Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Notions that teachers’ classroom work often gets decoupled from institutional goals of schooling have long been central to sociological theories of schools’ organizational functioning. Despite the pervasiveness of decoupling arguments, we know comparatively little about how teachers learn to operate within schools’ organizational conditions. In this article, I draw upon data from a longitudinal ethnographic study of college seniors in a teacher education program transitioning from coursework, through student teaching, and into their first jobs as teachers. I focus on the collective routines teacher candidates experience, and how they make sense of their roles in schools – both prospectively and upon entry into the occupation – as they pass through the stages of their transition from student to teacher. I find that new teachers reproduce and reinvent the organizational conditions of schools by developing perspectives which prioritize: 1) ongoing adaptation to individual classroom contexts; 2) a locus of control in the classroom; and 3) having a positive influence on students which may or may not overlap with curriculum standards. I discuss implications for theories of decoupling in schools, teacher education, and understanding relationships between social structure and processes of professional socialization.