Teaching prospective teachers about learning to think like a teacher: Articulating our principles of practice

Teaching is a complex endeavor in which there are few absolutes and even fewer algorithms for practice (Hoban, 2005). Beginning teachers need more than a set of activities, ideas, and techniques to help them become deliberate, thoughtful teachers who understand the relationship between their teaching and the quality of their students’ learning. Teachers need to be able to think creatively about complex situations, consider multiple options, make decisions about best courses of action, and understand why they do what they do. Show-and-tell teaching by teacher educators cannot help prospective teachers to think in more complex ways about their practice (Myers, 2002).