Knowing Anna, knowing myself: Two teachers' stories of professional development.

Abstract

This dissertation represents a qualitative study of Anna, an experienced high school English teacher in urban Detroit, Michigan, with whom I collaborated in a five-year study of teacher thinking and professional practice. Utilizing ethnographic, life history, and narrative approaches, I explored the history and evolution of Anna's beliefs about literacy, teaching, and students, and how these beliefs influenced her teaching practices throughout her 25-year career. In addition, recognizing that all research is inherently autobiographical, I present Anna's story within the context of my own evolving life history as a student, a classroom teacher, a teacher educator, and a researcher. At the end of her career, Anna's student-centered practices were closely related to her underlying beliefs. However, this relationship was not always a close one. As a beginning teacher, she possessed a variety of teacher-centered beliefs that arose primarily from her childhood school experiences and her university experiences as a preservice teacher. These short-lived, predominantly school-based beliefs guided many of her early teaching practices. At the same time, Anna possessed another set of beliefs that were rooted primarily in her childhood and adult experiences outside school. For example, remembering her family experiences with her parents and grandparents, she strongly believed that reading and writing were exciting, dynamic activities that had utilitarian functions. Over time, Anna either abandoned or reshaped many of her prior beliefs and drew upon other more permanent beliefs to create a functional pedagogy. It was a practical move---one that she made in response to the demands of her job---and the transition was slow, haphazard, and idiosyncratic, with no definite beginning or end. Anna's story, combined with my own, presents a vision of teaching as an autobiographical endeavor. Because the values and beliefs that guide teachers' actions are inevitably shaped by their personal histories, all of their past experiences---as children, as students, as preservice teachers, and as adults---play a significant role in determining the kinds of teachers they ultimately become. From this perspective, teaching can be seen not as a science, but as an artistic form of self-expression.