Helping preservice teachers separate fact from fiction 

Building realistic expectations of the teaching profession among aspiring teachers will increase their potential job satisfaction and retention. 

 

When my daughter was in 2nd grade, she told me she wanted to become a teacher. “I’ll wear a long black dress,” she said. “I’ll pull my hair back in a bun, and I’ll stand in front of the blackboard and use a stick to point at things. If my students talk, I’ll smack them on the head!” 

“But your teacher doesn’t do any of those things,” I replied. “Where did you get an idea like that?” 

She rolled her eyes. “Everyone knows that what teachers do, Dad,” she said with all the seriousness that an eight-year-old can muster. “Plus, that’s what the teachers do in Harry Potter.”   

This admittedly precocious exchange illustrates an important phenomenon. Almost from the moment we are old enough to recognize the world around us, we are bombarded with images of teachers and teaching. They are in the books we read, in the childhood games of toddlers, in newspapers, and in magazines. Images of teachers “spill out into television studios, movie theaters, homes, and playgrounds, infiltrating all arenas of human activity” (Weber & Mitchell, 1995, p. 5). Consequently, by the time my daughter was eight, her exposure to images of teaching was sufficient to override her actual classroom experiences. When she imagined herself as a teacher, she based her expectations on the images she had seen and read, not on the realities she had experienced. Her expectations of teaching were based on hand-me-down images, secondhand impressions of how a classroom works.   

Hand-me-down images 

This same hand-me-down phenomenon happens with preservice teachers. Like the rest of us, aspiring teachers have been saturated with images of teachers and classrooms.  

On one hand, these images of teaching can paint teaching in a flattering and inspiring light that can draw people into the profession. Teacher movies, for example, are essentially scripted highlight reels, showcasing three or four pivotal moments over the course of a year, foregrounding relationship building and, often, racial catharsis. The teacher is the hero, the cowboy of the Wild West riding into town to save the day. No one cares for the students like this teacher does, and, consequently, his or her students’ lives are changed forever. The familiar tropes of the Hollywood teacher movie are well-worn and comfortable. Despite the fact that numerous studies have documented just how unrealistic these portrayals often are (e.g., Dalton, 2010; Rhem, 2015), their appeal is undiminished, and people are often drawn to teaching in part because of these films’ implicit promises that teachers can singlehandedly change students’ lives. 

On the other hand, these same images of teaching can lead to frustration and emotional turmoil, especially when new teachers enter the field and begin to face the realities of classroom practice. Our cultural images of teachers are too often one-dimensional, fictionalized accounts of a fantastically complex three-dimensional reality. In the movies, good teachers often begin the year by discarding standards-based instruction in favor of “life lessons” — there may even be a scene where the teacher literally throws the curriculum away. Imagine the fate of the new teacher who enters the classroom convinced that it’s more important to teach students to love math than it is to make sure that they can do math.  

People are often drawn to teaching in part because of these films’ implicit promises that teachers can singlehandedly change students’ lives. 

Although changing students’ lives and fostering academic excellence are not mutually exclusive goals, the images of teaching that surround us often insist that teachers must, in fact, choose between them. Inspirational teacher quotes found on coffee mugs and in internet memes tell us that “the best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book” or that “some teachers taught the curriculum today. Other teachers taught students today. And there’s a big difference.” My own research indicates that preservice teachers have internalized these images to the point that they prioritize their future students’ emotional outcomes far above their academic outcomes (Delamarter, 2019). In fact, preservice teachers often believe that focusing on academic content will interfere with students’ emotional growth.  

Unfortunately, teachers who enter the classroom expecting to foreground emotions while merely tolerating academics will quickly find themselves at odds with the realities of 21st-century education. They will likely experience practice shock, the disorienting and jarring reality check that happens to so many new teachers (Meijer, De Graaf, & Meirink, 2011). Preservice teachers who uncritically build their expectations off these dominant cultural images, which are often out of alignment with contemporary classroom practice (Britzman, 2003), are at increased risk of suffering early-career identity crises and even leaving the field altogether (Chong, Low, & Goh, 2011).  

These hand-me-down images don’t only come from the media. Preservice teachers have told me that they know exactly what they’re getting into because their spouse/best friend/former college roommate/parent is a teacher. They assume that watching a loved one grade papers in the evening or listening to them talk about a particularly frustrating student over the dinner table constitutes reliable, unfiltered, and complete information (Lortie, 2002). The reality, however, is that such vicarious experiences remain secondhand. Though hand-me-down images of teaching, whether from the media or from personal relationships, can convey some truth, they cannot convey it in full. At best, such images will be a shadow of reality, a shadow that is too often mistaken for substance and fact.  

Firsthand knowledge 

Secondhand images of teaching are not the only shadows that get mistaken for reality, however. Even preservice teachers’ own firsthand experiences as K-12 students can lead to unrealistic and incomplete expectations of teaching. Time spent in classrooms as students does not, in and of itself, prepare one for the realities of teaching. Though preservice teachers may have spent much of their lives observing their own teachers in action, the picture they have is incomplete: 

The student is the “target” of teacher efforts and sees the teacher front stage and center like an audience viewing a play. Students do not receive invitations to watch the teacher’s performance from the wings . . . they are not pressed to place the teacher’s actions in a pedagogically oriented framework. They are witnesses from their own student-oriented perspectives. (Lortie, 2002, p. 62) 

Even the most attentive K-12 student does not have access to what takes place behind the scenes. Students don’t observe the meetings, trainings, and other collaborative activities that constitute much of a teacher’s work. They don’t see the planning, grading, or any of the other countless steps that it takes to implement effective instruction. They witness neither the self-doubt that accompanies a failed lesson nor the frustration of explaining the same thing for the third time in a row.  

Though students might be aware of some pedagogical strategies — such as assessments and management techniques — they most likely won’t think about them pedagogically. Because students don’t think like a teacher thinks, they don’t recognize the intentionality and structure behind much of what takes place in a well-run classroom. They experience it, but they don’t necessarily see it for what it is.  

Closing the expectations gap 

Because both first- and secondhand images of teaching play such a large role in shaping preservice teachers’ expectations of teaching, teacher preparation programs have a special responsibility to help their candidates confront and challenge the images they have absorbed. Historically, preparation programs have failed to adequately address preservice teachers’ psychological and identity development (Sutherland & Markauskaite, 2012), but recent research has identified a number of strategies to help aspiring teachers close the gap between their expectations of teaching and the realities they will face.  

Gathering information

One vital but often overlooked step in closing the expectations gap involves finding out what preservice teachers actually expect teaching to be. The methods for gathering this information range from formal, quantitative surveys to seemingly informal activities. One of the most effective and interesting ways to uncover classroom expectations is to have preservice teachers draw pictures of their “ideal” classroom. A number of studies have used this approach to unpack the tacit assumptions that preservice teachers bring to the table (e.g., Mensah, 2011; Sinclair et al., 2013). The teacher in these drawings is often drawn in a static pose, standing in front of a blackboard, pointer in hand. Students are rarely included, but if they are, they are disproportionately small, and we often only see the backs of their heads.  

These drawings reveal a great deal about the teacher-centric nature of preservice teachers’ expectations. Instead of focusing on students, preservice teachers tend to focus on themselves (Fletcher & Dicicco, 2017). Their classroom expectations center on their own performance and their own states of being to such an extent that students quite literally aren’t in the picture. Besides being revealing to teacher educators, if preservice teachers are given the opportunity to revisit and revise their drawings later in the program, these drawings can be a powerful reflection tool and a catalyst for future growth. 

Providing analytical frameworks 

When confronted with realities that conflict with their existing expectations, preservice teachers often resist the new information. They find themselves in a state of cognitive dissonance, unable to reconcile the disparities between the images they have internalized and the realities they are now facing. As a result, they frequently push back against their professors’ and supervisors’ attempts to expose them to more fully developed expectations of teaching. Cognitive dissonance can be a painful process. In this sense, the truth may hurt.  

To counter this resistance, some teacher preparation programs have taught preservice teachers about cognitive dissonance before exposing them to potentially disruptive classroom realities. In one experiment, researchers found that preservice teachers who read an article about cognitive dissonance before being presented with evidence that challenged their teaching expectations were more likely to accept and less likely to reject the evidence than those who had not read the article. Furthermore, the preservice teachers who read the article demonstrated “metadissonance,” which is an awareness of one’s own mental discomfort. Learners equipped with this kind of awareness are less likely to resist or selectively process information that contradicts their expectations (McFalls & Cobb-Roberts, 2001). 

Other frameworks may have similar effects. Providing preservice teachers with the vocabulary to analyze images of teaching can also provide them with the tools for analyzing their own expectations. For example, helping preservice teachers recognize the ways that most Hollywood teacher movies use oppositional and mutually exclusive language to emphasize emotional outcomes over academic outcomes can help them to recognize and critique these same inaccurate and incomplete narratives in their own teaching expectations (Delamarter, 2015). By applying a specific framework to an analysis of external images, such as movies, they are subsequently able to apply that same framework to their own internal beliefs. 

Supporting (but not requiring) reflection 

Once preservice teachers have been given the tools for reflection, they need to be given the necessary time and space to complete it. As it turns out, this is a more difficult task than it may seem. Although reflective activities are common in teacher preparation, effective reflection practices are much rarer. Much of the time, reflective activities are embedded into coursework, taking the form of journaling, class discussions, online forums, and so on. Although these kinds of activities can lead to meaningful reflection, a growing body of research (e.g., Hernandez et al., 2013) suggests that reflective practices are at their most powerful when they are unforced. Preparation programs may serve their candidates best when they teach them how to reflect without requiring that they do so.  

Teaching the skills of reflection without mandating their use may seem counterintuitive, but it actually paves the way for preservice teachers to engage in deeper, more authentic reflection on their own, rather than quickly jotting down a journal entry to meet a course requirement. Preparation program faculty should create time and space for reflection, and they should introduce preservice teachers to a variety of reflective techniques and strategies, such as “before and after” journaling, critical conversations, and sentence stems (“I used to . . . but now I . . .”). Perhaps most important, program faculty should model pedagogical reflection, inviting preservice teachers to join them on their own journeys of thinking through their instructional choices.  

Preparation programs must remember that just as there is no one-size-fits-all method for teaching, neither is there a standardized response to preservice teachers’ expectations gaps.

Differentiating responses 

Finally, preparation programs must remember that just as there is no one-size-fits-all method for teaching, neither is there a standardized response to preservice teachers’ expectations gaps. Aspiring teachers’ expectations of teaching have been found to differ according to program type (undergrad versus graduate) and by their desired teaching levels (Delamarter & Wiederholt, 2019). For example, undergraduate preservice teachers tend to have expectations that focus primarily on emotional impact, whereas graduate-level preservice teachers’ expectations tend to be more balanced between emotional and academic impact. In general, the same differences can be found between elementary and secondary preservice teachers, with elementary teachers being more emotion-oriented and secondary teachers being more interested in both emotions and academics.  

Expectational differences can also vary by gender. For example, Annette Braun (2012) found that male preservice teachers worried that they wouldn’t be perceived as authoritative, whereas female preservice teachers worried about not coming across as caring. Culturally stereotyped notions of gender-appropriate roles and behavior carry over into classroom expectations, and some studies suggest that preservice teachers who place too much weight on gender roles in teaching may end up leaving the profession early (e.g., Moses, Admiraal, & Berry, 2016).  

In a similar vein, preservice teacher’s racial identities may also play a role in shaping their teaching expectations. For example, numerous studies have highlighted the social advocacy expectations of Black and Latinx preservice teachers, while much remains unknown about the teaching expectations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (e.g., Brown, 2014). Unfortunately, teacher preparation programs generally respond to preservice teachers of color as a monolithic block, designing and implementing the same supports and interventions regardless of candidates’ individual racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds (Irizarry, 2007). 

Exactly how preparation programs should differentiate their responses to preservice teacher’s teaching expectations is difficult to say, particularly given that the categories listed here — program type, teaching level, gender, and race — interact and intersect with each other in ways that we don’t fully understand and that are often nearly impossible to predict. Although we know enough to highlight the need for expectational differentiation, we’re still learning how to go about doing it.   

Nevertheless, despite our relative lack of knowledge, the challenge remains. Creating a thriving teacher workforce requires a willingness to guide future teachers through the sticky work of reconciling their expectations with reality. Closing the expectation gap is not supplemental to basic teacher education; it is a necessary step in the process of becoming a teacher. It is not enough for aspiring teachers to learn something new; they have to become something new, as well.

References 

Braun, A. (2012). Trainee teachers, gender and becoming the ‘right’ person for the job: Care and authority in the vocational habitus of teaching. Oxford Review of Education, 38 (2), 231-246. 

Britzman, D. (2003). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.  

Brown, K.D. (2014). Teaching in color: A critical race theory in education analysis of the literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the U.S. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 17 (3), 326-345. 

Chong, S., Low, E., & Goh, K. (2011). Emerging professional teacher identity of pre-service teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 36 (8), 50-64. 

Dalton, M.M. (2010). The Hollywood curriculum: Teachers in the movies. New York, NY: Peter Lang. 

Delamarter, J. (2015). Avoiding practice shock: Using teacher movies to realign pre-service teachers’ expectations of teaching. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 40 (2). 

Delamarter, J. (2019). Proactive images for pre-service teachers: Identity, expectations, and avoiding practice shock. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Delamarter, J. & Wiederholt, K. (2019). The affective vs. the academic: A quantitative study of pre-service teachers’ expected impact on their future students. Action in Teacher Education. 

Fletcher, E.C. & Dicicco, M. (2017). Exploring teacher concerns of pre-collegiate urban teaching academy students. The Teacher Educator, 52 (2), 114-137.  

Hernandez, R., Haidet, P., Gill, A., & Teal, C. (2013). Fostering students’ reflection about bias in healthcare: Cognitive dissonance and the role of personal and normative standards. Medical Teacher, 35, 1082-1089. 

Irizarry, J.G. (2007). “Home-growing” teachers of color: Lessons learned from a town-gown partnership. Teacher Education Quarterly, 34 (4), 87-102.  

Lortie, D. (2002). Schoolteacher: A sociological study (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.  

McFalls, E. & Cobb-Roberts, D. (2001). Reducing resistance to diversity through cognitive dissonance instruction: Implications for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 52 (2), 164-172.  

Meijer, P.C., De Graaf, G., & Meirink, J. (2011). Key experiences in student teachers’ development. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 17 (1), 115-129.  

Mensah, F.M. (2011). The DESTIN: Preservice teachers’ drawings of the ideal elementary science teacher. School Science and Mathematics, 111 (8), 379-388. 

Moses, I., Admiraal, W.F., & Berry, A.K. (2016). Gender and gender role differences in student–teachers’ commitment to teaching. Social Psychology of Education, 19 (3), 475-492.  

Rhem, J. (2015). The teacher archetype in the movies. In D. Liston & I. Renga (Eds.), Teaching, learning, and schooling in film: Reel education (pp. 9-24). New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. 

Sinclair, B.B., Szabo, S., Redmond-Santiago, A., & Sennette, J.D. (2013). Investigating perceptions of teachers and teaching: Using the draw-a-teacher checklist. Issues in Teacher Education, 22 (1), 105-123. 

Sutherland, L. & Markauskaite, L. (2012). Examining the role of authenticity in supporting the development of professional identity: An example from teacher education. Higher Education, 64, 747-766.  

Weber, S., & Mitchell, C. (1995). ‘That’s funny, you don’t look like a teacher!’: Interrogating images, identity, and popular culture. New York, NY: Routledge.