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

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Drawing together Smagorinskys 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 Vygotskys concept development and Lorties 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.

Reviews

Smagorinsky takes the well-worn battle between theory and practice in teacher education and blurs the distinctions. His case studies provide a rich source of evidence of how people learn to teach under the notion of concept development. * Bethan Marshall, Senior Lecturer, Kings College London, UK *
Smagorinsky skillfully weaves together Vygotskian theory, case study research and pedagogical implication to offer an engaging, insightful examination of the many factors that shape the teaching of English and the language arts. * Melanie Shoffner, Associate Professor of English Education, James Madison University, USA *

Author Bio

Peter Smagorinsky is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia, USA, and serves as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. He has won a number of internationally recognised awards, including, the National Council of Teachers of English Distinguished Service Award in 2017, the International Federation for the Teaching of English Award in 2018, Distinguished Scholar at the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy in 2018 and the Horace Mann League Outstanding Public Educator Award in 2020.