Reading beliefs, practices, and theories in classroom teaching: Congruent, ambiguous, and incongruent relationships

Abstract

This study explored a teacher educator's beliefs, practices and theories during the teaching of a reading course READ 3323.02: Reading Acquisition, to 31 preservice teachers at a south Texas University during the Fall 1992 semester. Rationale for the study was based on current research that encourage the use of reflective inquiry practice to explore classroom instruction. Reflective practice is viewed as an alternative perspective to inquire into the teacher change process. Written in narrative, the inquiry explored my transition from a transmission belief system and related practices of the teaching of reading to a transactive sociocultural Constructivist/Vygotskian belief system and related practices about the teaching and learning of reading. The study addresses three aspects of myself as a teacher educator: (1) the beliefs I hold regarding teaching, reading, and learning; (2) the practices I employed; and (3) the relationships between my teaching beliefs, instructional practices and educational theory. Thirty-one class meetings were videotaped. Seven videotaped classes were selected to represent the study's primary data source. One videotape was used to initiate a practical argument of my classroom practices. The remaining six videotaped classes were transcribed into sets of anecdotal records and used to compare classroom instruction with the practical argument dialogue. Grounded theory procedures and techniques provided the comparative analysis that revealed twelve overarching teaching practices. The comparison of these teaching practices indicated degrees of congruent cases of relationships among my beliefs, practices, and current educational theories. These cases of practice relationships, termed Episodic Frames constructed a conceptual framework of congruent, ambiguous, and incongruent relationships between and among the twelve practices and my beliefs and theories about teaching, reading, and learning. The resultant framework represents my personal practical knowledge teaching system I employed during the teaching of reading to preservice teachers. Secondary data sources from student journal entries and other class related artifacts were used for triangulation purposes to support and inform this teaching system. Presented from the findings is one possible interpretation about the movement from a transmission-style of teaching to a more interactive-style of practice. This interpretation suggests an alternate view about the teacher change process.