An intervention study aimed at analyzing and transforming work and learning in three organizations (a bank, a primary health care center, and a hi-tech company) allowed us to investigate forms of coconfiguration work in which there is a focus on the development of products and services that adapt to the changing needs of users. The […]

Cultural-historical activity theory has evolved through three generations of research. The emerging third generation of activity theory takes two interacting activity systems as its minimal unit of analysis, inviting us to focus research efforts on the challenges and possibilities of inter-organizational learning. Activity theory and its concept of expansive learning are examined with the help of four questions: 1. Who are the subjects of learning? 2. Why do they learn? 3. What do they learn? 4. How do they learn? Five central principles of activity theory are presented, namely activity system as unit of analysis, multi-voicedness of activity, historicity of activity, contradictions as driving force of change in activity, and expansive cycles as possible form of transformation in activity. Together the four questions and éve principles form a matrix which is used to present a study of expansive learning in a hospital setting in Finland. In conclusion, implications of the framework for our understanding of the increasingly important horizontal dimension of learning are discussed.

Background: For decades, scholars have argued that teaching and learning depend funda–mentally on the quality of relationships between teachers and students, yet there is little research about how teachers develop relationships with students or how teacher education prepares teachers to do this work. Arguably, articulating the relational practices of teaching is critical for those aiming to prepare teachers to reach across differences, educate from a social justice perspective, and teach an increasingly diverse population of students. Noting the emphasis on relationships in community–based organizations (CBOs), the authors investigated preservice field placements in CBOs as potentially strategic contexts for learning about relational aspects of teaching. Objective: The authors engaged the questions: What do candidates learn in CBO field placements? What are sources of variation between candidates’ learning outcomes? What are individual and contextual factors that shaped candidates’ opportunities to learn in CBOs? Specifically, which factors influenced candidates’ inclination and capacity to enact relational teaching practices (e.g., the methods and skills associated with learning about and connecting with students, families, and communities)? Research Design: This study was a 3-year longitudinal investigation. Authors followed two cohorts of candidates from their first quarter of preparation into their first year of teaching. Qualitative methods, such as interviews, observations, and document review were employed in this inquiry of 12 case study candidates. To examine questions of variation, authors also conducted an in-depth comparative case analysis of a subset of two candidates and their CBO placement contexts. Findings: CBO placements facilitated opportunities for candidates to “see students”: candi-dates developed deeper understandings about children and more nuanced conceptions of diversity; experienced and examined school from an out-of-school perspective; and demon-strated greater attentiveness to the role of context in learning. The more detailed compara-tive analysis of two cases revealed variation in candidates’ experiences and their enactment of practices involved in building relationships with children and families. This analysis identified individual and situational factors (in coursework and CBOs) that facilitated and impeded candidate learning in CBOs. Conclusions: Findings from this study highlight the types of learning outcomes that preser-vice community-based placements potentially afford, as well as factors that make some place-ments more educative than others. The authors offer a theoretical lens that attends to variation in learning, which could be leveraged in future empirical work. This research con-tributes to the field’s developing efforts to identify key social justice teaching practices and to conceptualize pedagogies of enactment for such practices.

Community-based field placements have shown promise as a strategy for preparing teacher candidates to work in diverse, high-needs schools, but they have rarely been designed or researched with subject-area methods learning in mind. Drawing on data from observations, interviews, documents, and journals, the author investigated how placements in two case study community-based organizations (CBOs) shaped […]

This case study examines how differing views on the teacher’s role in school reform affected the work of a school–university partnership. The school district and the university had a history of partnerships and shared common general goals. Yet, as the partnership progressed, conflicting perspectives about teaching and the purpose of professional development became evident and […]

We analyze a particular pedagogy for learning to interact productively with students and subject matter, which we call “rehearsal.” Our goal is to specify a way in which teacher educators (TEs) and novice teachers (NTs) can interact around teaching that is both embedded in practice and amenable to analysis. We address two main research questions: […]

Professional development schools are vehicles for reform. But getting them “on line” becomes the priority, Mr. Duffy points out, and the spirit of collaborative egalitarianism becomes a secondary concern. He suggests a better way.

This article uses Andrew Abbott’s concept of jurisdictional challenge to analyze the current chal-lenges facing university-based teacher educators. The author suggests that teacher educators are dangerously close to losing jurisdiction over two key professional tasks—the preparation of new professionals and the production of academic knowledge for the profession. The author then argues for the need […]

The state of teaching and teacher education is the result of more than a century of compromises and adjustments demanded by the exigencies of another era. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the teaching profession was designed to match the rapid expansion of schooling. It relied on a captive pool of inexpensive, educated […]

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of first-year elementary teachers who assessed the strengths and weaknesses of their preservice student teaching experiences vis-à-vis their inservice realities. Specifically, the study explores opportunities to learn across student teaching placements and analyzes the degree to which placements present participants with equitable opportunities to build a specialized view […]

The paper addresses the failure of the Professional Development Schools movement in bridging the cultural gap, existing between schools and academic institutions. A model, based on the ‘ecological edge’, is suggested. It is believed that this metaphor has a higher potential for constructing collaborative communities because of the unique nature of ecological edges as environments […]

This article investigates the lasting legacy of the National Teacher Corps (NTC), which was created in 1965 by the U.S. federal government with two crucial assumptions: that teaching poor urban children required a very specific skill set and that teacher preparation programs were not providing adequate training in these skills. Analysis reveals that, though these […]

Research on teacher learning consistently documents the disjuncture between the practices beginning teachers encounter in university teacher preparation courses and those they reencounter in the K-12 classrooms in which they learn to teach. As preservice teachers enter teaching, they gravitate toward conventional K-12 practices, dismissing those endorsed by the university as impractical. In this arti-cle, […]