ABSTRACT
This is the fifth chapter in Part II ‘Case studies of learning to teach in specific contexts’. Through its case studies this chapter illustrates the fourth typology described in Chapter 2, resulting from a combination of a socio-cultural approach to the social situation of development with a sociological concern to understand institutional practices and the particular forms of pedagogic discourse operating within them. The fourth typology is characterised by alignment between the individual at the micro level and the school at the meso level, and some degree of misalignment, tensions or contradictions at the meso level with the HEI. This pattern is potentially more common in situations where student teachers are trying to align their teaching with the specific school context, taking an approach that is strongly influenced by adherence to school practices as reinforced by their mentors and their school department norms. This situation is more likely to occur when there is some misalignment between the goals of the school and those of the HEI or between mentors’ and student teachers’ individual motives, in spite of what otherwise can be seen as healthy partnerships and often as a response to external pressures. This kind of alignment was common in England and in the United States and on both traditional and alternative routes into teaching.
