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Preservice Teachers' Selection and Use of Content AreaLiteracy StrategiesThomas W. Bean aa University of Nevada–Las VegasPublished online: 14 Nov 2012.

To cite this article: Thomas W. Bean (1997) Preservice Teachers' Selection and Use of Content Area Literacy Strategies, TheJournal of Educational Research, 90:3, 154-163, DOI: 10.1080/00220671.1997.10543771

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Preservice Teachers' Selection and Use of Content Area Literacy Strategies THOMAS W. BEAN University of Nevada-Las Vegas

ABSTRACT Preservice teachers' selection and use of specific vocabulary and comprehension teaching strategies for a microteaching session in a field-based practicum attached to a required content area literacy course are described. Also, the degree to which these preservice teachers used their microteaching strategies in practicum assignments and stu­dent teaching is charted. Twenty-seven preservice content area teachers participated in the first phase of the study. They rep­resented core content areas as well as art and music. The results revealed (a) substantial variability within and across disciplines in strategy selection, with 14 different strategies chosen for microteaching; (b) that 2 of 10 preservice teachers interviewed reported they continued to use the original strate­gy selected in subsequent practicum experiences; and (c) that 8 of 10 teachers interviewed reported using one of the content area literacy strategies from the course in subsequent practicums. Qualitative data from the interviews supported the conclusion that these preservice teachers had a clear sense of the sociocultural context of their practicum settings and the powerful influence of the cooperating teacher in selecting and using particular strategies.

P reservice content teachers are typically introduced to vocabulary and comprehension strategies in required

content area literacy courses . The expectation is that these future teachers will select strategies that match the needs of classrooms in their diverse disciplines and transfer their use of the strategies to future teaching contexts. Various researchers have raised doubts about both of these expecta­tions, and several studies documented preservice teachers ' resistance to the use of strategies promoted in content area literacy courses (Fox. 1993; Hollingsworth & Teal , 1991 ; Wilson , Konopak, & Readence, 1993).

Fox ( 1993) conducted case studies of 5 student teachers in the field of English. Based on interviews and participant observation field notes , Fox found that student teachers coped with the multiple cultures of the school site and uni­versity milieu by becoming more teacher centered in their lessons. This teacher-centered approach to instruction replaced the collaborative model advocated in their univer-

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sity methods classes. Thus, content area literacy strategies were embedded in a complex sociocultural setting of ninth­grade English, where their utility was minimized.

Wilson , Konopak, and Readence ( 1993) used journals and observational field notes to conduct a case study of a preservice social studies teacher. David, a 21-year-old pre­service teacher was observed in his content area literacy course and related practicum. Further case study data were compiled as David progressed to his student teaching assignment in a rural high school. In this setting David taught six social studies courses spanning American histo­ry, world history, and government. Although David began his initial practicum with a belief in the reader-based strate­gies advocated in the content area literacy course, he changed this perspective dramatically in student teaching. In the solo stage of student teaching, David adopted a tradi­tional text-based approach that involved writing key points on the board, lecturing from the textbook, and using work­sheets with low-level , text-explicit questions from the text. In essence, he modeled the approach used by his cooperat­ing teacher and elected not to use any of the content area lit­eracy strategies introduced in the course. David commented that these strategies " take too much time." In a high school setting where teachers typically teach anywhere from 150 to 180 students clustered in short 40-min periods, control and efficiency become the hallmarks of good teaching. As an apprentice with few rights in this setting, David adapted to the environment by quickly sensing what would allow him to survive student teaching with the fewest classroom man­agement problems.

Hollingsworth and Teal ( 1991) conducted a detailed case study of two secondary preservice teachers ' beliefs and practices after taking a course on the foundations of teach­ing secondary reading. Both students experienced problems

Address correspondence to Thomas W Bean. University of Nevada- Las Vegas. Department of Instructional and Curricular Studies. 4505 Marvland Parkway, Box 453005. Las Vegas, NV 89 I 54- 3005.

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implementing reading strategies in mathematics and sci­ence because their cooperating teachers used the texts infre­quently.

The existing studies of preservice teachers ' strategy selection and use suggest that limited application of content area literacy strategies is the norm. Why does this resistance to content area literacy strategies persist? And, given the absence of participant follow-up in existing studies, is resis­tance to strategy use unique to some discernible dimensions of the field experience?

The role of the teacher envisioned in content area litera­cy courses and texts is that of a facilitator of learning. This idealized individual uses a variety of vocabulary and com­prehension strategies to smoothly orchestrate small-group activities . However, workplace realities and routines quick­ly mitigate against this idealized scene (O'Brien, Stewart, & Moje, 1993). In a critique of the university course infusion model used to inform preservice teachers about promising content area literacy strategies, O'Brien et al. ( 1993) argued that this model ignores the culture and pedagogical content focus of secondary schools. Furthermore, they emphasized that classroom control and the efficient coverage of large amounts of content are valued behaviors in secondary teaching. Proposed content area literacy strategies and the university courses in which they are demonstrated create an idealized, decontextualized setting where small-group col­laboration and creative application of strategies appears easier than it really is .

Reinking, Mealey, and Ridgeway ( 1993) also argued that content area reading instructors must go beyond merely pre­senting instructional strategies. Rather, instructors should relate the strategies to classroom sociocultural factors that affect teaching.

Current theories of how preservice teachers construct beliefs and practices about teaching emphasize four influ­ential factors: (a) discipline-based theories about learning ; (b) the culture of the classroom and the cooperating teacher's style; (c) reflection on preservice experiences; and (d) one's personal biography as a filter for reflection on teaching experiences (Bean & Zulich, 1992). The powerful influence of the cooperating teacher's style often outweighs the influence of the other three factors. For example, in a staff development project designed to introduce teachers to transactional strategies that help students model expert readers' use of comprehension strategies, the researchers found that only a small minority of the inservice teachers involved adopted transactional strategies (EI-Dinary & Schuder, 1993). If a strategy was inconsistent with a teacher's style, it was not adopted. Subsequent research showed that inservice teachers felt strategy-based instruc­tion was time-consuming and of greater use in reading than in science or social studies (EI-Dinary, Pressley, Coy-Ogan, & Schuder, 1994 ). Thus, classroom research and current theories of teachers' beliefs and practices show that although a rich array of vocabulary and comprehension strategies exists in our content area literacy courses, their

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actual application in classrooms may be minimized by other factors.

In the present study, I examined preservice teachers' selection of specific vocabulary and comprehension teach­ing strategies for a microteaching session in a field-based practicum. I also charted the degree to which these preser­vice teachers used their microteaching strategies in subse­quent practicum assignments and student teaching.

In the present study, preservice teachers developed and conducted a lesson with peers in a university class and again in their field-based practicum in a local school. I charted the strategies that students selected for this final project assign­ment in the school site and conducted follow-up interviews to explore application of these strategies in subsequent practicum assignments.

Method

Participants

Twenty-seven preservice content area teachers participat­ed in the first phase of this research. They were enrolled in a required content area reading course in the secondary cer­tification program at the University of Hawaii-Hilo. In addition, they were required to take a related ]-day-per­week observation-participation practicum in an intermedi­ate or high school classroom in their respective content areas. There were I 0 male and 17 female students, includ­ing 2 Hawaiians, 4 Japanese-Americans, and 21 Cau­casians. There were I 0 science majors, 3 mathematics majors, 3 English majors, 2 art majors, I music major, and 8 social studies majors . Pseudonyms have been used for the participants in this study.

Subsequently, a graduate student and I interviewed I 0 of the 27 students on their use of strategies in a 5-day practicum attached to a specialized methods course in their respective disciplines the following semester. These stu­dents were selected for interviews based on an effort to rep­resent the range of content areas from the original group of students and because not all 27 students were enrolled in the subsequent 5-day practicums. Some students were delaying this stage of the basic certification program while they com­pleted courses in their majors. Three were enrolled in a semester of student teaching.

Preservice teachers interviewed represented the content areas of science (n = 3), social studies (n = 2), mathematics (n = 2), English (n = I), art (n = I), and music (n = I). The interview consisted of four questions: (a) Tell me about your 5-day practicum or student teaching experience; (b) Are there any teaching strategies you use from your meth­ods course? (c) If so, what aspects of the practicum support the use of these teaching strategies? (d) If not, what aspects of the practicum interfere with using these teaching strate­gies? The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed for analysis through multiple readings, listing patterns, and dis­cerning themes.

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Materials

By the midpoint of the semester, students completed a reading autobiography, textbook evaluation, and plans for microteaching in the university course and in the school site. Students in the class were participating in their obser­vation-participation assignment in seven different school sites on the Big Island.

Strategies in vocabulary, comprehension, and writing were selected from the required text, Content Area Read­ing: An Integrated Approach (Readence, Bean, & Baldwin, 1995) or the course syllabus . I demonstrated these strategies using text material from science, social studies, and other content fields. Preservice teachers were encouraged to con­sider and select strategies they felt were applicable to their respective fields .

In planning the microteaching session, students were asked to carefully consider the classroom context and stu­dent characteristics related to learning from text (e.g. acad­emic. linguistic, and affective factors) , and sample projects were reviewed to model this process. Prior to this assign­ment, students analyzed teaching vignettes in the text in light of their initial experiences carrying out cooperating teacher-guided lessons in the practicum.

Results

Preservice teachers ' selection of specific content area reading strategies revealed substantial variability within and ac ross disciplines ; 14 strategies were selected for microteaching. These preservice teachers chose the strate­gies listed in Table I .

The variability of strategy selection within specific disci­plines represented in the course is evident in Table 2.

The variability in strategy selection suggests that these students engaged in an analytic consideration of the diverse classrooms represented in the seven schools where they completed their practicum experiences. Their final

Table I.-Content Area Reading Strategies Selected

Strategy

Graphic organi zer Anticipation- reaction gu ide Writing roulette Verbal- visua l Word map

Study guide Prereading questions Analogical study gu ide Text preview KWL

Fictionary Jigsaw Parallel notes Bingo game

Number

6 5 2 2 2

I I I I 2

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microteaching project occurred well after weeks of immer­sion in the classroom setting, assisting the cooperating teacher in the delivery of her lessons.

The strategies originally selected for microteaching dur­ing the content area literacy course are reported in Table 3. I compared those strategies with the strategies that the inter­viewed students reported using during the subsequent spe­cialized methods course and its 5-day-per-week practicum and in student teaching.

Only 2 out of I 0 preservice teachers continued to use the strategy they originally selected for microteaching in their subsequent practicum experience. Case No. 4, Tom Van­denhall , continued to use graphic organizers, and case No. 9, Robert Pascual , continued to use anticipation-reaction guides. However, 8 out of I 0 students were still using one of the content area literacy strategies introduced in the course. Two preservice teachers, Case No. 2, Karen Yamauchi , and Case No. 5, Sarah Ross, reported no strate­gies being used from the content area literacy class. Case study interviews provided a more vivid picture of the fac­tors that influenced strategy selection and application.

Amy Kamalani

Amy Kamalani entered her specialized methods 5-day observation-participation practicum in the semester follow­ing the content area literacy course. Her practicum in a local high school involved a human physiology class with 27 stu­dents and a biology class with 29 students. Her cooperating teacher was widely regarded as a highly successful young science teacher educated in Texas.

In response to the question about strategy use, Amy said:

If I work out a concept map on the unit then it kind of gives me an overview plus it helps the students. Mike, the CT, has been requiring the students to do a lot of concept map devel­opment. He partially develops a map rather than having them develop their own. Then I grade it as part of my unit.

Thus, in a 1-week or 2-week unit on a topic like tissues, the concept map would be filled in by students and submit­ted at the end of the unit for a grade. Amy's rationale for using concept mapping was directly linked to her discipline subculture and view of science as a field emphasizing facts and details:

In science there 's a lot of little details. You have to memorize a lot of facts. If you can get students accustomed to using concept maps, they will really help them see why and how things fit together. It gets them to do more reading cause you can't do a concept map without reading.

Three themes emerged from Amy Kamalani 's interview: (a) Science consists of facts and details to be memorized, (b) Concept maps may help students see how all these facts and details fit together, and, (c) The cooperating teacher and preservice teacher shared an enthusiasm for this strategy directly related to their discipline subculture. In addition, Amy originally selected graphic organizers in her

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Table 2.-Strategies Selected Within Specific Disciplines

Strategy Science Mathematics Soc. studies English Art/music

Graphic organizer Anticipation- reaction guide Writing roulette Verbal-visual Word map

Study guide Prereading questions Analogical study guide Text preview KWL

Fictionary Jigsaw Parallel notes Bingo game

3 I

2 3

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Table 3.-A Comparison of Strategies Selected in Microteaching and Subsequent Practicums

Case

Amy Kamalani Karen Yamauchi Randy Sager Tom Vandenhall Sarah Ross Jeremy Norton Lea Mitzuguchi Agnes Chun Robert Pascual Leonard Nagata

Discipline

Science Science Science (stud. tch.) Social studies Social studies Mathematics Mathematics English Art Music

microteaching assignment. Graphic organizers represent the hierarchical structure of text concepts in much the same fashion as concept mapping as it was used in this science class . When students turned in their maps at the end of a unit, Amy graded them by using a rubric and awarding points for including particular items about tissues or the topic under consideration.

Karen Yamauchi

Karen Yamauchi's 5-day observation-participation occurred in a seventh-grade life science class at a local intermediate school. Her cooperating teacher had extensive experience in teaching and a well-established curriculum. Karen said,

I really enjoy it. I have seventh graders . I really like that age more so than the high school I had last year. I feel like I have more control. It's more challenging because the kids are bouncing off the wall s. When I was in high school they thought I was a student. And they treated me as an equal instead of as a teacher. With the seventh graders, I can play around with them. I can joke with them. I can be on a social level, but when it's class time they know that I'm the teacher.

Microteaching strategy

Graphic organizer Word map Text preview Graphic organizer KWL Fictionary Context redef. Verbal- visual Antic .- reac. guide KWL

Practicum strategy

Concept mapping None Antic.-reac. guide Graphic organizer None Verbal-visual Definitions Writing roulette Antic.-reac . guide Graphic organizer

When Karen was asked about using any teaching strate­gies from the content area literacy course, she paused and said:

No, not really. I wouldn ' t say a specific strategy. I do go back and look over the lesson plans that I created, but I couldn ' t pick out exactly a specific method that I have used, maybe a combination. I could see ways where I could use some of the teaching strategies; I just haven't had a chance because we've been working on a chemistry unit, so everything is hands-on discovery learning. And my CT's teaching style is different.

When asked what aspects of her practicum interfered with using content area literacy strategies, Karen comment­ed, "I just haven't done it. Maybe later on, when I have more time to sit down and think ... you could test out .. . but I'm still trying to get comfortable in the classroom." However, later in the interview, Karen elaborated on her use of textbooks and a teaching approach that relied on analog­ical reasoning. Although she did not refer to this strategy in terms of analogies, it parallels much of the current work in analogical reasoning in science and ideas introduced in the content area literacy course where analogical study guides are treated in the text (Readence, Bean, & Baldwin, 1995).

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Karen described her use of textbooks and analogies in the life science labs.

There are four different textbooks that we use ... we don ' t have one set textbook. I pull a little bit from here and a little bit from there, whichever textbook will give a better description or would be easier for the kids to understand. I do relate a lot of lessons as much as possible to something in the real world. Something that they can see. Like, for example, I did a lesson on the cell-which is something you can ' t see right in your body. What I did was I brought an egg to class, and I showed them the egg. I told them to think of this as a cell: the yolk is the nucleus, the whites are the cytoplasm, the shell is the cell wall. And I carefully cracked the egg shell and peeled off the shell and just left the membrane. And that really caught their attention cause they expected, when I turned it upside down, for the egg to come out. But the membrane held the egg in. You know in comparison, other comparisons . .. that lesson was full of it. For example, like the cell membrane. I told them to think of your screen. What does it do? It lets air in. What else does it do'1 It keeps bugs out. You know, something they can see, something concrete. I do a lot of things like that.

Toward the end of the interview, Karen reiterated her socio­cultural , developmental view of seventh graders. "At this point we're still trying to teach them how to observe, how to prac­tice safe laboratory procedures, how to react with each other. At that age level they are just discovering themselves and each other."

Themes that emerged from Karen's interview include her belief that science learning at the intermediate level needs to be concrete with hands-on experiences and analogies students can readily grasp. She viewed the learning from text strategies introduced in the course as more "upper-level," perhaps because her practicum during the course was in a high school. The developmental and sociocultural dimensions of teaching intermediate students occupied much of Karen 's thinking about lesson design, but ultimately she used an analogical rea­soning strategy to teach cell structure that would be applaud­ed by experts in content area literacy. Her use of multiple text­books and her focus on students ' needs represents a high-level synthesis of her practicum and methods course experiences.

Randy Sager

Randy Sager was one of 3 student teachers interviewed. Thus, he took the content area literacy course 2 semesters before this student teaching experience. In his student teach­ing assignment in a rural high school, Randy taught two sec­tions of I Oth-grade biology and one section of I Oth-grade plants and animals of Hawaii . In discussing this experimental course created by his cooperating teacher, Randy commented, "There is no textbook. He sort of knows where he wants to go. I spend most of the semester in that class trying to figure out what it is he wants to talk about, what he wants to cover."

In contrast, Randy found that

the other biology classes are simply straightforward, tenth­grade biology with an assigned textbook and all the support materials labeled. So in that respect it was a great deal easier

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to deal with . I really had a better grasp of what we were doing, what was coming next, what was going to happen 2 and 3 weeks down the line. Plants and animals was kind of shaky.

Randy continued using the strategy he adopted for micro­teaching in the content area literacy course, but he modified it to fit a lecture and recitation mode with limited success.

I remember using it. I'm just trying to think back to remember what it was . . . ahh, anticipation-reaction guide. I have used it a couple of times, particularly in biology and once or twice in plants and animals. It worked out well. First time I used it I did­n't go back and really review the things we had covered, like some of the limiting factors of it. The one I put together was too long, too many questions, and by the time I got to the end of it people were beginning to drift off. I had about 10 questions, and I should have been down to 4 or 5. And because of the length of it I didn ' t have a chance to come back and use it for closure at the end of the period, which is what I had planned to do. I simply used it as sort of a tie-in to the next class period. But it worked well till I got to about the 6th or 7th question and people were falling asleep.

Randy refers to the anticipation-reaction guide statements as "questions" and used the prereading portion of the activity as a whole-class introduction. The strategy is usually modeled in class with an emphasis on small-group reactions to about four or five statements.

Later in the interview, Randy alluded to some of the pres­sures of conforming in the student teaching assignment to the climate established by the cooperating teacher. He said:

Actually there were some other techniques from that class that I had wanted to use but never got around to using. And the more I think back on the class the more beneficial I think some of these would be, particularly in science. A lot of the tech­niques were geared around vocabulary, which in science is a very, very big item. And I think they could be used as a tremen­dous advantage in introducing new vocabulary which these stu­dents are unaware of, particularly in the outlying schools. I'm finding that the regular, the everyday conversational vocabulary of the students is tremendously limited. So when we start talk­ing about some of the things in science in general and biology in particular, many of these students haven ' t the foggiest idea of what you 're talking about. So a lot of them I'd like to use in the future. I just haven ' t gotten around to using them. I have been trying to do what he 's trying to do [i.e. the cooperating teacher].

The themes that underpin Randy 's experience emphasize the importance of following the cooperating teacher's lead in lesson design. Time to think through and experiment with content literacy strategies is limited and must await future semesters. Finally, structure is important in teaching science, and the presence of a textbook in the biology classes helped provide this sense of structure, which was missing from the more experimental course on plants and animals of Hawaii.

Tom Vandenhall

Tom Vandenhall completed his 5-day practicum in town at the local high school. He participated in ninth-grade world history classes with an experienced cooperating

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teacher. Tom's cooperating teacher had over 10 years of experience working with difficult classes. These experi­ences, coupled with an extensive background in psycholo­gy, coaching soccer, and using a wide array of subtle ploys to keep students on task, represented the rich schema for teaching that an experienced teacher has at his or her dis­posal. This rich repertoire of strategies is often difficult for a novice to grasp, let alone apply.

In describing thi s context, Tom said, "I get to see how students act in the class and how much disrespect they show. And I get to see a heterogeneous class so there is a wide range of students."

Tom used the same graphic organizer strategy adopted for his microteaching. He elaborated on his rationale for adopting graphic organizers.

That type of strategy was logical for me to use. I used some­thing like that because I like to outline things. That appealed to me, and to me they were like direct. You can actually see ... you can just look at that and get information if you organized your work in that form- like the graphic organizer-you could get a lot of information just by looking at it and seeing what different parts connect.

Tom went on to critique some of the other content litera­cy strategies he had experienced the previous semester in the course.

There's one, the anticipation-reaction guide and stuff. l think those are .. . I don ' t know. They use up a lot of time I think, and you don ' t get that much across. It might be good to stir their interest, but . .. actually getting information across, I think something like this (i.e. the graphic organizer) is more direct.

When Tom was asked to specify what aspects of his practicum might inhibit strategy use, he returned to his ini­tial views of student behavior. "One thing is the whole . .. what's the word .. . not the attitude of the class . . . the char­acteristics of the class. You know if they 're a bunch of trou­ble makers .. . you got to be on them." Tom viewed the con­tent literacy strategies as a potential impediment to class control.

You're gonna use something that gives them a little bit more freedom. Especially if you do it with group work or some­thing like that. Plus, I think those kind of strategies give them more freedom. Maybe if they were a little bit older or not grouped heterogeneously. You know it st ill might work now, but I think it's just, for right now just at the beginning of .. . I'm just there and they've only been in school about a month and a half or something like that. They still haven't learned . . . ah, to me, the respect, the behavior they should have in class. They should be a little more respectful of the teacher.

Tom explained how well hi s cooperating teacher was able to work with this difficult group of students, calling home to parents and keeping the class on track.

The themes that dominated Tom's view of teaching included a desi re for students to respect the teacher and a sense that without thi s ingredient the content literacy strate­gies that rely on small-group participation would be

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unworkable . He also viewed order and control of students as desirable features such that certain strategies like the graphic organizer would fit this model but others such as the anticipation-reaction guide might be less efficient. In Tom's content delivery model , efficiency and control emerged as important themes, particularly with a recalcitrant group of ninth graders. Finally, having time to review strategies and develop lessons was seen as a luxury that would happen sometime in the future .

Sarah Ross

Sarah Ross also completed her 5-day practicum in town at the local high school in social studies. Like Tom, Sarah participated in a ninth-grade world history class with an experienced cooperating teacher. Unlike Tom, she did not use any of the content area literacy strategies and felt that sociocultural dimensions of this class and the cooperating teacher's agenda prevented much experimentation.

In describing her experience, Sarah said, " It's very stress­ful. It 's very different from last year's experience." She did her content area literacy practicum in a I Oth-grade class the previous year.

She mentioned using some of the small-group methods introduced in her specialized methods course blocked to this 5-day practicum, but she was not using any of the con­tent area literacy strategies. She attributed any problems in departing from the status quo to student characteristics, much like Tom Vandenhall's experience in the other social studies class. In addition , interfering with the cooperating teacher's preexisting structure would be a mi stake in Sarah 's view. She said:

I think how she (cooperating teacher) had it set up in the beginning-the classroom personalities, I think that has a lot to do with it. Their behavior . . . so they were doing a lot of independent things up until now. Today was the first time they worked in a group together since the beginning of the year. I have to structure it. They really need to have a lot of structure. There are problems with discipline. Students don't have much self-control yet. They'll get used to it , you know.

Other inhibiting factors in strategy use were mentioned by Sarah.

I think a lot has to do with the cooperating teacher maintain­ing some kind of consistency in the classroom. Because if you go in there and change everything around, she's going to be stuck with those kids. I mean I just think that .. . l think that is a consideration, so I try not to deviate too much from her already established pattern, procedures, and stuff like that because it 's just too confusing. Her management style, her policies, how she does set it up makes a difference in what I can do. lt limits what l am able to do ... not in a bad way . .. it just sets parameters on how creative or whatever I can be.

Themes distilled from Sarah 's rationale for not using content area literacy strategies revolved around a need to maintain consistent classroom routines and structure. The related theme of discipline and management of students by

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using the cooperating teacher's preexisting routines also supported Sarah's decision not to experiment with teacher strategies that may initially reduce classroom control.

Jeremy Norton

Jeremy completed his 5-day practicum at a rural high school in an Algebra II class with 23 I Oth through 12th graders. At the time of the interview, Jeremy had just fin­ished teaching a unit on equations and inequalities. He was in the process of planning his next unit on graphing functions, and, at thi s stage, Jeremy had a verbal- visual lesson planned for the new unit. He actually recalled this strategy by remembering the vocabulary used to introduce the verbal-visual strategy (Readence, Bean, & Baldwin, 1995). He called it "salubrious square" because the word salubrious was used to introduce the strategy consisting of four squares. Students create a personal association for a word like salubrious (e .g., healthy-jogging) and then construct a drawing in one of the other squares that depicts their personal association. The last of the four squares contains a definition of the word.

Jeremy was the youngest student in this group, and his responses to the interview were terse . He said, "At thi s point I'm so busy fulfilling all this stuff." But he regarded hi s cooperating teacher as highly supportive; she turned over the Algebra II class to Jeremy. "June just gave me her class . I mean I meet with her. I just tell her what I' m doing and stuff, and she sees my stuff but she's never told me no."

Two themes emerged in Jeremy 's interview. He viewed teaching the Algebra II class as a place where he could experiment with at least one of the content area literacy strategies because his cooperating teacher seemed to sup­port hi s ideas. On the other hand, he implied that he was experiencing pressure to cover content in algebra and he conveyed this sense of busyness, but unlike some of hi s peers Jeremy did not comment on any classroom manage­ment problems.

Lea Mitzuguchi

Lea was student teaching at the newest high school in town. This school is already overcrowded with 3,000 stu­dents, and some classes were scheduled in the cafeteria and other makeshift settings. She taught two Algebra I classes and one pre-algebra class. She was responsible for 65 students.

When Lea was asked to think of any strategies she cur­rently used from the content area literacy course, she paused and finally commented, ' 'I'm trying to think of the course ." She took the class 2 semesters before student teaching. She finally said, "Oh, like definitions . I would have them translate , like if there was a definition in the text, I would have them translate it in their own words so it would be more understandable to them." Thus, this

The Journal of Educational Research

approach was somewhat related to context redefinition introduced in the content area literacy course.

Lea felt her cooperating teacher was pivotal in sharing strategies that fit her mathematics content area. For exam­ple, she said, "My CT once she gave me this article on having BINGO in the math class. So I kind of made up my own ... it worked great. Everybody was on task. I used it for review." Lea recalled that this idea came from a maga­zine her cooperating teacher shared and she said "she has lots of reference books too ."

Lea also related some of the vocabulary difficulties she observed students having with the algebra text. "They have, I don't know if it is every chapter of the book, but they have like word problems. And you know, that is one topic that all students have difficulties with. They cannot translate, they can ' t translate the words into numbers or equations."

Themes apparent in Lea 's characterization of her teach­ing experience suggest that, first , mathematics makes tremendous demands on students' ability to translate tech­nical vocabulary. Second, the cooperating teacher set the stage for experimentation with a mathematics-re lated strategy (BINGO) to review concepts. Thus, Lea found some distant linkage with her methods course in content area I iteracy that was reinforced by the cooperating teacher's efforts to help students cope with word problems in an enjoyable game format. Otherwise, Lea recalled lit­tle of the content area literacy course and the present demands of the practicum dominated her teaching plans.

Agnes Chtm

Agnes completed her 5-day practicum in a rural high school teaching seventh- to ninth-grade English. Each class had 17 students. At the time of the interview, Agnes said , "Basically what I have been doing up to a couple of weeks ago is observing. A lot of observing, picking up strategies and her management style . I have also been cor­recting papers." She was planning to use writing roulette in an upcoming lesson.

I am going to use writing roulette in my next lesson plan [Readence, Bean, & Baldwin, 1995] . My observation-par­ticipation teacher is very open to new ideas, especiall y since she has been teaching for a long time, 17 years. She is still looking for ways to improve her teaching sty le. If she sees me doing anything interesting that she feels will work, she encourages it and supports it.

The class was focused on writers workshop activities ; therefore , the writing roulette strategy fit nicely into this unit. The themes that emerged from Agnes 's interview included the power of the cooperating teacher to support or sanction strategies like writing roulette and the corre­spondence of strategies to the di sc ipline. In thi s case, writ­ing was the focus of the cooperating teacher's class, and writing roulette was consistent with that focus.

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Robert Pasqua!

Robert was in student teaching at the newer, overcrowd­ed high school in town with a cooperating teacher recog­nized as the outstanding teacher of the year in the state. Although his art major and teaching preparation encom­passed painting and art hi story, he student taught in the area of introductory ceramics. Robert said, "I stayed after school and learned different techniques and vocabulary. It took a lot being in student teaching. It was a great experience. I learned a lot. It was a big step from 5-day observation-par­ticipation."

Robert's strategy use paralleled his earlier experience microteaching in the content area literacy class and its relat­ed practicum. He commented on using the anticipation­reaction guide.

In my introductory lesson, we did a background on clay-the basic material and introduction to clay. It was two work­sheets that were followed by a quiz. And to get the students ready for the quiz, I used the anticipation-reaction guide. It was good because Julie (the university supervisor) came in and she saw me in action using the strategy. I used it during the second worksheet because I used the webbing technique first. I found the anticipation-reaction guide to be more suc­cessful in remembering vocabulary words and certain tech­niques about clay. I used a lot of them, and the tests were all writing tests. They had to write out the answers.

Robert felt that his cooperating teacher was amenable to experimentation with strategies like the anticipation-reac­tion guide. "She was very open. In fact she was impressed by that strategy. And she said it was the highlight of my teaching, using that. She said it was very effective." Robert also indicated that his cooperating teacher shared her vast library of books on ceramics.

I used some on anc ient Japanese pottery and pottery of the Egyptians. What I found out was before glaze was devel­oped, they had glazes that were dated thousands of years before it was developed . They opened up these tombs and found pieces that were glazed 5000 years before it was developed. I did a lot of reading and studying.

Themes relevant to Robert 's student teaching experience and his use of anticipation-reaction guides centered on the cooperating teacher as a model of learning. She encouraged Robert to explore an area of art that was not his forte when he began student teaching. Because Robert is by nature an inveterate learner, hi s own desire to do well in this new area of teaching within hi s field was well matched to the support offered by hi s cooperating teacher. Robert was an accom­plished painter, musician, martial arts expert, and surfer admired by hi s students . Moreover, hi s cooperating teacher guided his learning and experimentation in a field students usually find pleasurable.

Leonard Negata

Leonard, the only music major in the group and an active woodwind member of the County of Hawaii band, complet-

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ed his 5-day practicum at a town intermediate school. He helped teach the seventh- and eighth-grade Level I wood­winds. " I try to correct their blowing techniques."

When asked to comment on any strategies from the con­tent area literacy course he used in teaching band, Leonard said, "The thing that sticks out in my mind is the graphic organizer. I don't know if that was one of the first things learned but I try to use that in class."

During the microteaching that Leonard did in the content area literacy course he modified K-W-L (Ogle, 1992) and combined it with a graphic organizer. Thus, in his 5-day practicum he simply used the graphic organizer. "Dividing the whole notes you go down to the half notes, quarter notes . .. eighth notes . .. that kind of thing. There 's other types of graphic organizers for music like the circle of fifths and stuff like that."

Leonard viewed his cooperating teacher as an effective model of strategies that linked well with teaching band. He said of his cooperating teacher, "He uses kind of the same thing too. Except for the circle of fifths with beginners. I do the family of scales from C to G, etc."

The major theme that emerged in Leonard 's interview was his view that music, with its scales and circle of fifths has an inherent structure that is compatible with band exer­cises. This hierarchical and patterned structure can be made more explicit for students through teaching strategies like the graphic organizer. Indeed, Leonard 's cooperating teacher reinforced that view.

Discussion

The preservice teachers involved in this study of strategy selection and use revealed a keen sense of the sociocultural context they were engaged in as they navigated their way through microteaching and subsequent practicum experi­ences. In their initial microteaching related to the content area literacy course, the 27 preservice teachers in this phase of the study exhibited substantial variety in their strategy selection and use. However, when I 0 of these preservice teachers were interviewed the following semester while enrolled in a 5-day practicum or, in three cases, student teaching, the strategies selected for use were more narrow­ly focused on perceived constraints of the discipline and the reality of secondary classrooms and students.

A synthesis of themes revealed in the I 0 interviews shows that the most dominant influence in strategy selec­tion and use was the cooperating teacher. These preservice teachers carefully checked the climate they felt the cooper­ating teacher wanted to maintain in the classroom and oper­ated accordingly. If a cooperating teacher gave signals that a particular strategy, such as the graphic organizer or antic­ipation-reaction guide, was compatible with the di scipline and the normal climate of the class, then the preservice teacher ri sked developing a lesson that used the positively sanctioned strategy. Thus, strategy use was regulated and sometimes minimized by preservice teachers' perceived

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understanding of their cooperating teachers' desires. Other studies of preservice teachers have found that sociocultural features of the perceived apprenticeship in practicums min­imize collaborative strategies and typically cause the novice teacher to embrace a teacher-centered transmission of knowledge approach in teaching (Fox, 1993; O'Brien, Stewart, & Moje, 1993).

A novice teacher also struggles with the demands of preparing unfamiliar lessons and maintaining classroom control. These were two additional themes that emerged in the interviews. If preservice teachers view their cooperating teachers as masters of the traditional teaching style that include assigning text reading, lectures, whole-class recita­tion and worksheets , they will emulate this model. This tra­ditional model offers the preservice teacher a familiar rou­tine and the possibility of covering content efficiently while managing student discipline with a high degree of control compared with the small-group models advanced in content area literacy courses and texts (Hollingsworth & Teal , 1991; Wilson, Konopak, & Readence, 1993; Zulich, Bean, & Her­rick, 1992) . Adopting this traditional model may be as much a matter of the preservice teacher's desire to make sense of the secondary classroom by reducing its complexity and that of the experienced teacher to a simple, straightforward delivery of content. The reality of an experienced teacher 's delivery infused with a multitude of tricks and grouping alternatives may be impossible for a novice teacher to dis­cern (Livingston & Borko, 1989).

Another theme that emerged in the interviews can be characterized as a theory of how particular disciplines are structured and how this structure should influence teaching and learning (Moje, 1993). For example, the science group expressed theories of that discipline ranging from science is facts and details to be memorized with the aid of concept maps , to science learning needs to be concrete with hands­on experiences and analogies. These views were, in part, derived from and reinforced by the particular style of sci­ence teaching that occurred in their practicum settings. Mathematics ' technical vocabulary fit well with the verbal­visua l vocabulary strategy, and music theory, with its struc­ture of scales and circle of fifths , could be introduced to beginning band students with the graphic organizer's visual hierarchical presentation .

An additional theme that undoubtedly related to personal biography encompasses the basic duality of a desire for classroom discipline and a need to experiment and grow as a teacher. One tends to work against the other given the sociocultural realities of a secondary school with 150 to 180 students enrolled by compulsory attendance laws. Each of these preservice teachers grappled with the issue of class­room control and exhibited varying levels of tolerance for experimenting with teaching strategies that might interfere with classroom management. Robert , the art teacher, had a personal biography representing a constant desire for self­improvement through learning. Others felt that strategy use was dependent on establishing a climate where respect for

The Journal of Educational Research

the teacher was a prerequisite for any experimentation. Findings from two studies of experienced teachers showed that they used a modest array of content area literacy strate­gies that they perceived as compatible with the structure of their discipline and their personal beliefs about human nature, rules, and learning (e.g., Moje, 1993; Muth, 1993).

Preservice teachers in the present study tended to select a single strategy they felt was appropriate for their discipline and current philosophy of learning. Yet content area litera­cy courses and texts often inundate preservice teachers with a wide array of strategies. Based on this study and others, preservice teachers may benefit from experiencing a small­er number of strategies and determining how they have been adapted for diverse sociocultural contexts. Reading and dis­cussion of case studies demonstrating how other preservice teachers negotiate the complex and difficult practicum and student teaching experience could provide alternatives to simply trying to copy a cooperating teacher's style.

Based on the studies reviewed on content area strategy use by preservice teachers, the present study supports many of the findings from previous studies. The particular lens through which preservice teachers view their content area literacy course and related classroom experiences influ­ences beliefs and practices about strategy use. For example , Holt-Reynolds ( 1992) argued that preservice teachers ' well­honed lay theories about good practice in a classroom are deeply rooted in personal history and resistant to change. In her case study of 9 preservice teachers from the fields of English and mathematics, she found that they rejected the content area literacy course professor's emphasis on small­group learning and constructivist strategies. They viewed lecturing as a fundamentally good teaching technique if the teacher lectured in a vibrant way and students were active listeners. Lecturing was a clear demonstration that the teacher had valuable content knowledge to transmit to stu­dents. This teacher-centered theory of instruction in a con­tent area literacy course where no practicum was required overcame the student-centered model that the professor advocated.

The preservice content area teachers in the present study were placed in varying school sites, including rural sugar cane communities, rural bedroom communities, and large, in-town schools. These schools are not true school-univer­sity partnership sites, but many of the cooperating teachers have hosted practicum students and student teachers over the past 5 years.

The content area literacy course and other methods classes are taught on campus . Some of the supervising cooperating teachers have taken the class either as preser­vice or inservice teachers. University faculty in education visit students during the practicums, but demonstration teaching , long-range partnership projects, and other incen­tives that might alter the themes revealed in this study are not present. Different preservice teacher themes might emerge in a partnership setting if a cohesive view of content area literacy were crafted as a result of the partnership.

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The present study is significant because it describes pre­service teachers' selection and use of content area literacy strategies across more than one segment of their field-based practicums. These preservice teachers were interviewed in the field-experience semester following their initial microteaching practicum. Although this step extends exist­ing research on preservice teachers' strategy use, it is limit­ed to the constrained, supervised setting of a preservice field experience. Follow-up studies of the participants in their I st year of teaching will be needed to gain a more complete understanding of content area literacy strategy selection and use. During this professional induction period of their career, new teachers may work with mentors or resource teachers, but they are no longer under direct super­vision of a cooperating teacher. This factor weighed heavi­ly on preservice teachers' strategy experimentation in the present study and in earlier studies (e.g., Hollingsworth & Teal, 1991 ).

Comparative studies across various types of teacher edu­cation programs, including those that have strong partner­ship school relationships, should further illuminate those sociocultural characteristics that foster or inhibit the appli­cation of content area literacy practices.

NOTE

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Greta Pung, Uni ­versity of Hawai i at Hilo graduate student and fifth-grade teacher at Pahoa Elementary. in the interview and transcription stages of this study.

REFERENCES

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Bean, T. W. , & Zulich, J. ( 1992). A case study of three preservice teachers ' beli efs about content area reading through the window of student-pro­lessor dialogue journals. In C. K. Kinzer & D. J. Leu (Eds.), Literacy research, theory, and practice: Views from many perspectives (pp. 463-474). Forty-first Yearbook of the National Read ing Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.

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El-Dinary, P. B., Pressley, M. , Coy-Ogan, L., & Schuder, T. (1994). The teaching practices of transactional-strategies-instruction teachers as revealed through collaborative imerviewing. Reading Research Report No. 23. College Park, MD: National Read ing Research Center, A Con­sortium of the University of Georgia and the University of Maryland.

El -Dinary, P. B., & Schuder, T. (1993). Teachers 'first year of transaction­al strategies instruction. Reading Research Report No. 5. College Park, MD: National Reading Research Center, A Consortium of the Universi­ty of Georgia and the University of Maryland.

Fox, D. L. ( 1993). The influence of context, community, and culture: Con­trasting cases of teacher knowledge development. In D. J. Leu & C. K. Kinzer (Eds.), Examining central issues in literacy research, theory. and practice (pp. 345-366). Forty-second Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.

Hollingsworth, S. , & Teal, K. (1991 ). Learning to teach reading in sec­ondary math and science. Journal of Reading. 35, 190-194.

Holt-Reynolds, D. (1992). Personal history-based beliefs as relevant prior knowledge in course work. American Educational Research Journal, 29, 325-349.

Livingston, C. , & Barko, H. ( 1989). Expert-novice differences in teaching: A cognitive analysis and implications for teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 40, 36-42.

Moje, E. B. (1993). Life experiences and teacher knowledge: Ho w a con­tent teacher decides to use literacy strategies. Paper presented at the Forty-third National Reading Conference. Charleston : South Carolina.

Muth, K. D. (1993). Reading in mathematics: Middle school mathematics teachers ' beliefs and practices. Reading Research and Instruction, 32, 76-83.

O'Brien, D. G., Stewart, R. A. , & Moje, E. B. (1993) . Why content litera­cy is difficult to infuse into the secondary curriculum: Strategies, goals, and classroom realities. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Ogle, D. ( 1992). K W L in action: Secondary teachers find applications that work. In E. K. Dishner, T. W. Bean, J. E. Readence, & D. W. Moore (Eds.), Coment area reading: Improving classroom instruction (pp. 270-282). Dubuque, lA: Kendall/Hunt.

Readence, J . E., Bean, T. W. , & Baldwin, R. S. (1995). Coment area read­ing: An imegrated approach (5th ed.). Dubuque, lA : Kendall/Hunt.

Reinking, D. , Mealey, D. , & Ridgeway, V. G. (1993). Developing preser­vice teachers ' conditional knowledge of content area reading strategies. Journal of Reading, 36, 458-469.

Wilson , E. K .. Konopak , B. C., & Readence, J. E. (1993) . A case study of a preservice secondary social studies teacher's beliefs and practices about content area reading. In D. J. Leu & C. K. Kinzer (Eds.), Exam­ining central issues in literacy research, theory, and practice (pp. 335-343). Forty-second Yearbook of the National Reading Conference. Chicago, IL: National Reading Conference.

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