Preparing to Teach: Exploring the Learning Experiences, Contexts, and Programs of Novice Teacher Preparation

Novice teachers enter the profession with vastly different levels of readiness for the complex responsibilities of classroom teaching. Logically, teacher preparation could and should serve as a lever for improving teachers’ readiness from the outset of their careers. However, it has historically been difficult to understand the relationship between teachers’ preparatory experiences and their readiness because of a host of factors that likely moderate how teachers learn. Teacher learning is multifaceted, shaped by the interplay between novice teachers’ characteristics, the learning experiences in which they engage, and the context in which that learning occurs. Yet, teacher preparation research does not always acknowledge this dynamic interplay. In this three-manuscript dissertation, I attend to these moderating features to generate theory and greater empirical precision about how novices learn to teach. Manuscripts one and two draw data from large samples of teacher candidates who participated in simulated learning opportunities during their preparation. The first manuscript uses a within-candidate design to control for unobserved participant characteristics, allowing us to more precisely estimate the relationship between features of the simulation and candidates’ perceptions of the opportunity. The second manuscript employs mixed methods to examine how candidates in three different teacher preparation programs experienced simulations. Findings highlight the influence of both the features of simulations and the broader contexts in which candidates are learning on their experiences. Based on these findings, we offer recommendations to improve the use of simulations as a pedagogy of teacher preparation. In manuscript three, I deepen my exploration of context through a case study of a single institution and its multiple teacher preparation programs. Findings reveal within-institution variation across programs, including differences between programs that share the same “pathway.” These findings challenge the use of pathways as a unit of analysis in teacher preparation research and suggest varying conceptualizations of teaching as a profession, even within a single institution. I highlight implications for how prospective teachers, schools, and researchers make sense of the growing array of preparatory options.