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Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 1196e1205

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ tate

Opening the black box of field experiences: How cooperating teachers’ beliefs andpractices shape student teachers’ beliefs and practices

Jeffrey J. Rozelle a,b,*, Suzanne M. Wilson c

aDepartment of Science Teaching, Syracuse University, 105 Heroy Lab, Syracuse, NY 13244, USAbDepartment of Teaching & Leadership, Syracuse University, 105 Heroy Lab, Syracuse, NY 13244, USAcDepartment of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, 318 Erickson Hall, East Lansing, MI, USA

h i g h l i g h t s

< We document a year-long internship for six secondary science teachers.< We examine changing beliefs and practices in response to field experiences.< All interns are strongly influenced by cooperating teachers’ practices.< Changes in interns’ beliefs are dependent on enacted practices.

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 9 December 2011Received in revised form26 July 2012Accepted 27 July 2012

Keywords:Student teachingTeacher learningCooperating teachersTeacher socializationTeacher educationField experienceTeacher beliefs

* Corresponding author. Department of Science TeacHeroy Lab, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA. Tel.: þ1 315 443

E-mail address: jrozelle@syr.edu (J.J. Rozelle).

0742-051X/$ e see front matter � 2012 Elsevier Ltd.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2012.07.008

a b s t r a c t

This study employed ethnographic methods to describe and explain changes to beginning scienceteachers’ (n ¼ 6) practices and beliefs during a year long internship. Teaching practices were stronglyinfluenced by the cooperating teachers. Initially, all six interns attempted to re-enact lessons they wit-nessed their cooperating teachers teach, including following lesson structures and borrowing repre-sentations, anecdotes, and jokes. Later, they independently implemented instruction that emphasizedsimilar strategies as their mentors, regardless of whether or not they were experiencing success. Internswho were successful also shifted their beliefs to match their mentors.

� 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The importance of student teachingdand field experiencesmore generallydfor new teachers goes almost unchallenged. Aculminating student teaching or internship experience is a centralcomponent of nearly every U.S. teacher education program and hasbeen for most of teacher education’s history (Guyton & McIntyre,1990). Although calls for reform of teacher education in the U.S.have cited changing field experience in different ways (HolmesGroup, 1986; Levine, 2006; NCATE, 2010), no one seems to doubtthe central place of teacher learning in schools and classrooms;

hing, Syracuse University, 1051616; fax: þ1 315 443 9134.

All rights reserved.

even the harshest critics of teacher education almost alwayspromote on-the-job or in-the-field training (e.g., Hess, 2001). Newteachers reinforce this message, often citing field experience andstudent teaching as the most beneficial, authentic, or practicalaspect of teacher education (Adams & Krockover, 1997; Britzman,1991; Farkas, Johnson, & Foleno, 2000; Goodlad, 1990).

Given its centrality, it is perhaps surprising that reviews of theliterature consistently find field experiences to be poorly under-stood (Clift & Brady, 2005; Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; McIntyre,Byrd, & Fozz, 1996; Wilson, Floden, & Ferrini-Mundy, 2001).Researchers have generally found that student teaching, along withthe first few years of teaching, tends to move teachers towarda more authoritative stance toward their students (Hoy & Rees,1977; Ng, Nicholas, & Williams, 2010; Veenman, 1984), andtoward traditional styles of teaching, away from reform-mindedmethods and strategies espoused in teacher education. In the

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heat of the moment, student teachers bend toward their cooper-ating teachers’ traditional style (Hewson, Tabachnick, Zeichner, &Lemberger, 1999; Ross, 1988; Winitzky, Stoddart, & O’Keefe, 1992),are too consumed by the demands of curriculum and classrooms toimplement reform ideals (Moore, 2003; Powell, 1994, 1997; Tang,2003), or fail to translate the theory of teacher education intopractice (Graham, 1997; Korthagen & Kessels, 1999). In addition,many student teachers undergo what has been termed “praxisshock” (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002; Veenman,1984) or “shatteredimages” (Cole & Knowles, 1993a) in which their conceptions ofteaching or of themselves radically change as they confrontteaching’s realities. On relatively rare occasions (e.g., Goodnough,Osmond, Dibbon, Glassman, & Stevens, 2009; Nilssen, 2010),exceptional mentors or innovative structures for student teachingare able to disrupt those patterns, but the research suggests thatimmersion in schools usually leads new teachers to become moreeducationally conservative and to replicate both the status quo andtheir experiences as learners.

Clift and Brady (2005) assert that preservice teachers have“difficulty translating concepts learned in methods courses intotheir classrooms” (p. 331). This highlights a feature andweakness ofthe literature: researchers often begin by defining a reform-basedset of practices promoted by teacher education and then examinethe progress (or lack of progress) that preservice teachers maketoward those goals. This results in mostly discouraging reports thatdocument the deficit between visions of what teaching should looklike and how new teachers actually teach.

The research reported here starts at a different place. Ourpurpose was to describe how six preservice science teachers learnto teach over a year and explain their learning by documentingtheir field experiences, teacher education courses, and theirchanging beliefs and practices. Using ethnographic methods, wecollected data throughout one school year, mapping a trajectory ofteacher learning and socialization. In this way, we hope to open the“black box” of field experience and document the mechanisms atplay in field experience and how those mechanisms interact (or failto interact) with concomitant experiences in teacher educationcourses. We borrow the black box metaphor from science, thediscipline of our preservice teachers; a problem might exist inwhich the inputs and outputs of a phenomenon might be known,but the intervening mechanism of action is hidden or not wellunderstood. We argue that while we have an understanding of theinputs and outputs of field experiences, we can saymuch less aboutthemechanism of that change. For example, in a survey study by Nget al. (2010) of preservice teachers, they found that experiences inschools made student teachers more concerned about controllingstudents and made them more self-focused than student-focused.While the input and outputs are described, little can be saidabout why these changes occurred. Furthermore, by concentratingon the inputs and outputs, research fails to illuminate the ways inwhich common mechanisms might lead to different outcomes(or, conversely, different mechanisms lead to similar outcomes).Ethnographic methods are appropriate for an attempt to under-stand mechanism because they focus closely on complex interac-tions in a local space (Erickson, 1984). Our goal is to open the blackbox and examine mechanisms by which cooperating teachersinfluence their student teachers’ beliefs and practice.

2. Levels of change in teachers

To frame our understanding of how interns might change ina field-based setting, we draw upon the work of Korthagen (2001,2004) who calls for a more holistic model of teaching thatcomplicates and explicates the relationship between the behavior/competency side of teaching and more personal characteristics like

beliefs and identity. In his “onion model” (Korthagen, 2004, p. 80),the teacher is represented as concentric circles, each of whichrepresents a different layer, or level (in Korthagen’s words), of theself. Outside levels (behavior and competencies) are both morereadily observed and more directly influenced by the externalenvironment. As one moves deeper into the onion (beliefs, identity,and mission), the levels become more difficult to observe directlyand may be more removed from direct environmental influence.Levels are not independent of one another; the environment andouter levels may influence changes in the inner levels, as in the casewhen a challenging student (the environment) may cause theteacher to seek new skills (competencies) for dealing with thatchild, whicheif successfulemight change the teachers’ views(beliefs) about how children behave. Likewise, a teacher’s beliefsabout teaching might influence the competencies she chooses todevelop and, consequently, the practice (behavior) she employs inher classroom.

One strength of Korthagen’s model is its insistence on keepingthe whole teacher in consideration, while still allowing fordistinctions. This enables one to see that many things may behappening to a new teacher all at the same time, even in contra-dictory ways: a student teacher who espouses strong commitmentsto social justice, while she employs a tyrant’s strategies(Bruckerhoff & Carlson,1995) or a new teacher deeply committed toscientific inquiry in the classroomwho relies almost entirely on histextbook (Powell, 1997). The model allows that the former may bedeveloping skills for teaching practices that go against her beliefsabout how to relate to students. The latter may be deeplycommitted to a vision of science but lack the competenciesnecessary to apply it to the classroom. For this study, we use Kor-thagen’s model to explore the ways that teachers’ behavior andwhat teachers know how to do may conflict with, influence, and beinfluenced by what they believe and who they believe themselvesto be. For analysis, we focused on comparing the more outer levelsof behavior and competencies (which we call practices) to the moreinner levels (which we call beliefs), because we found the contrastbetween what one does and is able to do with what one believesabout teaching and one’s self shed the most light on how teachers’changed during the internship. We highlight how these levelsinteract and change over time as a result of field experiences.

3. Methods

3.1. Rationale for ethnographic study

Given our research purposesdto describe and explain changesto student teachers over one yeardwe conducted an ethnographyof a science teacher preparation program. As we described earlier,there is fair amount of unity about the effects of student teaching onpreservice teachers, though much less that adequately explainsthose effects. With one of its goals “to apprehend as strange”contexts and situations which might be too familiar to theresearcher (Latour & Woolgar, 1986, p. 29), ethnography holdspromise for allowing insight into a long-standing problem.Furthermore, ethnographydand educational ethnography inparticularefocuses not on the inputs and outputs of systems, but ondescribing and understanding holistically the complex interactionsthat occur in a social space (Erickson, 1984). Ethnography is“microscopic,” and rests on the idea that understanding complexsettings (like sites of student teaching) in great detail contributes toknowledge about the world, even if that setting cannot be under-stood to be “typical” or representative of all such settings (Geertz,1973). Given the importance of understanding the local site, wenow turn to describing the setting for this ethnography and ourmethods.

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3.2. State’s teacher education program

Interns enroll in the secondary teacher preparation program atState University, a public U.S. Midwestern research university, withthe intention of gaining certification as a secondary science teacherover five years. (All names are pseudonyms.) During the first fouryears, preservice science teachers major in a scientific disciplineand receive a B.S. in a science, while also completing courses withinthe College of Education. The full-year internship, this study’s focus,takes place during preservice teachers’ fifth year. The program isdesigned as a scaffolded entry into teaching, informed by socio-cultural theories of apprenticeship and participation (Feiman-Nemser, 2001). Interns begin the year at their school placementstaking responsibility for one “focal class”da group of students forwhom they will have primary responsibility throughout theyeardwhile assisting and observing their cooperating teachers(CTs) during the other classes. Twice during the fall semester,interns increase their teaching load for two to three week periods(called “guided lead teaching”), during which they may take on theresponsibility for planning and teaching one or more of their CTs’classes in addition to their focal class. Finally, in the springsemester, interns assume full responsibility for teaching fourclasses over an approximately 10-week time period (called “leadteaching”).

Each intern is assigned one school-based CT, the intern’sprimary mentor throughout the year. Interns teach in their CTs’classrooms, and an intern’s students are officially students of theCT. Interns are also assigned one university-based field instructor(FI). The FI visits the classroom of each intern once every threeweeks, on average, to make classroom observations, provideassistance and feedback, and complete official university reports.During this internship, interns also complete teacher educationcoursework, attending classes onmost Fridays. One class focuses onscience methods; the other on more general professionalresponsibilities.

This structure (e.g., five-year undergraduate program, a full-yearinternship at one school, TE classes during student teaching), whilenot unique in the U.S., is but one permutation for how teachereducation might be conducted. Our study does not intend todescribe “every” program, intern or school, but is instead (as withany ethnography) a concrete description of a particular time andplace (Geertz, 1992). Borrowing from Geertz (1992), however, wehope that “just trying to figure out” this particular circumstance “isnot chopped liver” (p. 132).

3.3. Participants

Sampling proceeded using criterion-based selection, in whichwe specified prior to the study’s onset a list of criteria our samplewould meet (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993), including: 1) each internwould start in Fall of 2008; 2) each intern would work in a highschool near State’s campus, thus making ethnographic datacollection possible as interns moved between the school and TEsettings; 3) two interns per school would be selected to allowcomparisons within and across schools; and 4) the schools wouldserve communities with contrasting socioeconomic status.Consulting with experienced teacher educators, as well as using

Table 1School sites, intern placements, and cooperating teachers.

School Interns (CTs) Setting # of stude

Vincent High Heather (Ken); Cindy (Shannon) Suburban 950Randolph High Tammy (Vince); Chad (Frank) Suburban 1450Quincy High Kimberly (Bonnie); Holly (Michael) Urban 1400

demographic statistics, we selected three schools that provided themost divergence in the student populations they serve; each hadtwo interns and all interns and cooperating teachers agreed toparticipate. Table 1 shows interns’ placements at each school, eachintern’s CT, and school demographic information. Vincent andRandolph were suburban schools that served less ethnically andracially diverse student populations. Quincy was an urban schoolthat served a more diverse student population, had a higherpercentage of students who qualified for government-supportedfree or reduced lunch (a common student poverty measure in theU.S), and had lower graduation rates.

3.4. Data collected

We used three data sources commonly used by ethnographers“to understand (holistically) the worlds of others and themselves”(Eisenhart, 1988, p. 105): participant observation, ethnographicinterviewing, and artifacts. We describe our collection of each.

Eisenhart (1988) describes participant observation as restingalong a continuum from participant to observer; one’s placementon that continuummay shift during a study. The first author did nothave an official role with the school districts or the teachereducation program during the study. However, in the year prior todata collection, he served as a course instructor to the six partici-pating interns. As a result, we did not assume that hewould be seenby the interns as a neutral observer; most likely, he would beviewed as a teacher educator and someone aligned with theprogram and its ideas. While recruiting participants, we explicitlyaddressed the role he hoped to play in an intern’s class (that ofa researcher), but also gave interns permission to negotiate hispresence in ways that they might find beneficial (Cole & Knowles,1993b). The participant observation experience for the firstauthor varied across classrooms and across time, ranging fromquietly sitting in the back writing notes to wandering throughoutthe room providing assistance to interns’ students. The secondauthor did not conduct participant observations and was notknown to the school participants, though she was familiar withState’s teacher education program.

In the end, fieldwork entailed four major categories of obser-vations: school, school with field instructors present, teachereducation courses, and outside meetings (see Table 2). In the schoolvisits, we shadowed the intern. Early on, interns spent much oftheir time observing their mentors teach and assisting theirmentors; this meant that we observed CTs teaching. As the yearprogressed, we observed greater proportions of interns’ teaching.We also documented the moments “off-stage” where interns werenot teaching or watching their mentors teachdconversations withother interns, lunch with other school staff, planning lessons withmentors, meeting with students at lunch, grading papers, andphone calls with parents. On most occasions, we spent half dayswith interns. On morning visits, we tried to arrive when the interndid and stay through lunch. On afternoon visits, we would oftenstay until the intern headed home. The intentionwas to capture thefull range of activities that interns engaged in on a daily basis.

FIs attempted to make at least 10 observations throughout theyear. In addition, they met with cooperating teacher-intern pairstwice during each semester to discuss intern progress. On 26

nts % White, non-Hispanic % free or reduced lunch Graduation rate

90% 10% >95%85% 20% 90%45% 55% 75%

Table 2Number and duration of field observations.

Fieldwork category Number ofobservations

Hours ofobservations

School 56 216School with Field Instructor 26 38Teacher Education Courses 16 44Outside Meetings 6 13

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occasions, we documented days when FIs were present in schools.Eighteen of those visits were at formal evaluative conferences inwhich the FI, CT, and intern met to discuss the intern’s progress andto produce written evaluations that were filed with the teachereducation program. These meetings, including the informal chatterbefore and after, generally lasted about an hour. On six otheroccasions (once with each intern), we shadowed the FI througha visit, which included documenting the FI observing the intern andthe post-conference that followed. On two occasions we happenedto be visiting the intern when the FI arrived for an observation anddocumented that interaction.

We also documented 16 teacher education course meetings.During courses, we consistently took a low profile role, often sittingin a back corner away from the rest of the class where we couldunobtrusively take notes. When interns sat in small groups, wewould generally join a group in which one of the study’s internswas participating. Classes met for 3-h blocks and, on most occa-sions, we documented the full class.

While in the field, we used “jottings” to take fieldnotes,concentrating on capturing particular and pertinent details ofactions witnessed, focusing most closely on capturing quotationsthat might be harder to remember later (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw,1995). These rough notes were then written into narrative formsthat were “intelligible to anyone, not just to (us)” shortly afterleaving the field setting (Miles & Huberman, 1984, p. 50). In total,these fieldnotes span about 300 h in the interns’ professional lives.

In addition to participant observations, we conducted semi-structured interviews with interns, CTs, FIs, and course instruc-tors. All interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed for anal-ysis. We conducted three interviews with each intern, at thebeginning, middle, and end of the internship. All intern interviewsfocused on three main topics: interns’ visions of good scienceteaching and how their practices reflected that vision (e.g., Can youdescribe for me what good teaching looks like?), interns’ interac-tions with members of their professional community (e.g., Do youget help in your planning and teaching from your CT? Can youdescribe what that looks like?), and interns’ assessment of theirlonger-term career trajectory (e.g., How do you feel about teachingas a career right now?). CTs and FIs were interviewed twice. The

Table 3Interviews conducted with participants.

Participant Number ofinterviews

Range of interviewdurations in minutes

Average length ofinterviews in minutes

InternsOpening 6 40e50 45Middle 6 89e119 102Closing 6 61e81 70

Cooperating TeachersOpening 6 47e60 50Closing 6 52e67 61

Field SupervisorsOpening 2 60e71 66Closing 2 62e73 68

Teacher EducatorsClosing 4 56e79 69

first interview focused on eliciting their beliefs about teaching andscience teaching, their previous experiences working with interns,and their relationship with the State teacher education program.The second interview focused on their descriptions of how theyworked with their intern and the TE program, the ways in whichthey saw the intern change over the year and their reflections onhow well prepared the interns were to enter the teaching profes-sion. Teacher educators were interviewed once at year’s end, andthe interviews focused on the teacher educators’ visions of goodscience teaching and their reflections on the interns’ years. Table 3summarizes the interviews. The 38 interviews with all participantstotaled almost 42 h.

Finally, we collected artifacts from the internship experiencethat would allow us to characterize interactions that we might notsee during participant observations such as email correspondence,assignments from courses, or formal evaluations (see Table 4). Allartifacts were collected directly from the interns themselves ratherthan from FIs, CIs, or State’s teacher education program. Since theinterns controlled what documents we received, they may havebeen selective about what they provided though we do not haveany evidence suggesting that they withheld documents that re-flected on them more negatively.

3.5. Data analysis

Data analysis began during data collection through the writingup of fieldnotes (Emerson et al., 1995). While the fieldnotes wereoften nothing more than captured dialog or short descriptions ofinterns’ or students’ movements, typed fieldnotes were more pol-ished documents that represented the first author’s first attempt toimpose a narrative structure to what had been observed. In addi-tion, both authors regularly met throughout data collection todiscuss events, connect stories to other stories, and, in doing so,generated lists of things to watch for. The first author also wroteshort analytic memos that served to solidify thinking and promptreaction from others (Emerson et al., 1995). During this time, initialthemes began to emerge inductively that were later used in moreformal data analysis.

All fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and artifacts were importedinto the qualitative analysis software NVivo 8. Because we had seenpatterns in the ways CTs and interns taught, we began by coding forthe strategies employed by each; categories emerged such asinstructional models, laboratory activities, questioning strategies,as well as disciplinary actions, interactions with students, andclassroom-running routines and procedures. We grouped thesestrategies hierarchically into two larger categories (instructionaland relational) because the patterns that emerged appeared similarwithin each of the two larger categories. Instructional strategiesincluded all aspects related to science instructiondcontent,

Table 4Internship artifacts collected.

Class of artifacts Number collected

Weekly Journal EntriesWritten by Interns

98 (55 with feedback fromfield instructors)

TE Course Assignments 48 (34 with feedback fromcourse instructor)

Formal Evaluations fromCooperating Teacher

17

Formal Evaluations from Field Instructor 15Formal Self-evaluations from Intern 7Observation Feedback Forms

Provided to Interns fromField Instructor

13

Email Correspondence betweenInterns and Teacher Educators

4

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classroom activities, or lesson structures. Relational strategiesincluded ways of interacting with students, as well as issues ofstudent discipline and behavior. We analyzed each instance of CTand intern instruction. In addition, we used the same codingprocedure on CTs’ and interns’ description of their own teachingfrom the opening interviews, as well as interns’ descriptions oftheir CTs’ teaching from interviews to corroborate our fieldnotesand to seek out more infrequently occurring emphases that mightstill be considered an important part of the CTs’ practice.

Once these instructional and relational strategies weredescribed, we wrote chronological narratives for each intern thatdocumented two different levels of change using Korthagen’smodel (2004): practices and beliefs. These narratives tracked howinterns’ practices and beliefs about teaching were changing as theyear progressed. Following Korthagen (2004), we did not assumethat interns’ beliefs and practices would be necessarily coherentand aligned; rather, we might see places where practices andbeliefs diverged, as well as instances where levels of changeinfluenced others. These narratives were compared and contrastedwith the sets of relational and instructional practices and beliefsthat were developed for CTs from observations and interviews.Below we describe the patterns in progression across the sixinterns, as well as highlight instances where interns had differenttrajectories.

4. “A carbon copy of myself”: interns’ learning fromcooperating teachers

The relationship between an intern’s practice and her collabo-rating teacher’s shifted over the course of a year. We identified twodistinct phases. The first involved using the CT’s script, the secondinvolved replicating the CT’s pattern.

4.1. Using the CT’s script

All six interns engaged in an early period of “using the CT’sscript.” They used their CTs’ performances, witnessed earlier eachday, as the source of their own performances with a later class.Interns’ re-enactment of CTs’ lessons included following thegeneral structure of the lesson by using lesson activities, materials,and the daily agenda. It also included the details as interns bor-rowed CTs’ representations, examples, or anecdotes. In the sectionsthat follow, we describe the ways inwhich lessons were re-enactedand the issues this script following raised.

The structure of State’s internship may have contributed to thismimicking. For all six interns, their focal class intentionally fol-lowed one of their CTs’ classes, thus providing interns with anexample to follow. For example, Frank, Chad’s CT, taught generalchemistry 1st, 3rd, and 5th hours. As a result, Chad and Frankdecided that 3rd hour would be Chad’s focal class because he couldwatch Frank teach 1st hour and then have 2nd hour to get himselfready to teach. Other intern/CT pairs made similar decisions.

4.1.1. Re-enactment of lesson structuresAt the beginning of the year, interns and CTs would typically

discuss the lesson to be taught the afternoon before, but the CTretained responsibility for planning; lessons used CTs’ materialsand activities, and CTs decided the content to be taught. During theCTs’ teaching of the lesson, interns would carefully observe the CTs’performances. For some, “scripting” was literal. Chad and Tammysat in the back of the room, pen and paper in hand, as their CTs’classes unfolded. With a paper copy of her lesson plan in hand(written with Vince, her CT, the day before), Tammy scribbledannotations, filling in the details she witnessed. When Vince addeda step to a lab procedure that they had not discussed, Tammywrote

it in the margins. Chad’s scripting, however, had a more franticquality. He would start with a blank legal pad and try to captureevery detail, every example Frank used, every drawing Frank drewbefore it disappeared from memory. When it came time to teach,Chad did so with his legal pad in hand. Other interns did not writea script, but watched closely and then used the samematerials (e.g.,PowerPoint slides, handouts, etc.), so that the lessons they taughthad a re-enacted quality.

This does not mean interns’ lessons unfolded like their CTs’. Acommon complaint among interns was that “my lessons go morequickly than my CT’s,” as they often rushed through the lesson andfound themselves with (unplanned) spare time; this was primarilybecause interns did much less extemporaneous talking than theirCTs. For example, a pre-lab discussion from the thirdweek of schooltook Vince, Tammy’s CT, 12 min to complete, including: 1) listingand describing the five parts of the lab report and giving studentshints about what each might include (9 min), 2) remindingstudents how to begin once reaching their lab stations (2 min), and3) explaining clean-up procedures (1 min). Tammy’s discussiontook 5 min, across all three steps. When Vince explained the clean-up procedure, he took a full minute to explain what it would entail:rinsing the test tubes, including how to use the test tube brush,taking the labeling tape off the tubes, where and how to store thecleaned test tubes, and directions on what to do after clean-up.Tammy’s clean-up portion included seventeen words, “When youare finished collecting data, clean the test tubes and then come backto your seats.” This pattern repeated itself frequently; an internwould follow the CT’s lesson plan, use the same activities, lecturefrom the same slides, or give similar directions. Most often, theintern’s explanations were briefer, less developed, quicker in pace,less open to student participation, and less informed by the detailsthat concrete experience brings.

Students also played a role. For example, Chad was following hisCT Frank’s lesson structure when he asked for three volunteers togo to the board to write electron configurations. But unlike inFrank’s class where three students quickly rose and went to theboard, no one volunteered. Forced to improvise, he asked Jade tocome forward. Jade quietly said, “No.” Chad responded with “Yep,you’re going to.” Her friend, Katie, mockingly mimicked Chad(to the class’s delight), “Yep, you’re going to.”When Jade eventuallymade it to the board, she simply stood and waited for her friends totell her what to write. While the structures of Frank’s and Chad’slessons were the same, Chad’s inability to garner student cooper-ation made the lesson look and feel quite different,exposingdpainfully for Chaddthe oft-invisible dependence ofteachers on their students.

4.1.2. Interns’ use of cooperating teachers’ instructionalrepresentations

In addition to lesson structures, interns copied other aspects ofCTs’ performances, including the use of examples, jokes, orpersonal anecdotes. Interns would repeat CTs’ representationswhen explaining content. When Shannon, Cindy’s CT, explained themovement of water through the cell membrane, she emphasizeda way for students to remember water’s path: “Remember, thewater always moves toward the solute.” Cindy, a bell later, used thesame phrase, word-for word, four times. When CTs used a drawing,or an outline of ideas, or definitions of key terms, interns were sureto use them also.

Jokes and personal anecdotes were also replicated, sometimeswith a different effect. When Frank, Chad’s CT, introduced theelements on the periodic table, he had a joke for each one (e.g.,“when you spell fluorine, don’t spell it F L O U R, because that wouldbe Flower-inednot the same thing”). The jokes were corny; bothFrank and his students knew it. But students loved it, laughing, eye-

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rolling, and glancing at each other in just the right places. WhenChad told it, the language was similard“and with fluorine, it’s F L UO R -ine, not Flower-ine.” But students did not see this as funny,perhaps because Chad was nervous and not smiling. After no onelaughed, Chad added sternly for effect, “This is important to know.Teachers will get on you about this. Even students in college spell itwrong and the teachers would yell at them. They get meaner as yougo higher up.”

CTs were well aware of this mirroring by the interns. Ina meeting of CTs and State teacher educators, a CT commented(tomuch knowing laughter) “howweird it is to see carbon copies ofmyself teach. Oh my God, that is the same example I gave. This isthe same joke I used.” In the most extreme version of mimickinginstructional representations, Tammy even adopted her CT’spersonal life; she described how her lactose intolerant sister usedto eat ice cream and then vomit, except it was not her sisterdit washer CT’s. When asked about that instance, Vince (her CT) said:

They hear us tell a story and they think, “That’s how I fill thisminute.” Because, early on, I think for them it’s just about fillingthe time and they’re like, “Oh crap, I got 73 minutes, I’ve got toknow what to do every minute. And so, he told a story here, I’vegot to tell that story at the same time when I teach this,”and they don’t have some of those stories or they don’t thinkthey do.

Vince sees Tammy’s behavior as reasonable for a beginner, andhis description of interns’ thinking about filling time seemsa sensible explanation, consistent with the literature (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985). Indeed, as we move from the firststage (using the script) to the second (following the patterns) andinterns move into their second or third month of the internship,these sorts of mimicking behaviors almost disappear, though theCTs’ dominant influence remains.

4.2. Following mentors’ patterns

State’s teacher preparation program structure involved two“guided lead teaching” periods in which interns moved from “theteacher” in one class to two or three classes. During these periods,the interns’ schedules no longer allowed them to watch a CT beforeteaching the same lesson, making script following impossible.Instead, a new pattern emerged: as they attempted to teach thelessons they planned with their CTs, they essentially channeledtheir CT by following their patterns of practice.

During this stage, interns’ behaviors began to diverge. Fourinterns, called here “reproducers,” faithfully attempted to imple-ment their CTs’ approaches and, in doing so, received consistentlygood feedback from their CTs, FIs, and students. In addition, whenreproducers described their visions for teaching, they increasinglyincluded aspects of their CTs’ practices. As will be seen, thisreproduction does not imply that interns arrive at a specified ordesirable outcome. As interns shift their practice, and later theirbeliefs, to match their CTs, several become less reform-based andless like teachers envisioned by their teacher education programbecause the CTs they reproduce were not reform-based teachers.Our argument here is about mechanism; regardless of where thereproducers ended up, the way that they got there is common.

The second group of interns, the “strugglers,” also faithfullytried to reproduce their CTs’ approaches. Unlike the reproducers,however, they struggled to master their CTs’ practiceda strugglethat was readily apparent to CTs, FIs, students, and the intern.Despite this, the strugglers forged ahead, rarely venturing from CTs’established practices. Unlike the reproducers, however, the strug-glers’ visions of good teaching did not move toward their CTs’visions, leaving them with less coherence and alignment between

their emergent practice and ideals. Whether being a “struggler” is,in the end, beneficial or detrimental for the intern or makes onemore or less likely to teach in reform-basedways is left unansweredhere. Again, our focus is on the mechanism: even as they failed tomaster their CTs’ practices, strugglers rarely sought alternativepractices to enact and, perhaps as a result, the alignment of beliefsand practices described in the reproducers did not occur.

4.2.1. ReproducersWe describe two of the four reproducers, although the pattern

holds for all four. When Bonnie, Kimberly’s CT, taught, sheemphasized helping students find answers for themselves. As shesaw it, “most of my students will never use chemistry directly therest of their lives, but they will use problem solving skills.”Students’ questions were always answered with another question,in an attempt to guide students to answers or point them toresources they should be using. For Bonnie, this habit closely con-nected to her classroom management style, where she “focuses onhelping kids take responsibility for themselves, to become goodcitizens.” The first week of school focused almost exclusively onroutines and procedures, and Bonnie, with extraordinary discipline,never wavered. When students asked where to get an extraworksheet they had misplaced, for example, Bonnie would simplylook in the direction of the room where a student might find it.Bonnie had clear rules and consequences for breaking those rulesthat she framed as “student choices.” Bonnie’s interactions withstudents were somewhat formal, particularly when students werenot doing what she had hoped they would. In those interactions,she would clearly, calmly, and coolly remind students of rules andexpectations and allow students to choose how to behave.

Kimberly, like Bonnie, followed questions with questions andemphasized students taking responsibility for finding their ownanswers. During a lab in which students were investigating thefactors that affect solubility, one group (comparing rates of solu-bility in different volumes of water) complained to Kimberly thatthey should be able to use hot water.

Kimberly: “Well, what would that do?”

Student: “Well, it would make it go faster.”

Kimberly: “Is that a good thing?”

Student: “I think so e we won’t have to keep stirring so much.”

Kimberly: “What does that do for our question? Which factorsare we looking at here? What happens if we start changingmultiple things?”

Student: (realizing the implication of the questions):“But it’sgoing to take us forever!”

Kimberly smiled and moved onto the next group. This behaviorwas not something that came easily to Kimberly:

I hated this at first, when I first saw (Bonnie) do this. Because Iwas like, “Gosh, that was so annoying as a student,” but askingquestions when they have a question for you, just to get themthinking about what is it they’re trying to find out and leadingthem towards those steps versus saying ‘this is how you getthere.’

Yet this “annoying” strategy became part of Kimberly’s corepractice.

Kimberly also emphasized the same relational patterns asBonnie. During Kimberly’s lead teaching, no routines were newlycreated or dropped, though Kimberly’s lack of expertise led tothings running less smoothly. At Quincy High, cell phones wereubiquitous, despite a widely posted school policy banning them.

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Elsewhere in the school, students called and “text-ed” withoutconsequences. Bonnie, however, enforced the rule firmly. A phonewould ring, Bonnie would walk to the offending student, put herhand out, and the student would give her the phone. On the fewoccasions where students resisted, she would calmly offer a choice:“You can either give me the phone and get it back after school or Isend you to the office e you decide.” Students would give her thephone, pout, and class continued.

On one occasion early in Kimberly’s lead teaching, a phone rang.Bonnie was not there, and Kimberly hesitated for severalbeatsdlong enough for the student to shove it in his backpackdbuteventually confronted him with the same set of choicesdturn thephone over or go to the administrator. The student spent more than5 min wandering around class deciding what to do; Kimberly wasvisibly upset. But she finally got the phone and frequently used thestory as an example of her “figuring out how to give kids choices,”rather than exacting punishments. Later in the year, anotherstudent’s cell phone rang and it was turned over without incident.

By the end of Kimberly’s lead teaching, class ran smoothly usingBonnie’s techniques. When Kimberly described her vision of goodclassroom management, she described Bonnie. When she evalu-ated her own instruction, her progress was toward Bonnie. Forexample, she said “But I think second semester, I felt morecomfortable, like this isn’t really me trying to push power on thiskid, but it’s more of ‘let’s have a conversation’ and hopefully helphim realize or her realize how their actions are affectingme and theclass”da description consistent with Bonnie’s goals.

Bonnie, too, used the same metric to evaluate Kimberly. Sheviewed Kimberly as responsible, conscientious, dedicated, andreflectivedall characteristics that she credited Kimberly asbringing to the internship. In evaluating her teaching however,“improvement” meant movement toward Bonnie’s instructionaland relational emphases:

(Kimberly’s classroommanagement) has improved dramaticallyover the course of the year. She was initially willing to deal withalmost anything that went on, on an individual basis rather thanestablishing routines. And while that can be easy initially, itdoesn’t get any easier as the year progresses without teachingyour students those routines. And she saw the differencebetween modeling the routines . and holding them to themconsistently.

Bonnie also noted how Kimberly was now regularly:

challenging students with questions when they ask questions,as opposed to just giving them the answer and moving on. Sheinitially started off, “Miss Sui, how do you do this?” Which justencourages kids: “Miss Sui, how do you do this?”. after the firstcouple weeks of running ragged, she saw the value in encour-aging kids to find their own answers.

Likewise, Kimberly received consistently good feedback fromher FI, who often complimented the aspects of Kimberly’s teaching(emphasis on routines and consistency, for example) that mostresembled Bonnie’s.

Kimberly and Bonnie exemplify the reproducers’ experiences.Reproducers followed their CTs’ script. Once following a script wasno longer possible, reproducers followed their CTs’ patterns, bothinstructionally and relationally. They faced challenges, but beforelong, they began to feel good about how the class was running andtheir CTs and FIs gave them positive feedback about their progress.By year’s end, reproducers described their visions of teaching interms that sounded like their CTs. Before the internship, Kimberlyemphasized ideas like respecting and caring about students, bothpersonally and academically, and “developing kids’ self-awareness

and self-growth.” While these ideas would not have garnereddisagreement from Bonnie (who was always respectful to andcaring toward them), Kimberly’s language shifted away from “care”and “respect” toward “routines” and “expectations,” a languagecloser to practices that might embody those abstractions. Despitebeing initially put-off by Bonnie’s approach with students, Kim-berly became a reproduction of Bonnie.

Tammy’s initial vision of good teaching included “long-termhands-on projects” with an emphasis on inquiry and “under-standing things in depth rather than just memorization.” In thisregard, she and her CT, Vince, were well suited. Vince organized hiscurriculum around case studies that led students through inquiry-oriented investigations involving cooperative groups. Despiteinitial struggles, Tammy acquired considerable skill at executingand designing activities that fit Vince’s framework, and over theyear, continued to articulate this as a core component of goodteaching and her teaching.

Relationally, Tammy initially emphasized the importance of“clear rules and consequences” and the “need to follow throughconsistently.” In earlier field placements, she witnessed seriousclassroom management problems, convincing her of the need forstrict rules and consequences, enforced by an impartial arbiter.Vince, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of buildingrelationships, of letting students know he liked and cared aboutthem. Students loved Vince, and he leveraged that affection to gaincooperation using two distinctive techniques: 1) When students’socializing began to take precedence over their work, heapproached the group, participated in the socializing, and thengently returned them to their work, and 2) he began each conver-sation with personal talk before shifting to the task at hand.

Tammy initially mimicked these techniques and later adoptedthem a part of her practice. During a lab in which students weremeasuring their stride length and looking for patterns in the data,the students’ striding devolved into a contest over who lookedsilliest. Tammy laughedwith the students and contributed her vote,even imitated one girl who was trying to run in too-high heels. Ata lull, Tammy pulled them back to the task, “OK, let’s make sure youget the data. You guys are too silly.” Another time, Rolando (in dressclothes) approached with a question and she asked him, “Wow, arethose snakeskin shoes?” before beginning the discussion of theworksheet. By the internship’s end, Tammy emphasized relation-ships as the primary source of good classroommanagement. Just asVince believed that his relationships led to increased studentcooperation, Tammy described managing classrooms as “involvingestablishing relationships” that you “can pull on” to gain studentcooperation. Gone from her description of good teaching was anymention of rules or consequences or fairness, replaced by anemphasis on relationships and cooperation.

4.2.2. StrugglersThe trajectory for the second group begins like the reproducers,

but as they failed to successfully enact their CTs’ practices, endsquite differently. Holly’s story exemplifies the pattern.

Michael, Holly’s CT, had one distinct instructional pattern:provide an opening review problem for students to solve, solve theopening problem with student input, introduce a new kind ofproblem including some teacher-worked examples, and providetime for students to work the new problems as Michael helpedstudents individually. Michael’s teaching reflected a “common-place” or traditional rather than a reform-oriented approach toteaching science, dominated by teacher-centered problem solving,textbooks, and worksheets (Wilson, Taylor, Kowalski, & Carlson,2010).

Relationally, Michael relied heavily on his ability to “builda rapport with students” to gain their cooperation. Michael’s efforts

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to connect with students were evident daily. Hemet students at thedoor, greeted them warmly, commenting on their clothing ora recent school event. An active extracurricular advisor, he attendedhis students’ events often. Students seemed to genuinely like Mr.Delaney; they were always saying hi or giving him a high-five inhallways. When students were off-task, he sidled up to them,asking a question about their sport or family; students respondedto these overtures in friendly ways. On occasions, however, wherestudents showed disrespect or failed to follow a directive, Michaelquickly ejected them from class. This happened infrequently, andMichael joked that the administrators “knew the student had reallyacted up” when it did.

Holly, like the other internseas she saide“parroted what hedid.” However, quite early on, Holly faced great challenges inbuilding relationships with students. By early October, Michaelexpressed concern that while Holly “was very cordial,” students“did not seem to be taking her very seriously.” Her FI in the secondmonth of school raised the issue of non-compliant students withHolly; he witnessed some “pretty chaotic” moments during herclass. By December, it was apparent to everyone that she had veryserious classroom management problems.

At a December conference, Sam (her FI) and Michael spent30 min suggesting resources and strategies that Holly might use.Michael made several suggestions: 1) read Harry Wong’s First Daysof School, 2) establish new routines that she might feel morecomfortable using (rather than his own), 3) increase her parentalcontact, and 4) quickly send students to the administrator. He alsopraised her efforts at establishing relationships with students, forattending their events, and for getting more comfortable talkingwith them. Sam had asked her to prepare a “behavior plan” for themeeting, one that had her own classroom expectations, routines,rules and consequences. He also imposed a sanction to express howseriously he viewed the problem by assigning her a “Pass withConcern” which meant he was officially bringing his concerns tothe program. The meeting was tense. Holly was visibly flusteredand, at times, defensive, particularly with Sam who kept pushingher to admit how bad things were.

In the lessons following, however, there were no signs ofchanges. If anything, the level of confrontation with studentsincreased. In one particularly difficult moment, Holly askeda student to stop talking as she was explaining a problem on theboard. The student stood up, turned to face the rest of the class, andyelled:

Man, she’s on my dick all the time. (turning to Holly) Why youalways talking to me? He’s talking. She’s talking. Why not saysomething to him? Why not say something to her?

The student sat down. Holly continued, “So, you are going tohave a decrease in potential energy when.”

There was little evidence that Holly took up the suggestionsnoted at the conference. While both Sam and Michael emphasizedthe need for new routines and procedures, Holly continued to usethe same ones, and students continued to ignore her. She posted nonew rules, nor assigned any consequences. Holly did, however,seem to double-down on her efforts to build relationships; shecomplimented them on their clothing or hair frequently, she triedto incorporate popular culture, and she attended as many sportingevents or school plays as she could. No matter how mean studentswere to her, she seemed determined to win them over.

Instructionally, Holly also continued to follow Michael’s patternof problem-solving. Class always began with a question on theoverhead that Holly expected students to solve on their own andthat she would then go over. Presumably, her intention was to talkabout the problems as a class before introducing a new kind ofproblem. No matter what Holly planned, however, the class would

invariably end with students playing cards, listening to their iPods,talking on their phonesdanything besides the posted task. AndHolly apparently had no tools available to her beyond the two thatshe saw her CT use: trying to develop personal relationships andremoving students when that failed. In Holly’s response to thiscrisis, the only practices she engaged in were those that, to thatpoint, had not worked. Other suggested practices like those offeredby Michael and Sam in the conference went un-enacted. Unlike thereproducers, she did not acquire a level of expertise in her CT’spractice, nor did she take up an alternative set of practices that hadbeen suggested.

For the reproducers, their increased expertise comes witha change in their vision of good teaching to match their CTs’. WithHolly, on the other hand, we see a different kind of change to hervision. Prior to the year, she identified as important to good scienceteaching the use of demonstrations to peak students’ interest, alongwith an ability to connect real-world science with students in theclassroom. By the end of the internship, she talked about the needto create inquiry-based assignments to give students experiencesthat they could draw on for discussion. Yet we never observed hertry any demonstrations and we have only one documented case inwhich she tried to bring students’ experiences into a discussion.Nor did she or Michael regularly, if ever, use any form of inquiry toteach. When Holly envisions good science teaching, then, it centerson a concept for which she did not have practice enacting duringher internship year.

Another example is evidenced in Holly’s beliefs about classroommanagement. In her first interview, she discussed teachers shewished to emulate. She emphasized “high expectations,” “havingstructure for students so that they always knew what they shouldbe doing,” “making sure that students are held to high standardsd[to which] they will be held accountable.” Yet Holly was rarely ableto create any system of accountability or responsibility. Throughoutthe year, her CT and FI encouraged her to set up systems ofprocedures, rules, and consequences that might work for her, butshe never did. These initial beliefs were not aligned with thoseMichael promoted or modeled that emphasized rapport-buildingabove all. At year’s end, we talked about how she might approachclassroom management in her own classroom in light of herstruggles:

I want to establish a method of having a black book of good.and bad behavior, recording those things. If I collect a lot ofthings that are either good or bad, phone calls can be madehome. And establishing rapport with students, being moreabout pulling everyone together, rather than saying this is thisand this is that. Setting a different kind of tone. As soon as theyrealize that I am on their side and want them to do well, I thinkdiscipline will be more personal and effective.

Keeping a “black book” has a police-like tone that stands insharp contrast with a classroom that “pulls everyone together,rather than saying this is this and this is that.” Holly’s plans, evenafter a year in strugglingwith this problem, reveal the contradictionin her thinking and the ideas lack a concreteness that comesdforthe reproducersdfrom a year of engaging in those practices.

5. Discussion

At one level, this analysis describes two different pathwaysthrough the internship, both beginning with an initial attempt byinterns to follow their CTs’ scripts. One path branches when theintern grows increasingly skilled at using his or her CT’s keyinstructional or relational strategies and receives positive feedbackfor doing so. In time, these reproducers’ visions of good teachinggrow toward their CTs’. The other branch begin mimicking

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butdimportantlydnever gain expertise in their CTs’ practice, butnot because they do not try. Instead, they work hard to be like theirCT in the face of growing evidence that their CTs’ practices do notwork for them. Strugglers do not adopt their CTs’ beliefs, insteadleaving with a vision of good teaching that lacks an experientialbasis and is not aligned with the practices that they have engagedin or witnessed.

While we have identified two distinct pathways, there is alsoa singularity to the interns’ experience. Despite interns entering theinternship with different values and beliefs about teaching; despiteCTs’ varied experience with mentoring, teaching styles, and align-ment with State’s teacher education program; and despite differentschools and contexts, cooperating teachers’ values and behaviorsexerted a dominant influence on the internship. Whether theinterns could eventually pull off their CTs’ practice may have varied,but other potential practiceselike those promoted by the teachereducation program or those envisioned by interns prior to the yearbeginningerarely surfaced.

We recognize that these two pathways and the mechanisms fortheir arrival may certainly not be the only two. Smagorinsky, Cook,Moore, Jackson, and Fry (2004) describe Sharon, a teacher whosereform-oriented initial beliefs do not match her CT’s more tradi-tional practices and beliefs. Sharon’s practices do end like those ofher CT, but Smagorinsky et al. (2004) describe Sharon as retainingher beliefs, as evidenced by their re-emergence the following yearafter the constraints of the CT had been removed. While we do nothave data about our interns beyond the internship, we did not seeany evidence of what Lacey (1977) calls “strategic compliance”; thereproducers seem to have adopted their new beliefs that alignedwith CTs’ practices without Sharon’s reservations. In addition,State’s program had unique characteristics that may have influ-enced these findings. Interns spent nearly an entire academic yearwith just one CT, beginning with the first day of school and endinga month before the school year ended, and the program sought tointegrate interns’ experiences in the field with coursework throughfield-based assignments and discussions. These conditions, whichcenter interns’ work in schools, might have amplified the effect ofCTs on interns’ beliefs and practices; other programs with shorterplacements or that changed CTs more frequently might seedifferent patterns of influence emerge. At the same time, recentcalls for reform in teacher education have pushed for moreclinically-based programs that shift attention to the field, much asState’s program had, which suggests that these findings may haverelevance in other settings (e.g., NCATE, 2010).

As we have already noted, research on field experiences oftenfocuses on the degree to which the student teacher moves away ortoward a reform-oriented teaching practice promoted in teachereducation programs. But there is a cost to taking that perspective,as it risks missing important variability in teacher learning from thefield. Kimberly became more authoritative with her students(following Bonnie’s lead), while Tammymoved to a more relationalmanagement technique like those promoted in her TE program. Butthe mechanism (reproduction) for arriving at these polar destina-tions was the same. Likewise, neither Holly (a struggler) nor Kim-berly (a reproducer) became more reform-oriented instructionally,yet the reasons for missing that mark could not be more different.This study suggests that understanding the path by which internsget to the places they end up might be a more fruitful conceptu-alization then identifying whether they end up in the “right” placeor not. If we take as the object of comparison the CTs’ practicerather than an ideal practice, the reproducers represent quite“successful” internships. Rather than viewing internships likeKimberly’s as unsuccessful because she moved away from reform-based practice, it behooves us to understand how teachers come toacquire practices and change beliefs (reform-oriented or not).

Why did reproduction work this way, with change occurring inpractices leading to changes in beliefs? Grossman and others (Ball &Forzani, 2009; Grossman et al., 2009; Grossman, Hammerness, &McDonald, 2009; Lampert, 2010) have recently argued thatteacher education must shift its orientation away from helpingteachers learn about teaching toward learning to teach, movingfrom knowledge to practice. Likewise, other researchers haveproposed models of teacher education that more fully integratedoing and knowing as teachers learn (van Velzen, Volman,Brekelmans, & White, 2012; Zeichner, 2010). As interns followtheir CTs’ example, they are working within a template for practiceset before them. While initial attempts appear more likemimicking, as in the retelling of a joke, before long, interns use thetemplate for practice in more flexible ways, as when Kimberlyfollows Bonnie’s pattern for cell phone infractions. Kimberly’sinitial executions may have been rougher and less than polishedthan Bonnie’s, but as Kimberly repeated the practice throughoutthe year, she mastered the template.

From the lens of Korthagen’s (2004) onion model, we see thismastering of templates as changes to the outermost levels of theteacher (behavior and competencies), which are most vulnerable toexternal forces. Interns attempt to use CTs’words or phrases, even ifthey do not yet understand how to use them most effectively, orborrow strategies for relating to students, even if they do soawkwardly. By trying these (at times uncomfortable) behaviors,interns develop competencies or skills, one level further into theonion.When Kimberly learns to follow every questionwith anotherquestion and Tammy relates to students with personal interactions,they exhibit a changed set of skills that resemble their CTs.

In teacher education, a great deal of energy is directed towarddeveloping teachers’ beliefs and identities, the inner levels of theonion, with the assumption that the external layers will follow. Inthis study, however, it seems that the directionality of the influenceduring field experiences moves inward. When one engages inbehaviors and develops competencies under the influence of the CTand field experience, one’s beliefs about teaching shift in thatprocess. It may even be that reproducers were successful atacquiring their CTs’ practice because their beliefs and identitybecame aligned with their newly developing practicedthatbecoming a reproduction meant gaining the behavior and skills oftheir CT and concurrently shifting their beliefs and identities tomatch. The strugglers, who failed to successfully master their CTs’practice, never acquired the outer levels of behavior that thereproducers did and never experienced the corresponding shift inmore inward levels. This suggests that attention to beliefs andidentity that are separated from the development of an emergingand aligned behaviors may not have much influence and that thepathway to changed beliefs and identities may begin with oppor-tunities to enact a practice (Valencia, Martin, Place, & Grossman,2009). The idea that the practices in which one engages mayshape or even drive what we believe, who we believe ourselves tobe, or what we know stands in contrast to models of teachereducation which use theory-to-action pedagogies. At the sametime, findings from far-ranging field of neuroscience, psychology,philosophy, teacher education, and science education all point indifferent ways to the influence that enacted practice have on whatwe come to believe (e.g., Burton, 2008; Kahneman, 2011; Lakoff &Johnson, 1999; Meirink, Meijer, Verloop, & Bergen, 2009; Waters-Adams, 2006).

This study also suggests that further work in field experience,regardless of program structure, ought to include more attention tohow cooperating teachers themselves teach, as it matters a greatdeal to who student teachers become. It is not only the teachingexperience that student teachers have in those classrooms or thequality of the mentoring that are crucial variables; being an

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apprentice to a cooperating teacher means, as it does for manyfields, a great deal of time watching and assisting. While teachereducators may wish to influence novice teachers toward particularpractices and beliefs, only by understanding how one arrives at anybelief or practice could such a task be accomplished. Studies thatdocument the day-to-day efforts of CTs and novices, as well as thecharacteristics of CTs and novices, would further extend ourunderstanding of the conditions for teacher change and mightallow teacher educators to shape those experiences toward desiredoutcomes.

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