ABSTRACT
Occupational socialization is recognized as a robust theoretical perspective used to examine the process of preservice physical education teachers learning to teach as well as guiding experienced physical education teachers’ decisions and actions (see Lawson, 1983a, 1983b, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991; Schempp & Graber, 1992; Stroot, 1993; Templin & Schempp, 1989). Lawson (1986) defined occupational socialization as “all kinds of socialization that initially influence persons to enter the field of physical education and later are responsible for their perceptions and actions as teacher educators and teachers” (p. 107). He observed that three distinct types of socialization – acculturation, professional socialization, and organizational socialization – were likely to mold physical education teachers’ perspectives about their subject and the pedagogical practices they employed (Lawson, 1983a, 1983b). It is organizational socialization, broadly defined by Zeichner and Gore (1990) as the field of scholarship which seeks to understand the process whereby the individual becomes a participating member of the society of teachers, which this chapter specifically addresses.
