Thinking Like a Teacher

Book excerpt: Today’s classrooms present a variety of challenges for teachers, many of which result from unanticipated, unpredictable events, from minor to serious. This collection of teacher narratives highlights several of these challenges with subsequent reflections and commentaries that invite conversations about aspects of teaching that often remain unacknowledged in educator preparation programs but that can have deleterious effects on the implementation of the pedagogical content knowledge that is promoted in these programs. Thinking Like a Teacher: Preparing New Teachersfor Today’s Classrooms aims to address this gap in educator preparation programs through sharing and affirming teachers’ voices as sources of pedagogical knowledge. Engagement with the narratives included in this collection will help teacher candidates perceive and think about teaching in new ways as they make the transition from instructional consumers to instructional leaders while simultaneously forging a new professional identity.