Section archive - Beginning Teachers

When graduate students enter special education programs, they arrive with dispositional knowledge that can assist or hinder them in their professional development. Over the course of two years, the researchers assessed the dispositions of beginning teachers in a special education program at a west coast state university in order to better understand and enhance the teacher education process. The results of this study describe how students entered the program with a variety of perceptions and attitudes and how course work and clinical experiences in these programs affected students' attitudes, as instructors began building on students' prior experience and knowledge.

In this article the authors analyze the mentoring of an alternate route beginning teacher to better understand mentoring practices in alternative licensure programs and to identify how such programs might more effectively mentor this growing population of teachers. The analysis highlights the promise of mentor teams for supporting beginning teachers in alternate route programs.

The article examined a survey of 747 students, regarding literacy habits of teachers or prospective teacher. Findings suggest high literacy, the ability to read out, but no interest in personal reading.

The authors describe a retrospective discourse discussions approach that was developed in a graduate literacy education course. This method represents a reconceptualization of supervising and coaching graduate students where meanings are constructed, problems are reframed, and beginning professionals can develop more nuanced understandings of their teaching and learning (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998; Cobb & Bauersfeld, 1995). The authors assert that clearly stating and understanding one's theories about teaching and learning can help educators converse about, scrutinize, and adapt their teaching in ways that hold powerful benefits for instruction and learning outcomes .