Utilizing ethnographic methods of participant/observation and in-depth interviews, this study critically reconstructs the unfolding interaction between the student teacher's biography and the social structure of the school during student teaching. How this interaction frames the student teacher's developing images of the work of teachers and their understanding of and place in institutional life is also examined. Built upon the tenets of critical theory, this study depicts socialization as characterized by contradictions, and as a complex movement between the self, significant others, the curriculum, and the social structure.
Two secondary student teachers in the areas of language arts and social studies were followed throughout their four month internship. Two separate case studies, contextualizing student teaching within the life history of each student teacher were then reconstructed. Professional significant others who in some way had contact with student teachers were also interviewed about their life experiences in teacher education. These people included: cooperating teachers, school administrators, a university supervisor and a professor of teacher education. An account of their interviews comprises a separate chapter.
Addressing the question, how do social forces frame the student teacher's understanding of school life and the work of teachers, this study found that student teachers internalize the ethos of individuality and privatism which pervades school culture. This cult of individualism encourages a false sense of autonomy and a push for social control while obscuring the reality of isolation, negotiation and dependency, significant features of institutional life. As these student teachers were formerly highly socialized students, their entrance into the familiar school territory encouraged an evocation of and dependence on their student biography to inform pedagogical decisions. This cultural lens reduced the social complexity of teaching to that of individual classroom performance. They lacked the critical understanding to analyze and transform how their circumstance shaped them and how they shaped their circumstance.
