Regarding uncertainty in teachers and teaching: Learning to love the questions

This qualitative study explores how teachers experience the uncertainties of their work. It also investigates how some teachers develop more positive relationships to their uncertainties and how their relationships to uncertainties might qualitatively change over the course of their teaching careers. It therefore responds to and builds on disagreements within the literature about how teachers should regard the uncertainties they face.; This dissertation is based on in-depth, qualitative interview data with twelve teachers who have varying years of experience. I elicited and analyzed their stories about and interpretations of their uncertainties to understand both individual teachers' stances toward their uncertainties as well as the general patterns across teachers' responses. I identify four kinds of findings: (1) external dimensions of teachers' experiences of uncertainties, including the ways that the school context mediates these experiences; (2) four key dimensions of teachers' internal experiences of uncertainties, including: (a) a teacher's preferred orientation toward or away from uncertainty; (b) conceptions of what one is and is not responsible for as a teacher (uncertainties about one's own effectiveness); (c) management of interrelated dilemmas (dilemmas as a form of uncertainty); and, (d) conceptions of how one's teaching role relates to one's self (uncertainties about how to teach in situations of emotional or personal stress); (3) the changes that some teachers reported along these internal dimensions over the course of their careers; (4) three strategies that teachers commonly used to manage their uncertainty successfully.; Finally, this dissertation contributes to its field by presenting a more complex conceptual map of teacher uncertainties and suggesting key components for understanding and supporting teachers' development of more positive relationships to their uncertainties.