'The same things done differently': A study of the development of four foreign language teachers' conceptions of practice through an in-service teacher education program

The issue of how teachers develop their classroom practice is central to understanding of teaching and teacher education. This study examines the influences of a teacher education program on the thinking and practice of teachers over an eighteen-month period. It provides insight into how individuals learn to teach as they are socialized into a specific professional discourse about teaching and learning. It also offers evidence of structural and procedural features of the teacher education program which contribute to changes in these teachers' thinking.;Adopting a "second-order" perspective on the teachers' conceptions--as contrasted with their behavioral implementation--of classroom practice, this qualitative study examines how the teachers' ways of thinking about their teaching are influenced by their participation in a teacher education program. It follows four high-school foreign language teachers from before matriculation (Phase 1) through the two consecutive summers of an MAT program in foreign languages (Phases 2 and 4) and the intervening school year which is an on-the-job practicum at their home schools (Phase 3), to the school year after the program (Phase 5). The data, which include interviews, observations, and documents written by the teachers during the program, follows the development of the teachers' conceptions of their teaching through these five phases. The analysis includes case studies of the four teachers, followed by a comparison of cross-case themes.;The findings reveal how the shared, professional discourse of the in-service program contribute to increasing the complexity of the teachers' thinking about their teaching. The study suggests that as the teachers learn to articulate their de facto ways of thinking about teaching in the shared discourse of the in-service program, they gain greater control over their classroom practice and are thus more able to shape it to their own ends. The changes result in 'the same things differently': (1) instances in which the teaching seems the same externally although the thinking behind it has shifted, (2) those in which the similar thinking is enacted in new classroom practices, and (3) those in which both the thinking and the practice shift while maintaining the same overall purpose.