Learning to Teach English and the Language Arts: A Vygotskian Perspective on Beginning Teachers’ Pedagogical Concept Development

Drawing
together Smagorinsky’s extensive research over a 20-year period, Learning to Teach English and the Language Arts explores how beginning teachers’ pedagogical concepts are shaped by a variety
of influences. Challenging popular thinking about the binary roles of teacher
education programs and school-based experiences in the process of learning to
teach, Smagorinsky illustrates, through case studies in the disciplines of
English and the Language Arts, that teacher education programs and classroom/school
contexts are not discrete contexts for learning about teaching, nor are each
of these contexts unified in the messages they offer about teaching. He
explores the tensions, not only between these contexts and others, but within
them to illustrate the social, cultural, contextual, political and historical
complexity of learning to teach. Smagorinsky revisits familiar theoretical
understandings, including Vygotsky’s concept development and Lortie’s
apprenticeship of observation, to consider their implications for teachers
today and to examine what teacher candidates learn during their teacher
education experiences and how that learning shapes their development as
teachers.