Date of Award

1-4-1993

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Teaching & Learning

Abstract

This study focuses on the complex interplay of biography, beliefs and teachers practice, and reveals the enormous power of the personal and the past to inform and shape the present practices of teachers. For this study, two experienced and reflective high school English teachers were identified. Their teaching styles as well as their responses to the introduction of a new curriculum were very different, and this research was undertaken in order to gain a clearer understanding of how teachers' beliefs influence the way they shape the curriculum to make it uniquely their own, and how the personal figures in teachers' classroom actions and in their acceptance or resistance to curriculum change.Using the methods of participant observation, interviews, narrative inquiry and biography, the data base for this research was established to include biographical information, as well as teachers' beliefs, attitudes and values; all set against the teachers' classroom actions in order to illuminate those actions. This study describes the everyday teaching practices of Raymond and James and traces these practices to their personally held values and beliefs, which in turn find their source in the autobiographical stories of the teachers. It is also apparent from this study that bringing about substantial change in teaching practice is an exceedingly difficult and complex process. There is a consistency in James' and Raymond's teaching practices. Their practices are coherent as a whole, and in the face of change, these teachers either resist those changes that don't allow the whole to remain coherent, or they restructure new ways of doing things in order to maintain the coherence and consistency of their practice.The intricate connections between biography, beliefs, and teacher practice made evident through the narrative portraits of these two teachers, contribute not only to James' and Raymond's understanding of their own experiences, but also illuminate what is general. This study offers an alternative perspective to current research on teaching and adds to our growing awareness of the importance of adopting this new line of inquiry into teacher practice.

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