Pitfalls of Experience in Teacher Preparation
Sharon Fieman-Nemser
Margret Buchmann
Michigan State University

There is a common belief in the educative value of firsthand experience. We say things like "that was a real learning experience," "practice makes perfect," "experience is the best teacher," and "let experience be your guide." Common sense casts experience as both the means and content of important learnings.

This implicit trust in firsthand experience is particularly evident in discussions about learning to teach. Teachers claim that most of what they know about teaching came from firsthand experience. In short, they learned to teach by teaching. When teachers look back on their formal preparation; they generally say that student teaching was the most valuable part. In deference to this belief, teacher preparation programs give more and more time to classroom experience , while in-service programs stress teachers' sharing their experiences with one another. Increasingly, states are proposing alternative routes to teacher certification whereby college graduates can replace formal preparation with a yearlong internship.

But is experience as good a teacher of teachers as most people are inclined to think? To answer this question, we must take into account commonly used informal strategies of inference and judgment, the immediate impact- of personal memories and classroom realities, the instructional purposes of teacher educators, and the normative context of schools as institutions.

This article focuses on the contribution of firsthand experience in the preservice phase of learning to teach. The discussion. rests on abroad view of learning to teach as a process that begins before formal teacher preparation and continues afterward. Thus preservice field experiences are part of a continuum that includes powerful early experiences with parents and teachers as well as the learning that inevitably occurs on the job.

To set a concrete frame of reference for our discussion, we begin with three vignettes that describe different occasions for firsthand experience at the preservice level in elementary schools. More and more, preservice programs are providing exploratory field experiences so that future teachers can encounter the realities of classroom life early in their formal preparation. The first vignette describes such an opportunity. The second vignette illustrates another trend-linking field experiences with foundations courses. The third vignette is about student teaching, the most familiar way of giving preservice teachers firsthand experiences of schools and classrooms. The students discussed are imaginary, but the vignettes are based on observations and interviews.

Each vignette is followed by a commentary in which we explore what the imaginary student is learning from the experience. The commentary is guided by three questions. First, what is the preservice teacher learning in the here and now? We look at potential learnings-insights messages, inferences, reinforced beliefs about being a teacher, about pupils, classrooms, and the activities of teaching. We describe and analyze a particular type of inappropriate learning, which we call a "pitfall." Second, how do these lessons of experience relate to the central purpose of teaching, that is, helping pupils learn? Third, to what extent do these lessons foster the capacity to learn from future experience, which should be a central purpose of teacher education?

Three basic pitfalls-the familiarity pitfall, the two-worlds pitfall, and the crosspurposes pitfall-are present in these three vignettes and our discussion highlights each of them in turn. It draws on studies of the social psychology of judgment, reinforcement theory, research on teaching and teacher education, and the educated imagination of a teacher educator with a philosophical bent and a philosopher interested in teacher education.

The scenes that follow deal with learning from experience in the preservice phase of learning to teach. The expectation that something will be learned in these different occasions is probably justified. Yet not all learning is productive or desirable. Thus the questions of whether we want future teachers to learn all the lessons of experience And how to make these lessons educative must be examined.

VIGNETTE 1: EARLY FIELD EXPERIENCES

Every Thursday at 8:15 A.M., Karen, a college sophomore, catches the bus to Central School, where she spends the day in the fourth grade. Karen loves children and has always wanted to be a teacher. She is excited about being a teacher's aide this term. This is the first time Karen has been inside an elementary school since she was a pupil, and she is surprised at how modern the building is and how knowledgeable the fourth graders seem. She had wanted the children to call her Karen, but the teacher introduced her as Miss Miller, which feels a little strange.

In the morning Karen works with Tommy on his spelling list. While the teacher runs a reading group, Karen helps individual pupils with their seatwork. At recess, she goes outside with the children and usually plays with the same three girls. At lunchtime she swaps experiences with other university students enrolled in the same introductory education course. During the silent-reading period after lunch, Karen talks a little with the teacher and then marks papers. She can see that some pupils understand their work better than others. The teacher has asked Karen to do a bulletin board on careers and to take the class to the library. Karen feels like a real teacher walking the class to the library and back.

WHAT IS KAREN LEARNING AND HOW DOES EXPERIENCE FIGURE IN IT?

In trying to make sense of her first field experience, Karen naturally thinks about how this setting resembles the ones she remembers from her own schooling. Her judgment about the pupils implies a comparison with the past and thoughts about the future. Not only does she feel that they know more than she did at their age, she also feels apprehensive about whether she will know enough to teach these children. Yet much of what she sees is familiar. Past experience helps in making sense of spelling lists and reading groups, recess and bulletin boards, seatwork and ditto sheets. Actually, her familiarity with these classroom practices gives her a feeling of competence. Classroom life is not all that strange to Karen, even seen from the other side of the desk. Many things are fixed in the school day, and classroom activities have inherent and predictable patterns. Caught up in memories that help her understand much of what is happening around her, Karen identifies teaching with things she already knows. Still, there is a lot to learn, and Karen is unsure about how to define it and how to go about learning it.

The fact that she prefers to be called Karen and plays with the same three children at recess suggests that she feels more like a pupil than a teacher. Yet getting the class to and from the library without mishap gives her a sense of what it will feel like to be in charge and have students do what she wants. A sense of power is added to some sense of competence; acting like a teacher, Karen sees pupils acting in their matching roles. "Should the teacher be an authority or a friend?" Karen wonders. How she resolves this issue and whether her attention will be directed toward what goes on in children's heads will depend on What is modeled in the classroom and on the expectations she holds and, encounters at the university and in the schools.

Similarly, what Karen makes of her observation that the children differ in their understanding will depend on how the teacher handles errors and misunderstandings and whether teacher educators explain the significance of errors for assessing and directing student learning. The observation she makes about the children's written work relates to the heart of teaching: helping students learn things and looking for what they have learned. Will this observation be turned into questions that Karen actively tries to answer in further field experiences and in her professional coursework? It probably will be if Karen has the inclination and capacity to connect classroom experience with formal knowledge and to learn from further experience by thinking about it. These capacities are central to teaching, but they must be learned. Most teachers do not bring an inquiring disposition to their preparation, and immersion in the classroom tends to preclude inquiry. Since it is unlikely that the habit of inquiry will be acquired on the job, it is important to cultivate it at the preservice level and to show its indispensable role in teaching and getting better at teaching over time.

In early field experience, unquestioned familiarity is a pitfall because it arrests thought and may mislead it. People generally do not recognize that their experience is limited and biased and future teachers are no exception. The "familiarity pitfall" stems from the tendency to trust what is most memorable in personal experience. Karen approaches her early field experience with preconceptions about what classrooms are like and what teachers do. She has a selective interest, and her perceptions are personal and affectively charged. Ideas and images of classrooms and teachers laid down through many years as a pupil provide a framework for viewing and standards for judging what she sees now. Such frameworks will fit with social traditions of teaching and schooling; they have the self-evidence and solidity of the taken-for-granted.

Fundamental facts of classroom life, such as that teachers are in charge, may impress Karen; however, she may not relate this fact to the central tasks of teaching unless someone helps her to do so. One can learn to be in charge without learning to teach children something. Classroom experience in itself cannot be trusted to deliver lessons that shape dispositions to inquire and to be serious about pupil learning. On the contrary, it may block the flow of speculation and reflection by which we form new habits of thought and action.

VIGNETTE 2: CLASSROOMS AS LABS

As a college sophomore, Tom had an early field experience much the same as Karen's. Now he is a junior halfway through his preservice program. This term, in conjunction with his educational psychology course, Tom spends one afternoon a week in a second-grade classroom. Because he is here for only half a day, he does not know all the pupils' names. He is not even sure that they know his name. Nor is he sure of the classroom routines. Most of the time he observes. He is supposed to focus on three pupils whom the teacher has identified as in some way different from the others.

Tom spends fifteen minutes observing each pupil. His assignment is to describe what they are doing during academic activities-to note the specifics of their behavior and the setting in which it occurs. At first Tom thought this would be easy. But it is hard to watch and write at the same time, and he is not sure about what he is expected to write down. In her feedback, the university instructor said that Tom should try to be more objective and avoid so many inferences. Instead of noting that his focal pupil is not paying attention, he should describe what he sees, that is, that D goes to the pencil sharpener, returns to his desk, stares out the window, and so on.

Tom's difficulties stem in part from the fact that by the time he arrives, the class is already busy at work. His three focal pupils are at their desks doing assignments, and Tom has trouble figuring out what they are supposed to be doing, let alone whether they understand it. He does notice

differences, though, in their ability to concentrate, their tendency to move around and talk to neighbors, and the accuracy of their work. Tom looks forward to the time after recess. Then his assignment will be easier, because he can hear what the teacher says. Still, for the last two weeks, the class has been rehearsing for Parents' Night, which does not strike Tom as academic activity.

In his educational psychology course, the instructor said that focused observation can help you learn to think like a teacher. It gives you practice in noticing differences in children's responses to instruction, which, in turn, can help you decide whether pupils are learning something. Tom can see that he is beginning to pay closer attention to children's behavior, but he is uncertain about the value of writing such detailed notes. Certainly when he is a teacher he will not be able to watch individual pupils for fifteen minutes at a time. He would rather work with the pupils and find out about their learning that way. Because he is in the classroom for such a short time, Tom cannot become an integral part of the action. Also, getting involved would keep him from concentrating on just those things that he needs to practice for his university class. His observation assignment is meant to set him apart from what is going on. The children rarely approach him for help and the teacher does not count on Tom's assistance. It is Tom who is the learner, and he is learning ways of seeing, not of acting.

 

WHAT SHAPES THE COURSE AND OUTCOMES OF TOM'S LABORATORY EXPERIENCE?

Tom's learning experience is largely shaped by the instructional purposes of his course in educational psychology. He appears to be learning how to take detailed notes on individual children's responses to academic activities. Based on practice and feedback, he will become more adept at distinguishing description from judgment and at providing some context for observed behavior. Over time he should also begin to see patterns in the behavior of individual pupils and differences among them. In that sense lie is developing tools to see how children respond differently to instructional activities. The question is whether Tom himself relates this growing awareness to his future work as a teacher.

Is Tom learning habitual ways of seeing or is he acquiring a skill that he can apply to specific situations? There may be some transfer once he is actually teaching-that is, Tom may continue to look for differences it student responses to instruction. Still, he will have to decide whether teaching calls for the application of observational skills. He must come to believe that this kind of observation can (indeed should) inform instructional decision making. In other words, this "academic" skill must become part of his conception of teaching.

In either case, a lot depends on what happens with his observations both in the classroom and in his foundations class. Building habitual way of seeing requires instruction, critique, and reinforcement. Tom will nee help in thinking about what these observations mean and what they ma suggest for action. He can get help from two sources-the classroom teacher and his university professor. Suppose the teacher shows Tom that she, too, is a classroom observer, even though she does not have the time to observe that Tom has. Suppose she talks with him about what his date may mean, encourages him to observe the same children in nonacademic activities to round out his impressions of them, tells him when she cap afford to observe, and explains how observation helps her to decide what to do. Suppose, on the other hand, that the teacher lets Tom go about hi business without paying much attention to him, seems to ignore or miss the kinds of observational cues he is picking up, and treats the business e lengthy note taking as somehow irrelevant. Clearly these two alternative would communicate different messages about the role of observation of teaching and learning to teach. Note that the second alternative is liable to reinforce beliefs about the irrelevance of academic learning for teaching that Tom might already hold.

Chance also plays a role. The cooperating teacher's conception of he work may include observation. Ordinarily, she makes time to act on conception. This class of second graders, however, happens to be all over the place-literally, and in terms of what they need to learn. The teacher is busy keeping order while doing her best to diversify pupil work. She cannot give the pupils all the feedback she wants, let alone spend tire with Tom.

Classrooms are busy places, and Tom sees that the teacher must attend to many things. the observational skills that he is developing are relate to helping children learn. Without training in how to look and what to notice, it is easy to miss important clues about pupil responses to instructional activities. Tom can afford to concentrate on mastering this way of looking precisely because he is not responsible for what goes on. But there is a pitfall. If Tom does well in this assignment, he will have the gratification of a good grade. This immediate reward, however, is indigenous to the university culture, not to the culture of schools and teaching. The very structure of Tom's assignment shows that university learning and classroom teaching are worlds apart.

Tom's experience illustrates what we are calling the "two-worlds pitfall." In teaching, observation is a means, not an end. Tom may succeed in becoming a skilled observer, but this will not guarantee that he will know how to act wisely on what he notices. Nor will further classroom experience in itself activate the acquired skills in situations that call for observation. Tom will need help to see how what he has learned as a university student can shape his thoughts and actions as a teacher. His university instructor may tell him that learning to look is important in learning to teach. Will Tom come to see observation as a valuable tool for the work of teaching or merely as something he must do, this term, for a course requirement?

The two-worlds pitfall has at least two aspects. The norms and rewards associated with Tom's formal professional preparation fit with the academic setting. Doing well at the university brings immediate and highly salient rewards that may not have much to do with success in teaching. On the other hand, the pressure to adapt to the way things are in schools is great. Moreover, this pressure will resonate with commonsense notions of teachers and classrooms acquired through the personal experience of schooling. Confronted with such pressure, academic learning is liable to evaporate, regardless of its worth. Its availability in memory depends on attributions of relevance and connections to particular instances that have personal meaning and felt significance. Its availability in action depends on knowing how to adapt it to concrete situations. This requires much more than mastery of skills and formal knowledge.

VIGNETTE 3: STUDENT TEACHING

It is spring. Sue has just begun her third week of student teaching in a fourth-grade classroom. Today, she is supposed to take over the morning; activities. Since Sue has been watching the teacher for the past two weeks, she has a good idea of what the morning schedule is like, and that makes her feel fairly comfortable. In addition, the teacher explained what lessons - should cover and gave Sue the teacher's guides to follow. This morning Sue is planning to play Simon Says after the reading lesson. She puts the math assignment on the board, just like the teacher does, and calls the first reading group to the front of the room. She calls on children in turn to read the story and then asks the questions spelled out in the guide. Everything goes smoothly and Sue thinks with some elation that she can actually teach.

Next week Sue will take over for the entire day, which means that she will also do spelling, science, and social studies. She plans to have a spelling bee for Friday. This will generate a lot of noisy excitement, since the pupils enjoy competing with each other. In science she will teach a unit on batteries and bulbs that the science methods teacher showed her; she wonders how the children will like discovering things on their own. So far she has not seen any science instruction in this classroom, but her cooperating teacher said she could try out this unit. Some movies have already been ordered for social studies, so the day will be pretty well filled. Sue hopes that she can keep the pupils busy and that she will not have to discipline anyone. She is eager to see if she can get through a whole day on her own. The outcome will mean a lot to her. Sue stands at the threshold of doing the work of teaching in earnest. Whatever will help her to come out of this experience in one piece will impress her as tried and trustworthy.

HOW DOES PRACTICE TEACHING HELP OR HINDER TEACHER LEARNING?

So what does it prove if Sue can make it on her own in student teaching? In the first place, it shows that she can keep the system running, which is basically how Sue sees her task. She is confident because she knows what tier cooperating teacher does in the morning and she believes that she can step into the teacher's shoes. Moving children through the daily schedule is, of course, part of the teacher's responsibility, but a real teacher also has to decide what that schedule will be, how the children should be grouped, and what assignments to put on the board. The point is that student teaching occurs in somebody else's classroom; this makes the requirements for action and thought in student teaching fundamentally different from those for the teacher.

Making it on one's own in student teaching is not the same as learning to teach or being a teacher. Sue's confidence is not well founded; she does not see clearly that the order around her was shaped and established over time and that, for the real teacher, there is a good deal of uncertainty to contend with. Classroom structure has to be created, and it can take different forms for different purposes. Sue's personal experiences as a pupil and her experiences in the field do not provide a reliable sample of the variation in classroom environments.

What can be experienced firsthand is necessarily limited and likely to be biased. just because experiences seen plausible does not mean they are trustworthy. Sue's belief that she knows how classrooms work will be difficult to dispel since it grows out of things she has seen and participated in; these experiences are vivid and cathected. Yet inferences and generalizations based on firsthand experience are frequently unwarranted or at least premature.

One can see why Sue thinks she is learning to teach and why she feels competent at teaching. She rehearses behaviors that she identifies with teaching and that are familiar to the class. She and the cooperating teacher will see children at work, perhaps happily and with excitement. It is unlikely that her cooperating teacher will fail to commend her performance. Like everyone else, student teachers are particularly sensitive to things that bring about a feeling of success. Going through familiar routines and being praised will produce that feeling, independent of whether these practices lead to student learning or could have been established by the novice in the first place.

Sue's confidence is partly based on experience in this classroom, but vivid memories of her own schooling also help her figure out what to do. Take the spelling bee. Teachers often use competition as an incentive to get children through boring tasks. Unless Sue is helped to see the possible long-term consequences of such instructional strategies-shaping pupil conceptions of the purposes of classroom life in terms of rewards extrinsic to learning, for example-she may continue to think of a spelling bee simply as a "fun thing to do." If no one requires Sue to practice making and justifying instructional decisions or to consider the consequences of given actions in a concrete context, she may be confirmed in a view of teaching as filling time, keeping children busy, perpetuating familiar practices without considering their consequences for pupil learning, in the short and long run. Classroom experience alone, whether past or present, cannot justify what teachers do, nor teach teachers to think about their work.

Sue has the impression, common to many teacher candidates, that student teaching is the time to put it all together, the definitive test of the relevance and practical worth of formal preparation. In this context, it would be important to know what motivated Sue to try out the elementary science unit on batteries and bulbs. Did Sue's decision stern from an interest in science and a belief that children should understand how their everyday world works? Or was it motivated by a desire to try out something new and neat (being "creative" is a characteristic of student teachers that teachers and teacher educators often judge favorably). The problem is that the discovery approach to science teaching presupposes a deep understanding of subject matter and children's learning. Sue has never seen the teacher in this classroom teach science. Has Sue seen any demonstration of "open" pedagogy in science? Without understanding the value and limits of "messing about," she will have no basis for deciding when and how to intervene in order to nudge children's learning along.

What will the experience be like and what will Sue learn from it? Various scenarios are possible. The children could cooperate in this new kind of learning because the activities are fun, and the teacher could compliment Sue on her creativity. On the other hand, Sue could be unable to manage "hands-on" discovery learning, and the teacher could be displeased with the commotion and the amount of time being taken. While it is not clear whether either scenario would promote science learning in the pupils, both have potential for teaching Sue some things about teaching-if she were helped to articulate the lessons of this experience. just as the pupils must make sense of their experiments with batteries and bulbs, so Sue must figure out what it takes from both pupils and the teacher for discovery learning to succeed. Promoting student learning through discovery is difficult, perhaps too difficult for a novice, but one unsuccessful experience should not lead a teacher to dismiss the whole approach.

Before one can assess what Sue has learned from her student teaching experience as a whole, one needs to know about the teacher's intentions as well as those of the university staff. Perhaps the teacher has judged that Sue needs a lot of guidance as she takes over a block of time. Or it maybe that the teacher is not much inclined to have her classroom schedule altered, especially at this time of year. Has Sue been encouraged by the university staff to fit herself into the teacher's overall plan and to propose activities that do not alter what is going on in this classroom? The . university staff realizes that teachers need to keep their classrooms running and appreciates how easily even well-established, thoughtfully devised routines can be upset.

This analysis illustrates the "cross-purposes" pitfall. The legitimate purposes. poses of teachers center on their classrooms, which generally are not designed as laboratories for learning to teach. In her role as teacher of children, the teacher will see the student teacher's attention to the way things are as praiseworthy since it is functional from the point of view of classroom life. Yet, without instructional intervention, Sue's adaptiveness to the here and now may be dysfunctional for the long-range purposes of learning to teach. Learning from practice teaching and further experience. presupposes acting with understanding. If Sue cannot analyze practical successes, identifying critical variables presumably responsible, there is no reason to believe that she can replicate, let alone learn from them, Attending to the requirements for action in established settings does not foster the capacity to learn from further experience. In fact, immediate practical success in student teaching is almost a disincentive for analysis. Nor is one's success in this, experience a reliable predictor of success at running one's own classroom for the purposes of pupil learning.

CONCLUSION

The three vignettes illustrate three basic pitfalls that must be overcome if classroom experience during teacher preparation is to serve the broad purposes of learning to teach. At best, field experience in teacher preparation can help in learning some parts of the job of teaching. The more serious problem is getting into pitfalls or learning things that are inappropriate in any teaching situation and that will be reinforced by further unanalyzed experience on the job. The familiarity pitfall arises from the fact that prospective teachers are no strangers to classrooms. The two-worlds pitfall arises from the fact that teacher education goes on in two distinct settings and from the fallacious assumption that making connections between these two worlds is straightforward and can be left to the novice. The third pitfall arises from the fact that classrooms are not set up for teaching 1 teachers: It is a case of being at cross-purposes.

These pitfalls arrest thought or mislead prospective teachers into believing that central aspects of teaching have been mastered and understood. Premature closure comes from faulty perceptions and judgments that are supported, even rewarded, by trusted persons in the salient setting. For Tom, this setting is probably the university classroom; for Karen and Sue, the elementary classroom. What makes these perceptions pitfalls is that future teachers get into them without knowing it and have a hard time getting out. What makes them even more treacherous is that they may not look like pitfalls to an insider, but rather like a normal place to be. Clearly, help from the outside is necessary on both counts.

OVERCOMING THE PITFALLS

The familiar is the most salient and the least amenable to inquiry. Over coming the familiarity pitfall requires a break with the taken-for-granted and a recognition that people have devised what is familiar in schools and classrooms. Nor can future teachers be expected to recognize that what they know about classroom life is only part of a universe of possibilities. They need help in appreciating how their personal history and experience of schooling influence their perceptions of classrooms in a way that makes it difficult to see alternatives. A larger and more flexible vision need not result in a rejection of traditional or familiar ideas and practices. There is, however, a big difference between mere habit and customary action that is understood and seen in perspective. Furthermore, plain thinking and empirical research do sometimes show that traditional ways of doing things are not always sound or effective. Overcoming the familiarity pitfall should keep future teachers from confusing what is with what can or should be, and heighten their receptivity to new data and ideas.

Overcoming the two-worlds pitfall requires acknowledging that the worlds of thought and action are legitimately different. Each has its unifying purposes and a potential for making a contribution to learning to teach. In other words, one does not overcome this duality by eliminating it. The goal of professional education is acting with understanding. Neither understanding nor action will suffice by itself, and belief alone does not produce action. Teacher education students need help in seeing how understanding can clarify and shape ways of doing. They also need instruction in judging ways of doing and in adapting them to particular settings as well as to their own capacities. Teacher education students cannot be expected to make the crucial distinction between enlightenment and application in considering the uses of knowledge in teaching. This is where teacher educators must take responsibility for guiding their students' learning.

Finally, the cross-purposes pitfall can be overcome by working toward a closer fit between the purposes of classroom life and those of learning to teach. This will require structural and normative changes in schools, including an expansion of the teacher's role.

If schools became places where teachers studied their own practice together and were rewarded for doing so, future teachers would be inducted into a professional community where collegiality and experimentation were norms. In such a setting, observation and conversation among persons at different career stages would expand the alternatives available to the novice and dramatize the limits of personal and local experience. Future teachers would get the message that learning from teaching was part of the job of teaching.

A second way around the cross-purposes pitfall turns on a recognition that teachers who invite novices into their classrooms take on a new role. While the goal of pupil learning is legitimate, it does not justify treating student teachers only as assistants in the ongoing life of classrooms. If class rooms are to become settings for learning to teach that go beyond adaptation and unreflective imitation, purposes of learning to teach cannot automatically be subordinated to the goal of pupil learning. Teachers also must see themselves as teacher educators willing to plan for the learning of a novice.

Such role expansion not only benefits the teacher candidate, it offers mature teachers new opportunities for teaching and learning on the job. Associated long-term gains such as increases in reflectivity and competence, in breadth and depth of communicable teacher knowledge, will benefit everyone concerned including the teaching profession, and more than compensate for the time involved in talking and working with teacher candidates to further their learning.

The disposition of teachers to take seriously yet another set of responsibilities and opportunities to learn will be enhanced and supported by appropriate changes in school norms and structures. Beyond this, however, are questions of substantive preparation. Just as becoming a professional teacher involves a transformation from person to teacher, so becoming a teacher of teachers means shifting to another role. Here, too, experience alone will not suffice. Preparation must sensitize teachers to the pitfalls of experience in learning to teach so that they can guide teacher candidates around them.

 


The inferences and generalizations in our discussion are based on the following: H. S. Becker, "A School is a Lousy Place to Learn Anything," American Behavioral Scientist 16, no. 1 (1972): 85-105; M. Buchmann and J. Schwille, "Education: The Overcoming of Experience," American Journal of Education 92, no. 1 (1983): 30-51; J. Dewey, "The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education," in Teacher Education in America: A Documentary- History, ed. M. L. Borrowman (New York: Teachers College Press, 1965; originally published in 1904); S. Feiman-Nemser, "Learning to Teach," in Handbook oil Teaching and Policy, ed. L. Shulman and G. Sykes (New York: Longman, 1983); S. Feiman-Nemser and M. Buclimann, The First Year of Teacher Preparation: Transition to Pedagogical Thinking?, Research Series No. 156 (East Lansing: Michigan State University, Institute for Research on Teaching, 1984); J. W. Little, "Norms of Collegiality and Experimentation: Workplace Conditions of School Success," American Educational Research journal 19, no. 3 (1982): 325-40; R. Nisbet and L. Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Short comings of Socialjudgment (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall 1980); J. Platt, "Social Traps," American Psychologist 28 (1973): 641-51; S. B. Sarason, The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change, 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1982); B. Tabachnick, T. Popkewitz, and K. Zeichner, "Teacher Education arid the Professional Perspectives of Student Teachers," Interchange 10, no. 4, (1980): 12-29; and K. Zeichner, "Myths and Realities: Field-based Experience in Preservice Teacher Education," Journal of Teacher Education, November/December 1980, pp. 45-55.