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Changing nature of preservice teacher concerns in an accelerated, graduate-level teacher education program

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Changing nature of preservice teacher concerns in an accelerated, graduate-level teacher education program

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Content Running head: PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS 1

CHANGING NATURE OF PRESERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS IN
AN ACCELERATED, GRADUATE-LEVEL TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM

by

Debra I. Danner

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

December 2018

© 2018 Debra I. Danner

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my Chair, Dr. John Pascarella, for your steadfast support of my
work as a doctoral student and researcher in the field of teacher education. And to
Dissertation Committee members Dr. Artineh Samkian and Dr. Kalim Rayburn for your
encouragement and patient engagement in this process, and for what you have taught me
about research and the real-life adventures of a school leader.
I am immensely grateful to my parents, Judi and Bry Danner, whose love and
support have sustained me for more than a half-century, and whose curiosity and endless
desire for exploration and discovery continue to inspire my lifelong love of learning—
and teaching.
Many thanks to my dear friends and co-voyagers Victor Chears, Wendy Manning,
and Cassandra Mitchell, whose emotional and spiritual sustenance on this doctoral
journey—and, indeed, on the whole of life’s odyssey—continues to be invaluable and
indefatigable.
Thanks also to Mary Walsten, Voytek Dolinski, Catherine Rose, and all of my
extraordinary teachers who have indulged my curiosity, challenged me to learn and grow
in seemingly impossible directions, and nodded knowingly at my irrepressible desire to
be a teacher.
Thank you to Anna DiStefano for embracing me as a doctoral scholar. And to the
many others along the way who wisely encouraged me to “just do it!”
Thank you to the women who generously shared their stories with me as part of
this research project. I hope that you prosper and are fulfilled in your teacher careers.
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Finally, thank you to my students in Los Angeles, Chicago, and online around the
world, who have taught me more about teaching (and myself) than any textbook or
training course ever could.
They ask me why I teach,
And I reply,
“Where could I find more splendid company?” (Harmon, 1948)

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Table of Contents
List of Tables 7
List of Figures 8
Abstract 9
Chapter One: Introduction 10
Background of the Problem 11
Statement of the Problem 13
Purpose of the Study 14
Research Questions 14
Importance of the Study 15
Methods 18
Key Terms 18
Organization of the Study 20
Chapter Two: Literature Review 22
Fuller’s Phased Concerns Model 23
1969 Model 24
1975 Reconceptualization 29
Measurement Instruments 33
Interventions and Extensions 35
Nature of Teacher Concerns and How They Change 37
Early Research 38
Kagan (1992) and Grossman (1992) 40
Continued Research 43
Pigge and Marso (1997) 44
Early 2000s 45
Watzke (2007) 47
Miksza and Berg (2013) 48
Mediating Factors 50
Individual Characteristics 50
ITP Coursework 52
Change in Teaching Context 54
Questions about Over-Personalization 55
Summary 59
Chapter Three: Research Methods 60
Research Questions 60
Overview of Research Design and Methods 60
Sample and Population 62
Background on Institution/Population 62
Sampling Strategy 64
Criterion 1 64
Criterion 2 65
Conceptual Framework 66
Data Collection and Instrumentation 70
Document Analysis 71
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Observations 72
Interviews 73
Ethical Considerations and Confidentiality 74
Data Analysis 75
Credibility and Trustworthiness 76
Researcher Bias 78
Limitations 79
Delimitations 80
Sample Size 80
Time Frame 81
Data Collection Strategy 82
Summary 82
Chapter Four: Findings 84
Case Study #1: Anne 85
Background 85
Key Areas of Concern 86
Classroom management 87
At the start of ITP 87
At the end of ITP 88
Parental involvement 90
At the start of ITP 90
At the end of ITP 91
Administrative support 91
At the start of ITP 91
At the end of ITP 92
Lesson planning and delivery 93
At the start of ITP 93
At the end of ITP 95
Student learning 97
At the start of ITP 97
At the end of ITP 100
Summary 102
Case Study #2: Beth 102
Background 102
Key Areas of Concern 103
Classroom management 104
At the start of ITP 104
At the end of ITP 106
Parental involvement 107
At the start of ITP 107
At the end of ITP 108
Administrative support 110
At the end of ITP 110
Lesson planning and delivery 111
At the end of ITP 111
Student learning 113
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At the start of ITP 113
At the end of ITP 116
Summary 118
Cross-Case Analysis 118
Types and Timing of Concerns 118
Classroom management 119
Parental involvement 121
Administrative support 122
Lesson planning and delivery 123
Student learning 124
Summary 127
Changes Over Time 128
Concerns that changed 128
Concerns that arose later 129
Concerns that persisted 130
Simultaneous concerns 131
Summary 132
Mediating Factors 133
Individual characteristics 133
ITP coursework 136
Change in teaching context 138
Summary 141
Conclusion 141
Chapter Five: Conclusion 142
Purpose of the Study 142
Summary of Findings 143
Why Studying Pre-Service Teacher Concerns Matters 144
Contributions of This Study 146
Limitations and Further Research 148
Missing Voices 148
Missing Concerns 149
Missing Numbers 150
Implications 152
The Walk to the Teacher’s Desk Revisited 156
References 159
Appendices
Appendix A 171
Appendix B 173
Appendix C 174
Appendix D 176
Appendix E 177
Appendix F 179

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List of Tables
Table 1: Summary of Fuller’s Early Conceptualization (1969) 26
Table 2: Summary of Fuller & Bown’s (1975) Reconceptualization 30
Table 3: TCS Codes (Fuller & Case, 1972) 33
Table 4: Instrumentation by Research Question 71
Table 5: Anne’s Teaching Concerns 86
Table 6: Beth’s Teaching Concerns 104
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Initial Conceptual Framework 67
Figure 2: Revised Conceptual Framework 68

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Abstract
A qualitative research study was conducted to address questions regarding pre-service
teacher concerns during an accelerated, graduate-level teacher training program and the
changes in those concerns over time. Presented in a case study, the data collected from
two participants at the start and end of their initial teacher preparation program—through
document analysis, observations, and interviews—revealed an array of teaching concerns
in the areas of classroom management, parental involvement, administrative support,
lesson planning, and student learning. The nature of some of these concerns changed as
students progressed through their training program, while others did not. Mediating
factors—including individual characteristics, program coursework, and changes in
teaching context—may have influenced both the nature and timing of the students’
concerns. These findings partially support the phased-concerns theory developed by
Fuller (1969) and her colleagues at the University of Texas in the late 1960s, and suggest
that the journey each aspiring teacher makes to the teacher’s desk is unique and deeply
personal, but can be enhanced by teacher educators who are attuned to his or her needs,
model reflective practice, and demonstrate the importance of student-centered learning.

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

“Although the distance between a student's desk and a teacher's desk is short in
linear feet, it is probably the longest psychological distance that these young
adults have traveled in such a brief time” (Cruickshank & Callahan, 1983, pp.
251-252).

Despite decades of research on teacher preparation, significant questions remain
about how to effectively support aspiring teachers to go the distance and become
effective classroom educators. Some have argued that the learning-to-teach process is
profoundly idiosyncratic and largely unpredictable, and thus defies successful
theorization and definitive, one-size-fits-all prescriptions for how to make it happen.
Others have viewed teachers as simple instruments to deliver knowledge, and their
idiosyncrasies as irrelevant to the construction and delivery of their training. Still others
have sought to discover patterns in the situated experiences and concerns of pre-service
teachers in order to devise ways for teacher educators to interest and motivate their
students to become effective classroom teachers—who will themselves then attend to and
promote student learning.
This study falls into the latter category. It sought to understand the nature and
trajectory of concerns among a group of aspiring teachers in an accelerated, graduate-
level teacher preparation program, and to describe that phenomenon in such a way that
might inform the practice of teacher educators (including myself) within the program and
beyond. To accomplish this task, I utilized a nearly fifty-year-old framework to guide the
inquiry and help make meaning from data gathered from pre-service teachers as they
moved toward the teacher’s desk.

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Background of the Problem
Each year, more than 300,000 new teachers take their seats behind teacher desks
in K-12 classrooms around the country (Hussar & Bailey, 2013). In fact, more
schoolchildren in the United States have a first-year teacher than one with any other
number of years of experience (Loewenberg Ball, 2014).
While the “psychological distance” new teachers cover may be long, the actual
time they spend in pre-service preparation may be as short as a few weeks, or stretch two
years or more. Over the last fifty years, however, the basic curriculum of most initial
teacher preparation (ITP) programs has seen little change.
1
Like the program under
study, most ITP training includes coursework in methods and learning theory, coupled
with practice teaching. Some programs have lengthier fieldwork requirements—a year-
long internship, for example—while others require practice teaching stints that are six
weeks or less (Anderson & Stillman, 2013).
With each passing decade, the basic questions educators and policy makers ask
about preparing classroom teachers remain essentially the same: what should fledgling
teachers be learning during their initial preparation program—and what do they actually
learn? Far from settled, the answers to these questions remain top-of-mind in the
ongoing debate over the efficacy of various approaches to teacher training. In an era in
which teacher education programs are under increasing pressure to “demonstrate their
‘value-added’ and defend their very existence” (Anderson & Stillman, 2013, p. 4), failing
to demonstrate relevance to the learning-to-teach process is a risky proposition. Systems
of ITP that remain “orthogonal” to the process of learning to teach—or, at worst, in “total

1
The same was also said about the 30-40 years prior to 1969 (Hall & Hord, 1987).
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

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collision” (Fuller, 1970, p. 30)—face heightened scrutiny in an increasingly competitive
landscape.
Fifty years ago, Fuller and her colleagues at University of Texas at Austin sought
to gain a deeper understanding of the process of early teacher development. Rather than
conducting a traditional curriculum analysis, they chose to investigate the learning-to-
teach experience from the perspective of the pre-service teachers (PSTs) themselves.
They asked undergraduate education majors to describe their interests and concerns at
various points during the course of their ITP, hoping to learn how ITP programs could
address PSTs’ needs in a way that might better facilitate PST learning and development
(e.g., Fuller, 1969).
Based on their data, Fuller and her team hypothesized that the trajectory of
teacher development is predictable and sequential, much like the phased human
development models of Maslow (1954) and Erikson (1956). They constructed a “phased-
concerns” theory to describe and predict a “dependable pattern” of teaching concerns that
evolve over time (Fuller, 1970, p. 10). They hoped the model might assist teacher
educators (and ITP programs) in ensuring the relevance of instruction to the needs of
their education students, and finding ways to more effectively motivate PST learning and
development (Fuller, 1970).
Since then, scholars have done considerable research to test, refine, and challenge
the work of Fuller and her team in a variety of educational settings and populations.
Many have examined whether Fuller’s phased-concerns framework accurately describes
the developmental trajectory of the concerns of pre-service (and, in some cases, in-
service) teachers over time, and the potential implications of those findings for ITP
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programs and teacher educators. The results of this research have been mixed, due in
part to the variety of research methods used (e.g., longitudinal, cross-sectional) and the
length of time studied (e.g., single point in time, one term, seven consecutive years).
Some scholars have also sought to identify mediating factors that may influence teacher
concerns—including individual characteristics, ITP curriculum, and ITP fieldwork
placements. Others have questioned the wisdom of taking a concerns-based approach to
teacher education, and the danger of over-emphasizing personalization in teacher
training.
This study contributes to the existing body of “Fullerian” scholarship by
examining the concerns of PSTs in an accelerated ITP program over time and the factors
that may have influenced those concerns. It describes the concerns expressed by two
PSTs at the start and end of their 18-month ITP program—and examines how those PSTs
made sense of the changing nature of their concerns.
Statement of the Problem
ITP programs are responsible for providing the nation’s school children with the
best possible new teachers on Day One of their graduates’ first year of professional
service (Loewenberg Ball, 2014). To be effective, teacher educators must understand
what PSTs need in order to prepare for the rigors of classroom practice and the
mechanisms that will support PST learning. For ITP programs that pride themselves on
taking a learner-centered approach to instruction, this inquiry must necessarily
encompass an understanding of the learning-to-teach process from the PSTs’ perspective,
including the concerns they may have at various points in their development process—
and how those concerns change, linger, or resolve over time. These data must then
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inform the selection of curriculum and methods, as well as the ways in which program
efficacy is evaluated (e.g., Buhendwa, 1996).
While data about PST concerns may be solicited and collected informally by
faculty members during the course of teacher preparation—and may also appear in
various post-graduation survey data—it is illuminating to examine more closely, and with
more methodological rigor, the concerns of purposefully selected PST students in order
to “hear” their concerns at the start and end of their program, and understand how they
make sense of changes that may have occurred in those concerns.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to examine the concerns of pre-service teachers
who were recently enrolled in a particular accelerated, graduate-level teacher training
program; to understand how those concerns change (if at all) during the course of the
program; and to suggest implications these findings may have for pre-service teacher
education. To do this, I conducted a qualitative research study that included the
collection and analysis of data gleaned from written and verbal artifacts created by PSTs
during a foundations course in the first term of their program and from interviews
conducted after they had completed the last term of their program.
Research Questions
I used the following research questions to guide my inquiry:
1. What concerns do PSTs express (if any) related to teaching during the first term
of their accelerated ITP program?
2. What concerns do PSTs express (if any) related to teaching at the end of their
accelerated ITP program?
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3. How do PSTs make sense of the changing nature of their concerns?
Importance of the Study
This study will contribute to a long line of empirical research that has used
Fuller’s concerns framework to better understand the nature and dynamics of pre-service
teacher development. It is hoped that the findings and implications of this research will
help to inform the broader discussion of the efficacy of PST education, and benefit both
the research community whose work I have attempted to build upon and extend, and
other teacher educators who are deeply committed to the preparation of outstanding
teachers to serve in our nation’s K-12 schools. Knowing more about how PSTs make
meaning during their ITP experience may also inform curriculum and pedagogical
practices utilized by teacher educators in this program and elsewhere—and, at a system
level, influence decisions made by leaders and policy makers in teacher education.
The reasons for attending to PSTs’ concerns about teaching are several. First,
student learning is closely tied to motivation: students learn what they want to learn, and
have difficulty learning that in which they are not interested (Fuller, 1969; Tyler,
1949/2013). They learn best when learning “springs from [their] genuine interests and
concerns” (Schubert, 2010), and concerns are the “driving force” of learning (Korthagen,
2004, p. 88). Education that “answers, even well, questions no one is asking,” is
irrelevant (Fuller, 1970, p. 5), and necessitates “teaching against the tide”—an arduous
endeavor for both student and teacher (Fuller, 1969, p. 223).
Second, teacher educators who make the effort to discover student interests and
leverage them toward learning are modeling that behavior for PSTs who will, in turn, be
asked to engage in the same activity with their K-12 students—and for the same reason:
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better educational outcomes (Fuller & Bown, 1975). In addition, learners who feel their
interests are taken into account in the instruction they receive are more likely to be
satisfied with their learning experience—as are their instructors—and are more likely to
meet their goals at critical phases of their career (Fuller, 1970; Miksza & Berg, 2013).
Understanding PST concerns also helps teacher educators facilitate teacher
development by providing them with more data about where PSTs are starting from,
where they are, and where they are interested in going during the learning-to-teach
process (Fuller, 1970). Knowing, for example, that fledgling teachers are concerned
about whether or not students at their school site like them, teacher educators can focus
their instruction on helping PSTs to build and sustain positive student-teacher
relationships that also serve to promote learning.
In addition, data on PST concerns can help ITP educators to tailor instruction to
their students’ interests, rather than to their own (Fuller, 1970). Given that most teacher
educators are experienced practitioners and likely to have more “mature” concerns about
teaching that their PST students, it is important for them to separate their own needs from
those of prospective teachers. For example, while experienced teacher educators may be
intent on developing teaching strategies for maximizing their impact on aspiring teachers,
their PST students may be preoccupied with concerns about survival or mastering the
basic tasks of teaching (Fuller, 1969). Similarly, understanding how concerns about
teaching may change over time—and that change may take longer than a few weeks, a
semester, or even a year, and may happen in a recursive rather than linear fashion—may
influence choices in ITP curriculum and sequencing at a programmatic level (Miksza &
Berg, 2013).
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Finally, PST concerns—and the issues, experiences, and situations that shape
those concerns—influence the pace and depth of PST learning, whether or not those
concerns are brought to the surface. PSTs’ concerns operate as “sets of developing
approaches, perspectives or ways of thinking” (Loughran, 2014, pp. 7-8). It is important
for teacher educators to acknowledge and respond “in real ways” to this important, and
often-hidden, emotional work of teaching and learning—and to provide PSTs with the
guidance and space to articulate and explore their experience of the emotions and
complexities of teaching without judgment (Loughran, 2014, p. 5).
This is not to say that teacher development can be explained or understood by
PSTs’ perceived concerns alone (Miksza & Berg, 2013). Teacher educators should also
be aware of other models of teacher development that focus on cognition, identity
formation, and socio-cultural learning, for example, as they formulate their approach to
supporting PST learning (e.g., Beijaard, Meijer & Verloop, 2004; Berliner, 1988; Flores
& Day, 2006; Miksza & Berg, 2013).
Nor should PST concerns be the sole factor in determining ITP curriculum. As
Tyler (1949/2013) admonished, it is the job of progressive teacher educators to listen and
respond to student needs, while also expanding and challenging them in order to ensure
that student interests and understandings are broadened and deepened through the
learning process. Neophyte teachers may know what they want, but not what they will
need in the future (Fuller, 1970). Moreover, assuming prospective teachers are incapable
of focusing on more than one thing at a time—or catering solely to their immediate
survival needs—sells short both PSTs and the students with whom they will soon be
working (Grossman, 1992; Zeichner & Teitelbaum, 1982). In sum, it is the job of teacher
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educators to guide PSTs toward learning the skills necessary to be successful in the
classroom, and to do so in a way that is conducive to their learning.
Methods
In this study, I used a qualitative, case study approach to examine the concerns
PSTs express at the beginning and end of their ITP program, and how they make sense of
the changing nature of those concerns. I drew my research sample from a pool of PSTs
recently enrolled in an accelerated, graduate-level ITP program offered through a large,
private university in the western United States. I collected, analyzed, and described data
from two students who began the program during the 2014-2015 academic year and
completed their final term of the program in the spring of 2016. The data gathered from
these students included written reflections and other documents they submitted during a
first-term foundations course, as well as recordings of verbal comments they made during
the final class session of that course. The data corpus also included information gathered
during semi-structured interviews that took place shortly after the PSTs had completed
their third and final term in the program. I analyzed the data using a recursive coding
process that reflects Fuller’s phased-concerns theory, while remaining open to newly
discovered concerns and insights into the PSTs’ experiences of becoming a teacher.
Key Terms
For the purposes of this study, the following key terms will be used:
• Concerns: The word “concern” comes from the Latin word “concernere”
meaning “to be relevant to”—from “con-“ (expressing intensive force) and
“cernere” (meaning sift or discern)(en.oxforddictionaries.com, n.d.). Concerns
are indicators of matters of particular interest and importance to someone—
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whether or not they are a source of anxiety or worry. According to Hall and Hord
(1987), the term “concerns” was coined during the initial phase of research done
by Fuller and her colleagues (including Hall) on teacher development. Fuller’s
team found the term useful because “it tends to defy definition and yet is readily
interpretable using one’s own frame of reference” (Hall and Hord, 1987. p. 54).
Fuller (1970) suggested that concerns included “constructive frustration” about
our initial inability to correct an imperfection or “right the wrong” we see (p. 11).
They may also reflect anticipation that we may not be able to cope successfully
with a particular situation: “‘I hope I can do it; I am not sure I can; I am trying to
do it’” (Fuller, 1970, p. 10). Hall, George, and Rutherford (1979) defined concern
as “the mental activity composed of questioning, analyzing, and re-analyzing,
considering alternative actions and reactions, and anticipating consequences” (as
cited in Hall & Hord, 1987, p. 59). They saw concerns as “the composite
representation of feelings, preoccupation, thought, and consideration given to a
particular issue or task” (as cited in Hall & Hord, 1987, p. 59). Concerns are
individual and personal, observed Hall et al. (1979): “each person perceives and
mentally contends with a given issue differently, depending on our personal
make-up, knowledge, and experience” (as cited in Hall & Hord, 1987, p. 59).
• Initial Teacher Preparation (ITP): This term refers to the formal program or
course of study in which aspiring teachers engage prior to the start of their first
year of professional service and independent practice. ITP programs typically
include coursework in methods and learning theory, as well as fieldwork
experiences that involve classroom observations and student teaching. While the
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ITP program under study is approximately 18 months long, the length of ITP
varies by program.
• In-Service Teachers (ISTs): This term refers to teachers who are currently
serving as classroom teachers, most of whom have engaged in some sort of ITP
prior to starting their professional practice.
• Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs): This term refers to teachers who are engaged in
ITP training, and who have not yet begun their first year of professional practice.
I also use the terms “novice teachers,” “student teachers,” “aspiring teachers,” and
“teachers-in-training” to describe this group.
• Teaching (or Teacher) Concerns: This term refers to concerns that are
specifically related to teaching.
• Teacher Educators: This term refers to instructors in programs that teach pre-
service or in-service teachers.
Organization of the Study
I have organized the study into five chapters. In Chapter One, I provided an
introduction and background to the problem; identified the questions that guided my
research; and discussed the importance of the study. In Chapter Two, I presented a
detailed literature review focused on pre-service teacher concerns, tracing relevant lines
of research from Fuller’s seminal work in 1969 through the present. In Chapter Three, I
described the research methods used in this study. In it, I elaborated on the research
design and sample selection, as well as the tools used for data collection and analysis. I
also included a description of the conceptual models related to my inquiry, and the
limitations and delimitations of the study.
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In Chapter Four, I presented the findings of my study as two individual case
studies and then provide a cross-case analysis to identify themes that emerged across the
data. In Chapter Five, I reviewed the purpose and findings of the study, as well as its
contributions, limitations, and implications.

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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
This study sought to contribute to the literature on the learning-to-teach process
by examining the concerns of preservice teachers enrolled in an accelerated, graduate-
level teacher education program.
Empirical research into teacher concerns was the central focus of the work of
Fuller and her colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin in the late 1960s and early
1970s (e.g., Fuller, 1969; Fuller & Bown, 1975). In it they sought to challenge the
prevailing view that teaching was predominately a cognitive task—involving the
transmission of knowledge from teacher to student—and thus that teacher preparation
should focus on content and method. Missing from that equation, they felt, was the
important effect of feelings (of both the teachers and the students) on the teaching-
learning experience: feelings that could significantly alter the effectiveness of a teacher,
as well as the ability and willingness of her students to learn (Fuller, 1970).
Perhaps, Fuller (1970) suggested, the reason that attention had not been
adequately paid to the feelings and interests of education “consumers” is that their voices
had not been clearly understood or conceptualized in a way that is “understandable and
useful to planners” (p. 8). Teacher educators, she thought, taught aspiring teachers what
the educators believed the students needed, not what students believed they needed—
hence the “widespread dissatisfaction of undergraduate education students with their
professional preparation” (Fuller, 1970, p. 9). Fuller sought to contribute to the larger
conversation about the learning-to-teach process by conceptualizing the nature and
progression of teaching concerns among pre-service (and later, in-service) teachers in an
effort to discover “regularities” in the interests of education students that could help
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23
teacher educators to construct and sequence of teacher preparation in a way that would
better address the needs and interests of teaching students (Fuller, 1969, p. 208).
During the half-century since Fuller’s research was published, scholars have
continued to explore, refine, and challenge the work of Fuller and her team, and the
phased-concern theory they developed to describe and predict teaching concerns (and
teacher development) over time.
This literature review begins with a summary of the work done by Fuller and her
colleagues between 1967 and 1975 to conceptualize and develop a theory that predicted
the trajectory of teacher concerns over time. The work of Fuller’s team included multiple
published and unpublished studies on their evolving model, as well as the development of
instruments to collect data on teacher concerns and related interventions and extensions.
In the next section, I highlight key areas of subsequent research that further investigated
the nature of teacher concerns and the question of whether or not they change over
time—and, if so, when and how. In the third section, I highlight studies that have sought
to identify mediating factors that may influence the nature and progression of teacher
concerns. Finally, I review issues that have been raised about the over-personalization of
teacher education and potential consequences of matching ITP curriculum to Fuller’s
concerns-based model of teacher development.
Fuller’s Phased-Concerns Model
Fuller, an educational psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, is widely
recognized as the pioneer of concerns-based theory and research in teacher education.
She sought to understand the needs of teachers as they engaged in the challenging process
of learning to teach. Understanding PST concerns and how they changed over time, she
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felt, was critical to providing a curriculum that would better meet their developmental
needs and prepare them for success in the classroom. Fuller posited that PST concerns
could be grouped into clusters or categories, and that those concerns change in a
predictable pattern during the process of learning to become a teacher. Knowing this
progression, she believed, would enable teacher educators to better match their curricular
approach to PSTs’ evolving interests and needs.
In this section of the literature review, I describe key elements of the research
published and presented by Fuller and her colleagues between 1967 and 1975, including
work on the evolution of the phased-concerns model, instruments used to measure
teacher concerns, and proposed interventions and extensions to Fuller’s theory. The
efforts of Fuller and her team during this relatively short period of time set the stage for
decades of subsequent research on the teacher development—highlights of which are
reviewed in the next section of this Chapter.
1969 Model
Concerned with reports of pervasive dissatisfaction with preservice preparation at
the University of Texas at Austin, Fuller (1969) began to investigate the attitudes of
prospective teachers (in this case, undergraduate education majors) to understand what
they were concerned about and how to conceptualize those concerns in a way that might
enable the program to better tailor its offerings to meet PSTs’ needs. Given that student
concerns provide motivation for learning, Fuller believed it was incumbent upon teacher
educators to understand patterns in student needs in order to harness that motivation
(Fuller, 1969; Fuller, Parsons, & Watkins, 1974).
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25
Fuller’s (1969) review of learning-to-teach literature up to that point showed that
beginning teachers were considered to be generally concerned about class control;
content mastery; the contexts in which they teach; and how their competence would be
evaluated by their supervisors and pupils (and themselves). She noted the remarkable
consistency of these findings among various PST populations, as well as the consistent
absence of concerns about topics typically addressed by ITP programs, including
instructional design, pedagogy, assessment of student learning, and dynamics of child
behavior.
Fuller (1969) sought to confirm these findings by conducting her own empirical
research with student teachers at the University of Texas. In the first study, counseling
psychologists met with a group of six student teachers for two hours each week in three
consecutive semesters—a different group in each semester. She evaluated the transcripts
of these recorded sessions, and found that the most frequently cited concerns during the
early weeks of student teaching related to the PSTs’ self-adequacy (including self-
protection, class control, content knowledge, and understanding the power structure of
school and the expectations of supervisors, principals, and parents). Concerns regarding
students and student learning (including their learning and how to influence it), on the
other hand, appeared more frequently in later weeks of student teaching.
In Fuller’s (1969) second study, 29 different student teachers were asked at two-
week intervals during a single semester to write about “what you are concerned about
now” (p. 214). She classified the responses into three categories: adequacy concerns,
class control concerns, and pupil learning concerns. She found that a dichotomy in the
students’ responses between self concerns and pupil concerns. That is, while adequacy
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

26
concerns were primary, and some expressed concerns with class control as well, none of
the students was concerned primarily with student learning.
Fuller (1969) used this data—grouped together with data from other
investigators—to conceptualize a phased model of teacher development, based on
changes in the types of concerns teachers expressed during the early, middle, and late
periods of their training (Fuller, 1969).
2
(Table 1).
Table 1. Summary of Fuller’s Early Conceptualization (1969)
Phase Description
1 Pre-teaching
Unconcerned about specifics of teaching. Vague concerns,
based mostly on rumors and hearsay.
2 Early teaching
Concerned with self. Worried about class control, content
mastery, student and supervisor opinions, degree of authority.
3 Late teaching
Concerned with pupils. Interested in understanding and serving
student needs and assessing gains.

Fuller (1969) found that, in the Pre-Teaching phase—the period prior to PSTs
having contact as teachers with pupils in the classroom—PSTs were primarily concerned
about themselves and relatively unconcerned about the specifics of teaching (Fuller,
1969). Although they had problems, they rarely expressed concerns about teaching itself.
The teaching-related concerns they did relate during this phase were “amorphous,”
“vague,” and “unconvincing,” based primarily on rumors and hearsay or on their own
experiences as students in K-12 and college classrooms (Fuller, 1969, p. 219).

2

Fuller (1969) acknowledged that her three-phase model bore some relationship to
phased theories of child development, such as those of Maslow (1954) and Erikson
(1956), and suggested they may be part of a much longer “chain of development” across
a teacher’s lifecycle (p. 222). Fuller’s conceptualization of teachers at the early stages of
their career has, in fact, been credited as the basis for more comprehensive, staged
models of development across the teacher lifecycle—from pre-service to post-
retirement—that were subsequently developed by Huberman (1989, 1993) and others
(Fessler & Christensen, 1992).
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

27
In the Early Teaching phase, after PSTs had begun student teaching, Fuller (1969)
found that they were still primarily concerned with themselves. Overtly, they were
intensely concerned about their own adequacy in the classroom. They were apprehensive
about their ability to maintain control; achieve content mastery; ensure that their students
liked them; and cope with the evaluation of their sufficiency by their supervisors and the
pupils themselves (Fuller, 1969). PSTs in this phase also expressed concerns with how
much authority and responsibility they would be given by their supervisors and school
administrators—though they were “extremely reluctant” to express them (Fuller, 1969, p.
220). They wondered how much support they would receive, and how well they would
be accepted as teaching professionals. Without clear answers to questions about these
parameters, Fuller warned, PSTs could become “stuck” in a state of uncertainty, to the
detriment of both the students in their classrooms and their own professional
development (Fuller, 1969, p. 220).
In the Late Teaching phase, Fuller (1969) suggested that PSTs might begin to
have more “mature” concerns, similar to those characteristic of more experienced
instructors. They might worry about their ability to understand their learners’ capacities;
develop appropriate learning objectives; and assess students’ gains—as well as evaluate
themselves in relation to those gains. Experienced teachers, she noted, had more often
been found to be concerned about slow pupil progress, and less concerned about
discipline, self-adequacy, and evaluation (Fuller, 1969).
Fuller (1969) acknowledged that, while some changes had, in fact, been observed
in her research, other studies had found that little change occurred in student teacher
concerns during a semester. She suggested that the difference in results might be related
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

28
to differences in data gathering procedures: for example, the number of samples that were
taken in her study (11 versus two in other studies) and the opportunity for teaching
students to express all possible concerns (rather than having to respond to a question
about the single area of greatest concern, for example) (Fuller, 1969).
Fuller (1969)

also expressed uncertainty about the sequencing and discreteness of
her initial theory. Among questions she explicitly left open were whether the proposed
phases were complete and in the correct order; whether individuals moved through
phases at different speeds, skipped a phase, and/or regressed to an earlier phase; and
whether the later, more mature concerns appeared only after the earlier concerns are
resolved.
She also wondered how concerns and inter-phase movement were impacted by
context and/or individual characteristics; how to measure concerns in a reliable way; and
whether or not concerns could be positively impacted by coursework or other
interventions (Fuller, 1969). She suggested, for example, that education students be
required to teach for at least a brief period of before enrolling in their first ITP course, so
that their teaching concerns would be aroused and they could begin to resolve the early
concerns from the very start of their ITP program. Individual counseling, she felt, may
also help PSTs to identify and resolve self-focused concerns and promote interest in pupil
learning, she suggested.
Fuller (1969) was certain, though, that educators who attempt to teach
instructional design, psychology, and other foundational courses before PSTs’ “later”
concerns about pupils had been aroused were “teaching against the tide”—and unlikely to
be increasing PSTs’ interest in education courses (Fuller, 1969, p. 223).
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29
1975 Reconceptualization
Fuller and her colleagues continued to refine and expand her phased-concerns
theory as they gathered more data and developed instruments to measure teacher
concerns. In 1974, they published the results of a concerns study that analyzed the
content of 1359 responses to the semi-structured, open-ended instrument called the
Teacher Concerns Statement (TCS)(Fuller, Parsons, & Watkins, 1974). (See
Measurement Instruments section below.)
Based on their data, they posited that there were actually three teaching concern
clusters, rather than two (Fuller et al., 1974). (Non-teaching concerns were omitted from
the analysis.) While they found that pre-service teachers were more concerned about
“benefit to self,” and in-service teachers about “benefit to pupils”(Fuller et al., 1974, p.
46), their analysis revealed that PST concerns had two dimensions: “can I do it” (related
to survival) and “how do I do it” (related to teaching performance) (p. 41). They
suggested that the progress of education students could be tracked by the increase in their
levels of concern about teaching performance (e.g., how to enunciate clearly to
students)(Fuller et al., 1974, p. 46). They also suggested offering “survival training” to
pre-service teachers immediately after their first contact with teaching, when survival
concerns were likely to be heightened (Fuller et al., 1974, p. 46).
In 1975, Fuller and Bown published a reconceptualization of the phased-concerns
model that included descriptions of four categories of teacher concerns: pre-teaching
concerns; early concerns about survival; teaching concerns; and concerns about pupils
(Fuller & Bown, 1975). (Table 2).

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

30
Table 2. Summary of Fuller & Bown’s (1975) Reconceptualization
Cluster/Phase Description
1
Pre-teaching
concerns
Focused on Self. Identify with pupils rather than classroom
teachers.
2
Early concerns about
survival
Focused on Self/Survival. Concerned about class control,
content mastery, evaluation.
3
Teaching situation
concerns
Focused on Survival/Task. Worried about limitations and
frustrations in the teaching situation, especially
administrative tasks.
4 Pupil concerns
Focused on Task/Student Impact. Concerned about
assessing and providing support that students need.

Similar to the model proposed in 1969, the reconceptualization included a
category of pre-teaching concerns, predicted to occur prior to PSTs experiencing “the
realities of the teaching role” (Fuller & Bown, 1975, p.38). During this time, PSTs are
more concerned about themselves, their own feelings, and their “problems with friends,
roommates, grades, and decisions about drugs and sex” than about anything having to do
with teaching, wrote Fuller earlier (1974, p. 113). When they begin classroom
observations, PSTs tend to identify more with the pupils than the teachers. “Fresh from
the pupil role,” they are often “unsympathetic, even hostile critics of the classroom
teachers whom they are observing,” and view themselves as not yet having “’gone over
to the enemy’” (Fuller & Bown, 1975, p. 38). Whatever concerns they express about
pupils, suggested Fuller and Bown (1975), were really about themselves.
In the second phase, PSTs’ concerns change “radically” as they have their first
contact with pupils as teachers (Fuller & Bown, 1975, p. 38). It is a time “of great
stress,” during which PSTs become preoccupied with their own adequacy and survival as
a teacher (Fuller & Bown, 1975, p. 38). They worry about controlling the class and
mastering the content—and wonder about how they are going to be evaluated by their
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

31
supervisors. They wonder if they will ever learn to teach. Their discomfort may be
exacerbated by conflicts they perceive between their ITP program and their school site in
terms of value orientations and preferred teaching practices, and the insistence that they
implement new teaching techniques before they have mastered basic classroom routines.
In the third phase, Fuller and Bown (1975) predicted, PSTs have both survival
and task concerns on their minds. As they become more engaged in teaching and more
involved in the school community, they may feel overwhelmed and frustrated by the
teaching situation in which they work—believing, for example, that they are being
required to handle too many students or too many the administrative tasks (e.g., attending
meetings, acquiring resources, completing paperwork) beyond preparing lessons and
teaching. They may come to realize that they do not know the academic content well
enough to explain it to someone else, answer questions about it, or give examples—and
may search for their notes on methods and materials from earlier ITP courses (Fuller &
Bown, 1975).
In the fourth phase, PSTs may begin to express deeper concerns about their
students. They worry about their ability to respond to pupils’ social and emotional needs,
in addition to their academic needs. However, while PSTs may express pupil concerns
during the last segment of their ITP program, Fuller and Bown (1975) suggested that
such concerns were much more prevalent among in-service teachers. In fact, concerns
expressed by PSTs about student needs may not be “real,” and might actually still be
concerns about themselves, since prospective teachers may still identify more closely
with students than teachers, and are generally anxious about everything (Fuller & Bown,
1975; Parsons & Fuller, 1974). Moreover, even if PSTs do worry about meeting their
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

32
students’ needs at some point during ITP, they may be unable to respond to those needs if
they have not yet learned to cope with their own survival needs, task and content mastery,
and the situational demands at their school site (Fuller & Bown, 1975).
As in Fuller’s earlier work, Fuller and Bown (1975) continued to keep the notions
of phases and sequencing fluid. They remained unsure about whether the concern
categories were stages or clusters; whether they were distinct or overlapping; and the
degree of effectiveness of teachers at various stages. Some of the research conducted by
Fuller’s team, for example, had shown that teacher concerns did not mature with training
and experience, as was originally hypothesized, and that teachers seemed to have both
early and late concerns simultaneously (Fuller et al., 1974).
As they continued to empirically test and refine their theory (and the instruments
used to collect concerns data), Fuller and her team offered various versions of the phased-
concerns model in numerous published and unpublished reports prior to Fuller’s death in
1975 (e.g., Parsons & Fuller, 1974). Since then, researchers have offered their own
descriptions of Fuller’s model as they seek to confirm, expand and/or challenge it in their
own studies—a number of which are discussed in the following literature review. The
framework set forth in Fuller and Bown (1975), however, seems to be the one most
frequently cited in the last five decades, and is the one to which I generally refer in this
study. Fuller’s phased-concerns model is now typically referred to as having three phases
(Self, Task, Impact), starting with the concerns expressed by novices at the point they
begin to do classroom observations (i.e. Phase 2 of Fuller and Bown’s 1975 model) and
carrying through their in-service teaching career.

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

33
Measurement Instruments
To help refine their phased-concerns model, Fuller and her team began to develop
and test measurement instruments to gather data on teacher concerns. At first, they
primarily used the Teacher Concerns Statement (TCS) instrument. Designed for use with
both preservice and in-service teachers, the TCS consisted of a single, open-ended
question: “When you think about your teaching, what are you concerned about?” (Fuller
& Case, 1972, p. 2). Participant responses were then scored using codes matching
descriptions of various components of six stages of development, based on a 1969
version of Fuller’s model (Fuller & Case, 1972; Fuller et al., 1967). (Table 3). Codes 4-
6, for example, were used to identify concerns related to pupil learning—similar to those
identified by Fuller (1969) as emblematic of the Late Teaching Phase. Participant
responses were scored by frequency (number of concerns expressed by each
participant)—with one frequency score assigned for each of the six teaching categories.
Table 3. TCS Codes (Fuller & Case, 1972)
Concern
Cluster
Code Key question Sample Concern Statements
Concerns
about self
0
Non-teaching
concerns
“Right now I am most concerned about
getting married.”
Concerns
about self as
teacher
1 Where do I stand?
“I was concerned about finding my way
around in the school.” “What will the
cooperating teacher expect of me? Is it
going to be my class or her class?”
2
How adequate am
I?
“Will I be able to do what is expected of
me?” “I am concerned about my ability to
present ideas to the class.”
3
How do pupils feel
about me? What
are pupils like?
“I wonder whether or not the pupils will
accept me as a friend.” “What goes on in
their minds? What are they thinking?”
Concerns
about pupils
4
Are pupils learning
what I’m teaching?
“Right now my chief concerns seem to be
am I getting across to them?” “I want
them not only to understand what is said,
but also be able to apply what is said.”
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

34
Concern
Cluster
Code Key question Sample Concern Statements
5
Are pupils learning
what they need?
“My concerns now seem to be to get
closer with the students, to provide them
with an opportunity to question, to doubt,
to think.”
6
How can I improve
myself as a
teacher? (And
improve all that
influences pupils?)
“Concerned about reducing my talking
time. I have a tendency to take words out
of student’s mouths.” “The school lunch
program needs to be extended to
breakfast. Hungry children cannot learn.”

Troubled by the psychometric limitations of the TCS,
3
Fuller and her team
developed the Teacher Concerns Checklist (TCCL or TCC)(Parsons & Fuller, 1974). It
consisted of a 56-item, closed-ended questionnaire that asked participants to identify the
level of concern they felt for various items on a five-point scale, from “not concerned at
all” to “extremely concerned.” The initial results of research done with the TCC helped
refine the concerns categories to those set forth in Fuller and Bown (1975), including
self-concerns, situational or task concerns, and student-impact concerns.
Borich (1996), another of Fuller’s colleagues, later revised the TCC to a 46-
statement questionnaire, which has been validated (e.g., Rogan, Borich, & Taylor, 1992;
Lamanna, 1993; Schipull, 1990) and used extensively in various versions in a number of
concerns-based studies (e.g., Buhendwa, 1996; Smith & Sanche, 1992; Watzke, 2007).
Borich’s (1996) TCC items, listed by concern category, are included in Appendix A.
George (1978), another member of Fuller’s team, developed and validated a third
instrument, the Teacher Concerns Questionnaire (TCQ). It consists of 15 items extracted

3

While the relatively unstructured TCS had the advantage of allowing respondents to
report freely, explained Fuller et al. (1974), like most (if not all) content coded
instruments, it had “serious problems in reliability . . . especially coder agreement and
stability deficiencies” (Parsons & Fuller, 1974, p. 7).

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

35
from the TCC, five items each for identifying Self, Task, and Impact concerns of teachers
about teaching. Participants use a five-point, Likert scale to evaluate their level of
concern for each item. The TCQ has since been re-validated and used by a number of
researchers in large-scale, longitudinal and non-longitudinal studies of teacher concerns
(e.g., Bray, 1995; Hall, George, & Rutherford, 1979; Pigge & Marso, 1995, 1997:
Rajkamur, 2015).
Interventions and Extensions
At the same time they were conducting their research and building predictive
models of teacher development, Fuller and her colleagues were also developing specific
guidance for education programs and teacher educators on how to more closely align
their efforts to PST needs (e.g., Fuller, 1974; Fuller & Case, 1972).
As part of their work, Fuller and her colleagues proposed a new model of teacher
education, the Personalized Teacher Education Program (PTEP) (Fuller 1970, 1973,
1974). Fuller’s research had shown that the coursework in traditional teacher education
programs tended to be sequenced based on the beliefs of the instructor rather than on the
needs and concerns of PSTs. Foundations courses, for example, came first because
teacher educators believed that PSTs needed to learn about the philosophies of education
before they engaged in teaching (Hall, 2013). Instead, Fuller and her team developed a
more concerns-based curriculum in which early field experiences and personal coaching
were offered first in order to address PSTs’ early Self concerns. Foundations courses
were then moved to near the end of the program, when PSTs are more likely to be ready
to focus on pupil concerns (Hall, 2013).
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36
The PTEP model was piloted at the Research and Development Center on
Teacher Education at the University of Texas at Austin (Feiman-Nemser, 1989). It
included the requirement that teaching students plan and teach a (videotaped) 15-minute
lesson to students in a real classroom early in the program—an effort designed meet the
desire of beginning education students for actual teaching experience. Research showed
that it did, in fact, satisfy that need—while also serving to elicit teaching-related
concerns: focus students’ attention on the task of teaching; and assist them in being more
able to “profit” from the ITP classes that followed (Newlove & Fuller, 1971, p. 339). (It
also gave students insights about their decision to become teachers—shocking some and
inspiring others. (Newlove & Fuller, 1971).) However, while the PTEP program
appeared to move students from Self to Task concerns, few made the transition to
concerns about pupils (Feiman-Nemser, 1989).
While working with Fuller and her colleagues to develop and pilot PTEP, Hall
(2013) also realized that the faculty of university-based and school-site teacher education
programs were reporting the same, general patterns of concerns that Fuller had
encountered with PSTs—moving from Self to Task to Impact—when they were asked to
change their practices to comport with the principles of PTEP (Hall, 1978; Hall, 2013;
Hall, et al., 1979; Hall & Hord, 1987). “Concerns,” observed Hall, “are a phenomenon
that occurs to all of us when faced with new experiences, demands for improvement, and
changes” (Hall and Hord, 1987, p. 58).
Based on Fuller’s earlier work and their own experiences with PTEP
implementation, Hall and his colleagues developed the Concerns-Based Adoption Model
(CBAM) to describe phenomena associated with the personal side of any change process
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

37
or school improvement project. They promulgated a set of related tools to help change
leaders and administrators to diagnose, support, and monitor change management efforts,
including a Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ), based on the TCC (George, 1978;
Hall & Hord, 1987). This framework has continued to be used as the basis for extensive
research on individual response to change, both within and outside of the field of
education (e.g., McGurn, 2014; van den Berg, 2002; van den Berg & Ros, 1999).
In sum, the extensive work done by Fuller and her team to establish, refine, and
extend her phased-concerns theory of teacher development laid the groundwork for a
wealth of subsequent research on teacher development and change. They sought to
understand and describe the learning-to-teach process from the point of view of teachers,
and urged teacher educators to adopt an educational approach better suited to the learning
needs of pre-service and in-service teachers. They discovered that teacher concerns
seemed to evolve in predictable ways, suggesting a pattern of growth and change that
should be reflected in the curriculum of teacher preparation. Over the last five decades,
scholars have continued to explore the nature and trajectory of teacher concerns as they
engage in the challenging process of learning to teach, and the viability of curricular
approaches intended to address their needs.
Nature of Teacher Concerns and How They Change
Over the past 50 years, Fuller’s concerns-based model of teacher development has
been tested and challenged in a variety of contexts, using various research methods. The
results have been mixed. For the purposes of this literature review, I have traced two,
key lines of Fullerian scholarship: research on the nature of teacher concerns and how
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

38
they may change; and research on mediating factors that may influence the existence of,
and changes in, teacher concerns.
This section focuses on key studies that have been conducted to test Fuller’s
(1969) prediction that PSTs move through a predictable set of concerns in a discrete,
sequential fashion. As indicated earlier, Fuller herself remained uncertain about the
linearity of this progression—wondering, for example, if stages overlap or always happen
in the order she had posited, and what, if anything, actually changes over time as the
learning-to-teach process progressed (e.g., Fuller & Bown, 1975; Fuller et al., 1974).
Early Research
In the decades immediately following Fuller’s death, research proliferated on
teacher concerns. Adams (1982), for example, conducted a longitudinal analysis of data
gathered from 152 teachers who were enrolled in the teacher preparation program at
Western Kentucky University. He collected concerns data at four points in their early
development over a six-year period, beginning with student teaching and continuing
through five years of teaching experience. He found that factors that were of the highest
concern—student discipline and motivation and impact of instruction on students—did
not tend to change across experience levels. Concerns about supervisor evaluation, peer
acceptance, and students liking them did, however, decrease over time (as Fuller
predicted) but concerns regarding the tasks of teaching, while not initially high, continued
to increase with experience (Adams, 1982).
Silvernail and Costello (1983), on the other hand, using self-reporting instruments
fashioned from items from the TCQ and other measurement tools, found no difference in
the overall teaching concerns of elementary education students who had participated in a
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

39
30-week teaching internship versus those who enrolled in a one-semester student
teaching program. Despite having different amounts of teaching experience, both groups
expressed essentially the same type and level of concerns at the end of their practice
teaching experiences as those they had held at the beginning of their clinical program.
Both groups held a high level of concern for the academic and emotional growth of
pupils, and were not particularly anxious about their ability to manage classrooms,
interact with students, or master the subject matter.
Similarly, in their cross-sectional study of 128 pre-service and 90 in-service
teachers using the TCQ, Reeves and Kazelskis (1985) found that both groups expressed
the greatest level of concern for their ability to impact students. There was no difference
in the level of Task concerns between the pre-service and in-service teachers, but the
level of Self concerns was higher with the PST group.
Calderhead (1987) found a relatively linear change in the concerns of 10 pre-
service elementary teachers during a term of student teaching in a post-graduate training
program. Based on data gathered through four sets of observations and interviews, he
found that, while the PSTs had different starting points in terms of what they expected
and believed teaching would be like, they seemed to go through three common phases.
In the first two weeks, students were anxious about assuming the teaching role and
“fitting in” to supervising teachers’ routines. They then began to learn from, and model
themselves after, their supervising teachers, viewing them as sources of support and
advice, and began to learn more about classroom management, the children, and lesson
planning and delivery. However, by midway through the term, students’ professional
learning slowed or reached a plateau, as their concerns about being assessed overtook any
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

40
concerns they had for effective instruction. By the end of their student teaching
experience, the PSTs felt more relaxed about maintaining control of the classroom and
lesson delivery, even experimentation, but often rebuffed suggestions for reflection or
improvement. These results only partially support Fuller’s phased-concerns theory.
While Self concerns seemed to be at the fore at the start of their practice teaching
experience, they seemed to subside but then return, overriding the PSTs’ interests in
teaching tasks and pupil learning.
Studying PSTs enrolled in a five-year preparation program, McCullough and
Mintz (1992) discovered that second-year students were primarily concerned with their
career choice and the impact the profession would have on their lives, while fifth-year
student teachers were more interested in teaching skills and the impact they would have
on their future students—a result that is somewhat consistent with Fuller’s predicted
progression from Self to Task and Impact concerns.
Kagan (1992) and Grossman (1992)
Articles published in 1992 by Kagan and Grossman provided key insights into the
first two decades of Fullerian research and thinking. Kagan reviewed the results of
selected research prior to 1991 and inferred a new model of early teacher development.
Grossman (1992), on the other hand, took issue with phased development theories in
general—and with the linearity of Kagan’s (1992) model in particular—based on her own
research.
Kagan (1992) reviewed 40 qualitative, learning-to-teach studies published or
presented between 1987 and 1991 that purported to show teachers’ professional growth
over time, and attempted to “add them up” to create a new, “coherent and consistent
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

41
picture of the natural course of teachers’ professional development” (p. 129). She found
a consistent narrative that began with an understanding that teaching candidates come to
preparation programs with both an idealized view of their future students and an
“optimistic, oversimplified picture of classroom practice” (Kagan, 1992, p. 154)—a
notion consistent with Fuller’s perspective.
Based on her own literature review, Kagan (1992) proposed a model of early
teacher development that integrated Fuller and Bown’s (1975) phased-concerns model
with Berliner’s (1988) five-stage model of cognitive expertise development. She
believed her model could provide a “cognitive” explanation for the progression of early
teacher concerns that Fuller had proposed by translating teacher concerns and
“unremitting self-confrontation” into concepts consistent with those related to the
acquisition of knowledge (Kagan, 1992, p. 161).
According to Kagan (1992), growth in preservice and first-year teachers consisted
of a single developmental stage, during which they are engaged in three cognitive tasks:
acquiring knowledge of their students; using that knowledge to modify and reconstruct
their personal images of themselves from being the learners they had been for years to
being teachers; and developing standard procedures that integrate classroom management
and instruction. Kagan (1992) believed that novices must go through these activities in
sequence, and must begin with a phase in which they focus on themselves.
Far from being immature or undesirable, as Fuller seemed to suggest, Kagan
(1992) saw this initial stage in which PSTs focus on themselves as “necessary and
crucial” for teacher development” (p. 155). Attempts by teacher educators to divert the
attention of novice teachers away from inward reflection during this phase are
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

42
“counterproductive,” since novices need a clear image of their present self before they are
able to begin the process of reconstructing it (Kagan, 1992, p. 155). Novices who failed
to reconstruct their self-images at this stage, she warned, may be “doomed to founder”
and experience frustrations that drive them out of the profession (Kagan, 1992, p. 155).
It is only after novices complete their self-image rebuilding that they are able to turn their
attention toward the design of instruction and teaching routines. Then, once those
routines are in place, Kagan (1992) asserted, novices are finally able to shift their
attention to student learning.
In her rebuttal to Kagan (1992), Grossman (1992) took issue with stage theories
of teacher development in general—and, in particular, with Kagan’s (1992) claims that
beginning teachers must necessarily focus on only one element at a time, and only in
sequence. Her own research, for example, had shown that secondary PSTs were fully
capable of thinking about how to teach subject matter before they had established
classroom routines (Grossman & Richert, 1988). “It is not that these teachers ignored
issues of self, identity, and classroom survival,” she asserted; it is that these concerns
“did not prevent them from reflecting deeply on issues related to the content of teaching”
(Grossman, 1992, p. 173).
Grossman (1992) also pointed to other research demonstrating that teacher
education coursework itself can help prospective teachers focus on student learning and
critical thinking about instruction (e.g., Ball, 1989; Grossman, 1990). It is the job of
teacher educators to help PSTs “struggle simultaneously with issues of management,
social roles and routines in classrooms, instruction, and learning,” she asserted
(Grossman, 1992, p. 175). By assuming that prospective teachers have “too little in their
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43
minds” to consider such issues, “we sell our students, and ultimately our schools, short”
(Grossman, 1992, p. 177).
Grossman (1992) also quarreled with the idea that earlier stages of teacher
development “naturally” lead to later stages (p. 174). She saw no evidence, for example,
that experienced teachers who had established classroom routines were likely to question
or change them later in their development. On the contrary, evidence suggested that
experienced teachers become complacent and are less likely to challenge prevailing
norms (citing Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985, 1989). Moreover, Grossman (1992)
argued, classroom routines and student instruction are “eternally married,” and classroom
management strategies carry within them their own, implicit theories of instruction
(Grossman, 1992, p. 174). By concentrating on classroom routines in isolation, she
contended, “student teachers may learn to manage pupils and classrooms without learning
to teach” (Grossman, 1992, p. 174, citing Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1989, p. 367).
Continued Research
Research on the progression of teacher concerns continued to proliferate in the
1990s, and the results continued to be mixed. Smith and Sanche (1992, 1993), for
example, found that PSTs participating in a four-month practicum expressed concerns in
all three categories at the same time—and that pupil concerns played a central role right
from the start. They suggested that no category disappears altogether—though they did
see PSTs’ self-concerns decrease and student impact concerns increase over time. Ralph
(1993) also observed that PSTs’ concerns from one stage could linger, even as PSTs shift
their attention to other categories of concern over time.
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44
A study by McDermott, Gormley, Rothenberg, and Hammer (1995) showed that
student teachers with practicum experience were more concerned with student learning,
and less concerned with what others thought of them, than students without practicum
experience—though both groups expressed some concerns in all three categories.
Buhendwa (1996) studied PST concerns in the context of a successful implementation of
Fuller’s personalized teacher education model at a private liberal arts college. Using the
TCC, he found that PSTs did, in fact, shift their concerns from self to task during the
three terms after the start of their sophomore year. He noted, however, that differences
among the levels of concerns did not appear to be significant, suggesting possible
interactions among the stages of concerns and the potential influence of individual PST
characteristics on the findings.
Pigge and Marso (1997)
In 1997, Pigge and Marso published a landmark, longitudinal study of the
concerns of 60 teachers over a period of seven years. Using the TCQ instrument
developed by George (1978), researchers gathered data from participants at four different
points in their early teaching career: at the commencement of their ITP; near the end of
their student teaching practicum; and near the end of their third and fifth years of in-
service teaching after graduation. By taking this longer-term, longitudinal approach,
Pigge and Marso (1997) sought to overcome concerns raised about previous studies not
being of adequate length to capture changes in concerns stages that may happen over time
(e.g., Weinstein (1990)(seven weeks)) and objections to cross-sectional studies, like those
they had conducted earlier (Pigge and Marso, 1987, 1990) that might not adequately
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45
capture subtle and more variable rates of change in teacher concerns among and within
groups studied.
In their study, Pigge and Marso (1997) were able to show that Fuller’s concerns
theory had applicability across the lifecycle of preservice and novice teachers, but not in
the linear sequence Fuller and her colleagues had predicted. Like other researchers
before them, Pigge and Marso (1997) found that PSTs expressed student Impact concerns
right from the start, and that the level of those concerns remained stable and higher than
task and self concerns across all four career stages. On the other hand, Self concerns
generally decreased as the PSTs began to experience some success in the classroom, and
task concerns increased as they encountered the complexity of classroom teaching. By
the fifth year after graduation, they found, teachers’ Task concerns were higher, and their
Self concerns lower, than when they began their preparation program.
Early 2000s
Since the turn of the century, researchers have continued to investigate changes in
teacher concerns using both cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches. Burn, Hagger,
Mutton, and Everton (2003) saw a variety of concern progressions in their study of 25
graduate-level PSTs in England. They suggested that, while pupil concerns were present
throughout ITP, there appeared to be an increasing level of sophistication in what the
student teachers were describing during their interviews. PSTs’ descriptions of desired
learning outcomes for their students, for example, became more specific the longer they
spent in practice teaching, and their instructional aims shifted from content toward
knowledge, skills, and concepts. The researchers suggested that these types of
distinctions were not adequately reflected in “simplistic” sequential models of teacher
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46
development. They also suggested that the variations they were finding in PST concerns
might, in part, be attributable to the fact that there was “no common starting point” for
the student teachers studied (Burn et al., 2003, p. 314). Individuals began at different
points, developed at different rates, and reached different points in their development
during ITP.
Haritos (2004) examined the concerns of 94 elementary and secondary teacher
candidates on the first day of their graduate ITP program, before they had even began
education-related coursework and field experiences. The majority of participants reported
concerns in all three categories, though the responses were not equally balanced. For
example, PSTs reported more pupil concerns than concerns regarding teaching situation
and survival combined, and reported survival concerns the least frequently. In fact, no
participant reported survival issues alone. Haritos (2004) observed that these new PSTs
also felt it was part of their job as teachers “to overcome all teacher challenges”—an
expectation which he considered unrealistic and likely the result of PSTs’ naiveté, lack of
teaching experience, and lack of understanding of school organizations (p. 649).
Similarly, Swennen, Jorg, & Korthagen (2004) found that PSTs in the first year of
training in a Dutch teacher education institute expressed concerns that seemed highly
pupil-focused at the start of their program—and that their concerns did not change during
their entire first year (during which they did little teaching). The researchers speculated,
however, that the PSTs’ concerns were more idealized and related to self-preservation
than actual student impact—a finding consistent with Fuller’s suspicions about the early
pupil concerns she and her team had observed among PSTs.

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Watzke (2007)
A decade after Pigge and Marso (1997), Watzke (2007) published the results of
another longitudinal study tracing changes in the concerns of 79 in-service teachers
during their second and third years of teaching. Like Pigge and Marso (1997), Watzke
(2007) found that teachers’ concerns for student impact remained high across time, but
reported that levels of self- and task-related concerns had decreased or remained the
same.
Based on his research, Watzke (2007) argued that concerns-based theory and its
related concerns category progression are inadequate to explain the complex nature of
teacher development. Given that the theory is inherently longitudinal in nature due to its
focus on change, Watzke (2007) believed that more weight should be placed on the
results of longitudinal studies testing the comprehensiveness of Fuller’s framework.
Those studies, he asserted, had offered near uniformity of results over time: consistently
high student-impact concerns with comparatively lower levels of concern for self and
task. Only the proposed developmental transition between self and task had been
supported by research, he argued.
Given these results, Watzke (2007) dismissed the notion of promoting a stage-
based teacher education curriculum tailored to Fuller’s theory. Like Grossman (1992),
Watzke (2007) insisted that beginning teachers are capable of complex and student-
oriented thinking early in their ITP programs, and are capable of benefitting from
professional development that does not delay a focus on the academic and personal
dimensions of student impact in favor of issues exclusive to self and task. Debunking the
“self-task-impact chronology,” he argued for a more holistic view of PST concerns and
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needs, one that views them as recurring, and as phenomena experienced and addressed by
beginning teachers in different ways across time (Watzke, 2007, p. 118).
Miksza and Berg (2013)
Miksza and Berg (2013) offered further insight into the changing teacher concerns
in their study of eight aspiring undergraduate music teachers during the year and a half
that they moved from their junior-level practicum experience to the end of their student
teaching. As Fuller predicted, they found that participants less concerned about their
survival and more concerned about making an impact on students as time progressed.
For example, after the PSTs’ initial practicum experience, they no longer expressed basic
Self concerns, or Task concerns about basic competencies and professionalism.
Similarly, Self concerns regarding interactions with peers and colleagues and personal
evaluations seemed to disappear by the midpoint of student teaching. They noted that
task concerns related to clarity and intensity of instruction and issues specific to the
context of participants’ placements emerged only during student teaching. PSTs’ student
impact concerns emerged during the initial practicum and student teaching, and remained
through the end of their program—with an increasing emphasis on more personal
approaches in teaching, such as student rapport.
Like Pigge and Marso (1997), Miksza & Berg (2013) suggested that the
inconsistent results of previous studies investigating Fuller’s model could be explained
by the differences in research design. For example, the length of time for data collection
in some studies may have been too short to observe long-term shifts in thinking. They
also suggested that previous studies had not adequately accounted for mediating variables
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49
that may impact the nature and timing of teacher concerns, such as teacher personality or
motivation, and changes in PSTs’ teaching environment of placement site.
In sum, research exploring Fuller’s hypothesis of a predictable linear trajectory in
the stages of teacher concern has been largely disproven. Some studies found evidence
supporting Fuller’s predictions that teachers’ primary concerns would shift over time
from self to task to student impact (e.g., Calderhead & Robson, 1991; Pigge & Marso,
1997; Ralph, 1993). Others found no evidence of a significant shift (e.g., Silvernail and
Costello, 1983; Weinstein, 1990). Many found high levels of student impact concerns
throughout PSTs’ preparation and on into their work as in-service teachers (e.g., Reeves
& Kazelskis, 1985; Smith & Sanche, 1992, 1993). Still others have observed overlapping
and recursive movement among the various categories of teachers’ concerns (e.g., Ralph,
1993).
Some scholars have suggested that mixed results indicate that Fuller’s concerns-
based model of teacher development may be inadequate to fully capture the complexity
of early teacher development and the sophistication of thinking in beginning teachers
(e.g., Miksza & Berg, 2013; Ralph, 1993; Smith & Sanche, 1992, 1993). Some have
argued that tailoring teacher education to address Fuller’s notions of teacher concern
stages can be detrimental to teacher development (e.g., Grossman, 1992; Watzke, 2007),
while others have reported favorably on the use of Fuller’s personalized teacher
education model in supporting PSTs during teacher preparation (e.g., Buhendwa, 1996;
Smith & Sanche, 1992, 1993).
Others have posited that mixed results in Fullerian research may be partly
explained by variances in study design, especially in the length of time over which the
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50
study was conducted (e.g., Miksza & Berg, 2013; Smith & Sanche, 1992, 1993). Others
have suggested that mediating factors—such as context and individual characteristics—
may influence the development and evolution of teacher concerns (e.g., Miksza & Berg,
2013). The latter topic is taken up in the next section of this literature review.
Mediating Factors
A second line of research related to Fuller’s phased-concern theory relates to
mediating factors that might influence the existence and evolution of teacher concerns
and development. As discussed earlier, Fuller and her colleagues suspected that changes
in teacher concerns might be affected by individual characteristics, curriculum, and
context (e.g., Fuller, 1969). In the five decades since the publication of the initial work
on teacher concerns, researchers have continued to pursue this line of inquiry and sought
to identify factors that may mediate the nature and sequence of concerns among novices
learning to teach. Highlights of their findings are described below.
Individual Characteristics
Researchers have also attempted to identify which (if any) individual
characteristics may play a role in the nature of, and change patterns in, teacher
concerns—including sex, age, career stage, academic success, personality, and race.
Fuller et al. (1974), for example, found that among groups of pre-service and in-
service teachers, the concern scores of male PSTs tended to increase with increasing
experience, while the scores of females remained constant. They found no difference
between students who were focused on elementary versus secondary education, however.
Bray (1995) found that the intensity of PSTs’ concerns before, during, and after
their student teaching experience varied, depending upon whether they were traditional
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51
(24 years of age or below) or non-traditional students (ages 25 and above and career
switchers). PSTs who were traditional students, for instance, expressed higher levels of
concern throughout their student teaching semester than nontraditional students. Also,
while all of those studied showed reductions in self concerns over time, career switchers
felt less confident at their end of their student teaching term than did older students,
despite similarities in age.
In their seven-year, longitudinal study, Pigge and Marso (1997) found that, across
time, participants’ levels of concern about teaching seemed to be related to their grade
point averages (GPAs). They found, for example, that PSTs with the highest GPAs
reported declining levels of Self concern during teacher preparation, while the Self
concerns of their classmates with lower GPAs increased (Pigge & Marso, 1997). At the
same time, PSTs with high GPAs reported increased, rather than declining, Self concerns
during their first three years of in-service teaching. From the third to the fifth year of
teaching, however, their Self concerns declined again, as did those of their peers.
Researchers hypothesized that high-GPA students might begin their program with high
levels of Self concerns, but that their success in ITP quieted those concerns until they
experienced the fuller responsibilities of the classroom.
Pigge and Marso (1997) also noted that female PSTs had higher levels of Impact
concerns throughout their program than did their male counterparts. Teaching concerns
did not, however, appear to be related to their basic academic skills, academic majors,
family characteristics, ACT scores, and locus of control orientations.
Based on their results, Pigge and Marso (1997) concluded that the development of
concerns may not follow a “lock-step pattern,” but rather may vary based on the relative
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52
capabilities of teachers (p. 234)—a possibility that was embraced in Fuller’s personalized
teacher education model.
In his longitudinal study, Watzke (2007) found that variables such as gender, race,
and grade level taught did not seem to have an influence on teachers’ concerns. Nor did
the differing levels of minority and family incomes represented in the schools in which
they were placed. On the other hand, like Pigge and Marso (1997), Campbell and
Thompson (2007) discovered that female PSTs in music had higher levels of concern
than their male counterparts. They also found that aspiring elementary school teachers’
concerns were higher than those of secondary school PSTs.
In sum, while some researchers have found that PSTs’ individual qualities may
influence teaching concerns, there does not appear to be a clear pattern across studies.
ITP Coursework
Some researchers have suggested that nature and phasing of the concerns that
Fuller and her colleagues observed—and that others have continued to describe—are
simply a function of the traditional teacher education curriculum to which novices are
exposed. Hall and Hord (1987), for example, were not surprised that Fuller (1969) found
relatively consistent evidence regarding how preservice teachers perceive and experience
their introduction into the profession, given that teacher education practices at the pre-
service (and in-service) levels had changed little in the thirty to forty years prior to her
research. They described the beginning of ITP coursework as heavy with theory in
educational psychology, history and philosophy of education, and focused on highly
detailed skill development for observing classrooms and designing tests—a sequence
inconsistent with Fuller’s research on PSTs’ perceived needs and interests.
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53
Similarly, when teacher preparation programs began to emphasize reflective
practice, that change seemed to be reflected in concern study results. Kagan (1992), for
example, noted the correlation between early preparation curriculum that promoted
reflection and her findings of heightened self-concerns among prospective teachers.
Conway and Clark (2003) also acknowledged that the findings of their study on PST
concerns likely reflected the situated and contextual perspective of Michigan State’s ITP
program, which promoted reflective practice in teacher learning and development.
Levin, Hammer, and Coffey (2009) also argued that research showing that PSTs
focus on themselves before focusing on their students’ learning simply reflected what
PSTs are taught to do in most ITP programs. They expressed disappointment with the
near-universal acceptance of the stage-based models of explaining and guiding PST
learning in teacher preparation programs. Because ITPs continue to be largely “teacher
centered” and focused on things teachers do and say, such as instructional methods and
classroom management strategies, with an emphasis on self-reflection and identity
formation (Levin et al., 2009, p. 3), they asserted, ITPs inevitably direct more of PSTs’
attention toward themselves rather than on their students’ needs.
Like Grossman (1992), Levin et al. (2009) asserted that, while novices may focus
on themselves and their own behavior, it is not imperative that they do so before they are
able to focus on student learning. Instead, they argued, PSTs are capable of drawing
upon their “nascent abilities for attending to others” from the very start, and must learn to
attend specifically to student thinking because “that is the data or ‘stuff’ teachers must
work with in considering their practice” (Levin et al., 2009, p. 17). It is particularly
important to teach PSTs to prioritize student thinking while they are first practicing
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54
instruction and constructing their classroom routines, the researchers insisted, given the
tendency of the educational systems they will soon enter to frame teaching in terms of
classroom management and curricular coverage rather than pupil learning (Levin et al.,
2009).
Grossman and Richert (1988) also found that teacher education curriculum—
including both coursework and fieldwork (see below) does—and should—influence
prospective teachers. The challenge, as they saw it, was in figuring out how to integrate
the two in such a way that teaching students are afforded opportunities to learn how, for
example, to translate conceptual knowledge into teaching practice—and to critically
examine the beliefs and knowledge they are acquiring in the field, lest potential
“miseducative” fieldwork experiences go unchallenged (Grossman & Richert, 1988, p.
61).
Change in Teaching Context
As Grossman & Richert (1988) suggested, another crucial element of a PSTs’
learning environment that may play a significant role in the types and progression of
teaching concerns is their ITP fieldwork experience. Changes to their on-site learning
environment, in particular, seem to be particularly influential.
Burn et al. (2003), for example, observed that, at the end of both semester-long
and year-long practicum experiences, British PSTs experienced a regression away from
relatively sophisticated Impact concerns toward increased Task and Self concerns. They
hypothesized that this phenomenon might be due, in part, to PSTs mentally withdrawing
in anticipation of changing teaching placements, or the placement schools’ inability to
provide them with continued challenges or levels of support due to preoccupation with
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the need to prepare pupils for public examinations. Conway and Clark (2003) also
noticed that the classroom management concerns of teaching interns were most
prominent during September and December of their internship year, concurrent with the
start and end of their student teaching stints.
Miksza and Berg (2013) also posited that the context of PSTs’ practice teaching
work—specifically, the degree to which it is new or familiar—might influence changes in
teacher concerns. PSTs experiencing changes in setting or context may once again raise
concerns about their own adequacy and teaching skills, and draw their attention and
energy away from pupil learning. In their analysis of the students’ essays and journal
assignments, they found, for example, that at the midpoint of participants’ student
teaching experience, the level of PSTs’ Impact concerns decreased and their Task
concerns increased. This regression back to earlier concern stages, posited Miksza and
Berg (2013), was likely due to a change in the PSTs’ fieldwork placement: the student
teachers in the study switched to another school placement site midway through their 16-
weeks of student teaching. Thus, they concluded, the teacher concerns model may have
“both progressive and recursive elements,” just as other developmental models do
(Miksza & Berg, 2013). The researchers also suggested that differences in individual
PSTs’ progress might be related to the type of support they receive from their guiding
teachers and challenges they encounter with particular students in the classroom. The
latter, for example, seemed to increase Self concerns.
Questions about Over-Personalization
As indicated earlier, based on her phased-concerns theory of early teacher
development, Fuller (1974) endorsed a personalized approach to teacher preparation, one
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that places the novice teacher “at the center of her own education, both in her own view
and in the view of her teachers” (p. 112). To engage and motivate education students,
Fuller (1974) believed, programs should present curriculum in a sequence that reflects
their evolving needs. ITP programs should, for example, offer field experiences and
psychological counseling to PSTs at the beginning of their training in order to help PSTs
address their “early” fears of looking foolish and not being able to control a class.
Courses on instructional design should then be offered later in the curriculum, once PSTs
develop more “mature” desire to make a positive impact on student learning.
However, scholars have continued to question how much attention teacher
educators (and teacher preparation programs) should really pay to PSTs’ concerns.
Zeichner and Teitelbaum (1982), for example, warned against promoting a “personalistic
pedagogy” in teacher education (as cited in Conway & Clark, 2003, p. 467). They
preferred that teacher educators focus their attention on critical inquiry and spend their
time problematizing teaching among PSTs. Catering to PST survival and task needs,
they insisted, should not delay the study of more complex and important questions and
problems of practice. Similarly, Feiman-Nemser and Buchmann (1985) asserted that,
rather than focusing on the comfort of PSTs during the learning-to-teach process, teacher
educators should be challenging them to identify and question their pre-existing beliefs.
Buchmann (1986, 1993) also argued against the over-personalization of teacher
education. She felt that focusing on PSTs’ concerns wrongly elevated PSTs as
individuals to an exalted status in teacher preparation. Teacher education pedagogy
should, instead, focus on orienting prospective teachers to their broader role in society:
that of embodying “society’s highest aspirations and provid[ing] social mechanisms for
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shaping action in their light” (Buchmann, 1993, p. 147, as cited in Conway & Clark,
2003, p. 467). Rather than focusing on a narrow, overly personalized agenda promoted
by concerns-based approaches, argued Buchmann (1993), teacher educators should be
emphasizing the standards and professional expectations of teachers.
Kagan (1992), on the other hand, argued that the design of preservice teacher
education programs must necessarily address the developmental needs of the PSTs and
leverage what is known about “naturally occurring processes and stages” of their
evolution into teachers (p. 162). After all, she noted, Fuller and her colleagues had begun
their work out of a desire to address PSTs’ feelings of anger and frustration with existing
teacher education programs, which were not “talking to teachers where they are” or
providing them with the support they needed to be successful in the classroom (Fuller &
Bown, 1975, p. 50). Teacher educators cannot simply assume, or demand, that students
have the particular set of concerns that matches the existing curriculum, asserted Kagan
(1992), simply because “the program proponents think them more appropriate or
sophisticated” (p. 162). Nor should they assume that PSTs will “’see’ the wisdom and
relevance” of their offerings (Kagan, 1992, p. 162). Instead, she suggested, “it seems
more productive to think about ways to address and then build upon the students' needs
(Kagan, 1992, p. 162, citing Eisenhart, Behm, & Romagnano, 1991, p. 67).
Conway and Clark (2003) acknowledged that “foregrounding the attainment of
[PSTs’] personal comfort over compelling pedagogical, political and societal goals”
might lead to teacher educators taking a more cautious and conservative approach toward
PST training (p. 467). They argued, however, that this outcome was not inevitable.
Extensive scholarship had demonstrated the value of understanding teachers’ personal
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meaning making (including their concerns) as they learn to teach, they asserted, and the
phenomenology of PSTs’ learning-to-teach experiences has value to teacher educators’
efforts to support students’ development (Conway & Clark, 2003).
Taking a Vygotskian perspective, van Huizen, van Oers, and Wubbels (2005)
argued for a balance of approaches in teacher education. They observed that a personal
orientation to teaching—which views the teacher him- or herself as the primary
instrument of instruction, rather than as a functionary—is largely antithetical to
competency-based paradigms of teacher education. On the other hand, focusing on
teachers’ unique personalities, values, and personal meaning making “tends to overlook
the public, institutional, and corporate aspects of teaching” and neglect important
sociocultural aspects of the educational environment (van Huizen et al., 2005, p. 269).
“An appeal to personal creativity, self-development, and self-fulfillment,” they warned,
“may be self-defeating if it is not accompanied by a recognition of the stimulus and
support these qualities require from outside the lone individual” (van Huizen et al., 2005,
p. 269). Instead, they advocated for teacher educators to provide PSTs with an
“exploratory” environment in which PSTs are presented with “valid, ideal forms of
teaching” for critical evaluation, appropriation, and personalization and are given the
opportunity to make meaning from both public ideals and their own, personal ideas and
views (van Huizen et al., 2005, p. 275).
In sum, while Fuller and her team felt that it was important for teacher educators
to promulgate curriculum that served PSTs’ evolving needs, other scholars have warned
of the dangers of over-personalizing teacher education, fearing that it will distract from
the study of more important, and potentially more discomfiting, issues in teaching. Some
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have proposed that a balance might be struck between personal and instrumental
approaches to ITP by presenting PSTs with a gamut of perspectives and experiences and
training them to reflect critically as they develop their practice.
Summary
The scholarship related to teacher concerns over the last fifty years is vast. In this
literature review, I have highlighted key themes that have emerged in the research based
on the seminal work of Fuller and her colleagues in the late 1960s and early 1970s on
pre-service teacher development. I have presented key studies that have affirmed and/or
challenged the linearity of teacher concern development, and those that explored
mediating factors that might influence that development. I have also included key
scholarship that questions the wisdom of focusing on PSTs’ personal worries when there
are other, more important interests to be served. This study was intended to contribute to
the extensive body of Fullerian research by examining the nature and progression of PST
concerns over time in an accelerated, graduate level ITP.

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CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODS
The purpose of this study was to investigate the concerns PSTs expressed related
to teaching during an accelerated, graduate teacher education program; how (if at all)
those concerns changed during the course of the program; and how PSTs made sense of
the changing nature of their concerns. The findings of this qualitative study were
intended to contribute to the knowledge and understanding of the developmental needs of
pre-service teachers, and identify implications for how teacher educators support PSTs to
become effective classroom teachers.
In this chapter, I identify the specific questions addressed by this study and the
research methods I used. I provide an overview of the organization and population to be
examined, and describe my sampling strategy. I also include my conceptual framework,
along with my approach to data collection, instrumentation, and data analysis. The
chapter will conclude by addressing limitations and delimitations of my study.
Research Questions
This study was intended to answer the following research questions:
1. What concerns do PSTs express (if any) related to teaching during the first term
of their accelerated ITP program?
2. What concerns do PSTs express (if any) related to teaching at the end of their
accelerated ITP program?
3. How do PSTs make sense of the changing nature of their concerns?
Overview of Research Design and Methods
I chose to use qualitative methods for this study to serve my primary interest in
understanding how PSTs experience the world and make meaning from the experiences
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they have within it. Qualitative researchers conduct their inquiries using a systematic and
largely inductive approach to exploring—and then richly describing—the phenomenon
they select and people’s perceptions of that phenomenon (Merriam, 2000). The
researcher is the primary instrument of data collection and analysis, and the goal is to
provide a “thick” description that “transports” readers to the setting and leaves them
feeling as if they are having a “shared experience” (Creswell, 2014, p. 202) and
understand better what it is like for someone to experience that phenomenon
(Polkinghorne, 1989, as cited in Creswell, 2013, p. 82).
I designed this project as a case study, which is considered an optimal, qualitative
research strategy for generating an in-depth description and interpretation of a
phenomenon that exists within a contemporary, bounded system over time (Creswell,
2013; Merriam, 2000). In this study, the bounded system was an accelerated, graduate-
level ITP program for preservice teachers, offered in a specific, higher education setting.
The studied phenomenon was the teaching concerns of PSTs enrolled in that program and
the changing nature of those concerns over time.
This phenomenon was of intrinsic interest to me as both a researcher and a teacher
educator. I was curious to see how Fuller’s decades-old, phased-concerns theory might
help to identify, predict, and explain changes in the teaching-related concerns of a
population of PSTs, and how these discoveries might inform my practice and the work of
others who are also striving to provide an optimal learning experience for future
classroom teachers.
The primary data gathering tools I used in this study were artifact analysis,
observations, and interviews. My study sample was drawn from a population of students
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who had completed coursework in an online delivery of this ITP program. I collected
data using various qualitative instruments and analyzed them using a recursive coding
and categorization strategy. My conceptual framework informed my data collection and
analysis, and vice versa.
Sample and Population
The purpose of this project was to examine the concerns of PSTs in a particular
ITP program over time. As suggested by Maxwell (2013), I constructed the research
sample through purposeful selection and convenience, rather than through probability
sampling. Because I was interested in understanding how PSTs in a specific ITP
program interpret their experiences and attribute meaning to them, I drew my sample
from the population of people from whom the most could be learned about the
phenomenon—namely, PSTs who had been enrolled in that program. From that
population, I pulled a convenience sample from the subpopulation of students who were
enrolled in two particular sections of the first-term, foundations course during the 2014-
2015 academic year. I chose to use this subpopulation because I was familiar with the
extensive, written and verbal reflective exercises and activities that occurred during these
specific class sections—and believed that artifacts from those classes would be likely to
contain contemporaneous data of PSTs’ concerns early in the ITP program.
Background On Institution/Population
The population of PSTs under study had enrolled in an 18-month, accelerated
Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program in the School of Education at ULearn, a
university in the western United States that is focused on preparing teachers for
placement in high-needs schools. At the time this study was conducted, the program
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served approximately 600 PSTs per academic year, the majority of whom took courses in
a blended format that included class sessions that were delivered in a synchronous, online
format. Each online section of the course contained approximately 15 students, and met
weekly for 12 consecutive weeks. To earn their MAT degrees and qualify for state
credentialing, PSTs were required to complete three terms of coursework, including
classes on learning theory, literacy, learning technology, and subject-specific pedagogy.
They also conducted fieldwork at school sites located near their homes, including one
term of classroom observations, followed by 20 weeks of guided practice (student
teaching).
In the first term of ULearn’s ITP program, one of the required classes was a
foundations course focused on the social contexts of high-needs schools. This course
required students to do extensive reading; submit graded and ungraded written
assignments and reflections; participate in weekly, recorded, online class sessions; and
conduct classroom observations in K-12 classrooms. In the last two terms of their
program, PSTs completed their guided practice assignments and participated in online
classes designed to provide them with remote supervision and support as they developed
their teaching practice.
PSTs enrolled in ULearn’s online MAT courses were located across the United
States and around the world. Students were from a wide range of ages and backgrounds,
and were preparing to teach in either primary (grades K-6) or secondary (grades 7-12)
classrooms. The population included PSTs who had recently earned their undergraduate
degrees as well as those who had earned degrees a number of years earlier. Some were
joining the workforce for the first time, while others were returning to the workforce or
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seeking to begin a second career. Many entered the program little to no prior teaching
experience.
Sampling Strategy
Researchers using a purposeful sampling strategy must first establish a set of
criteria from which the sample will be constructed (Merriam, 2000). From the larger PST
population that had been enrolled in ULearn’s online MAT program, I drew a sample of
two MAT students who had recently completed their studies. While this sample may
seem small, in qualitative research judging the sufficiency of the sample size is more
about quality than it is about quality (Creswell, 2013). The goal is to have “an adequate
number of participants to answer the question posed at the beginning of the study”
(Merriam, 2000, p. 80). My job as a qualitative researcher was to collect extensive detail
about each participant in order to “elucidate the particular, the specific” rather than to
generalize (Creswell, 2013, p. 157).
I drew my sample using the following criteria:
Criterion 1. The first criterion I used to select participants for this case study was
that the PSTs had been enrolled in one of two particular, online sections of the
foundations course, conducted during the 2015-2016 academic year (n=28). I chose this
criterion for several reasons. First, because data collection for this study was conducted
over several months at the end of their ITP program, rather than periodically over the
three ITP terms in which PSTs were enrolled, it was important that data regarding the
PSTs’ early concerns be immediately available. Second, the extensive reflective work
done by students in these particular sections of the first-term foundations course was
likely to yield data regarding their early concerns about teaching. Students in these
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sections had been asked to submit weekly, ungraded, written reflections before and after
class meetings, as well as graded papers that contained reflections on their insights and
evolving teaching practice—all artifacts from which “early” concerns data could be
drawn. They had also participated in online class sessions, the recordings of which
provided observational data for this study.
Criterion 2. The second criterion I used to select participants for this case study
was that the PSTs must have completed their ITP program (and thus both their first and
second term of guided practice) immediately prior to data collection. This criterion was
important to my inquiry for several reasons. It allowed me to gather data about the
concerns participants reported at the end of their ITP program, but prior to starting their
in-service careers. It also provided some assurance that the data participants provided—
including thoughts about their concerns at the end of the program and reflections on how
they made sense of changes (if any) in their concerns during the program—were
proximal enough to their experiences to be relatively fresh. Lastly, it helped to mitigate
concerns that the PST participants might feel coerced to participate in the study—and/or
respond a particular way to questions—due to unease that their responses might affect
their grades or standing in the program.
I had also planned to use a third set of criteria to create “maximum variation” in
my sample (Creswell, 2013, p. 156), and increase the likelihood that the findings would
reflect different perspectives (Creswell, 2013). These selection criteria might have
included age, race/ethnicity, career stage, single- or multiple-subject credential, and
geographic locale—some of which have been investigated as potential mediating factors
by other researchers (e.g., Bray, 1995; Campbell & Thompson, 2007; Pigge & Marso,
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1997). However, the number of respondents who met the first two selection criteria, and
who provided sufficient data to support a case study, was smaller than I had hoped, and
creating maximum variation among participants was not feasible.
To execute my sampling strategy, I sent a solicitation email to the 28 students
who had completed the two, designated sections of the foundations course. (Appendix
B). This email included information regarding the study and a request for participation.
To express interest and determine eligibility, respondents were asked to complete a short,
online questionnaire, which also included a more complete Study information Sheet
(Appendix C). Of the 28 possible respondents, 10 clicked the link to the survey. Of
those, four met both selection criteria and provided consent to participate. Three of the
four responded to follow-up emails regarding arrangements for participation, and thus
were included in data collection. During the data collection process, however, I
discovered that only two of the participants were able to provide data that was of
sufficient detail and quality on which to base a case study. (The written reflections
submitted by the third participant during the first-term foundations course were far fewer
in number and limited in scope, as were her recollections of concerns during the learning-
to-teach process.) Therefore, the case study in Chapter Four is fashioned from the data of
two pre-service teachers: Anne and Beth (both pseudonyms).
Conceptual Framework
To guide the overall construction the study, I developed an initial conceptual
framework (Figure 1) that represented the “concepts, assumptions, expectations, beliefs,
and theories” that could support and inform my research (Maxwell, 2013, p. 39). I used
this framework to develop the design of my research questions and approach (Maxwell,
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2013), and as a lens through which I collected, and initially coded and analyzed, the data.
At the same time, I held open the possibility that PSTs might express concerns not
anticipated by Fuller’s theory, and/or that the timing of their concerns might not reflect
the sequence that Fuller had theorized.

Figure 1. Initial Conceptual Framework
Once I had collected the data and was conducting an analysis using a recursive
coding and categorization strategy, I realized that the conceptual framework that I had
initially constructed was tied too heavily to precepts of Fuller’s phased-concerns
theory—and depicted certain assumptions about the nature and progression of concerns
over time that have not been fully supported by subsequent research (including my own).
It also did not clearly represent the mediating factors examined in this study. Instead, I
developed a revised conceptual framework for this final dissertation that better reflects
the concerns expressed by the PST participants in this study, a different conceptualization
of concern progressions, and a more accurate list of mediating factors considered in this
research. (Figure 2).
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Figure 2. Revised Conceptual Framework
Specifically, the revised framework identifies five categories of teaching concerns
that PSTs in this study identified during their ITP program. Each of these categories
(depicted in order of convenience rather than priority, weight, or time) represents a set of
specific concerns that reflect PSTs’ reactions to the world around them and how they
made sense of their place within it. Student learning concerns, for example, reflect PSTs’
apprehensions about whether or not pupils were actually learning from the instruction
they were delivering as student teachers. While some of these categories reflect elements
of Fuller’s original research (e.g., concerns that participant PSTs expressed about student
learning are similar to those Fuller included in her Impact cluster), others do not (e.g.,
PSTs’ worries about having sufficient support from school administrators seem to go
beyond the concerns about administrators’ assessments of their performance that Fuller
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suggested in her Self category). These similarities and differences are discussed at length
in Chapter Four.
The revised framework also recognizes that Fuller’s prediction that PST concerns
would follow a discrete, linear progression during the learning-to-teach process (Self to
Task to Impact) is only partially supported by subsequent research—including this study.
Scholars have suggested, for example, that PSTs’ concerns may develop in a nonlinear
fashion; may linger over time; and may co-exist at the same stage of development (e.g.,
Ralph, 1993; Reeves and Kazelskis, 1985, 1988). All three variations were evident in
this study. Therefore, in the revised framework, PSTs’ teaching concerns are not
depicted in a particular sequence (as the arrows suggested in the initial conceptual
framework), but rather as part of PSTs’ overall thinking about their evolving teaching
practice.
Finally, I have also identified three mediating factors that might have influenced
the nature of individual PST’s concerns at various points during their ITP program. I
derived the first factor—individual characteristics—from a line of research exploring the
impact factors such as gender, age/career stage, GPA, and prior teaching experience (e.g.,
Bray, 1995; Pigge & Marso, 1997) may have on PST concerns. Fuller (1969), for
example, posited that the course of PSTs’ development during ITP might be strongly
influenced by the amount of teaching experience they had gained prior to starting their
program.
The second factor I considered for its possible influence on PST concerns relates
to the ITP curriculum. As Hall and Hord (1987), Grossman (1992), and others noted, the
emphasis placed by ITP curriculum on certain concepts and skills at particular points in
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the training process seem to impact which concerns PSTs express at a given time. This
seemed to hold true for the PSTs in this study. Both, for example, expressed concerns
related to particular concepts introduced and discussed in their first-term foundations
course (e.g., creating a positive classroom climate)—and used very specific language to
describe them.
The third mediating factor I examined in this study is the potential influence of
PSTs’ fieldwork assignments on the nature and timing of their concerns. As Burn, et al
(2003) and others discovered, actual (or anticipated) changes in school site placements
may impact the nature and timing of PST concerns during their ITP process. That
seemed to hold true for one of the participants in this study, who experienced a change in
her placement site for her second term of student teaching and expressed new concerns as
a result. A more detailed analysis of mediating factors is included in Chapter Four.
Data Collection and Instrumentation
In this study of teacher concerns, I used the three strategies of data collection that
Merriam (2000) suggested are most commonly associated with qualitative research:
document analysis, observations, and interviews. These approaches seemed best suited to
the goals of my research and the research questions to be answered, in that, as Maxwell
(2013) suggested, they allowed for the collection of “real-life” data generated directly by
participants in the study. In addition, using several methods allowed me as a researcher
to gather information about different aspects of the phenomenon that might complement
or expand my understanding; to triangulate my findings; and to assess the strengths and
weakness of the various data-gathering tools used (Maxwell, 2013). Data collection was
completed in the spring of 2016.
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Table 4 describes the instrumentation used to gather data in response to each
research question.
Table 4. Instrumentation By Research Question
Research Question

Document
Analysis
Observations Interviews
1 What concerns do PSTs express (if any)
related to teaching during the first term of
their ITP program?
x x x
2 What concerns do PSTs express (if any)
related to teaching at the end of their ITP
program?
x
3 How do PSTs make sense of the changing
nature of their concerns?
x

Document Analysis
In qualitative research, documents can offer a stable and accessible means to
acquire descriptive information, offer understandings and perspectives, and assist in
tracking changes and development over time (Merriam, 2000). Also, unlike interviews
and observations, the presence of the researcher does not alter what is being studied
(Merriam, 2000). Documents are materials (written, visual, digital, and physical) that are
relevant to the study at hand—and are in existence prior to its commencement (Merriam,
2000). These include both public and personal documents that contain “first-person
narratives that describe an individual’s actions, experiences, and beliefs” (Bogdan &
Biklen, 2007, p. 133). While documents can sometimes be of limited value when they
are not developed for research purposes or offered in a readily useful or understandable
format, data contained within them can often be invaluable in “inductively building
categories and theoretical constructs,” (Merriam, 2000, p 154). That was the case in this
study.
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To answer the first research question about the concerns PSTs expressed at the
start of their program, with the students’ permission I collected and analyzed documents
they had each generated during the foundations course, including their graded papers and
written, ungraded, pre- and post-class reflections—more than twenty-five documents for
each participant. (This data was later supplemented by information gleaned from
interviews, as described below.) The PSTs had produced all these documentary data in
the past for the purposes of the foundations course and not for the research at hand.
Observations
Observations are also an important qualitative research tool because they provide
researchers with a direct, first person look at people’s behavior in the context in which it
naturally occurs (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam, 2000). Through observations, researchers
can develop their own, first-hand perspectives about a situation and draw inferences
about other people’s perspectives that they cannot obtain by relying solely on the
interview data (Maxwell, 2013). Data collected during observations can be used to
develop and enhance descriptions of settings, behaviors, and events relevant to the topic
of inquiry, and to triangulate information obtained through other means (Maxwell, 2013).
To answer the first research question regarding the concerns the participant PSTs
expressed early in their program, I reviewed recordings and transcripts of the final class
session, in which students in each of the two sections debriefed on their experiences over
the term—including their reflections on what they had learned and how they changed as a
result of the ITP coursework and fieldwork. I reviewed these recordings (approximately
one hour each) to glean data that might suggest more about the nature of their concerns,
and changes they had perceived in them during the initial phase of their ITP program.
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My original observation protocol is included in Appendix D. As with the documents, the
data collected from these observations were all produced in the past by students for the
purposes of the foundations course and not for this research study.
Interviews
Interviews help qualitative researchers to understand the “deep, lived meanings”
that events have for study participants, and gain insight into how those meanings guide
their actions and interactions (Merriam, 2000, p. 93). They allow researchers to “enter
into another person’s perspective” and provide data they might have missed—or not had
access to at all—during document analysis and observations (Patton, 2002, p. 341).
Interviews can also be used to check the accuracy of the data collected through other
means (Maxwell, 2013). Semi-structured interviews allow for flexibility in the interview
process and an in-depth exploration of issues (Creswell, 2013; Maxwell, 2013). In
addition, semi-structured interviews allowed the researcher to respond to the interview
situation in varied ways in order to explore the emerging themes and new ideas being
expressed by the respondents (Merriam, 2000).
I conducted two, semi-structured interviews with each study participant to gather
data regarding their concerns. Each interview included open-ended questions about the
PSTs’ concerns (past or present, depending on the interview), and was guided by the
interview protocol included in Appendix E. In the first interview, I asked participants to
recollect their concerns at the start of the program (during the term in which they were
enrolled in the foundations course). Data gathered during this interview provided
additional insight regarding their “early” concerns and serve to enhance and triangulate
the information collected during artifact analysis and observations. In the second
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interview, I asked questions regarding the PSTs’ concerns at the end of the program, and
how they made sense of the changing nature of their concerns—information responsive to
the second and third research questions, respectively. To assist participants, I used my
notes from our first interviews, artifact review, and observations regarding their early
concerns as prompts during the interview. (Appendix E)
The interviews were conducted via live, face-to-face, confidential
videoconferencing technology—the same means by which the students had participated
in their ITP coursework during the program. The interview protocol (Appendix E) was
developed and piloted in advance of the interviews to ensure that questions were clear
and that participant responses would be likely to address the research questions
(Creswell, 2013). Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed to ensure that
participants’ comments were captured accurately. All told, the two interviews lasted a
total of 100 minutes with Anne, and 120 minutes with Beth.
Ethical Considerations and Confidentiality
This study was conducted following ethical guidelines prescribed by the IRB.
Prior to the initiation of this research, I sought approval from the IRB regarding the
procedures and ethical considerations related to this study. The data I collected for the
purposes of this study was stored on a secured, password-protected computer and will be
securely destroyed after the completion of this work. To preserve participants’
confidentiality, I used secure record keeping processes and pseudonyms for people,
places, and organizations.

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Data Analysis
The goal of data analysis is to make sense of the information collected by
identifying elements that are responsive to the research questions—and then using them
to formulate the answers (Merriam, 2000). The information I gathered during this study
was compiled in a case study database I developed in Microsoft Excel specifically for this
study. (Sample entries from the case study database—including codes, categories, notes,
and sources—are included in Appendix F.) I then derived my findings and analysis and
constructed answers to each research question from the compiled data.
I used a series of data analysis techniques to answer each research question. To
answer the first research question regarding PSTs’ concerns in the early stage of their ITP
program, I analyzed data gleaned from my document analysis and observation notes, as
well as my first interviews. I began my analysis by coding the data to identify bits of
information that seemed interesting, important, or potentially relevant to my study
(Merriam, 2000). In the process of “open coding” my notes, I used a priori codes based
on the descriptions of teacher concerns developed by Fuller and Bown (1975)(Table 2)
and Borich (1996). (Appendix A).
At the same time, mindful that these descriptions might not represent all
dimensions of the phenomenon under study (e.g., Hagger and Malmberg, 2011), I
developed additional, empirical codes as they emerged from the collected data. Using a
recursive process, I used one document analysis as a base and then expanded the codes as
I reviewed my other data (Merriam, 2000). I then grouped these empirical codes into
categories, as I identified conceptual elements that seemed to span many codes (Merriam,
2000). As I continued to add and refine my codes and categories, I returned to previously
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coded data to update my analysis, until I reached saturation and felt that I was at the point
where I saw no new insights or understandings emerging (Merriam, 2000). Throughout
the coding and analysis process, I wrote memos about my thoughts and findings, codes
and categories, and surprises and disappointments (Merriam, 2000).
To answer the second research question regarding PSTs’ concerns at the end of
their ITP program, I primarily analyzed the data collected during my second interviews
(though I also studied relevant comments participants had made during their first
interviews). I used a recursive coding process similar to the one described above,
utilizing my refined codes and categories as the base, and developing additional,
empirical codes and categories as they emerged from the collected data. As I added and
refined my codes and categories, I returned to previously coded and categorized data
related to the first research question to update my analysis.
To answer the third research question regarding how the PSTs make sense of the
changing nature of their concerns, I primarily used data collected during my second
interviews. I began my analysis using the open and recursive coding strategy described
above, while remaining open to new codes and categories emerging. I also referred to
insights that arose from other participant data (i.e., first interviews, written artifacts, and
observations) to better understand both the changes themselves and how the participants
were making sense of them.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
In qualitative research concerns about the credibility and trustworthiness of the
findings of a field research study are addressed through careful attention to the study’s
conceptualization, data collection and analysis, and presentation (Merriam, 2000).
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One of the primary strategies used by qualitative researchers to address credibility
concerns is triangulation—for example, through the use of multiple methods and sources
of data (Merriam, 2000). To answer the first question of this study, I collected data from
multiple artifacts the participants created during their first-term foundations course—
namely, the ungraded, written reflections they submitted after class and those they
submitted as part of their graded papers, as well as their recorded, verbal reflections
during the final class session of the term. These artifacts provided contemporaneously
recorded data regarding participants’ teaching concerns at the beginning of their ITP
programs. To answer the second and third research questions, I gathered data from
interviews with participants shortly after they had completed their ITP program to learn
about what teaching concerns they held at that point, as well as how they made sense of
changes (if any) in their concerns between the start of the program and the end. I also
utilized relevant data from artifacts and observations as prompts during the first and
second interviews to support participants’ recollection of concerns they may have had at
earlier point in their program and to assist them in identifying what (if any) changes they
experienced in their teaching concerns.
To promote the credibility of the research findings, I have attempted to provide an
accurate and rich description of the phenomenon I intended to research; the context in
which I studied it; and the methods I used to do so. I have also attempted to accurately
match the case descriptions with the data that was seen and heard, so that others can
review the data collected and trace how I derived those data (Merriam, 2000). Further, as
Merriam (2000) suggested, I have also called upon peers knowledgeable about the topic
and the methodology used in the study—my dissertation chair and committee—to review
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and assess the reliability of my findings. The decision as to whether or not these findings
are transferable or generalizable to other contexts and other research subjects is the
responsibility of the person who seeks to apply them elsewhere (Merriam, 2000).
Researcher Bias
In qualitative research, ethical issues related to the researcher-participant
relationship are likely to arise during both the collection and dissemination of data
(Merriam, 2000). Because the researcher is the primary instrument of data collection
and analysis in qualitative research, it is important that I was aware of and deliberately
monitored the shortcomings and biases I might bring to the table (Merriam, 2000).
In this study, I was aware that I might be biased toward wanting to see Fuller’s
phased-concerns theory somehow play out in the participants’ learning-to-teach stories. I
also may have wanted the ITP curriculum with which I am familiar to be reflected in
participant data as a potential sign of the efficacy of that coursework and program in
shaping PST development. I am also aware that both participants knew me (as a program
instructor) prior to our interviews, and may have attempted to tell me what they thought I
wanted to hear—despite the fact that I had no influence over their success at the time that
data was collected, or in their future placements or success as an in-service teacher.
I took a number of steps to reduce researcher bias. I kept observer notes during
data collection to capture my immediate reflections on the data I collected (Patton, 2002).
I also wrote extensive and separate research memos during data collection and analysis
and the dissertation development process to identify and reflect critically on my biases,
dispositions, assumptions, experiences, worldview, and theoretical orientation (Merriam,
2000). During data analysis, I utilized a recursive coding and categorization strategy, and
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stayed open to the possibility that the data would not support (in whole or in part) Fuller’s
initial theory and/or would go in a different direction. I also used colleagues—including
my dissertation chair and committee—to review my research design and drafts of my
findings and analysis to gather feedback on potential biases of which I am unaware
(Merriam, 2000).
To reduce participants’ potential sense of coercion, data collection activities were
scheduled to occur after participants had successfully completed all of their ITP program
requirements to reduce participants’ potential sense of coercion. Participants were also
informed in the Request for Participation (Appendix B) and Study Information Sheet
(Appendix C) that the data collected during the study (and their identities) would be kept
confidential. At the start of each interview (as well as on the Information Sheet),
participants were told that they were free to stop the interview at any point, skip a
question, or choose not to participate.
Limitations
The limitations of this study are those elements that might influence the findings
but are largely beyond control of the researcher.
First, because my study relied in large part on the reported concerns and meaning-
making of participants, the findings were de facto limited by the self-reflection and
observation skills of the participants, as well as their willingness and ability to be honest
and expressive in their written and verbal communications, before, during, and after their
ITP program.
Also, what students chose to disclose and produce during their first-term
foundations course may have been affected by their awareness that the documents they
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submitted would be reviewed (and, in some cases, graded) by the course instructors; and
that the final class discussions, conducted online in a whole group format and facilitated
by the course instructors, were being recorded. It is also possible that documents and
recordings from the foundations course may not fully represent the thoughts and opinions
of the participants regarding their concerns. These artifacts were not produced in
contemplation of this study and so, for example, do not include responses to direct
questions about what participants’ concerns were at a particular time.
Delimitations
Delimitations are characteristics of the study that are determined by the researcher
that limit the scope of the study. I have identified several areas of delimitation in my
study as designed, including: sample size, time frame, and data collection strategy.
Sample Size
As indicated above, the study sample was chosen from a small group within a
larger population of approximately 600 PSTs enrolled in ULearn’s MAT program. That
group (n=28) consisted of students who had completed one of two sections of the first-
term foundation course. This narrowing was necessitated by the study design and the
likelihood of finding data on PSTs’ early teaching concerns in the reflective artifacts
collected during two particular sections of that course. Within that small group, two PSTs
were selected for study because they met the selection criteria; voluntarily participated in
data-collection activities; and provided sufficient data from which to develop a case
study. Questions about the adequacy of the sample size in qualitative studies are
common. While their aim is not to be statistically generalizable, the sample must
nonetheless be empirically sound (Yin, 2014).
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Time Frame
The time frame during which this study was conducted also likely impacted data
quality in several ways. First, data collection took place at two points in time—during
the first term of the participants’ ITP program and immediately after their completion of
its requirements—rather than across the entire, 18-month ITP program (or beyond). As
Pigge and Marso (1997) argued, using this type of non-longitudinal approach raises
concerns about the reliability of findings regarding changes in teacher concerns over
time—an inherently longitudinal concept. While I attempted to mitigate the impact of
this timing issue by leveraging documentary and observational data collected
contemporaneous with participants’ experiences in their first term, the issue remained.
Second, my data collection approach included information generated at various
points of time during the participants’ first term of their ITP program—including, but not
limited to, participants’ response to a pre-course survey that was distributed just prior to
the first class (though after the reading list had been released and the texts made
available). As Haritos (2004) suggested, this strategy may not have fully captured the
participants’ teaching concerns prior to their encountering ITP curriculum.
Third, the time delay between the participants’ first term of the program and their
last may have created inaccuracies in the data collected during the interviews that were
conducted just after the participants completed the program, due to poor participant recall
(Yin, 2014). Prompting participants’ responses using data from their earlier work in the
foundations course may have mitigated some of the impact of poor recall, but was
unlikely to have entirely eliminated it

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Data Collection Strategy
Another study delimitation that became more evident during the process of data
analysis was one related to my data collection strategy. Because the bulk of evidence
collected in this study (documentary and observational) was derived from participants’
first-term foundations course, the data is heavily skewed toward their thoughts and
insights related to their experiences in that course. For example, as described in the case
studies below, the nature of a number of their concerns—and the language the PSTs used
to describe them—clearly reflected the topics and readings of the explicitly social justice-
oriented foundations course. Moreover, while the interviews conducted after their third
(and final) term of ITP included much broader questions about their teaching concerns at
that point in time, they also included inquiries about participants’ reflections on specific
evidence of concerns they had expressed during the foundations course and their
perceptions regarding changes their concerns during and since that time. Consequently,
the data corpus may not have captured teaching concerns that the participants held and
expressed contemporaneous with other courses and experiences they had during the first
term of ITP (e.g., classes in teaching methods, technology in the classroom). Nor may
they fully reflect the broader gamut of teaching concerns that arose—and possibly
subsided—during the entirely of their ITP experience.
Summary
In summary, I designed and conducted this qualitative research study using a case
study approach, informed by my conceptual framework. I used data from artifacts,
observations, and interviews to better understand PSTs’ concerns about teaching at the
beginning and end of a particular, graduate-level ITP program, and how the participants
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make sense of their changing concerns. I purposefully selected two participants upon
which to develop the case study, using two criteria based on convenience, in order to
increase the likelihood of being able to obtain data on the phenomenon of preservice
teacher concerns. I then gathered and analyzed the data collected using a recursive
coding and categorization strategy. The completed dissertation reflects my findings, as
well as a revised conceptual framework..

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CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS
This study sought to explore the concerns of pre-service teachers during an
accelerated teacher preparation program. The findings of this study were intended to
provide insight for ITP programs and educators that might assist them in building
coursework and instructional practices that address the needs of PSTs as they learn to
teach.
The first three chapters of this dissertation included an introduction to the
problem, a review of selected literature on teacher concerns, and a description of the
research methods used in this study. In this chapter, I present the findings of my
research, based on the data that was collected and analyzed in order to respond to three
research questions: What concerns did PSTs express (if any) related to teaching during
the first term of their accelerated ITP program? What concerns did PSTs express (if any)
related to teaching at the end of their accelerated ITP program? How did PSTs make
sense of the changing nature of their concerns?
This chapter contains two separate case studies of individuals who completed the
ITP program under study: Anne and Beth. Each case study includes a description of the
participant’s background and the key concerns that she felt at the start of her ITP program
and immediately following its conclusion. The second section of this chapter includes a
cross-case analysis of the study findings, illuminated by the teacher concerns research
discussed in Chapter Two.
The findings of this study indicate that the concerns of these pre-service teachers
can be categorized into five themes or clusters. Arranged for convenience, and not in
order of importance, weight, or intensity, they include: classroom management; parental
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involvement; administrative support; lesson planning and delivery; and student learning.
The nature and timing of each PST’s individual concerns varied, and provided only
partial support for Fuller’s phased-concerns theory. Several mediating factors—
including their individual characteristics, as well as the ITP coursework and fieldwork
placements they encountered during their training—appeared to influence the PSTs’
concerns in various ways.
Case Study #1: Anne
Background
At the time of her enrollment in the ITP program, Anne was a Caucasian female
in the 26- to 30-year-old age range, who was living on the West Coast of the US. She
was the married parent of a young child. She had completed her Bachelor of Arts in
Mathematics (with a concentration in teaching secondary math) just a month before
starting ITP, having taken time off during her college career to work and have a family.
Anne was seeking a single-subject credential in mathematics.
Prior to starting the program, Anne taught preschool for more than ten years. Her
goal, however, had always been to teach middle school math. “Math gets a bad rap,” she
said, especially in middle school. “An enthusiastic, effective teacher can make all the
difference.”
For her first-term observations, Anne was placed in a seventh grade math
classroom at the local middle school—interestingly, the same school she had attended as
a student. She remained at that school for both terms of guided practice (her second and
third terms of ITP), and was hired to teach seventh grade math there full-time starting the
next fall.
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When Anne joined the ITP program, she expected it to prepare her for the
challenges of transitioning from teaching preschool to teaching secondary math—and to
help her learn to leverage her prior work and life experience (including parenting, which
she considered “huge form of teaching”) for the benefit of her pupils. She believed that
the challenges of teaching middle school would be “similar” to those she faced in
preschool, despite the fact that the students would be at a different developmental stage
and the curriculum more complex. She was also aware that the class sizes would be
significantly different. The teacher-student ratio in preschool had been six to one, she
reported, whereas in her secondary classroom, she would be the “sole teacher
responsible” for four times as many students.
Key Areas of Concern
During the course of her ITP program, Anne identified concerns in five areas
related to teaching, including: classroom management; parental involvement;
administrative support; lesson planning and delivery; and student learning. (Table 5).
The nature of some of her concerns changed during ITP; others did not. What follows is
a description of the nature and timing of Anne’s concerns within each of these categories;
how her concerns changed (if at all) from the start of the program to the end; and how
Anne made sense of those changes.
Table 5. Anne’s Teaching Concerns

Category Concerns
Classroom
management
Handling student misbehavior*

Parental
involvement
Fostering parental involvement
Wanting to be liked, and approved of, by parents
+

Administrative
support
Understanding decision-making rights*
Garnering support from school administrators
Lesson planning, Integrating students’ “funds of knowledge” into math lessons*
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Category Concerns
delivery Coping with pressures around standards, standardized testing*
Teaching in front of the classroom*
Having time for reflection, consulting with colleagues
Finding time to grade papers
+

Student learning Fostering a positive classroom environment
Building personal relationships with students
Serving diverse learner needs
Demonstrating cultural competence*
Notes
* Indicates a change in nature of this concern during ITP
+ Indicates a concern that arose after the first term of ITP

Classroom management. One area of concern for Anne throughout her ITP
experience was classroom management—in particular, her ability to effectively address
student misbehavior, especially in larger classes than she had been used to.
At the start of ITP. As she began her ITP program, Anne wanted to be seen as an
“excellent classroom manager.” She wanted to learn “how to both manage the class as a
whole and engage with individuals.”
During her first-term classroom observations, Anne expressed apprehension about
her ability to handle student misbehavior. From the back of the classroom, she reported,
“I saw some things that shouldn’t have happened” (e.g., students poking one another with
sharp pencils, off-topic chatting) that the teacher at the front of the room appeared not to
notice. She worried that it would not be possible for her, as a teacher alone in the
classroom, to “have eyes and ears everywhere” and catch all student misdeeds. In her
written reflections, Anne suggested that the only solution might be to keep students so
completely engaged in the lessons that “nothing happens”—a task she recognized as
“nearly impossible,” especially with seventh graders.
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Anne also worried about her ability to control a classroom with four times as
many students as she had had in her previous role as a preschool instructor—and doing so
without other colleagues immediately available to help. She wondered how it would be
possible to “juggle so many different personalities in one classroom.”
At the end of ITP. After completing her ITP program, Anne reported feeling
more confident in her ability to manage a classroom. She felt buoyed by praise from her
principal and master teacher, who had both complimented her management skills. Her
concern over having to work with so many different personalities at the same time had
also lessened. “I’m not even intimidated,” she said. ‘After dealing with all kinds of
different personalities and succeeding” in guided practice, she reported, “I feel more
comfortable with all the kids.” At the same time, she predicted that her concerns about
classroom management would “still always be there.”
Anne also felt more confident in her ability to effectively respond to student
disciplinary issues—a shift she attributed to the experience she had gained during guided
practice as well. Though she had not been able to eliminate behavior problems in her
classroom entirely, she admitted, she still felt buoyed by seeing the positive impact her
attempts had made, and the support and suggestions she had received from her guiding
teacher.
Anne also began to use her earlier experience with young children to gain insight
into her middle school students. She realized that junior high students threw “fits just
like four-year-olds,” but in different ways. She understood that the challenge was first to
understand their behavior, and then to find the best response.
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There's always a reason for their behavior, and I like to dig down deep and figure
out what it is, because just like a four‑year‑old there's a reason why [they’re]
doing this. "Tell me about your idea," is my first thought. "Tell me about your
idea. What are you thinking here?"
At the same time, Anne worried about her ability to respond effectively to student
misbehavior the next fall as an in-service teacher—especially without her guiding teacher
there to help. She was also searching to find the balance between being strict and being
respectful and kind, so that the classroom environment would feel safe for her students.
I will be in charge of my own classroom, and I won't have my master teacher with
me to help with anything, should it arise. That's concerning for me, for sure. [I’m
worried about] student misbehavior and not knowing how to handle it properly, or
maybe saying something that I shouldn't without reflecting on it first. Being able
to, again, manage all the personalities in the classroom and finding that balance
between being strict and knowing, so that they know the expectations and the
consequences if those expectations are broken. [I want to be] respectful and kind
and making sure that it's a safe and positive environment. It's hard finding that
balance for me. I want them to like me as a teacher, but I want them to know that
there are expectations, and I expect them to follow them. [Having to find] that
balance [in] the first week of school really freaks me out.
In sum, the nature of Anne’s early concerns regarding classroom management
seemed to shift as she gained more experience and support. While she was still nervous
about becoming an in-service teacher, and finding the best approach to handling student
discipline, by the end of ITP she was more confident about her ability to do so.
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Parental involvement. Anne was also concerned about her ability to foster
parent engagement with their children’s education, and later, about gaining parents’
approval.
At the start of ITP. In her pre-class survey, Anne believed it was important for
parents to be involved in their children’s education, and for them to clearly understand
the behavioral expectations for their children at school, and the consequences for failing
to meet them. At the same time, she worried about “setting boundaries” with parents, and
felt “a real nervousness” about “how to talk to parents and how often.” She wanted to be
sure that the parents would be “behind” her on disciplinary issues.
Toward the end of her first-term observations, Anne also wondered about whether
or not middle school parents would even be interested in being involved their children’s
math classes. She worried that parents’ attention would wane once their children had
completed elementary school.
Do parents of middle school students really want to be involved in their child’s
math instruction and design?? I feel like parents are so busy in their jobs and own
lives that after elementary school, parent involvement goes by the wayside a little.
It could be a mixture of both parents’ trust in teachers to provide their kids with
the education they need and they feel like they aren’t really needed, or they just
don’t want to or don’t have the time to be involved.
Anne began to think of “creative” ways to “bring parents in” and facilitate parent
involvement at the middle school level through active communications. She thought of
maintaining an online discussion forum “where parents suggest ideas for instruction, [and
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could participate in] polls and open discussions about what their children are learning and
how their ‘funds of knowledge’ can be incorporated into the topics.”
At the end of ITP. During guided practice, Anne discovered that parents did, in
fact, want to be involved. Her focus had, instead, shifted toward wanting to involve
them in a “positive way” and making sure that she was able to meet both their (and their
children’s) needs. In fact, her concern had now “switched” toward wanting parents’
approval.
I worry about pleasing parents. I want parents to be pleased with me. I'm just
scared, overall, being a first‑year teacher because I don't want parents to think,
"Oh, she doesn't know what she's doing. My child should be in a different class." I
worry about what parents think of me as a teacher, and I don't want to disappoint
them.
In short, Anne’s interest in garnering parent support for her work in the
classroom—evident at both the start and end of ITP—seemed to shift from wanting to
engage parents around instructional and disciplinary issues to seeking affirmation from
them of her own efficacy as an instructor.
Administrative support. Another area of concern for Anne was her relationship
with school (and district) administrators—in particular, understanding her decision-
making rights and ensuring administrative support for her work as a classroom teacher.
At the start of ITP. As she began her ITP program, Anne was concerned with
what she called the “politics” of education. She wanted to know where she stood in the
educational system in which she would be working—specifically: “where I am in it,
where I belong. In what part can I have a voice?” She felt it was important for her
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understand her rights as a classroom teacher in relation to school (and district)
administrators, and which decisions she would be allowed to make. She was particularly
fearful of “crossing boundaries” when it came to discipline and classroom management.
She wanted to be certain that district and school administrators would stand behind her
when she enforced behavioral policies and procedures, regardless of whether she or the
district had put them in place.
Anne was also concerned about what she viewed as inconsistencies in the
behavior of school administrators, and times she felt they should have stepped in to
support teachers, but did not.
I've seen a few inconsistencies with administration, where the principal and vice
principal don't agree or they don't step in maybe when they should. Or they're not
standing behind their teachers as well as they should. I've seen a few instances of
that. Not serious ones, but ones where I thought maybe they should have stepped
in and backed up the teacher a little bit. That is cause for concern a little bit.
In short, at the start of her program, Anne seemed wary of the degree to which she
could administrators would be involved in supporting her as a classroom teacher.
At the end of ITP. After completing her ITP program, Anne reported that the
concerns she had had previously about the decision-making rights of teachers had
diminished. Also, while she was “not entirely pleased” by what she had seen during
guided practice, her general concerns about school leadership had also lessened. She
attributed the change to the experience she had gained during ITP. “Having gone through
the [ITP] program, and attended these meetings, and [getting] to meet the faculty and
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administration, I don't think [decision-making rights] is so much of a concern for me
now. I get it.”
Nonetheless, she still had specific concerns about the lack of guidance and
support administrators had given to teachers in the math department, who were not
unified around a new curriculum to be implemented the following year. This situation
was of particular interest to her, as it concerned both the curriculum and the colleagues
she would be working with as a newly hired, in-service teacher at the same school in the
fall.
In short, Anne’s concerns about what she could expect from school administrators
shifted during ITP, though she was still cautious and aware of issues she might need to
address in the future.
Lesson planning and delivery. Another area of concern for Anne was her
ability to successfully plan and deliver the type of creative, engaging lessons she had
envisioned at the start of the program.
At the start of ITP. From the start, Anne was clear about her desire to teach in a
way that was antithetical to how her middle school math instructor had taught her in
class.
When I teach, I take into consideration how I was taught math [in junior high],
and I try to do the opposite. . . . I just remember being in my desk the whole time .
. . It was just basic teacher‑led discussions. [The teacher’s procedure was]: “I’m
going to write stuff on the board. You’re going to copy it down. We’ll try a few
problems, and then we’re going to do it again.” . . . It was so boring . . . rote
memorization. I don't want to do that.
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Instead, Anne wanted to deliver lessons that were creative, energizing, and
“amusing.” She wanted students to enjoy math, and understand its importance in their
lives. It was also important to Anne to be well prepared and enthusiastic about the
subject matter. She did not want to be the type of new teacher who “stalled” her students’
success by being “unsure, unprepared, and timid.”
While Anne was confident that she “knew math,” she wanted to learn how to
teach it an “engaging” way and discover “lots of different ways to show everything I
know about the subject.” She thought that learning to teach in a way that was different
from how she was taught would be a “challenge,” but nonetheless held it as her goal.
As the first term progressed, Anne became concerned about how to build bridges
between the math curriculum and her learners’ individual needs and interests. She
wondered how she would “squeeze” into her math lessons some connection to students’
pre-existing “funds of knowledge” from their own experience and culture (Moll, Amanti,
Neff, & González, 2005)—especially when she had a pre-planned curriculum to follow,
specific standards to cover, and required skills to practice. She had observed classroom
teachers feeling pressure to teach Common Core and prepare students for standardized
tests, and not seeming to have time to include anything else.
Anne also reported that, while she enjoyed the reflective work that was central to
the first-term ITP curriculum, she thought it would be a challenge to make time to slow
down and reflect in the midst of a teaching day. During her observations, she “witnessed
the lack of formative reflection time available to the teacher during each class period, as
well as transitions between classes.” She also worried about not having time to solicit
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another colleague’s perspective before deciding on appropriate action, given the many
time constraints.
At the end of ITP. At the end of the program, Anne felt that she had successfully
distanced herself from the kind of teaching she wanted to avoid.
I remember that [at the start of my first ITP] semester I was really worried about
[whether I was] going to be able to teach a different way. But now I can't imagine
standing up there like a sage on the stage and just talking and having my students
write notes. That sounds terrible, and I would never do that. That first semester I
was really worried that I would be that person, but I [have] had so much
information and experience throughout this year and a half that I can't wait to not
be that person.
Anne also reported that she had found it much easier than she had anticipated to
create lessons that encouraged students to leverage what they already knew in order to
build math skills.
There are so many resources out there that I don't really have an excuse. Looking
at it now, I think it is a lot easier to be able to do that. There's a group of kids who
I know I'm getting next year who are really into skateboarding, and I want to do
something with skateboarding because I know they'll get a kick out of it. . . . It's a
lot easier than I anticipated.
Anne also felt more confident overall in her ability to deliver effective lessons.
She believed she could now develop and implement “pretty good” lesson plans, knowing
she could reflect and modify them if necessary. She reported that her guiding teacher had
allowed her to take some risks with more creative lessons during guided practice. While
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some of her experiments had not worked, Anne acknowledged, she had experienced more
successes than failures, and that had helped build her confidence.
Anne also reported feeling more comfortable standing in front of the classroom
and teaching. In her first term of guided practice, she confessed, “I was a nervous wreck.
. . . I was just so, so nervous to stand in front of the class.” Teaching middle school for
the first time, she acknowledged, was “a bit scary.” Anne expressed gratitude to her
guiding teacher for having confidence in her and pushing her to take over the classes
sooner than Anne might have otherwise. “It really took a jumping in and taking over just
for me to feel comfortable,” she reported. The more she taught, she said, the more
confident she felt.
She was also less concerned about handling the pressure to cover Common Core
standards and prepare students for standardized testing. She still worried about having to
go “too fast” in her instruction, in order to meet the expectations of school administrators
for high student scores. (During guided practice, her guiding teacher had warned her that
they did not have much time to try more creative lessons because of the focus on test
preparation.) After completing the ITP program, Anne also realized that having a
standardized curriculum in the math department had been helpful, since teachers had not
previously been “on the same page” and had not even been using the same textbooks. She
also came to understand that administrators were interested higher student scores on
standardized tests because they wanted to be able to offer honors math classes to more
students, an outcome she saw as a positive. “I don't know how responsible I am for that,”
she said, so she was not sure about “how much I should really stress over that. . . . I
haven't really started yet so maybe I'll know more in August.”
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Looking ahead to the next year—her first as an in-service teacher—Anne still
worried about having enough time to reflect and consult colleagues before adjusting her
practice. Nonetheless, she pledged to do so as much as she could. “It may be hard,” she
said, especially during the first month or so. “I’ll be too nervous,” she predicted. She also
voiced a new time-related concern: having enough time to grade student work—a task
she had only partially done as a student teacher. “It’s hard to imagine finding time to
grade 120 student papers,” she noted.
In short, Anne’s initial concerns about delivering effective instruction eased as
she gained more experience during ITP, and she felt more confident in her ability to
avoid teaching the way she had been taught. Nonetheless, she did express some
trepidation about facing the challenges of having her own classroom as a full-time math
teacher in the fall, and having setting the tone and boundaries from the first day of school.
Student learning. Anne was concerned with her ability to meet her students’
diverse learning needs at both the start and end of her ITP program, though her
perspective on how to do so changed along the way.
At the start of ITP. In her pre-class survey, Anne wrote that she wanted “to reach
every student individually, both academically and personally, so I can help him/her grasp
and relate to the material.” She did not want her students to suffer through the same
experience that she had had in junior high math class
I remember . . . being super confused in my desk, but not wanting to ask a
question because I was so stupid and crying, just sitting there crying in my desk
trying not to look dumb, because I didn't want to ask a question. The teacher
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really had to move on . . . You get to a point where you feel you can't ask for help
because you're beyond it. It feels embarrassing.
She sought, instead, to be a teacher who was kind and respectful to her students, who put
their needs first and ensured that the learning environment was comfortable enough for
every pupil to ask all of his or her questions.
She also understood that it was her responsibility as a teacher to “empower
children” and set up a positive classroom environment “where [students] felt physically
and emotionally safe;” had fun; were eager to interact with one another and the teacher;
and were not afraid make mistakes. Anne saw the importance of building personal
relationships with her students, so that she could serve their individual needs and help
them connect what they already knew with the math curriculum. “Teaching is not
telling,” she wrote. “Teaching is building relationships and making connections to
[students’] ideas.” She thought she might be able to get to know her students on a
personal level by asking questions and genuinely caring about them.
During her first-term foundations class, Anne also recognized that her previous
understanding of “multicultural education” had been too limited. “What hit me hardest”
during the first term, she reported during the last class session, was that she used to think
multicultural meant “Taco Tuesday,” or incorporating literature from different cultures
into her lessons. She admitted to having been puzzled about how to do that in a math
class. By the end of the first term, though, Anne understood that a teacher’s “cultural
competence” has a direct bearing on students’ academic performance and her ability to
make knowledge meaningful to them—a pathway she embraced.
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When I used to think about Multicultural education before this class, the first
thing that popped into my head was integrating literature from different cultures
into the classroom, to create a more diverse curriculum. However, multicultural
education is so much more than that. Multicultural education makes a link
between classroom experiences and students’ everyday lives. . . . Multicultural
education allows for connections to be made in spirited discussions . . . and
portrays to the kids that knowledge is meaningful and empowering and something
to be valued, not something to be memorized and regurgitated for a test.
Anne was also concerned about her ability to create successful math experiences
for all types of learners. She worried that the student body at her observation school was
not more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, so that she could watch, document,
and practice what she was learning in her ITP classes about serving the needs of
culturally diverse learners. She also wanted more hands-on experience with students with
special learning needs—including students with disabilities, English language learners,
and gifted pupils—so that she would be better prepared to serve and accommodate them
in her classroom as well.
At the end of her first-term foundations course, Anne noticed that her view of the
role of a teacher had changed during the term.
Before this class, my idea of a teacher was focused mainly on the physical
strategies and methods of the teachers to effectively “manage” or class and feed
their knowledge to students. After this course, I’ve come to see teachers on more
of an ideological perspective, emphasizing the importance of culturally relevant
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instruction, and organizing curriculum around powerful ideas and concepts that
the students themselves construct.
Her view of teaching had also shifted, she reported.
Teaching is not telling, teaching is building relationship with students and making
connections to their ideas. . . . There is more to teaching than knowing the
content, and lecturing it. I love what [the professor] said about transitioning from
a student to a teacher: “I’m no longer responsible for just my own learning, but
I’m responsible for all my students’ learning as well.” That’s huge. I now see the
importance of focusing on learning rather than teaching and valuing student
feedback; asking your students, “are you learning? What are you learning? How
could I help you more?” This is golden.
In short, Anne’s perspective on student learning—and her role as a teacher in
facilitating that process—seemed to develop during her first term of ITP through her
interactions with coursework and classroom observations.
At the end of ITP. At the end of her ITP experience, Anne reported that she had
an even better understanding of the need to develop personal relationships with her
pupils.
[It is important to] really get to know each personality so I know whether they
understand, whether they're engaged, whether they're not comfortable. I really
want to know where they are as a learner and as a student, and everybody is so
different in their ways. They're all trying to find themselves in this seventh grade
chaos.
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She had also gained a more holistic view of how multiculturalism relates to
student learning in the classroom.
It's about knowing [each] student as a person and bringing that into the classroom.
I see it as making sure that every student is speaking in the classroom. . . .
Whether it's something personal they're bringing into their academics, or just
talking about how they may have solved a problem, a different strategy they used.
Just making sure that they count in the classroom, and that they know that they're
valued. Whatever they bring from their home life is valued, that we respect their
ideas.
Anne admitted, however, that differentiating instruction for so many students in
her classroom would still be a challenge.
I do not know if I will succeed in this task or not, but I have every intention to try.
My main concern is that there are so many students [in] one classroom and to be
able to utilize each and everyone’s funds of knowledge throughout the course of
the year seems like a hefty task. . . . I will only truly know if it works when I test
it out through trial and error (and reflection!).
Anne also remained concerned that she had not had enough experience and
exposure to culturally diverse pupils, or students with special needs, at the school site
where she had done both her observations and guided practice. She worried that she
might not know how to conduct herself in an educational setting with a more diverse set
of learners, and considered taking additional classes to address this gap.
In short, Anne’s understanding of the importance of advancing student learning in
her teaching practice seemed to deepen during the ITP program, though she noted with
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regret that she had not had the opportunity to gain experience with a more diverse student
population.
Summary
In summary, the case study of Anne shows that the nature of many of her early
concerns shifted as she gained more experience and support during guided practice.
Several others came to the fore later in that same developmental process. An analysis of
the nature and timing of Anne’s concerns in relation to those expressed by Beth, as well
those reported in previous research studies, is included later in this Chapter in the cross-
case analysis.
Case Study #2: Beth
Background
At the time of her ITP enrollment, Beth was an Hispanic female, who was also in
the 26- to 30-year-old age range, and who had recently moved from the West Coast to the
East Coast of the US. She was the married parent of two young children. She had
completed her undergraduate degree in Sociology six years prior to starting ITP. She was
seeking a multiple-subject teaching credential to teach kindergarten.
Before she started the program, Beth had already had an array of teaching
experiences. She had worked with older children as a tutor at a high-needs high school; a
literacy coach for at-risk students ages 6-18; and a sports and life coach for preadolescent
girls in an after-school program. She had also worked with younger children (ages 6
weeks to 12 months) as preschool teacher for two and a half years. At the time her ITP
began, Beth had been working for a year as a special education (SPED) assistant in a
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resources classroom for children with autism, grades K-1. She continued to serve in that
role during her first term of ITP.
Beth conducted her first-term observations in a general education, kindergarten
classroom at a diverse elementary school in a rural area. She completed her first term of
guided practice at that same school. For the second term of guided practice, however,
Beth was placed at a different school in a less rural area.
Beth reported that she chosen to work with kindergartners to help them to “start
out on the right foot,” especially those who had had “traumatic beginnings” before they
enrolled in school. She was inspired to have her own classroom by the early childhood
educator she had worked with as a SPED aide, and seeing the positive impact that teacher
had made on her young pupils.
At the conclusion of her ITP program, Beth was looking for a job in a general
education kindergarten classroom, but had not yet found a position. She described
finding employment as a teacher as her “main worry” at that point.
Like Anne, Beth expected that during her ITP program, she would not only gain
the skills, knowledge, and understanding she would need to be a “great teacher,” but
would also “learn how to use the skills I have already acquired to my advantage to
improve student learning.”
Key Areas of Concern
As she progressed through her ITP program, Beth was concerned about issues in
same areas as Anne: class management; parental involvement; administrative support;
lesson planning and delivery; and student learning. (Table 6). However, in addition to
being fewer in number, the nature of Beth’s concerns seemed to shift to a lesser degree
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than Anne’s during ITP. What follows is a description of the nature and timing of Beth’s
concerns within each category; how her concerns changed (if at all) from the start of the
program to the end; and how Beth made sense of those changes.
Table 6. Beth’s Teaching Concerns

Category Concerns
Classroom
management
Handling student misbehavior

Parental involvement Fostering parental involvement

Administrative support

Garnering support from school administrators+

Lesson planning,
delivery
Coping with pressure around standardized testing+
Managing instructional time+
Student learning Creating a positive classroom environment
Serving diverse learner needs
Satisfying IEP requirements*
Building personal relationships with students
Demonstrating cultural competence
Notes
* Indicates a change in nature of this concern during ITP
+ Indicates a concern that arose after the first term of ITP

Classroom management. As with Anne, classroom management was an area of
particular interest to Beth at both the beginning and the end of her ITP program.
At the start of ITP. Early in her ITP program, Beth (like Anne) was concerned
about responding appropriately to student misbehavior. While she understood the
importance of resolving behavior issues promptly, she believed that reacting too quickly,
without taking time to understand the situation and the individual students involved,
could lead to solutions that were impossible to maintain. Instead, she believed she should
understand each child in order to determine the appropriate response.
I needed to gain their trust and confidence, so they are comfortable enough to
communicate with me (verbally or non-verbally). . . . They may not be feeling
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well and are not able to express it, so they may begin to turn away from a lesson
and exhibit behavior of avoidance. It’s my job to be able to distinguish if it is in
fact just avoidance or they are coming down with a cold. Perhaps, they didn’t get
enough sleep the night before or there was a change in their morning routine.
Like Anne, Beth felt it was important to listen to a child’s own reasoning for his
behavior. “Sometimes their reasoning is more rational than we expect,” she wrote.
Beth found nothing that “shocked or surprised” her during her observations of a
general education kindergarten classroom during ITP—especially compared to her
previous experience and concurrent work as a SPED aide. She had a pragmatic view of
classroom management. “No matter how much we think we’re in control of our
classroom and [have] it set up for success in every possible [way],” she wrote, “problems
always arise somehow, and it’s up to us to figure out a way of resolving the issue.”
“Every day is new,” she opined, and “will not go as planned.”
Beth offered two stories to illustrate what she had experienced and learned during
her SPED work by way of comparison to her ITP observation experience. In the first,
one of her non-verbal students with autism had become agitated and belligerent, and
threw furniture across the room and struck Beth. After she was able to calm the child and
analyze the situation, Beth discovered that there had been a change in the child’s routine
that day that had likely triggered the upset. With that understanding, she said, she could
view the situation differently rather than simply being upset and reacting to the child’s
misbehavior.
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On a separate occasion, another one of her non-verbal students with autism had
refused to return to the school bus after a field trip. Rather than trying to force her to
comply, Beth allowed the student to “show” her what she needed.
Initially, she agreed to get on the bus but became easily distracted from the
school’s cafeteria, since we had to pass by it on the way out. It was a new
environment for her. I didn’t run after her, but I calmly followed her to see what
she was going to do or where she was going. I know she likes to cook and she
was watching the workers in the kitchen. I joined her for a moment, but prompted
her with her clipboard of the bus icon again, and this time she reached for my
hand and led me outside to the bus.
In short, during the first term of ITP, Beth demonstrated a particular perspective
of classroom management, based on her prior experience and simultaneous work in a
resource classroom for students with autism.
At the end of ITP. At the end of her ITP program, Beth remained steadfast in her
commitment to manage the behavior of her kindergartners in a compassionate and
personalized way. She reported that, during her second term of guided practice, she had
“butted heads” with her guiding teacher over the teacher’s negative stance toward a group
of kindergarten students whom Beth knew were experiencing hardships outside of school.
Her guiding teacher had become frustrated with these students for not paying attention in
class and their rapid decline in academic performance. Beth believed that it was a
teacher’s job to provide students with a stable environment to go to every day, and not to
penalize students for situations at home that were impacting them at school.
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I felt like I had to remind her of everything that was going on at home and it's not
the child's fault, and it's our job because this is the only, I think, stable
environment that they go to every day. . . . She would say, “Well, I understand
that, but I just don’t understand how parents . . .” [I replied:] . . . “I don’t even
think they understand what’s going on right now with themselves or whatever
their situation is.” . . . [I told her:] “I think it’s our job to give the students the
best possible time with us and time here, because they're probably not even
having a good time, they probably don't even look forward to going home.”
Beth took it upon herself to accommodate the students’ needs by giving them
extra time to complete classwork and providing modified lessons that were less
challenging. She worked with each child individually on the reading, writing, and
counting skills that they had previously mastered but forgotten. She reassured the
students: “I know you’re tired. I know it’s hard right now at home. But you are smart,
and I want you to give me your best work. You are better than this. I know you can do
it.” She observed that it had taken the students three months to recover academically.
In sum, Beth came to the ITP program with a belief in the need to take an
individualized approach to managing student behavior. She continued to develop her
approach though her work with autistic children in the SPED classroom, and then in her
observations and guided practice with kindergartners.
Parental involvement. Beth also expressed a strong interest in involving parents
in their children’s education at both the beginning and end of her ITP program.
At the start of ITP. At the start of her ITP program, Beth believed parents played
“an absolute vital role in their child’s education.” She felt that the school-home
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partnership was critical to her students’ progress and success: “When a child sees that
their parent and teacher work and communicate cohesively, it makes a world of
difference.” She wanted to understand more about that relationship, and the differences
that might exist related to geography, race, socioeconomics, and access to resources.
Beth also anticipated that parental involvement might not be as active as she
would like at the start, and understood that it was up to her to make the effort to “attract”
parent interest. She thought of experimenting with different events to encourage
involvement.
I could do so by organizing a parent and student social night. It doesn’t have to
be formal, but to offer parents an opportunity to meet other parents and myself.
Hopefully, a level of comfort is formed and a community within our classroom
will evolve. It’s crucial to have the parent’s support, as it is more crucial for the
parent(s) to have my support.
She planned to reach out to parents from Day One, introducing herself and asking them to
complete a student interest questionnaire that would help her get to know her pupils
better. She then intended to maintain constant and consistent communication with
them—in both Spanish and English, as needed—to help foster greater understanding of
student activities and progress in the classroom. (Beth herself was bilingual.)
At the end of ITP. Beth continued to place importance on the need to foster
parental involvement during guided practice. In fact, she reported squabbling with her
guiding teacher, when the teacher became frustrated with a child whose parent had not
responded to letters home. Beth looked into the situation, and discovered that the child
was an English Language Learner who spoke Spanish at home. When she asked the
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teacher why she had not sent home communications that were in Spanish, the teacher
replied that she did not have a translator available. Beth suggested that the student might
have an older sibling at the school who could help, but the teacher said she did not time
to investigate. Beth’s concern and frustration were evident in her account of the
remainder of the conversation.
Beth: If you don't have time, then you don't let that student come on the field trip
and then they end up missing out. Who is that benefiting?
Teacher: [The student’s mother] could have emailed me.
Beth: What if they don't have a computer at home?
Teacher: Well, she could have called me.
Beth: She can't speak English. We're going in circles here.
On the other hand, Beth had seen a marked improvement in the schoolwork of
another troubled student, whose mother had initially refused to come to school for a
parent-teacher conference about her daughter’s progress—likely out of fear that she
would be questioned about the difficulties in their home life, Beth thought. When the
parent finally did come in, Beth was able to develop a relationship with her and provide
her with resources to help the child at home. Beth believed that made a difference in the
student’s subsequent improvements in academic performance.
In short, Beth’s strong interest in encouraging parental involvement seemed clear
at both the start and end of her ITP program. Her confidence in her position was evident
in the advocacy stance she took with her guiding teacher, and the results she saw.
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Administrative support. Beth’s concerns about school administrators arose
from negative experiences she encountered during guided practice at her second
placement site.
At the end of ITP. Beth reported that she had not felt concerned at all about
school administration—until her second term of guided practice. During her first two
terms (both at the same school), she saw the school’s leadership as organized and
communicative, and supportive of the classes for children with autism (and their
teachers).
She had a very different experience, however, in her second term of guided
practice at a second school site. There she found school administrators to be
disorganized, untimely in their communications, unresponsive to teacher needs, and
unprofessional. They told teachers who had come to them for support: “that’s not our
problem.” When there was a power failure at the school, she observed that school leaders
failed to provide teachers with guidance, and did not notify parents of the situation, as
Beth believed they should have. When students were sent to the cafeteria for cold
sandwiches at lunchtime, administrators did not ensure that accommodations were in
place for students with allergies to wheat, or those who were on the free or reduced lunch
program. She had also witnessed administrators bullying students during announcements
over the school’s public address system, and wearing what she felt was inappropriate
attire.
There were several instances and situations where, if I wasn't there as student
teacher and I was there just as a simple parent volunteer, I think I would have
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made several reports to the school district about the things that I had seen. Those
were the true concerns.
In sum, as Beth finished her ITP program, she was wary of school administrators
and the assistance they would provide to her as a teacher. She now understood that
having good administrative support was not “a given.” Though she was confident she
could manage without it, she said, the possibility of having to do so was concerning.
“Because of everything that I experienced through administration at this [second] school,
she said, “it just scares me. Those things scare me more than anything about experiencing
that at a potential new teaching job.”
Lesson planning and delivery. As with administrative support, Beth reported
that she did not feel concerned about her skills as an instructor until she was in her
second term of guided practice.
At the end of ITP. Beth felt that she had been able to “get into the swing of
things” during her first term of guided practice. She set up daily routines and became
more familiar with the students she had observed during the first term of her ITP. When
a lesson was not working, she would simply transition away before coming back to try it
again when she felt the students were ready and more focused.
During her second term of guided practice, Beth reported that she felt even more
comfortable taking the reins. She knew more about what to expect from her pupils, and
they knew what to expect from her. She understood from her own parenting experiences
and previous work with young children that consistent, predictable routines were
important—and had put routines in place, including morning announcements, greetings,
and writers’ workshop. She had also learned from working with her own son that young
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children were not going to remember everything—and that it was best to treat lapses as
“just forgetfulness,” rather than escalating the situation into a “pitched battle.”
Beth did, however, identify a new concern that arose during student teaching. She
discovered that managing her instructional time was a challenge for her. In the middle of
lessons, she said, “I found herself suddenly having to tell students to line up for PE.” She
understood that she would need to create reminders and set alarms for herself to help stay
on track during the day.
All throughout Guided Practice. I would lose track of time and be like, "Oh, we
have to go to PE. Line up quick," [laughs] while we're in the middle of doing
something. "Put your scissors down. Just leave your work on your seat. Let's line
up. All right, yellow table, blue table, line up. We've got to go to PE." I think
more than anything it's just time management, keeping an eye on time, me
preparing myself more for the time.
Beth also became concerned at her second school site about the pressure
administrators put on teachers to ensure high student scores on standardized tests—
something “unexpected” that she had not seen it at her previous schools. She was also
troubled by the inconsistent guidance they provided regarding the level of test scores
expected from kindergarteners—and their rebuff of teachers’ concerns about both the
expectations and the uncertainty. (This also added to her overall concern about school
administrators.)
In short, while Beth seemed to feel comfortable implementing instructional
routines in her kindergarten classroom, she became concerned about time management
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and handling stress related to standardized testing during her second term of guided
practice.
Student learning. Beth was committed to making a positive impact on student
learning from the start of her ITP program to the finish.
At the start of ITP. Like Anne, from the start of her ITP program, Beth was
concerned with her ability to foster a positive classroom environment—one in which
students felt safe to participate and not afraid to make mistakes. She wanted her
kindergartners to be excited to come to school, believing that every day would be an
“adventure.” She saw teacher’s role as being a “a cheerleader, rooting for each child to
succeed.” She wanted to help her students “navigate” their school experiences, and to
provide them the tools to learn, while “keeping their minds open to new things.” She also
understood from her own experience as a student that teachers set the tone and model the
behavior they expected from their pupils.
Beth expressed concern about her ability to meet the wide range of student needs
in a kindergarten classroom. Sensitized by her prior experience and concurrent work in
special education, Beth was apprehensive about her ability to differentiate instruction in a
general education class—in particular, to understand and fulfill the requirements of the
many different Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs) that her students might have,
while being the only teacher in the classroom.
I think [my concern is] just with a wide range of different IEPs, and students at
different levels, of differentiating and meeting all their goals that I set for them,
more than anything, and achieving that, because you're not going to have a class
full of students that are the same. You're not going to have a class where you do
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have the freedom in that time to be able to get what you want to get through in the
day, and the goals that you have for each group. Also, the fear of not having that
support . . . I think without it, more than anything, it terrifies me a little bit, but I
know it's not unusual at the same time.
Beth felt that her most important job as a teacher was to develop a social-
emotional bond with her students. “There’s more to a student than just correct answers or
problems,” she wrote. Knowing each student individually, she believed, and knowing
how they learn best, would help her develop lesson plans that were responsive to their
needs. She understood that “little things” could make a big difference—like making eye
contact, addressing students by name, and taking time to listen to whatever they had to
say—as could “10 minutes of tutoring, a smile, or a hug,” she wrote. During the first
term of ITP, she said, she deepened her understanding of the need to understand students
better and to come to know, and then leverage, her kindergartners’ existing “funds of
knowledge” (Moll et al., 2005).
From the start, Beth also reported that one of her most significant fears as a
teacher was not being “fully culturally aware and considerate” of students whose
backgrounds were different from her own. While she had had experience working with a
large Hispanic and Latino community (of which she was a member) when she was on the
West Coast, she said, she had noticed a greater diversity of names on student rosters in
schools on the East Coast. She felt it was critical to her teaching for her become more
familiar with the cultures of her students from other groups, including those from parts of
Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.
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Of particular concern to Beth was her ability to pronounce students’ names
correctly. By doing so, she felt she would demonstrate a mindfulness and respect for the
cultures of her students (and their families)—something she believed was important to
bring to the classroom, and was fundamental to her teaching.
I want to be able to say [the names] correctly . . . to be considerate and respectful
of their cultures and bring that in the classroom and how I'm teaching more than
anything, because I don't want to offend. I don't want a story to get back to a
parent where I've offended their family or their culture. That for me more than
anything was . . . one of my fears, something I had to learn basically just to be
mindful of.
Beth’s strong interest in continuing to develop her cultural competence may have
been linked, in part, to her negative experience of segregation in her sixth-grade
classroom when she was a student.
[My teacher] thought we [the only three Hispanic girls in the class] would be most
comfortable sitting next to each other because we could easily relate to each other.
I’m not exactly sure [why he thought] we would easily relate with each other just
because we had Spanish last names. I must admit [that] one of those girls is still
my best friend to this day, but I really didn’t share any of the same interests [with]
the other girls.
Beth still remembered the larger, negative impact the teacher’s decision had had
on the girls and the classroom climate.
It changed the way other students in our class behaved around us socially. [The
teacher] separating us from the rest of the class set the tone of how the rest of the
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class treated us socially and how they perceived us. It made me feel excluded. [I
did] not really understand the true reason why [it] bothered me [at the time]. . . .
It was definitely a confusing time for a child to have to go through at school, a
place where students are supposed to feel safe and comfortable.
At the end of ITP. At the end of her program, Beth reported that she was still
concerned about meeting the individual needs of pupils at various academic and
developmental levels. Even though she had now worked with students diagnosed with
various learning and emotional disabilities during guided practice in a general education
classroom, and with students with autism as a SPED aide, “that concern continues,” she
said. “It will never go away.” She understood that she would always have ‘different
students with different stories and different needs,’ and that she must continue to adapt.
“You can’t teach the same way to all students,” she said. “They’re not all going to learn
the same way.”
Beth also reported that she had discovered during guiding practice that students in
general education classrooms, like those in her special education class, might reveal their
needs in a variety of ways. For example, she had watched her guiding teacher observing
closely as a boy, who had recently arrived from Iran and spoke no English, silently
cleaned up after his classmates and put things away before getting into the lunch line with
the other students. Instead of scolding him for not following directions and being in the
lunch line on time, the teacher chose to appoint the child as her “cleaning helper” as a
way to help him immerse himself in, learn about, and contribute to the classroom.
Beth also said that she was not as concerned as she had been earlier about meeting
the requirements of various student IEP plans. Given her experiences in guided practice
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and the SPED classroom, she said, she felt comfortable that she would be ready—though
she would like to have support.
When the time comes and when it arises, I think, naturally it will hit me on how to go
about instructing those students and how to equally distribute and divide them into
groups according to where they are, on what level. . . . Touching on that, probably my
concerns would be more about support that I get, especially in the beginning.
Finally, at the end of her program, Beth continued express a strong interest in
modeling and fostering cultural sensitivity in her classroom. She was still worried about
mispronouncing the names of students—and of their parents. “When it comes to learning
names,” she said, “that's so important. I don't want to mess up a person's name because
that's so disrespectful when someone doesn't pronounce your name correctly when they're
calling on you.” She admitted that she had made a mistake in pronunciation during
guided practice, and was grateful that the student had corrected her.
Beth also realized that developing cultural competence was an ongoing process,
and that she must continuously learn about her students and their cultural backgrounds.
“While I don’t think I will ever be fully prepared,” she wrote, “I think continuing to stay
educated on social issues will help me stay informed.” Being mindful of individual
differences was also a broader issue, she realized. She reported, for example, that she
had learned during guided practice not to blow a whistle on the playground during recess
out of concern that it might upset the children of military families stationed at a nearby
base.
In short, having a positive impact on student learning was a consistent area of
focus and concern for Beth at both the start and end of her ITP program. While her
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worries about satisfying students’ IEP requirements waned, her strong interest in getting
to know her students, and demonstrating cultural awareness and sensitivity, persisted.
Summary
Beth came into the ITP program with a considerable degree of relevant teaching
experience, and seemed to utilize and supplement her prior knowledge through her
experiences in classroom observations and guided practice, as well in her concurrent
work as a SPED aide. The nature of most of the concerns she identified at the start of her
program did not seem to change—though she did report an increased comfort level with
meeting IEP requirements, and identified new concerns that arose from her experiences at
her second school placement site.
In the next section, I will compare and contrast Anne’s and Beth’s teaching
concerns, and discuss these findings in relation to the larger body of literature on teacher
concerns.
Cross-Case Analysis

In this section I present a cross-case analysis of the findings of this study and how
they compare and contrast with prior research on teacher concerns. The analysis is
divided into three sections: types and timing of concerns; changes in concerns over time;
and mediating factors that may have influenced the nature and timing of the PSTs’
concerns.
Types and Timing of Concerns
As illustrated in the case studies above, both Anne and Beth articulated various
types of concerns in five categories, including: classroom management; parental
involvement; administrative support; lesson planning and delivery; and student learning.
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Within these categories, however, the nature of their concerns was not always uniform.
Nor did the timing of their concerns always match Fuller’s predictions of when such
concerns would arise. Also, in addition to being fewer in number, Beth’s concerns did
not seem to shift as much as Anne’s did during the course of the ITP program, and often
seemed indicative a more advanced stage of teacher development.
Classroom management. Both Anne and Beth expressed concerns about their
ability to handle student misbehavior appropriately. However, the nature of their
concerns differed.
Many of Anne’s initial concerns focused on her own adequacy as a teacher in
handling disciplinary issues. She fretted, for example, about being able to maintain
control of classes that were larger than she had been used to, and having to do so by
herself. During first-term observations, she worried about her ability to catch and correct
the myriad of student misbehavior she had witnessed from the back of the room, and was
troubled by the possibility that she would say something wrong. She was unsure of how
to balance her desire to be kind to (and to be liked by) her students with the need to set
and enforce behavioral boundaries. She hoped that by offering students interesting
lessons she might be able to focus students’ attention on classwork rather than on each
other, and thus minimize the number of misdeeds she had to address.
Anne’s early concerns seem consonant with Fuller’s (1969) predictions that
teachers in training would concentrate on themselves and their own adequacy and
professional survival when they first encountered classrooms from a teacher’s
perspective. On Borich’s (1996) TCC survey instrument—developed to measure
concerns predicted in Fuller’s phased-concerns theory—teachers are asked how
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concerned they are about their “ability to maintain appropriate degree of control” and
“getting students to behave” (pp. 672-673), both of which are scored as part of Fuller’s
early (Self) cluster of concerns. (Appendix A). Borich (1996) noted in his textbook on
effective teaching methods that the major focus of PSTs’ planning efforts during the
initial phase of teaching is typically on handling behavior issues, until novices begin to
feel more comfortable with day-to-day classroom management and can to turn their
attention toward improving their teaching skills.
On the other hand, Beth’s concerns about student misbehavior seem more
indicative of a teacher further along in her development. Rather than worrying about her
ability to identify and respond to student misdeeds, Beth was interested in what she might
learn from behavior issues about the socio-emotional and academic needs of individual
students. Though she understood the need to address misbehavior promptly, Beth was
also committed to taking time to better understand the child and the situation before
acting, so that her response could be appropriately tailored and more sustainable over the
long term. The examples she gave from her SPED experiences with children with autism
illustrate this perspective, as did her pushback on the guiding teacher during the last term
of her ITP program over how to handle the academic failings of students recently
traumatized by events outside of school. “Polite antagonism,” observed Guillaume and
Rudney (1993) is a good indicator of a student teacher’s growing confidence in her own
stance and unwillingness to accept without question other teachers’ positions on issues of
practice.
By the end of the program, Anne, too, had recognized the importance of looking
for the reasons behind students acting out, and reported feeling more confident in her
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ability to handle student discipline issues. She was still worried about being liked and
setting boundaries, however, particularly without the support of her guiding teacher.
There is no evidence that Anne advocated an alternative approach to discipline (or other
issues) with other teachers’ during her ITP.
Parental involvement. Both PSTs were concerned about getting parents
involved in their children’s education. As a practical matter, however, Anne was initially
apprehensive about approaching parents to discuss their children’s performance issues,
and worried about both setting and crossing boundaries, and the possibility of getting into
trouble herself on disciplinary issues. She also worried about whether parents would
even want to be involved. Later, she worried about whether or not parents liked her and
were pleased with her work. These concerns seem indicative of Fuller’s early phase of
development, as they focus more on Anne herself and her fears about taking on the role
of a middle school math teacher, rather than on her students’ learning experience. In fact,
“appearing competent to parents” is included as a Self concern on Borich’s (1996) TCC
instrument. (Appendix A).
Beth, on the other hand, spoke specifically about building personal relationships
with parents in order to increase her students’ opportunity for success in school. The two
stories she told about reaching out to parents and advocating for inclusion demonstrated
her confidence in taking action in accordance with her views. She also understood that
the individual needs of parents (e.g., language of home communications, correct
pronunciation of names) must be taken into account as purposefully as those of her
students, if the school-family partnership were to be successful. Thus, Beth’s stance
seems indicative of a later stage of teacher development—one focused on student
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learning rather than simply doing it right and getting affirmation and approval.
(Alternatively, Beth’s concerns about the possibility of parents displeased with her for
disrespecting their culture could also be viewed as Self-centered.)
Administrative support. Both Anne and Beth identified concerns regarding the
level of support and guidance they could expect to receive as classroom teachers from
school administrators. Early in her program, Anne wanted to know where she stood; how
much voice she would have as a teacher; and whether or not she would receive
administrative backing and support for the actions she took and the work she did as a
classroom teacher.
Beth, too, was concerned the unsupportive and unprofessional conduct of school
administrators that she had witnessed in the last term of her program—and its negative
impact on students, as well as teachers. So much so that she elevated it to the top of her
list of concerns as she looked toward to in-service teaching the next fall.
Fuller hypothesized that PSTs’ concerns related school administrators would
occur early in teacher training, concomitant with their fears about being observed and
favorably evaluated, and their desire to be seen and respected as professional educators.
On Borich’s (1996) TCC tool, for example, concerns regarding “teaching effectively
when another teacher is present,” “obtaining favorable evaluation of my teaching,” and
“what the principal might think if there is too much noise in my classroom” are all
categorized as early (Self) concerns. (Appendix A). Fuller and Case (1972) noted the
desire of novice teachers early in their training to know where they fit in the educational
systems into which they had newly been placed as instructors—one of Anne’s early
concerns.
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However, the concerns expressed by Anne and Beth about receiving adequate
administrative direction and support go beyond fears about how they will be judged and
accepted. Instead, they express a desire to build positive working relationships with
school leaders for the purpose of enhancing student (and teacher) success, and thus might
be better viewed as part of the later stages of Fuller’s development model. A lack of
clear institutional direction, for example, could be seen as an obstacle that PSTs discover
they must overcome in order to be successful in their day-to-day teaching practice—and
so might be predicted to arise in the second (Task) phase of development, after PSTs had
begun student teaching. This notion seems to fit with Anne’s concern about receiving
direction on the new math curriculum, and Beth’s perception that teachers did not receive
sufficient information and guidance during a power outage. To the extent that a lack of
administrative support is seen as something which must be mitigated to enhance student
well-being at school (as Beth also suggests with regard to the power outage), it could be
viewed as an Impact concern, expected to emerge later in teacher development.
Lesson planning and delivery. Both PSTs reported concerns regarding the
adequacy of their lesson planning and delivery. From the start, Anne wanted to ensure
that she did not teach like her junior high math teacher had—lectures, rote memorization,
and hurried coverage of curriculum without checking for student understanding. She
focused instead on learning to develop and deliver stimulating lessons that kept her
students interested and engaged. Later, she worried about how she would find time
during the teaching day to reflect, collaborate, and make adjustments—and to grade
papers.
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Beth, on the other hand, seemed confident in her ability to develop and implement
classroom routines for her kindergartners, citing her experience in doing so in her
previous classroom work and at home with her own children. She did, however, become
concerned about her ability to manage instructional time, when she found herself having
to abruptly interrupt one lesson to begin another in her final term of ITP.
Concerns regarding lesson planning and delivery are typically found in both the
Self and the Task categories of Fuller’s framework. Fuller theorized that concerns about
basic adequacy (“my ability to prepare adequate lesson plans”) may first arise during a
novice’s early stage of development (Borich, 1996, pp. 672-673). (Appendix A). Borich
(1996) suggested that more advanced concerns about finding good instructional materials
and new ideas for curriculum delivery methods would arise in the next (Task) phase of
teacher development, once teachers were immersed more deeply in day-to-day
instructional tasks. Watzke (2007) described concerns related to the task of teaching,
such as instructional methods and delivery of curriculum, as those generally expected to
arise in the second stage of teacher development (Task). Similarly, Miksza and Berg
(2013) included both clarity and intensity of instruction on their list of Task concerns.
Fuller predicted that basic concerns about managing time efficiently would arise
early in a teaching student’s career (Fuller, 1969; Borich, 1996). However, Borich
(1996) included concerns about “not [having] enough time for grading and testing” and
“not having sufficient time to plan” in a later (Task) cluster. (Appendix A). As with
student discipline, this overlap may indicate a recognition that time management is like to
remain a concern of PSTs far beyond their initial foray into classroom teaching.
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Similarly, the concerns both PSTs expressed about pressure related to
standardized testing and set curriculum, and its effect on their teaching practice, may fall
within Fuller’s predictions for the second phase of learning to teach, as novices encounter
challenges to their ability to execute day-to-day teaching responsibilities. In fact,
“inflexibility of curriculum” and “too many standards and regulations set for teachers”
are categorized as Task items on Borich’s version of the TCC instrument (Borich, 1996).
(Appendix A). Watzke (2007) also included “professional (instructional) freedom” as a
Task concern on the version of the TCC that he used in his longitudinal research (page
cite). In addition, given that Anne and Beth both linked these concerns with their
misgivings about school leadership, the discussion above regarding securing
administrative support is also relevant to this analysis.
Lastly, Anne’s and Beth’s concerns about tailoring their instruction to facilitate
their students’ own knowledge construction and learning how to building bridges
between the school curriculum and their pupils’ existing “funds of knowledge” reflect a
desire to have a positive impact on student learning—at the core of Fuller’s third
concerns cluster (Impact), which she expected to arise only at the end of a teacher’s ITP
training—if not, during their in-service work. Borich’s (1996) TCC instrument asks
teaching students the extent to which they are worried about their ability to “seek
alternative ways to ensure that students learn the subject matter” and “adapting myself to
the needs of different students,” and scores their responses in the Impact category.
(Appendix A).
In the case of Anne and Beth, both expressed concerns regarding instruction
during the first term of ITP training—perhaps as the result of readings (e.g., Moll et al,
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2005), class discussions, and assignments related to constructivist learning in their
foundations and methods classes. They also expressed related concerns after completing
ITP as well.
Student learning. Both PSTs were concerned about their ability to meet the
individual academic and emotional needs of a diverse set of learners. Both recognized
that building personal relationships with their students and demonstrating cultural
sensitivity and competence as teachers was essential to facilitating the learning process.
While Anne worried about not having enough experience with a more diverse student
population and learners with special needs, Beth focused on what she perceived as an
ongoing need to become familiar with the culture of her students and their families—
including how to pronounce their names correctly. She understood that, while she had
gained more experience and confidence serving students with various emotional and
academic needs during guided practice, her desire to understand and meet their individual
needs “would never go away.”
Both PSTs also understood the importance of creating a positive classroom
environment in which students felt safe to learn, participate, ask questions, and make
mistakes. Both reflected upon their own negative experiences as students to shape their
visions of how they wanted students to feel in their classrooms. As with their thoughts
about students’ “funds of knowledge,” Anne and Beth both drew upon course readings
and discussions that took place in their first-term ITP foundations course to shape their
notions of classroom climate, including an article by Matsumura, Slater, and Crosson
(2008) that defined classroom climate as the “affective features of a classroom
environment—the quality of children’s life in schools and classrooms apart from the rigor
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of instruction and curricula” (p. 294); and described a “positive classroom climate” as
“one that promotes respectful, caring relationships, cooperation, and emotional safety” (p.
295). (The influence of ITP curriculum on PST concerns is further discussed later in this
Chapter as a mediating factor.)
Expression of concerns regarding the socio-emotional well-being of students at an
early stage of teacher preparation contradicts Fuller’s prediction that such concerns
would only occur later in the teacher training process—perhaps not even until in-service
teaching—and only after PSTs had sufficiently resolved self/survival and teaching task
concerns. Borich’s (1996) TCC instrument, for example, includes “recognizing the social
and emotional needs of students” and “understanding the psychological and cultural
differences that can affect my students’ behavior,” on the list of third-phase (Impact)
concerns (pp. 672-673). (Appendix A). George (1978) also included concerns about
“whether each student is getting what he/she needs” in the list of Impact questions on his
TCQ tool (as cited in Reeves & Kazelskis, 1985, p. 269); and Watzke (2007) listed
concerns about “student social-emotional growth” and “individual differences” on his
TCC-based survey (p. 111).
Summary. In sum, the concerns PSTs identified in this study fell into five
clusters. In some cases, the concerns of Anne and Beth were similar within these
categories (e.g., time management, handling pressures related to standardized testing); in
others, there were individual differences that seemed to reflect their differing levels of
professional growth as teachers (e.g., Beth’s confidence in her ability to establish
instructional routines versus Anne’s initial uncertainty about learning to teach in a style
other than that of her junior high teacher). The nature and timing of the PSTs’ concerns
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bore some resemblance to those of Fuller’s teaching concerns framework, but there was
not a perfect match. In Chapter Five, I note several related issues as possible areas for
future study.
Changes Over Time
While many of the concerns identified in this study were evident at both the
beginning and end of the PSTs’ training program, the nature of some of their concerns
shifted over time. These findings only partially support Fuller’s hypothesis that teachers’
concerns change as they progress through their development as professional educators
(e.g., Fuller, 1969; Fuller & Bown, 1975). It is also clear that the PSTs in this study held
multiple concerns simultaneously, a finding that refutes Fuller’s theory.
Concerns that changed. Some of the concerns Anne and Beth reported early in
their ITP program seemed to lessen over time as the PSTs gained more experience both
inside and outside of the classroom—a finding consistent with Fuller’s phased-concerns
theory.
The nature of Anne’s concerns generally seemed to change more than those
expressed by Beth over three terms of ITP. For example, by the end of the program,
Anne reported feeling more confident than she had at the start about handling student
misbehavior. She attributed this shift to the experience she gained in managing a middle
school classroom during guided practice—and the praise she had received from her
guiding teacher and principal for doing it well. She was also less apprehensive about
lesson planning; supporting students to construct their own knowledge; and standing in
front of a classroom as a teacher. Her concern about the decision-making rights of
classroom teachers waned, as she became more familiar with her colleagues at school.
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Her attitude toward pre-set curriculum and standardized testing also shifted, once she
understood the value of coordinated lessons and the positive impact higher student test
scores could have on expanding the school’s math offerings.
Beth’s specific concerns about satisfying the requirements of the various IEPs of
her kindergarteners in a general education classroom also diminished during ITP. Like
Anne, Beth attributed this shift to having gained more experience in addressing students’
diverse learning needs during guided practice. The remainder of Beth’s concerns—which
seemed fewer than Anne’s to begin with—did not seem to change significantly in
substance during her ITP program, however.
The diminution of certain concerns expressed by Anne and Beth early in their ITP
programs is consistent with Fuller’s phased-concerns model, which posited that earlier
concerns about tasks such as classroom management and basic lesson planning would
lessen as PSTs gained more experience in their role as classroom teachers (e.g., Fuller,
1969; Fuller & Bown, 1975). It is also consistent with the findings of other researchers,
who found that Self concerns decreased over time (e.g., Smith & Sanche, 1992, 1993;
Pigge & Marso, 1997).
Concerns that arose later. As discussed earlier, both Anne and Beth identified
concerns that arose for the first time later in their ITP training—findings that are partially
consistent with Fuller’s phased-concerns sequence.
For example, the time management issues that arose during guided practice are
somewhat consistent with Fuller’s framework. She predicted novices might be concerned
with time-related issues once they became more deeply immersed in the day-to-day
challenges of a professional educator’s work (Borich, 1996). Also, as Capel (2001) noted,
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it is natural that questions of adequacy would arise at the end of ITP, as PSTs anticipate
starting to teach as newly qualified instructors. (Note, however, that Anne also expressed
trepidation about time constraints during her first-term observations, anticipating a
challenge she might have later in her teaching practice.)
Beth’s third-term concerns regarding administrative support and unwelcome
pressure regarding student scores and standardized testing may also be consistent with
Fuller’s framework, as they arose as she continued to take on more teaching
responsibility and encountered perceived obstacles to effective teaching and/or
impediments to student learning (see e.g., Pigge & Marso, 1997). Alternatively, the
timing of these concerns may have more to do with a change in Beth’s teaching
placement in the second term of guided practice (a mediating factor discussed further in
the next section of this Chapter).
On the other hand, Anne’s desire to have parents like and approve of her as a
classroom teacher, which arose during guided practice, seems to contradict Fuller’s
theory, which hypothesized that PSTs will be more concerned about being liked and
respected by parents, students, and school personnel early in their ITP process, before
they begin student teaching. Mikzsa and Berg (2013) also found that PSTs’ concerns
regarding interactions with peers and colleagues seemed to disappear by midway through
student teaching.
Concerns that persisted. Contrary to Fuller’s initial hypothesis, many of the
areas that were of concern to Anne and Beth at the start of ITP were still part of their
thinking after completing the program. (Tables 5 and 6). While they reported that the
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nature and intensity of some of their specific concerns had changed (e.g., Anne’s concern
about school administrators; Beth’s about IEPs), others they expected to never go away.
Rather, the findings from this study seem to support the observations of
Guillaume and Rudney (1993) that student teachers “did not so much think about
different things as they grew; they thought about things differently” (p. 79). For
example, Anne’s apprehension about standardized curriculum and testing shifted, once
she understood the opportunities they created. Beth’s focus on pronouncing names
correctly seemed to expand to a broader notions of cultural sensitivity and respect by the
end of ITP. If anything, the stance Beth took early in her program seemed to solidify as
she gained confidence and advocated for the students in her classroom.
On the other hand, Anne’s concern about not being prepared to serve more
culturally diverse students and students with special needs persisted—but simply as a
result of not having the opportunity during ITP to gain hands-on experience in this area.
These findings do not support Fuller’s initial notion that early concerns diminish
over time, as PSTs progress through their ITP program, and others come to the fore.
Instead, they are more consistent with studies which found no change in PST concerns
during ITP (e.g., Fuller et al., 1974; Silvernail & Costello, 1983), and those that have
found that PST concerns regarding student impact were evident at the start of ITP and
stable throughout their ITP experience (e.g., Smith and Sanche, 1992, 1993; Pigge &
Marso, 1987; Watzke, 2007).
Simultaneous concerns. As is evident from the case descriptions and tables
above, both Anne and Beth held concerns in multiple areas simultaneously, at both the
beginning and the end of their ITP programs. This finding contradicts Fuller’s initial
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theory that PST teaching concerns would arise in a discrete sequence of predictable
stages during teacher preparation (e.g., Fuller, 1969). (To be fair, Fuller and her
colleagues were not entirely sure that mature concerns would arise only after early
concerns faded (Fuller, 1969), or the categories they devised were distinct and did not
overlap (Fuller & Bown, 1975).
The phenomenon of simultaneity has been well-documented in subsequent
research, largely debunking the sequential aspect of Fuller’s theory. For example,
Haritos (2004) found that no concerns category appeared alone. Smith and Sanche
(1992, 1993) found that concerns in all three concern clusters appeared at the same time,
and also that no category seemed to disappear. (See also, e.g., Guillaume & Rudney,
1993; Capel, 1998). As Grossman (1992) admonished, teacher educators who believe
that PSTs can hold only one type of concern at any given time do a disservice to both
novice teachers and students in their future classrooms.
Summary. In conclusion, the findings of this study mirror those of the body of
research that followed Fuller’s initial studies of PST concerns, in that some of the
findings support Fuller’s phased-theory, while others do not. A number of the concerns
that PSTs in this study expressed early in their program diminished as they gained more
teaching experience (a finding consistent with Fuller’s theory), but many persisted even
after the PSTs had completed their ITP training. Still others seemed to arise out of
sequence with Fuller’s predicted progression. Finally, both PSTs were clearly capable of
holding multiple concerns at one time throughout their ITP program, consistent with the
research that has disproved Fuller’s prediction that concerns follow a discrete, linear
progression, one giving way to the next.
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Mediating Factors
The nature and timing of the PST concerns found in this study were likely
influenced by several mediating factors. In Chapter Two, I reviewed a line of research
related to Fuller’s concerns theory related to the role that mediating factors play in the
existence and evolution of PST concerns, including: the individual characteristics; ITP
coursework; and the context in which they conducted their observations and guided
practice (e.g., Fuller, 1969; Bray, 1995; Conway & Clark, 2003). In this section I
consider the findings of my research in light of these factors.
Individual characteristics. Previous research has suggested that individual
characteristics may play a role in the nature and timing of PST teaching concerns. Bray
(1995), for example, found that PSTs who were younger in age (24 years or below)
expressed higher levels of concern during practice teaching than did older students (ages
25 and above) and career switchers. Other studies suggested factors such as race, gender,
previous academic performance, and personality type may influence novice teacher
concerns (e.g., Pigge & Marso, 1997), though no consistent patterns have emerged across
studies.
In this study, it is difficult to determine the influence of these types of individual
characteristics on the findings, as both students were female and in the same general age
bracket. While one participant identified herself as Caucasian and the other Hispanic, it
is difficult to know how their race or culture may have contributed to the differences in
their concerns—other than to note that Beth told the story of being treated differently as a
student because of her Spanish surname and described her intention to be sensitive to the
cultural and language needs of her students and families.
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Aside from individual attributes found in demographics, test scores, and
transcripts, however, variations in PST concerns may be due, at least in part, to the fact
that there is “no common starting point” for students entering ITP programs (Burn et al.,
2003). Students enter ITP with different perspectives and understandings of education
and teaching, and leave showing varying levels of growth and development (e.g.,
Guillaume & Rudney, 1993; Zeichner & Liston, 1987). They are not simply “empty
vessels to be filled with ideas about ‘good education’” (Swennen et al., 2004, p. 266).
Each is already an “expert” in education, having been a client of the system for twelve
years or more as students (even more as parents), and a consumer of mass media
depicting, describing, and decrying various issues related to education and teaching.
They are also likely to have had at least a modicum of experience in teacher-like roles in
formal and informal educational settings (e.g., tutor, babysitter, coach, parent) (Swennen
et al., 2004). Fuller (1969) herself suggested that the course of a PST’s development was
likely to be strongly influenced by the amount of teaching experience he or she had
gained prior to entering an ITP program.
This seems generally true of the PSTs studied in this project. Both Anne and Beth
came to the ITP program with stores of prior knowledge and teaching experience—and
the express intention of learning how to leverage it for the benefit of their students. Both
were mothers of young children, and referenced parenting in their interviews and written
reflections. Anne referred to her parenting role as a “huge form of teaching.” Beth cited it
as a source of confidence in setting up classroom routines and her compassion with
kindergartners forgetting things.
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Both PSTs had considerable teaching experience prior to starting the program.
While neither had been teachers in the exact type of classroom for which they sought
credentialing, Beth often referred to her experience as an assistant in a K-1 special
education classroom in her reflections and interviews as she described readying herself to
teach in a general education kindergarten classroom. Anne mentioned a connection she
had made between the behavior of her middle school students and that of her four-year-
old preschool charges in considering classroom management strategies.
Both drew upon their past experiences as a source of both concern and comfort
during their ITP program. Anne, for example, was worried about her ability to
successfully perform the “hefty task” of differentiating instruction and being the only
teacher in much larger classes than she had had in preschool. She also used her own
negative experience in middle school math class as a touchstone for what she did not
want her own students to experience.
Beth drew upon her work with students with special needs to reinforce the
importance of taking time to get to know each student individually and understanding the
rationale for his/her conduct. She also reflected upon her prior experience in diverse
communities, and the negative experience she herself had had as a sixth grader
segregated from the other students because of her Spanish surname—possibly elucidating
her determination to be culturally sensitive and aware.
Lastly, while Fuller (1969) predicted that PSTs might identify more with the
students than the teacher during their classroom observations, and be harsh critics of the
“enemy” on the other side of the desk (Fuller & Bown, 1975, p. 38), both Anne and Beth
spoke highly of the teachers they observed during the first term of their ITP program.
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Anne admired the teacher she observed for her thoughtful and respectful interactions with
pupils and the methods she employed to keep them engaged and on task. Beth was
inspired to seek a teaching credential and have a classroom of her own by the teacher she
observed in the special education classroom in which she assisted. This deviation from
Fuller and Bown’s (1975) findings might be explained, in part, by both PSTs having
previous experience working in teaching roles and thus be more likely to be empathetic
and discerning in relation to other teachers.
In short, Anne’s and Beth’s individual, pre-ITP backgrounds and perspectives
held prior to ITP appeared to influence the concerns they held during ITP and how they
made sense of their experiences during the program.
ITP coursework. Scholars have also suggested that PSTs’ concerns may—and
perhaps, should—reflect the nature and focus of the teacher education curriculum to
which they are exposed. While Fuller (1970, 1972, 1973) believed that ITP curriculum
should be tailored to PST concerns as they naturally arose, Grossman (1992) urged
teacher educators to be more directive—focusing PSTs’ attention on student learning
from the start, and engaging them in the task of grappling with multiple salient issues
simultaneously, just as in-service teachers must do. Similarly, Levin et al. (2009) posited
that a curriculum focused narrowly on what teachers do in the classroom and
emphasizing self-reflection has the deleterious effect of directing PST attention more to
themselves than on student needs
The influence of ITP coursework with which Anne and Beth were engaged can be
seen in both the nature of their concerns and the language they use to describe them. The
first-term foundations class in which they were both were enrolled was specifically
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designed to foreground issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice in K-12
education, and included in-depth readings and class discussions on topics such as:
differentiation in instruction; teacher ideology; multicultural education and issues of race
and class; serving learners with special needs; the relationship between school, family
and culture; the importance of parent involvement; creating a positive classroom climate
(Matsumura et al., 2008); and leveraging students’ “funds of knowledge” (Moll et al.,
2005). In addition, both students were specifically asked during foundations class
sessions to reflect in writing on their own experiences with these issues. (Beth’s story
about sixth grade and Anne’s story about middle school math class were both written in
their first term of ITP in response to specific reflective prompts.) The PSTs were also
required to do six hours of classroom observation during the first term, and reflect upon
what they saw using Rodger’s (2002) reflective cycle in a series of graded essays. These
graded essays, as well as the written reflections and the final class sessions of the first-
term foundations course, were primary sources of data in this study. (See Chapter Five
for reflections on associated limitations of my research.)
A number of these concepts are clearly reflected in the participant data. Both
spoke explicitly about the importance of integrating students’ interests and “funds of
knowledge” into their lessons, and their role as facilitators in helping them link the two.
Both expressed strong interest in creating a positive classroom climate, conducive to
children’s emotional and academic growth. They also expressed concern about
embracing diversity in their classrooms, and supporting students with a diverse set of
learning needs. Both spoke to the importance of parent involvement, and the need to
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tailor their approach to both students and parents based on individual needs and
characteristics.
Both participants also utilized Rodgers’ (2002) reflective cycle—and mentioned it
by name—to look closely at teacher and students activities in their observation
classrooms, and to consider their own reactions to what they saw and what they might do
in the future with similar situations in their own classrooms. Anne spoke directly to
value of reflection in addressing student behavior and modifying lesson planning—and
her concern about making time for it when she had her own classroom to manage full-
time.
In sum, elements of the ITP curriculum is clearly reflected in the data collected
for this study—and in the concerns the PSTs expressed, sometimes earlier than Fuller
would have predicted.
Change in teaching context. Researchers have also suggested that PST concerns
may be influenced by fluctuations in their fieldwork placements during ITP. For
example, Miksza & Berg (2013) suggested that being transferred to a new, unfamiliar
fieldwork site may cause a teaching student’s “attentional resources” to be re-directed
toward issues they had already learned to manage at their previous school (p. 58), and
might trigger a regression to earlier teaching concerns. (See also, e.g., Burn et al., 2003;
Conway and Clark, 2003). The level of support PSTs receive from their guiding teacher,
and challenges they have with particular students, may also impact their development
(Miksza & Berg, 2013).
In this study, Anne remained at the same junior high school for both ITP
observations and guided practice (and was later hired to teach there). It was also the
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school she herself attended as a student. It is possible that stability in her fieldwork
placement site supported Anne’s development by allowing her to learn and practice in a
familiar environment during all three terms of ITP. Anne also noted the importance of
the support she received from her guiding teacher to her increasing confidence about
standing in front of the classroom and managing student misbehavior.
On the other hand, while Anne had stability in her ITP fieldwork placement
situation, she was nonetheless making a significant change in her teaching context—one
which may have had an even greater impact on her development as a teacher: leaving a
ten-year career in early childhood education to become a middle school math instructor.
As she began, Anne thought that the challenges she would face teaching in junior high
would be similar to those she had had as a preschool instructor. However, a number of
the concerns she later articulated belied this initial belief. For example, while she said
she was comfortable with her subject matter knowledge in math, and had always wanted
to teach in middle school, she was uncertain about her ability to teach middle school
learners—and how to manage so many of them in a classroom by herself. She was also
worried that it would be difficult to involve middle school parents in their children’s
education to the same extent they may have been involved when their children were
younger.
The fact that many of the concerns Anne reported seem to be indicative of an
early phase of teacher development in Fuller’s framework may also suggest that she was
experiencing her middle school placement more as an inexperienced pre-service teacher
than one with significant classroom experience. Some of the changes she reported in her
self-related concerns also suggest that she was at an early stage in her growth path,
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including those related to her becoming less fearful of controlling a class and taking her
place at the front of the classroom.
Beth’s teaching context changed in two ways. Like Anne, when Beth entered the
ITP program, she was making a shift in teaching circumstances: from assisting in a K-1
special education classroom for young children with autism to teaching a general
education classroom for kindergartners. Beth’s concerns regarding meeting the needs of
a wide range of students (as opposed to the autism-specific needs) seem to reflect this
change, as does her concern about meeting the requirements of multiple IEPs at the same
time. However, another change that Beth experienced during ITP had a greater impact:
her transfer to a new fieldwork site for her second term of student teaching. This change
triggered a new set of concerns about school administrators and standardized testing that
she had not previously experienced. These findings are in keeping with those of Burn et
al. (2003) and Conway and Clark (2003).
Nonetheless, despite changes in her fieldwork context, the concerns Beth
expressed still seemed fewer in number than Anne’s, and to be indicative of a more
experienced pre-service teacher. Her attention was focused more toward facilitating
student learning, and her increasing confidence in her own abilities as an instructor of
young children was evident in her interactions with her guiding teachers. Few things in
ITP surprised or worried her.
In sum, both PSTs in this study experienced a change in teaching context that
likely affected both the nature and timing of their concerns. For Anne, the leap was from
preschool to middle-school math. For Beth, it was a school site change for her second
term of guided practice.
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Summary. The findings of this study seem consonant with those of other
Fullerian research that found that the concerns of teachers in training seem to be
influenced by their individual characteristics, as well as their ITP curriculum and
fieldwork experiences.
Conclusion
This study was conducted in order to discover the answers to research questions
about the concerns PSTs expressed during the first term of their ITP program, and after
they had completed it, and to examine how they made sense of any changes that occurred
over time. The research showed that the concerns of the two PSTs under study had a
number of things in common: they fell into five concern clusters; some changed over
time, while others did not; multiple concerns were held simultaneously; and mediating
factors likely influenced the nature and timing of the concerns expressed. These findings
offer some support for Fuller’s concerns theory, and disprove it in others.
In the next Chapter, I review the purpose and findings of this study, and why it
matters, then review its contributions to, and implications for, the field of teacher
education and the limitations of the study and thoughts on further research.

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CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION
In this chapter I will review the purpose of my study and provide a summary of
the findings. I will then review the reasons for studying PST concerns; the contributions
of this study; its limitations and thoughts on further research; and its implications.
Finally, I will revisit the walk to the teacher’s desk described in the opening quote of this
dissertation.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to investigate the concerns of pre-service teachers
enrolled in an accelerated graduate ITP program. It was hoped that having a better
understanding of what PSTs think about during their initial teacher training could provide
insight into how to shape the teacher preparation curriculum and pedagogy to meet their
needs.
The framework utilized for this inquiry was based on research originally done by
Fuller and her colleagues in the late 1960s into the concerns of undergraduate education
students at the University of Texas, with the intention of shifting the curriculum more
toward what the students felt they needed rather than what the professors thought they
should study.
Fuller’s (1969) original, phased-concerns theory included three basic
suppositions: that teaching concerns could be grouped into discrete categories or
clusters; that PSTs would experience those concerns in a predictable, linear sequence as
they moved through their learning-to-teach process; and that the concerns in the earlier
categories would fall away as new sets of concerns arose and PSTs gained more teaching
experience. She and her colleagues continued to refine the theory during her lifetime,
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questioning each of these tenets: for example, were the categories discrete? was the
sequence correct? did factors such as previous teaching experience or ITP curriculum
influence the development of PST concerns? Decades of subsequent research has
furthered those inquiries with mixed results: supporting, for example, the notion of a
common set of teaching concerns, but largely disproving the linearity of the sequence
Fuller hypothesized; and finding evidence that some mediating factors seem to influence
PST concerns, but with no consistent pattern.
This study was meant to add to this body of research by investigating the concerns
of two pre-service teachers during their initial teacher preparation program. Specifically,
it sought to answer three research questions: what were the PSTs’ concerns (if any) at the
start of the program; what were their concerns (if any) after they had completed the
program; and how did they make sense of changes to those concerns that occurred during
ITP. It also sought to identify factors that might have influenced the nature and timing of
the PSTs’ concerns, and to understand how (if at all) the findings supported Fuller’s
concerns theory.
Summary of Findings
The key findings of this study can be summarized as follows:
• The PSTs in this study both expressed concerns in five areas of teaching. Those
categories included: classroom management; parental involvement;
administrative support; lesson planning and delivery; and student learning.
• The PSTs expressed an array of specific concerns within these clusters. In some
cases, the nature of their concerns was similar; in others, they differed. A number
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of the PSTs’ concerns resembled those Fuller (1969) identified in her concern
clusters, though some did not.
• The timing of when the PSTs’ concerns arose was similar in some cases, but
different in others. These findings provide only partial support for Fuller’s
phased-concerns hypothesis.
• The nature of some of the PSTs’ concerns seemed to change during the course of
their ITP program, and they often attributed these shifts to having gained more
teaching experience. The nature of other concerns, however, did not seem to
change during the program. These findings also partially support Fuller’s theory.
• The PSTs in this study identified concerns in many of the same areas at both the
start and end of their ITP program. This finding does not support Fuller’s initial
hypothesis that teaching concerns happen in a linear progression, one category
giving way to the next over time.
• Both the nature and timing of the PSTs’ concerns appear to have been influenced
by several mediating factors, including: individual characteristics, ITP
coursework, and changes in teaching context.
Why Studying Pre-Service Teacher Concerns Matters
Research studies on teaching concerns are one element of a larger body of
knowledge on the learning-to-teach process—a phenomenon that continues to be actively
investigated and theorized about from many different perspectives. The concerns of pre-
service teachers are (and should be) an area of interest to teacher educators for several
reasons.
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The importance of teacher educators—and teaching students themselves—
becoming aware of what students think and believe cannot be understated. Concerns are
driving forces in learning (Korthagen, 2004). A teacher’s actions are determined by their
beliefs about education, teaching, students, parents, the environment—and ultimately
themselves (Korthagen, 2004). Ignoring student interests is likely to be unproductive and
exhausting—as any teacher tasked with teaching a topic unpopular with her students can
attest.
Learning about the nature and timing of the teaching concerns of PSTs helps
sensitize teacher educators to the concerns of our own students, and provides fodder for
our own inquiries into the thinking of students in our classrooms. Whether a PST’s
concerns fit into Fuller’s framework or not, it is important for people on both sides of the
teacher’s desk to come to know and understand them, as evidence of the state of their
professional knowledge (Calderhead & Robson, 1991).
Also, there are unmistakable parallels between what we as teacher educators ask
our teaching students to do in the course of learning to empower pupils to learn, and what
we ourselves must do in own teaching practice. The job is the same: to understand what
learners already know from their previous experiences inside and outside of school—and
then to help bridge the gap between that knowledge and skill set and what students are to
learn through the educational activities we offer to them. Sometimes it requires
developing students’ conceptions—and sometimes it requires that they be challenged
(Calderhead & Robson, 1991).
Learning about PSTs’ teaching concerns also gives teacher educators insight into
their students’ starting point in the learning process, and what they may need in order to
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grow. Concerns may signal potential gaps in their thinking; areas in which they lack
confidence; and obstacles they may need to overcome (Fuller & Bown, 1975; Miksza &
Berg, 2013). Just as Beth sought clues to children’s needs in their misbehavior, we as
teacher educators can discover clues about what our students may need by examining the
worries they express and the issues that occupy their thoughts and attention.
Finally, as teacher educators, we must role model how we expect (hope) our
students will behave. Teaching them to reflect on their own learning, asking them to
share those thoughts with us, and then transparently utilizing that information in
delivering our lessons not only gives us crucial information we can use in our own
practice, but it also provides them with the opportunity to witness and experience how
that is done—and encourages them to mirror the same teaching practices in their own
classrooms. In short, as both Anne and Beth already understood, it is not only what we
teach our education students that matters, but also how we teach it.
Contributions of This Study
This study contributes to the literature on learning-how-to-teach in a number of
ways. First, it provides insight into the concerns of aspiring teachers who were enrolled
in this particular ITP program—and into the results of interactions between individual
PSTs and the ITP curriculum, pedagogy, and fieldwork. This study adds to the
considerable body of research about teacher concerns that serves to inform teacher
educators, policy analysts, and curriculum developers who seek to elevate the efficacy of
teacher training efforts. The decision as to whether or not the findings are applicable or
generalizable to other PSTs within the program—or to other ITP programs and
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populations of PSTs outside of the study’s setting—rests, of course, with those who seek
to apply them there.
Second, the findings in this study point to the need to embrace concepts omitted
from traditional teacher concern inventories and survey instruments. As Grossman
(1992) and Burn et al. (2003) suggested, Fuller’s “simplistic” concerns model may not
capture the range and sophistication of concerns experienced by today’s teachers-in-
training. Concepts such as establishing a positive classroom climate, leveraging students’
funds of knowledge, and building partnerships with families and school leadership for the
purpose of enabling student learning all seem to fall awkwardly within, clumsily straddle,
or lie entirely outside of the bounds of the typical descriptions of Fuller’s concerns
categories. It is possible that a grounded theory research study, using the question Fuller
and Case (1972) used in their early research (“when you think about teaching, what are
you concerned about?”) as the grand tour question, could aid in the development of a
next-generation framework for understanding teacher concerns.
Third, the findings of this case study also serve to reinforce the observations of
Guillaume and Rudney (1993), who suggested that changes in PST concerns might be
more about how they are thinking than about what they are thinking. For example, as
described in Chapter Four, while Anne continued to be concerned with parent
involvement, she reported that her notion of what that should look and feel like shifted
during ITP. This insight may provide at least a partial explanation for why PSTs express
concerns that do not seem to disappear entirely.
Lastly, the fact that this research was developed as a case study sets it apart from
many other studies on teacher concerns. By using this method, I was able to provide a
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robust description of individual PSTs’ teaching concerns at various points in the learning-
to-teach process, often in their own words. This allows readers to “hear” PST voices—
and the complex nature of their thinking—more clearly. In that way this study goes
beyond quantitative data about the relative levels of concern the PSTs have about a set
number of standardized statements based on some version of Fuller’s decades-old theory.
Limitations and Further Research
As with any study, this research has its limitations. Its scope and design
necessarily limited the amount and type of data that I was able to capture about the
phenomenon under study—and meant that some information of potential value to the
study of pre-service teacher concerns was absent from my analysis and dissertation.
Missing Voices
The data in this study was collected from two female PSTs in their late twenties,
who were both raising young children at the time of their ITP enrollment. Both came to
their graduate-level ITP program with an appreciable amount of prior teaching
experience. Missing from this study, therefore, are the voices of PSTs in the same
program who came to ITP with little or no teaching experience; and students who began
with an even more substantial teaching resume. Also absent are the perspectives of
novice teachers who came from different personal circumstances or careers, and/or
different racial, cultural, and family backgrounds. While it may be difficult to determine
a pattern of how these and other factors might influence teacher concerns, other voices
nonetheless deserve further study as part of a broader exploration of the phenomenon of
teacher concerns. (Also absent, of course, are the voices of PSTs in other programs who
may be similarly or differently situated to the novices in this study.)
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Missing Concerns
Also missing from this data are potentially valuable descriptions of the concerns
these PSTs held at other points in time during their ITP program. For example, what
concerns (if any) did they feel contemporaneously with the other classes and experiences
they had during their first term of ITP (e.g., methods, technology)—and how did those
differ from or interact with concerns identified in this study? How did those concerns
change (if at all) during ITP? What other teaching concerns arose (and/or subsided)
between the end of their first term and the completion of their last term of guided
practice? And how would they make sense of any changes in those concerns?
While the broad questions that I asked during interviews conducted after the PSTs
had completed their ITP program may have captured some of this data, there may have
been more to learn, had more specific questions been asked related to these issues, or
more data gathered during those other ITP experiences. I wonder, for example, whether
more concerns about teaching tasks—the choice and construction of lesson plans, for
example, or the use of specific teaching techniques like the Socratic dialogue or
storyboard cards—would have surfaced, had reflective data been collected during their
methods classes or second term of guiding practice. Would PSTs have identified
concerns about having adequate content knowledge, or having to attend time-consuming
administrative meetings at school, had they been interviewed during the second or third
term as they began to engage more deeply in their teaching practice?
Widening the lens even further, it would have been interesting to discover more
about the PSTs’ teaching experiences prior to enrolling in ITP—what concerns arose,
lingered, and/or subsided there—and how they made sense of those change (if any).
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That, too, may have contributed to my understanding of the learning trajectory of a
teacher-in-training and the evolution of teaching concerns. Similarly, collecting concerns
data from these PSTs in the early (and later) years of their in-service teaching practice
would also inform the analysis of teacher development and changing concerns over time.
I wonder, for example, how Anne’s concerns about involving parents in a positive way—
or Beth’s concerns about garnering administrative support—changed during their initial
years of in-service teaching. I wonder whether their change in status (and, in Beth’s case,
also school site) triggered new concerns, or re-raised concerns that had already lessened
(or been non-existent) during ITP.
It is also possible that the time elapsed between the start of the first term and end
of the last term of this accelerated ITP program (approximately eighteen months) was not
long enough to observe long-term shifts in PST thinking (Miksza & Berg, 2013). Real
changes take time, and may not be evident in studies of shorter time frames (e.g., Pigge &
Marso, 1997 (seven weeks versus seven years). As Watzke (2007) argued, Fuller’s
theory predicting changes in PST concerns is inherently longitudinal, and thus
necessitates a research approach better matched to the phenomenon than cross-sectional
studies. In this case, a proper longitudinal study—one that interrogated PST concerns
uniformly at the end of each of the three terms, for example, and then perhaps at yearly
intervals after they became in-service teachers (e.g., Pigge & Marso, 1997; Watzke,
2007)—would certainly have enhanced the data available for analysis.
Missing Numbers
Many scholars doing research on Fuller’s phased-concern theory over the last half
century have taken a quantitative approach to data collection, using some version of
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Borich’s (1996) Teacher Concerns Checklist (TCC) or George’s (1978) Teacher
Concerns Questionnaire (TCQ). Using this technique, researchers obtain quantitative
data on the levels of concern felt by PSTs for 45 (TCC) or 15 (TCQ) statements on a set
list. The data from these surveys also allow researchers to compare results within and
across populations, and across studies.
Having this type of quantitative data available to me for this study may have
given me the opportunity to learn more about certain concerns of these two ITP students,
and to identify and compare the levels of concern each one had regarding the surveyed
concerns at various points in time. Were I to have used a blended research approach, I
could then have interrogated that numerical data using the qualitative research techniques
that I employed in this study. Using quantitative survey results may also have allowed
me to draw additional conclusions by making comparisons with data collected in similar
(and often larger) studies of teacher concerns, using the same survey instrument.
As Capel (2001) noted, however, while questionnaires can be useful tools in
helping to identify teacher concerns in general—and perhaps identifying related
curricular needs—they have limited use in identifying the concerns of individual
students. And it is those individual learner needs—each one forged in the interaction
between the PST and his/her individual background and beliefs and the learning
experience in which he/she is engaged—that teacher educators must address in their own,
individual classrooms and lessons.
It is, moreover, difficult to know from surveys whether they are recording the
actual concerns of teaching students, or simply those identified on the questionnaire
(Capel, 1998). Hence the need for qualitative research.
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Implications
The findings of this study have several implications for the way teacher educators
engage with their teaching students. The first lesson, of course, is to avoid the folly of
making assumptions about what individual PSTs are interested in and concerned about,
based on generalizations about their individual characteristics or teaching experience.
Looking only at those factors—and the fact that they engaged with similar ITP
curriculum and structured fieldwork assignments—it may have been easy to expect that
the two PSTs in this study would have similar experiences and outcomes in ITP—which,
of course, was often not the case.
Trying to tailor teacher education curriculum to assumptions about what PSTs
might be concerned about at a particular time may be just as dangerous as ignoring them.
As this study—and many that came before it—found, novice teachers do not enter or
leave ITP in lock-step. Creating teaching prescriptions based on generalizations about
what we think they need and want is a poor substitute for thoughtful pedagogy. It is also
treacherous—risking the possibility that PSTs will be sold short, and left without
sufficient skill and experience to grapple with the (often considerable) complexities they
will encounter in day-to-day classroom life (Grossman, 1992). If we assume, for
example, that new PSTs are worried about whether parents or principals will like them,
we may ignore the possibility that they are actually more concerned about how to
encourage those adults to leverage their mental, physical, and emotional resources for the
benefit of students—and fail to provide aspiring teachers with guidance on how to do so.
Teaching must be guided by student learning (Rodgers, 2002). Otherwise, while we are
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busy at the front of the room, checking off our list of topics to cover, students like Beth
may be sitting at their desks, confused, upset, and afraid to ask questions.
Second, it is important for us as teacher educators to teach our students to be
reflective (and collaborative) practitioners. Not only for their sake--and the sake of their
future students—but also for our own. The more we know about what our students are
thinking, the more opportunity we have to support them in their development. While we
may have more experience and/or expertise in classroom teaching, they are the experts on
what (and how) they are learning (Rodgers, 2002).
Hence, it is important to ask PSTs to reflect on their thinking and experiences
during ITP—and to do so early and often. We must give them the opportunity to
discover what is on their minds and in their hearts, and encourage them to share that with
us as part of the design of each course. “In order to know what students know and how
they know it,” Rodgers (2002) suggested, “teachers have to create activities, a
curriculum, and a learning environment that reveal learning rather than just answers,
which represent only the very end of the learning process” (p. 233).
For example, in the first-term foundations class in which the participants of this
study were enrolled, students were asked before the first class began to respond in writing
to questions about what excites them most about becoming a teacher; what worries them;
and what their goals are for the course. At the start of each subsequent class session,
students were asked to reflect on their own experiences of education, teaching, and the
world outside of school, as they related to the specific readings and topics to be discussed
that day. For example, they were asked to describe the “funds of knowledge” that they
bring to teaching; and to describe a situation in which they believed a teacher’s ideology
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negatively affected the way they were treated, perceived, or evaluated. After every class
session, students were asked to reflect, verbally or in writing, on three basic questions
adapted from Rodgers (2002): What did you learn? How do you know you learned it?
What could have helped your learning? Much of the data collected for this study came
from those student reflections.
These types of exercises are invaluable in guiding and supporting PSTs to develop
a reflective practice and critical thinking skills. Without those, prospective teachers may
not gain as much value from ITP coursework or fieldwork. As Weinstein (1990)
suggested: “Although change in prospective teachers’ thinking may occur spontaneously
as they confront the reality of the classroom . . . it is likely to be haphazard and all too
infrequent” (p. 286). During observations, for example, they may return to ITP class
“more impressed by the fact that the youngsters have called them ‘Ms.’ or ‘Mr.’ than by
the skillful routines used by the cooperating teachers to check homework, review the
previous lesson, and present new material” (Weinstein, 1990, p. 287). As Fuller (1969)
warned, PSTs may have a difficult time stepping away from the student desk and
switching their focus and affinity from pupil to teacher. It is up to us as teacher educators
to help them see—and—make the transition.
The question of what we as teacher educators can and should do with the
knowledge we glean about the individual needs and concerns of our teaching students is
an important one. As indicated earlier, wholesale personalization of ITP curriculum has
not gained much traction (e.g., Buchmann, 1986, 1993; Conway & Clark, 2003). Rather,
as Kagan (1992) suggested—and I agree—the job is to consider ways to address and
build upon needs and interests that students identify. This necessarily includes
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supporting PSTs to integrate and interrogate their experiences, beliefs, and
understandings—and to challenge mistaken beliefs or “miseducation” they have gathered
from current (and past) experiences of teaching and education (Grossman & Richert,
1988, p. 61).
Given that the curricular demands of ITP programs are driven in large measure by
the prevailing (and ever-shifting) teacher credentialing requirements, the degree of
flexibility available within the existing coursework is often to be less than ideal—
especially in the limited time available in intensive preparation programs such as the ITP
under study. It is therefore worth considering other programmatic means by which to
address particular student interests. Supporting informal student discussions outside of
the set curriculum on topics of special interest, for example, may afford students
opportunities to engage with one another (and, if desired, invited experts) on issues of
particular concern. Beth reported, for example, that she had benefited from regular,
informal discussions she had had during ITP with a small group of classmates outside of
class time to share thoughts (and additional materials) on issues of particular interest to
them.
Supporting informal PST interest groups during ITP may also encourage—and
possibly provide the initial blueprint for—teaching students to begin to build the
supportive professional networks and learning communities they will need as they move
into their next phase of development as in-service teachers. As Grossman, Wineburg,
and Woolworth (2001) observed, structures for ongoing community for the purpose of
teacher learning are rare, particularly at the school level. Whether they are for the
purposes of gaining insight into a particular problem of practice, lesson study, or
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continuing intellectual development, participation in these groups can foster and promote
habits of lifelong learning and engagement in the teaching profession.
It may also be incumbent upon ITP programs and fieldwork site administrators to
take a more prominent role in ensuring that PST fieldwork experiences are adequate entry
points in their induction into the teaching profession. Rather than leaving to chance that
individual guiding teachers will provide the necessary orientation to the school
community (and politics) beyond the four walls of the classroom—for example, what to
expect from school administrators and their ever-changing role in instructional leadership
and school-family relationships—it would behoove educators involved in the ITP process
(whether university- or school-based) to set standard protocols that ensure that all
practice teachers receive support they need to make sense of the school environment and
their role (current and future) within it.
The Walk to the Teacher’s Desk Revisited
The walk to the teacher’s desk, described in the opening quote of this dissertation,
may well feel long to aspiring educators.
For some, it begins just a few steps away from their student desk. For others, it
begins well before they enter a formal ITP program—and completing the required
courses and fieldwork are just the final steps on their journey to becoming a teacher.
Neither group comes empty-handed. They arrive with a variety of skills and
opinions about what education is, and is not. They have notions about the kind of teacher
they want (or very much do not want) to be—and specific ideas about what they want to
learn. Like the students in their future classrooms, they arrive with a storehouse of prior
knowledge and experiences that they have collected as students, siblings, parents, family
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and community members, consumers of print and mass media, and (in some cases)
teachers. These preconceptions can influence what they find relevant and useful in ITP
coursework and fieldwork, and how they analyze their own work and the practice of
others (Calderhead & Robson, 1991).
Learning to teach is an individual and deeply personal journey. While PSTs share
a willingness to go through the rigors of teacher training and a desire to experience the
rewards (and challenges) of teaching itself, how they experience the learning-to-teach
process—and what they gain from it—depends in large part upon the skills, attitudes, and
understandings with which they arrived. For some, like Anne, the task of can seem
daunting at first.
Not only do I need to manage this classroom, and plan my lessons, and make sure
[students are] understanding, checking for understanding, but I also need to apply
all these theories and make sure that I'm reaching every single student in my
classroom. That worries me.
Our job as teacher educators is to act as facilitators and guides, delivering the
benefit of our expertise (and the curriculum we are paid to transmit) in the best way we
know how. We must help PSTs acquire the skills they need to sort out the concatenation
of ideas and experiences they will encounter during ITP—and the many dilemmas they
will face as teachers (Lampert, 1995) that are certain to pose intellectual and emotional
(and sometimes physical) challenges to their understanding of learning and teaching, and
themselves. “All course content related to teaching seems to be of concern to teachers at
some time and in some form,” Fuller (1970) offered (p. 10). The task is to match the
program (the support students are offered) with the needs (the problems or challenges
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they face). “Good teachers join self, subject, and students in the fabric of life,” suggested
Palmer (2007): “they are able to weave a complex web of connections among themselves,
their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for
themselves” (p. 11).
By seeking to know and understand what our students’ teaching concerns are—
and what they are not—we can meet them where they are and help them on their way.
We can also demonstrate to them that this is the hard work that successful teachers do to
make a positive impact on student learning.
The need has never been greater. Aspiring teachers must arrive at the teacher’s
desk with the full set of skills they need to be effective on Day One. Their students are
waiting.

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Appendix A
Borich (1996) TCC Items By Concern Category
(pp. 672-673)

SELF
Whether the students respect me.
Doing well when I’m observed.
Managing my time efficiently.
Losing the respect of my peers.
My ability to prepare adequate lesson plans.
Having my inadequacies become known to other teachers.
What principal might think if there is too much noise in my classroom.
Obtaining a favorable evaluation of my teaching.
Losing the respect of my students.
My ability to maintain the appropriate degree of control.
Getting students to behave.
Having embarrassing incident in my classroom for which I might be judged
responsible.
That my peers may think I’m not doing an adequate job.
Appearing competent to parents.
Teaching effectively when other teacher is present.

TASK
Insufficient clerical help for teachers.
Too many extra duties and responsibilities.
Insufficient time for rest and class preparation.
Not enough assistance from specialized teachers.
Not enough time for grading and testing.
The inflexibility of the curriculum.
Too many standards and regulations set for teachers.
The rigid instructional routine.
Having too many students in a class.
Lack of public support for schools.
Not having sufficient time to plan.
Not being able to cope with troublemakers in my classes.
My ability to work with disruptive students.
The large number of administrative interruptions.
Working with too many students each day.

IMPACT
Helping students to value learning.
Increasing students’ feelings of accomplishment.
Diagnosing student learning problems.
Whether each student is reaching his or her potential.
Recognizing the social and emotional needs of students.
Challenging unmotivated students.
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172
Understanding why certain students make slow progress.
Understanding ways in which student health and nutrition problems can affect
learning.
Meeting the needs of different kinds of students.
Seeking alternative ways to ensure that students learn the subject matter.
Understanding the psychological and cultural differences that can affect my
students’ behavior.
Adapting myself to the needs of different students.
Guiding students toward intellectual and emotional growth.
Whether students can apply what they learn.
Understanding what factors motivate students to learn.

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173
Appendix B
Solicitation Email

Subject: Request for Participation

Dear Former xxx Student:

. . . I would like to invite you to participate in a research study that I am conducting for
my doctoral dissertation. The purpose of this study is to learn more about the experiences
of pre-service teachers in the xxx Master of Arts in Teaching program. By participating
in this research, you will be providing valuable information regarding the experiences of
our MAT students that may aid in program improvement and provide key insights into
how schools of education more broadly can better prepare teachers for the classroom.

If you are selected for this study, you will be asked to participate in two, 30-45 minute
interviews about your experiences while xxx MAT program. These interviews will be
scheduled for xxx, and may be conducted in person or via phone or videoconference.
There is nothing that you need to prepare for these interviews. I will also ask you to
allow me to access the work that you already produced for the xxx course in the xxx 2015
or xxx 2015 terms, including but not limited to: opening and closing reflections; other
written work; and recordings of xxx class sessions.

If you are interested in participating in my study, please click on the link below. You
will be asked a few questions about your eligibility for and interest in the study, and also
be provided with an information sheet that includes more detail about the study. It should
take you less than 5 minutes to complete. Please respond by end of day on xxx, using
the link below:

[electronic link]

Your participation in this study is entirely voluntary. A decision not to participate will
involve no penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me (xxx) or xxx.

Thank you so much for your help.

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

174
Appendix C
Study Information Sheet

[Text was embedded in online screening questionnaire.]

Please read the following important information regarding the purpose and nature
of this research study.

The purpose of this study is to examine the experience of pre-services teachers who are
(or were recently) enrolled in the xxx Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program. By
participating in this research, you will be providing valuable information regarding the
experiences of our MAT students that may aid in program improvement and provide key
insights into how schools of education more broadly can better prepare teacher educators.
All students who were enrolled in the sections of the xxx course xxx in the xxx or xxx
2015 term are eligible to participate in this study.

If you are selected for this study, you will be asked participate in two, 30-45 minute
interviews about your experiences while in xxx MAT program. These interviews will be
scheduled for xxx, and may be conducted in person or via phone or videoconference.
Your participation in these interviews is voluntary, and you can stop either interview at
any point. You may also ask to skip a question that you do not feel comfortable
answering.

If you are selected for this study, you will allow the researcher to access work that you
have already produced for the xxx course in the xxx 2015 or xxx 2015 terms, including
but not limited to: opening and closing reflections; other written work; and recordings of
xxx class sessions. The results of your initial, online questionnaire may also be used in
the research.

Upon completion of the questionnaire, you will be asked to provide your name and
contact information. This information will be used to reach you for the purposes of this
research, including scheduling interview dates/times.

You will not be paid for participating in this research study. The records for this study
will be kept confidential as far as permitted by law. Members of the research team and
the University xxx Protection Program (xxPP) may access the data. The xxPP reviews
and monitors research studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.

The identity of study participants will not be revealed in the findings. Participants’
identifiers will be protected through the use of pseudonyms in the field notes and reports
produced as a result of data collection. When the results of this research are published or
discussed in conferences, no identifiable information will be used.

The data collected for this study will be stored on a secure, password-protected computer
to which the researcher has sole access. None of your current or former MAT course
PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

175
instructors or xxx program staff will have access to the raw data, interview recordings, or
transcripts. The data will be securely destroyed after the completion of this research.

Your participation is voluntary. Refusal to participate will involve no penalty or loss of
benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw your consent at any time
and discontinue participation without penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims,
rights or remedies because of your participation in this research study.

If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact the
principal investigator in this study (Debra Danner at xxx or xxx) or the faculty advisor
(xxx at xxx or xxx). If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as
a research participant or the research in general and are unable to contact the research
team, or if you want to talk to someone independent of the research team, please contact
the xxx Institutional Review Board (xxx), xxx.

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

176

Appendix D
Observation Protocol

Participant _____________________________________________________________

Observation Date ____________________________ Time ______________________

Class Session Date ___________________________ Recording Length ____________

CATEGORIES OF CONCERN
(Fuller & Bown, 1975)
Time Frame
Referenced
By Participant
Participant Remarks
SELF CONCERNS
Concerns about class control,
content mastery, evaluation

TASK CONCERNS
Concerns focused on teaching tasks,
limitations/frustrations in teaching
situation (esp. administrative tasks)

IMPACT CONCERNS
Concerns focused on pupil impact,
providing/assessing support
students need

OTHER CONCERNS

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

177
Appendix E
Interview Protocol

Interview #1: Recollecting Earlier Concerns

Background

1. Think back to around the time you started your MAT program. Describe your life at
that time. What were your thoughts and feelings about starting the program?

2. Prior to starting the program, what did you know about teaching as a profession?

3. What kinds of teaching experiences had you had prior to enrolling in the program?

4. What were your goals for becoming a teacher?

5. What other work experience did you have prior to enrolling in MAT?

Early Concerns

6. Tell me about a time right after you started this program when you felt concerned
about becoming a teacher.

6a. Describe the nature of your concern. Be specific.

6b. What would you say prompted the concern?

6c. How did this concern make you feel?

7. Can you think of any other concerns you had right at the beginning of the program
about teaching? Perhaps while you were doing your classroom observations? [repeat
prompts from Q#6 as needed]

8. [Specific questions based on participant’s artifacts from the foundations class.
Example: In one of your reflections on the classroom observations you conducted
during the first term, you wrote about being worried that you would not have time to
reflect as a classroom teacher. Would you tell me more about that?] [use prompts from
Q#6]

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

178
Interview #2: Concerns At End of Program, Making Sense of Changes

Current Concerns

1. Tell me about your life now that you have completed your MAT coursework.

2. What are your thoughts and feelings about becoming a teacher?

3. What are your goals for becoming a teacher?

4. Tell me about your last term of Guided Practice. What was that like?

5. Now that you have completed all of your coursework and student teaching, what
are you concerned about as you look forward in your teaching career?

5a. Describe the nature of your concern. Be specific.

5b. What would you say prompted the concern?

5c. How does this concern make you feel?

6. What other concerns do you have now? . . . [repeat Q#5 prompts as needed]

Reflections on Changing Nature of Concerns

7. Think back to when you enrolled in the program. During that first term, you said that
you were concerned about xxx. Tell me more about that concern.
a. Do you still have that concern—or has it changed?
b. [If changed] How has it changed since you started the program?
c. What do you think prompted that change?

8. [repeat Q#7 and prompts, referencing individual data regarding early concerns]

9. Are there any concerns that you have now that you didn’t have when you started the
program? Tell me more about that.

General Reflections

10. Is there anything else you can think of that might help me understand the concerns
that you have now or have had in the past about teaching—or how your concerns have
changed?

PRE-SERVICE TEACHER CONCERNS

179
Appendix F
Case Study Database
Sample Entries (Anne)

Concerns Inv v081418.xlsx Page 1 of 1 Printed: 9/10/18 1:16 PM
Time%Frame Fuller%Code Addit%Code Category Notes%on%Concern Source%
Pre$ITP Self Class-size
Classroom-
management
Concerned-about-being-sole-teacher-responsible,-with-
4x-teacher$student-ratio-in-preschool;-without-
assistance-from-colleagues
DC$Survey$39$
42
Early-ITP$recollected Impact Multicultural Student-learning
Observation-school-not-very-diverse.--Wish-had-more-
diverse-school-to-observe,-document,-practice-in,-to-
implement.--Wanted-to-take-it-all-in-and-use-it,-but-
didn't-really-have-anywhere-to-use-it.
Int$01$187
Early-ITP Impact
Relationship-w-
students
Student-learning
Teaching-is-not-telling.-Teaching-is-building-
relationships-and-making-connections-to-their-ideas.
DC$R12$578
Post$ITP
Self?--Task?-
Impact?
Relationship-w-
administrators
School-administration-
(change)
What-about-politics?--Initially,-I-worried-about-who-
makes-decisions$$teacher-or-administration.--Now-that-
I've-gotten-to-meet-faculty-and-administration,-I-don't-
think-that's-so-much-of-a-concern-for-me-now.--Still-not-
entirely-pleased-with-what-I've-seen-leadership$wise,-
but-not-too-concerned-about-it.
Int$02$319
Post$ITP
Self?--
Impact?
Handling-
misbehavior
Classroom-
Management
Like-to-find-out-the-reason-for-their-misbehavior.--Like-4$
year$olds,-reason-why-you're-doing-this.--Tell-me-about-
your-idea,-what-are-you-thinking? Int$02$348
During-GP/ITP$
recollected-post$ITP
Self Teacher-role
Lesson-planning-and-
delivery-(change)
During-1st-GP,-was-nervous-wreck.--Nervous-to-stand-in-
front-of-class.--Began-to-feel-more-comfortable,-
gradually-taught-more-periods.--Had-to-jump-in-and-
take-over-to-feel-comfortable.-GT-had-a-lot-of-
confidence-in-me-and-pushed-me-in-direction-of-taking-
over.--Am-grateful-now.
Int$02$83

Abstract (if available)

Abstract A qualitative research study was conducted to address questions regarding preservice teacher concerns during an accelerated, graduate-level teacher training program and the changes in those concerns over time. Presented in a case study, the data collected from two participants at the start and end of their initial teacher preparation program—through document analysis, observations, and interviews -- revealed an array of teaching concerns in the areas of classroom management, parental involvement, administrative support, lesson planning, and student learning. The nature of some of these concerns changed as students progressed through their training program, while others did not. Mediating factors -- including individual characteristics, program coursework, and changes in teaching context -- may have influenced both the nature and timing of the students’ concerns. These findings partially support the phased-concerns theory developed by Fuller (1969) and her colleagues at the University of Texas in the late 1960s, and suggest that the journey each aspiring teacher makes to the teacher’s desk is unique and deeply personal, but can be enhanced by teacher educators who are attuned to his or her needs, model reflective practice, and demonstrate the importance of student-centered learning.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Danner, Debra I. (author)

Core Title Changing nature of preservice teacher concerns in an accelerated, graduate-level teacher education program

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 11/13/2018

Defense Date 08/31/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag apprentice teacher,changing concerns,concerns,concerns theory,Fuller,initial teacher preparation,novice teacher,OAI-PMH Harvest,phased concerns,phased-concerns theory,preservice teacher,pre-service teacher,progressive concerns,teacher concerns,Teacher Concerns Checklist,Teacher Concerns Questionnaire,Teacher Concerns Statement,Teacher Education,teacher educator,teacher in training,teacher preparation,teacher trainer,Teacher Training,teaching concerns

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Pascarella, John A., III (committee chair), Rayburn, Kalim T. (committee member), Samkian, Artineh (committee member)

Creator Email danner.di@sbcglobal.net,ddanner@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-106925

Unique identifier UC11675709

Identifier etd-DannerDebr-6952.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-106925 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-DannerDebr-6952.pdf

Dmrecord 106925

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Danner, Debra I.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA