ABSTRACT
Finally, the new teachers in our study gave high priority to having a general teaching approach or philosophy, what we here call a “vision” for teaching. Being helped to develop such a vision was one of the things they appreciated most in their pre-service program. Sophia reported that “what my teacher education program did for me was help foster my philosophy, and my philosophy is what makes me the teacher I am: it is more important than any learning activity they taught me. Their philosophy was very collaborative and nurturing, and revolved around multiple intelligences.” Wanda said that her pre-service instructors exposed her to “a very good general approach in terms of how to work language and literature into your teaching.” And Tanya commented:
There is no way [the pre-service faculty] could have taught everything we needed from September to June for every grade level and every situation. But I think they gave us the philosophy we needed to make our way through our first year.
