learn from their own teaching over time, little researchhas investigated PTs’ beliefs about such an approach. This qualitative studyexamines prospective elementary teachers’ conceptions and values about system-atically studying and improving their own teaching. Participants (N = 6) werestudents at a university in the USA enrolled in a semester-long mathematicsmethods course designed around one model for systematically improving teach-ing (learning-from-teaching [LFT], also known as lesson experiments). Interviewresults show that the PTs had a high level of procedural knowledge about theLFT skills and reported liking and intending to use all or part of the LFT model.However, results also reveal that four of the six PTs held multiple misconcep-tions and all six PTs placed less value on improving teaching than on otherteaching goals. PTs’ conceptions and values about improving teaching may limittheir ability to successfully learn from their own teaching, which has implica-tions for how teacher educators teach PTs about lesson experiment skills such aswriting learning goals or examining student learning.

Keywords: beliefs; values; teacher knowledge; teacher preparation; prospectiveteachers

There is growing concern that prospective teachers (PTs) simply cannot be preparedto become expert teachers in a short teacher education program (Hiebert, Morris, &Glass, 2003). Given this, several researchers have suggested a key task of teachereducation should be helping PTs develop the skills needed to become better teachersover time (Feiman-Nemser, 2001). One proposed model to prepare PTs for a lifetimeof professional learning is to teach them to systematically study and learn from theirown teaching (Hiebert, Morris, Berk, & Jansen, 2007). Research is ongoing but sug-gests PTs can be taught the skills to learn from teaching (Morris, Hiebert, & Spitzer,2009; Santagata, Zannoni, & Stigler, 2007; Spitzer, Phelps, Beyers, Johnson, &Sieminski, 2011).

While PTs can be taught the learn-from-teaching skills, they may still fail toimplement these skills in their practice because of conflicting beliefs. Research sug-gests teachers’ beliefs influence their practice (Borko & Putnam, 1996; Kagan,1992), so if PTs have a belief system that does not align with the learn-from-teachingapproach, they are unlikely to adopt it. If teacher educators spend substantial time

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 2015Vol. 21, No. 1, 61–73, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.928121

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mailto:[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.928121

instructing PTs in learn-from-teaching skills without also attending to PTs’ beliefs,conceptions, and values, their efforts may be counterproductive. However, studies ofinstructional interventions to teach learn-from-teaching skills have not reported onthe beliefs of the participants, so little is currently known about PTs’ conceptions ofthis approach. In this study, we present a first attempt to examine PTs’ conceptions ofand values about the learn-from-teaching approach.

Learning from teaching

A growing group of researchers and teacher educators believe that a major focus ofimproving education should be ‘serious and sustained’ teacher learning, beginningin teacher education and continuing throughout teachers’ careers (Feinman-Nemser,2001, p. 1014). Although teachers learn and change as they progress through theircareer, this learning may be informal and accidental (Wilson & Berne, 1999), andchanges made may not truly be improvements that support student learning (Berk &Hiebert, 2009). If teachers are taught to systematically study, learn from, andimprove their own teaching, they can acquire ‘practitioner knowledge’ that isdirectly applicable to their local contexts, yet grounded in empirical findings aboutstudent learning (Hiebert, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002). Thus, researchers agree that amajor goal for teacher education programs should be to teach PTs to engage in sys-tematic and sustained learning from their own teaching and classrooms (see e.g.Bransford, Darling-Hammond, & LePage, 2005; Feinman-Nemser, 2001; Hiebertet al., 2003). Emerging research suggests that learning from teaching may deepenteachers’ content knowledge and awareness of student thinking (Phelps & Spitzer,2012), help teachers develop a tendency to view teaching in terms of student learn-ing (Lewis, Perry, Hurd, & O’Connell, 2006), and lead to improved teacher practices(Kazemi & Franke, 2004).

One model for systematically learning from teaching suggested by Hiebert et al.(2007), sometimes referred to as ‘lesson experiments,’ uses a set of four skills cen-tered on the study of one lesson or a series of lessons. These skills are situatedwithin the classroom decisions that practicing teachers make every day, but are sys-tematized with additional reflection. The first skill is setting content-focused learninggoals, where teachers specify what students are intended to achieve in the lesson.Next, teachers create hypotheses about how to help students achieve these learninggoals and design a lesson based on these initial hypotheses. Teachers then teach thelesson and collect evidence of students’ learning. The next skill is to evaluate thisevidence to determine students’ achievement (or lack thereof) of the specified goal.Teachers then revise their initial hypotheses or write new ones, this time linkingwhat actually happened in the lesson to the evidence of students’ achievement.Finally, teachers revise the lesson based on the new hypotheses. The Hiebert et al.(2007) model (see Figure 1 for an overview of the steps of the model) is set in thecontext of mathematics but is designed to work for any subject. It can be used cycli-cally over several years, while teachers develop knowledge of the learning goal andstudent thinking and design an ‘expert’ level lesson (or series of lessons) to improvestudents’ opportunity to learn.

Several intervention studies have been conducted to investigate whether PTs cansuccessfully learn and enact skills associated with the learning-from-teaching (LFT)approach. This work suggests PTs can learn lesson analysis skills, especially undercertain supportive conditions (Morris et al., 2009; Santagata et al., 2007; Spitzer

62 C.M. Phelps and S.M. Spitzer

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et al., 2011). However, a review of this body of literature does not reveal substantialattention to PTs’ conceptions and values related to the lesson analysis skills.

Conceptions and values

Given the importance of beliefs in influencing practice (Borko & Putnam, 1996;Kagan, 1992), we focus on PTs’ conceptions of and values about the lesson experi-ment model for improving teaching. We define conceptions as including PTs’ beliefs,views, and preferences (Thompson, 1992). Although conceptions are subjective, cer-tain beliefs better align with the original intentions of the Hiebert et al. (2007) model.We will call beliefs that align with Hiebert et al.’s intentions conceptions; other beliefswe call misconceptions (Murphy & Mason, 2006). We also examine PTs’ values ofteaching as they relate to the LFT model. We define values as beliefs that are specifi-cally about importance, and we look at two types of values. In this context, utility val-ues comprise beliefs about the usefulness of the model and of studying teaching ingeneral. Attainment values comprise beliefs about the relative importance of studyingteaching vs. other teaching tasks (Eccles, 1983). Our research question was:

What conceptions and values do PTs who are knowledgeable about the learn-from-teaching skills and model hold about these skills?

Methods

Setting and participants

In order to address our research question, it was necessary to include participantswho were knowledgeable about the LFT model. Since the use of this model in

Figure 1. The steps of the LFT model, as presented to PTs in the methods course. Arrowsrepresent movement through the model with one lesson.

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teacher education in the USA is still rare, there were few sites for rich data collec-tion. Thus, we designed and taught a methods course that was partially based on theLFT model. Participants in this study were elementary PTs at the end of a 15-week(3 h per week) mathematics methods course at a university in the USA. Participantshad previously completed three content courses in elementary mathematics and sev-eral courses in general educational theories and child development. This methodscourse had the overarching goal of developing PTs’ pedagogical practices specifi-cally for teaching mathematics for conceptual understanding. As part of the fieldexperience accompanying the course (an additional 2 h per week), PTs first observedgrade K-5 teachers in local public schools and later designed and taught their firstmathematics lesson. The course instructor (one of the authors of this paper) had pre-vious experience teaching this class and was an expert in systematically studyingand improving teaching (Phelps & Spitzer, 2012; Spitzer et al., 2011). In addition,both authors collaborated on the design of relevant instructional activities, usingexisting research to inform instructional design.

Class lessons were designed to include a variety of activities to develop LFTskills, including analyzing transcripts and videos of individual students and wholeclasses. The LFT skills were always integrated with appropriate mathematicsbecause research suggests PTs may be more successful enacting LFT skills aroundmathematics content that is familiar to them (Morris et al., 2009; Phelps & Spitzer,2012). Over the course of the semester, PTs first learned about the individual skillsof the Hiebert et al. (2007) model (learning goals, evidence, hypotheses, andrevisions) and then were introduced to a modified version of the whole model (seeFigure 1).

Interview and analysis

At the end of the semester, after PTs had worked extensively with the entire LFTmodel, all 16 students in the class were invited to participate in 45 min-to-1 h longinterviews; six agreed.1 The course instructor could not identify participants. Inter-views were conducted at times and in locations convenient for the participant andwere recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interview protocol was open-ended toallow for participants’ ideas to emerge and semi-structured to ensure some consis-tency in responses across participants. During the interview, PTs were also asked tosort a set of cards (described later) to help us better understand their values.

Coding followed Miles and Huberman (1994). We had two primary goals of cod-ing: to capture variety in the responses and to find commonalities across participants.The first author read the interviews multiple times to develop a start list of codes,coded part of the data using this start list, revised the codes, and coded all of the datawith the revised codes. Then, the second author performed a negative case analysis,reading the data and searching for examples that did not align with the themes (‘nega-tive cases’) to ensure the emerging themes accounted for all of the data (Lincoln &Guba, 1985). Where the second author found negative cases, the two authors exten-sively discussed the data and modified the themes, recoding the data when necessary.To ensure trustworthiness of the results, the authors kept an ongoing reflexive journalcapturing emerging ideas and possible biases. For trustworthiness and to bring an out-side perspective to our analysis, we discussed all six cases with an outside researcher(a graduate student familiar with the ideas of the study).


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Results

Results suggest these PTs were knowledgeable about the LFT skills and model andwill use these skills in some way in their future teaching. However, we fear thatthese PTs may fail to fully implement the LFT model as intended (for systematicallystudying, learning from, and improving their teaching). Below we examine PTs’ (a)knowledge of the LFT model, (b) conceptions and misconceptions about the model,and (c) values related to improving teaching.

Knowledge of the LFT model

The methods course was designed to ensure that students developed a strong knowl-edge base of the LFT model. Our analysis verified that all six PTs had a high levelof procedural knowledge about the skills in the LFT model. The PTs could describethe components of the model correctly, in detail, and could accurately describe howthe components fit together. For example, Alexis2 said:

The learning goal is what you’re trying to accomplish, and the hypotheses are what youthink is going to happen … And then you actually do the teaching, so you find out if it,[if] your … hypotheses were correct and if your learning goal was accomplished andthat’s like the analysing. And then you fix the hypotheses based on what reallyhappened and then you can fix the lesson for the future.3

Of course, we do not believe that being able to competently describe the steps of theLFT model implies understanding and the ability to use it. In fact, several PTs,including Alexis, stated they sometimes struggled with writing learning goals orhypotheses, and we will show below that some of the PTs held important miscon-ceptions. However, for the purpose of our study, analysis indicates that these PTshad sufficient knowledge of the skills of the LFT model to enable us to study theirconceptions and values.

Conceptions and misconceptions about the LFT model

Overall view of the LFT model

PTs were split in their views of the model. Three PTs had generally positive viewsand reported liking the model. For example, Taylor said, ‘I’m a big believer in this.I definitely like it for sure.’ The three remaining PTs reported both positive and neg-ative views. For instance, Jessica reported liking the model ‘because I don’t thinkyou could have a successful lesson if you didn’t plan these things or if you didn’tdo this (Figure 1).’ But Jessica also reported disliking that the model required her toreflect on and revise her lessons. She explained, ‘Revising can sometimes just betedious. And after you teach the lesson, if it wasn’t successful, kind of the last thingyou want to do is go back to that lesson again.’

Predictions of future use of the LFT model

All six PTs reported that they would use the LFT model in some way in their futureteaching, suggesting PTs held a positive conception of the model. In addition,despite learning the LFT model in a mathematics methods class, four of the six PTsexplicitly reported that the model applied to any subject.

For example, Taylor said:


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I feel like this [pointing to the model] is pretty general where you could use it for anylesson. Let’s even say a language art lesson. Like specify the goals: ok the studentsknow their vowels. Like create lesson hypotheses …, what if students say, ‘Oh is n avowel?’ like what am I going to say, you know? Like, ‘Oh no that’s a consonant.’Should I introduce consonants now or should I only talk about vowels? So that’s defi-nitely, could be in the hypotheses. And create the lesson plan and teach and gather evi-dence, I could go through it and see what students knew the vowels, what studentsdidn’t.

Three PTs qualified their future use of the model, reporting that they did not antici-pate having time to use it in the future. For example, Brittany said ‘I think it’s sillyto think that teachers have the time to sit there and analyse every single thing theydid all day, it’s not going to happen, there’s way too much going on.’ In spite ofthis, Brittany continued to highlight that she would use the model. Immediately afterher above statement, she said, ‘When you have the opportunity to do it, I think it’shelpful and it’s going to be beneficial in the end.’

Chassels and Melville (2009) found a similar concern for time among PTsengaged in collaborative lesson study. Although the model takes a considerableamount of time, research suggests this obstacle can be overcome (see e.g. Lewiset al., 2006). PTs’ concerns about time may reflect a deeper misconception about theintended use of the model. In particular, some PTs seemed to believe that the modelshould be used for every lesson they taught. For example, in expressing time as adrawback, Jessica said, ‘I just don’t know if every lesson needs to have every step[emphasis added].’ Additionally, Brittany said, ‘I don’t necessarily think that inevery lesson, especially like little mini-lessons that we do all the time, you’re goingto have the opportunity to do all these things [emphasis added].’ The LFT model isintended to improve only a few lessons each year precisely because teachers do nothave time to analyze every lesson they teach.

Conceptions and misconceptions about the model’s goal

Only two of the PTs, Taylor and Briana, held conceptions of the goal of the modelthat aligned with Hiebert et al.’s (2007) stated goal of continuously improving teach-ing. For example, Briana said, ‘I think it’s [the model is] to help teachers improvetheir own teaching and to reach their students better.’ Briana again shared her viewof the model as continuous improvement saying:

Your first couple years teaching you’re not going to be a perfect teacher and you justdo what you think is best. But by seeing the results, you’re going to realize what youcan change and if you change it then maybe one day the lesson will be close to perfect(laughing).

And Taylor reported she would use the model for repeated revisions ‘year after yearafter year.’

All four remaining PTs believed lesson planning was the primary goal of themodel. We consider this a misconception because, while planning is an importantpart of the model, the primary goal of the LFT model is to systematically learn fromand improve lessons over time (hence the phrase ‘learn-from-teaching’). A focus onusing the model primarily for lesson planning could inhibit this goal because it ispossible to use the model to plan a lesson that goes quite badly and then neverreflect on or improve it.

As an example of PTs’ thinking, consider Brittany’s statement:


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I think the overall goal is to make sure the students are learning what they need tolearn and figuring out ways to do that, understanding how the students learn and mak-ing sure that I am taking all the steps I need to, to ensure that they are successful[emphasis added].

Jessica provides another example. She viewed the model as being about lesson plan-ning and said ‘especially being a new teacher, I think kind of guessing at what yourstudents may say or do can help you better plan and better create your lesson.’ ThesePTs saw the model as helping them design successful instruction – a lesson planningview that is focused on students’ thinking and learning but which lacks any attentionto systematic reflection and long-term, continuous improvement of teaching.

Of the four PTs who believed a primary goal of the model was lesson planning, twoalso believed a goal of the model was self-reflection. We interpret this as still lacking anunderstanding of the primary goal of the LFT model. For example, consider Alexis,who said the model ‘makes it just easier when you’re … doing the lesson and writingthe reflection because I’m like, ok well now I have to gather my evidence.’ Part ofAlexis’ focus is on reflecting on her teaching. But this reflection is in a limited way, forwriting a reflection to hand in for her education classes rather than to develop a richerunderstanding of teaching and learning. Or consider Ashley, who said:

I think the overall goal is to get you to really think about how your students will meetyour learning goals and then to reflect upon that and change it. I think it’s a lot of revi-sion … I don’t think it’s about how to revise a lesson. I think that it’s just you knowevaluating the lesson. Like we learned a lot about like self-reflection.

Here, Ashley recognizes that a goal of the model is reflection but sees it primarilyas being evaluation of the lesson. She explicitly says the model isn’t about revisingthe lesson, just evaluating and reflecting on it. Again, this does not reflect the cycli-cal, systematic analysis and revisions intended by Hiebert et al. (2007).

Misconceptions about individual skills

Some PTs held misconceptions about individual skills of the model (evidence,hypotheses, and revisions; see Figure 1). Two PTs believed that the primary goal ofcollecting evidence was to assess individual students. For example, Brittany statedthat evidence was important to collect because: ‘I think teachers should always havelike sort of a running tab of all their students… You should always just have informa-tion about your students and how they’re doing and being able to keep informal pro-gress report[s].’ We consider this a misconception because it is related to the goal ofevidence in the LFT model (assessment) but in a limited way (assessment of studentsinstead of the lesson itself). Although conducting student assessment is certainly animportant part of a teachers’ job, it is tangential to analyzing the impact of particularinstructional decisions on student learning (the goal of the model). While there maybe some overlap, assessing students and assessing the success of a lesson are two dif-ferent goals. If Brittany focuses on evidence as an informal progress report, she maymiss key places in the lesson where evidence shows the lesson’s success (or failure).

Three PTs expressed a misconception about hypotheses. In particular, these PTsbelieved that hypotheses cannot be made without knowing specific details about theindividual students participating in a given lesson. We consider this a misconceptionbecause, while good teaching requires a focus on individual students, the goal ofhypotheses in the LFT model is to use general pedagogical principles, the structure


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of the subject and topic, and a teacher’s prior experiences in order to guess how tobest teach a population of students. Stigler and Hiebert (1999) best sum up this ideawhen they write, in the context of Japanese lesson study, that:

Although it is not easy to predict what any particular student will do in a given situa-tion, it is quite easy to predict what a group of forty students will do. This is simplythe result of the statistical principle of aggregation. Japanese teachers have ready accessto information of the form ‘When presented with problem A, 60 percent of studentswill use Strategy One, 20 percent Strategy Two, 15 percent Strategy Three, and 5 per-cent some other strategy.’ (p. 164)

Ashley provides an example of this misconception about hypotheses. She said, ‘Ithink every lesson, especially with students changing and everything, no lesson isgoing to be the same. You’re always going to have to change it and create newhypotheses.’ Alexis provides another example: ‘I just think it would be hard to cre-ate hypotheses for a group of kids you’ve never met.’ These PTs place high empha-sis on individualizing instruction for students, but do not account for the manyaspects of teaching that remain constant across classes and years. Learning goals,plans for lessons, and even predictions about how those lessons will help studentslearn are generally ‘tweaked’ by teachers but not recreated from scratch each year.Perhaps these PTs’ relative inexperience with teaching prevents them from perceiv-ing the commonalities across students and classes, leading them to believe that eachlesson (and associated hypotheses) must be completely new.

Finally, several PTs held misconceptions about lesson revisions in the LFTmodel. In particular, four of the six PTs believed the goal of revising lessons was tofix lessons that went badly. As an example, Alexis said, ‘[The model is] definitelyuseful as long as it needs to be, as long as you think [the lesson] needs to berevised, which not all lessons do.’ We consider this a misconception because theLFT model can be used productively even in cases where a lesson may appear suc-cessful (see e.g. Berk & Hiebert, 2009). In fact, studying lessons that appear suc-cessful is a critical way to improve teaching because collecting evidence and linkingteaching and learning can show further room for improvement or help uncover andunpack the processes behind successful instruction.

Misconceptions about the cycle

Two PTs held a misconception about the cyclical nature of the model. In particular,these two PTs believed that the model is used to reteach to the same group of stu-dents until they achieve the learning goal. Consider Ashley, who said, ‘I mean does[the model] go on and on forever? … How do you know when you are finished?’After asked to elaborate, she said, ‘We evaluate what has been learned and we eval-uate whether our learning goal has been met but, I don’t know, when do you startintroducing the next subject?’ We consider this a misconception because it ignoresthe continual, year-to-year aspect of the model, where lessons are revised for futurestudents as a way of gradually and continually improving teaching.

Conceptions and misconceptions summary

Our results suggest PTs had a relatively positive conception of the model, with allsix PTs reporting liking part or all of the model and intending to use it in their futureteaching. However, we also found that four of the six PTs held misconceptions


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about the LFT model. Only Briana and Taylor seemed to hold no misconceptions.We fear that the other four PTs, who were able to competently describe the steps ofthe model but held misconceptions about the purpose and role of some of thesesteps, may be unlikely to use the LFT model in their future teaching for continual,systematic lesson improvement.

Values about improving teaching

Because values influence where teachers spend their time, we were interested inunderstanding PTs’ beliefs about the usefulness and relative importance of systemat-ically improving teaching compared to other goals for teaching (utility and attain-ment values). During the interview, we asked PTs to order, from most to leastimportant, a set of eight4 cards that listed goals for teachers. We found the averageranking of each card, giving the card a PT ordered as most important a 1, the secondmost important a 2, etc. A list of the cards and average rankings is given in Table 1.

The card ‘getting better at teaching over time’ was designed to elicit PTs’ beliefsabout the value of systematically improving teaching. The average ranking of this cardwas quite low, in fifth place, indicating that most of the PTs placed little value on thisgoal relative to other goals of teaching. Across participants, one of the PTs ranked it inone of each of the following places: second, fourth, and sixth, while three ranked it assecond to least important. Below we explore PTs’ reasons for their ranking of this card.

Improvement just happens

The most common reason for ranking getting better at teaching lower than othercards, expressed by all six PTs, was that improvement ‘just happens’ over time anddoesn’t need to be systematically worked towards. For example, when asked toexplain her ranking, Briana said, ‘If I can do all these things then I think technicallyI will be getting better at teaching over time and so it’s not necessarily my first pri-ority, kind of could just happen.’ Even Jessica, who ranked getting better in secondplace, said, ‘I feel like getting better at teaching over time just happens.’ We hypoth-esize that this orientation may inhibit significant and intentional teacher growth, foralthough teachers do improve over time, much of this learning may be haphazard(Wilson & Berne, 1999) and not aimed directly at student learning. We fear that PTswho focus on other aspects of teaching, assuming they will simply improve, maynot achieve the systematic improvement necessary to become truly expert teachers.

Table 1. Cards used in card sort with mean PT ranking.

Card Mean ranking

Incorporating different learning styles 1.333Making students feel like they are good at math 3Using engaging and fun activities 3.333Helping children really understand math at a deep level 4Helping students master basic math skills like addition 4.6666Getting better at teaching over time 5.5Helping students learn how to solve unfamiliar problems 6.6666Having good test results 7.4Understanding what students are learninga N/A

Note: aThis card was removed from final analysis because PTs interpreted it in several different ways.


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Improvement is selfish

Three PTs gave another reason for their ranking; they believed that focusing onimproving their own teaching was selfish because it neglected the students. Forexample, Alexis expressed this idea saying, ‘You can’t focus on it [improving teach-ing] and base your lessons around it because it’s not for you, it’s for the students.’And Brittany articulated a similar view: ‘Because I think my focus is on the studentsand not on myself … I think this [getting better at teaching] focuses on me and therest [the other cards] focuses on them.’

Feiman-Nemser (2001) warned that PTs’ focus on students might prove an obsta-cle in teacher preparation programs and our findings support this concern. Thesethree PTs seemed to view improving their teaching as a problem, instead of as anopportunity or solution. This is unfortunate because we strongly believe that themodel does focus on students since it is about setting learning goals for students,examining evidence of students, and making hypotheses connecting teaching to stu-dent learning. In addition, we believe that students benefit in the long run from hav-ing expert teachers in the classroom, and the LFT model can help teachers developthat expertise. Briana seemed to be wrestling with the complexities of this ideabecause, although she said helping students was more important, she later said,‘improving my own teaching would eventually help my students in the long run, soit’s really helping everyone.’

Values summary

PTs valued other goals for teaching more than they valued systematically improvingteaching. While the other goals they picked are important, we fear that the low valuePTs place on improving teaching may hinder their ability to implement all or evenpart of the LFT model successfully in their future teaching.

Discussion

This study presents a first look at PTs’ conceptions and values around the LFTmodel. Table 2 summarizes key findings for each participant.

Limitations

Our results are based on PTs’ reports and it is possible these are biased because PTsdid not want to critique their methods course. This limitation was mitigated by

Table 2. Summary of participants and results.

Overallopinion

Number ofmisconceptions

Improving teachingplacement in card sort

Improvementjust happens

Improvementis selfish

Jessica Likes &dislikes

4 2 Yes No

Ashley Likes &dislikes

4 7 Yes No

Brittany Likes 6 7 Yes YesTaylor Likes 0 4 Yes NoAlexis Likes &

dislikes4 6 Yes Yes

Briana Likes 0 7 Yes Yes


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ensuring that the course instructor could not identify participants. Further, any biasesin PTs’ reports are likely to strengthen our results because PTs were likely morepositive about the LFT model in interviews than in actuality (resulting in us overes-timating their productive conceptions and values).

Our results are also based on PTs’ reports at one point in time. It is possible that,though they held less productive conceptions and values of the LFT model at thetime of the interview, they would come to value improving teaching in their fieldplacements or as practicing teachers. However, given that research suggests beliefsare resistant to change (Borko & Putnam, 1996), we think this unlikely withoutadditional interventions (e.g. professional development related to LFT).

Conjectures

Even though PTs had a high level of procedural knowledge, their conceptions werenot always productive in terms of promoting systematic lifelong learning. Why mayPTs have held these conceptions? We suggest three conjectures. First, in spite of ourbest design efforts, something in the course may have encouraged PTs to developnon-productive conceptions and values. For example, PTs did not have the opportu-nity to reteach their own lesson due to the limits of a 15-week methods class; PTsmay be more able to see the advantages of the cyclical model if they could reteach alesson.

Another hypothesis is that the structure of teacher education in the USA influ-enced PTs’ conceptions and values. Most current US teacher education programs,including the university where this study was conducted, put little focus on the ideaof systematically improving teaching. One isolated 15-week methods course may beinsufficient to change beliefs. Furthermore, the nature of teacher education, whichmust put substantial focus on practicing non-classroom skills, may explain why PTsin our sample seemed to view lesson planning, gathering evidence, and reflecting onlessons as ends in themselves, rather than as methods for improving their teaching.

Finally, we conjecture that it is possible that beginning PTs simply may not beready to focus on systematically improving their teaching. In some ways, PTs’ con-cerns are more immediate and focused on their own selves (successfully studentteaching, learning classroom management, etc.) (Fuller, 1969). PTs may see theimportance of systematic improvement only after several years of teaching, the reali-zation that improvement does not always ‘just happen,’ and experiences that helpthem question their own effectiveness (Hiebert et al., 2007). Given this, it may beimportant to teach PTs the LFT skills but then follow up with ongoing professionaldevelopment for beginning teachers.

Conclusion

We hypothesize that learning about the LFT skills will have some positive impacton PTs’ practice; however, we fear it is unlikely that, without further intervention,any of these six PTs will engage in systematic lifelong learning or use the LFTmodel to the extent envisioned by the authors (Hiebert et al., 2007) or taught in themethods class. Our work represents an important contribution in showing thatresearchers and teacher educators should be cautious in assuming that simply acquir-ing the skills of LFT will be enough to help PTs successfully study and improvetheir teaching in their future careers.


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AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank Mandy Jansen and an anonymous reviewer for their feedback on anearlier draft. We would also like to thank Julia Przybyla for her feedback on an earlier draftand her help with data analysis.

Notes1. PTs received a US$5 gift card as a thank you for participating.2. Participants’ names have been replaced by pseudonyms.3. Quotes have been modified to reflect differences in spoken vs. written English. In partic-

ular, punctuation has been added and some repetitive filler words (e.g. ‘like’ or ‘um’)have been removed.

4. There were originally nine cards. However, PTs interpreted the card ‘understanding whatstudents are learning’ in two different ways. Some interpreted it as understanding studentthinking (as we intended). Others interpreted it as understanding the math you are teach-ing. For consistency, we removed this card from our final analysis. Doing so did notchange the ordering of any of the other cards.

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prospective teachers’ conceptions and values about learning from teaching

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