Kathy Carter

Processing and Using Information about Students: A Study of Expert, Novice, and Postulant Teachers.

Abstract Expert and novice mathematics and science teachers, along with a group of postulant teachers (content matter experts from business with a desire to teach but with no pedagogical training) participated in a simulated teaching task. All subjects were given extensive information about a class they were asked to take over and then questioned about their plans for instruction, and their recall of information about students. Analysis of the protocols resulting from these queries yielded nine propositions about how expert, novice, and postulant teachers process and use information differently. The differences and similarities among the three groups of subjects in ability to perceive, remember, and solve problems related to teaching indicate how expert teachers resemble experts in other fields and provide insight into the unique aspects of expertise in pedagogy.

Narrative and Learning to Teach: Implications for Teacher-Education Curriculum.

The use of narrative as a perspective within which to understand teacher development has gained considerable momentum in the last decade (Carter 1993, Carter and Doyle 1996, Doyle 1997, Munby et al. 2001), and this perspective has led to several important innovations in the pedagogy of teacher education: the study of cases, the writing of personal narratives, and the like. But few have pushed the narrative perspective beyond pedagogy to examine the assumptions and interpretations that underlie the contents, activities, and arrangements of preservice teacher preparation, i.e. to explore the curriculum of teacher education.

A Curriculum for an Initial-Year-of-Teaching Program

This article addresses the content and processes for initial-year-of-teaching programs. The general goals of a beginning-teacher program are developed by describing the ways in which beginning teachers differ from both preservice and experienced teachers in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes, cognitive processes, and their needs in these areas. The article lays out a foundation for such a program based on conceptions of teaching, of knowledge needs of beginning teachers, and of the learning-to-teach process. It suggests that the content of these programs should be organized around the 2 central tasks of teaching-establishing and maintaining social order, and representing and enacting the curriculum-and that programs must focus on providing opportunities for first-year teachers to acquire event-structured knowledge. A promising way to deliver this content is through the study of cases of teaching, and, thus, cases could play a central role in initial-year-of-teaching programs. The article concludes with a discussion of how and by whom cases could be developed, and their costs.

Teaching Stories and Local Understandings

Abstract Educational research—indeed all research—is essentially about universals, that is, what is true generally of schools, teachers, students, learning, and so forth. Practice, on the other hand, is concrete, immediate, particular, and local. And, most important, the situations in which teaching and learning practice occur are locally understood. What works, therefore, is necessarily a local matter.

Do Teachers Understand Principles for Writing Tests

In this study the author identifies the need for teachers to develop more effec tive test-making skills. Many preservice and inservice teachers rely on a repertoire of limited and uninformed test construction skills when they create assessment items. Most problematic for teachers are items that test higher-order thinking skills, such as inference and prediction. Carter suggests a reexamina tion of preservice measurement courses and a more thorough critique of inservice and testing activities at the school district and classroom level.

Stories and Statistics: A Mixed Picture of Gender Equity in Mathematics

Abstract The goal of this chapter is to gain a better understanding of the experiences of mathematics anxiety that some women elementary preservice teachers encounter while learning mathematics during their own K-12 years. Specifically, this chapter is an analysis of the personal well-remembered events (WREs) told and recorded by women during their preservice teaching professional sequence. These narrative writings provide a powerful voice for the degree to which mathematics anxiety shape preservice teachers’ beliefs on what it means to learn mathematics. This intersection of teacher knowledge is important, as these are women who are on the professional track to teach mathematics. The focused analysis for this chapter is aimed at ways in which teacher preparation programs could broaden current views of women who have anxiety and confidence issues in mathematics.

The Story of Schools, Schooling, and Students from the 1960s to the Present

On a daily basis, students and educators are creating their individual narratives within schools and classrooms shaped by larger institutional narratives of policy, federal mandates, and alarmist concerns focused on America’s international competitiveness. In this chapter, we ask how these larger institutional narratives have changed over time and, concomitantly, how they converge with or diverge from the individual, lived narratives of students and teachers. Starting from the desegregation movement of the 1960s and moving through current educational reforms (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Common Core), we trace how the larger institutional narratives of schools and schooling have changed through the promotion of a market-based national educational agenda of standardization, accountability, and the belief in outsiders’ abilities to reform the national education system. Ultimately, institutional narratives, focused primarily on academic achievement and accountability, have narrowly redefined the purpose of schools and schooling in the lives of students and in the larger society. Moreover, these narratives have promoted reform agendas that often eclipse the social and emotional needs of marginalized students in schools and classrooms today.