Teacher Socialization in Technological Education

In a recent technological education teacher development study, two elements of teacher socialization–the process of formally preparing to become a teacher (Ginsburg, 1988, p.1)–were singled out for review. First, the study set out to examine the influences on teacher socialization prior to formal teacher education. Second, the impact of pre-service teacher education itself, was explored. The socialization process for technological education teachers was felt to have two dimensions: The first concerns the adjustment would-be teachers make when initially preparing for the profession. Feiman-Nemser (1990) refers to this adjustment as a transformative one because teachers come to the profession with a range of preconceptions that may or may not be effective in the classroom instruction component of a teacher’s work. The second element of socialization is identified in the occupational socialization research literature (Schein, 1985) and involves the adjustment a teacher makes as she/he becomes an educator in a broader context, i.e., the adjustment of the individual to the culture of the profession. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of the teacher development study undertaken at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Faculty of Education.