making sense of a failed triad: mentors, university supervisors, and positioning theory

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http://jte.sagepub.com/ Journal of Teacher Education http://jte.sagepub.com/content/55/5/407 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0022487104269804 2004 55: 407 Journal of Teacher Education Robert V. Bullough, Jr. and Roni Jo Draper Making Sense of a Failed Triad: Mentors, University Supervisors, and Positioning Theory Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) can be found at: Journal of Teacher Education Additional services and information for http://jte.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts: http://jte.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions: http://jte.sagepub.com/content/55/5/407.refs.html Citations: What is This? - Nov 9, 2004 Version of Record >> at COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY on June 30, 2014 jte.sagepub.com Downloaded from at COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY on June 30, 2014 jte.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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Page 1: Making Sense of a Failed Triad: Mentors, University Supervisors, and Positioning Theory

http://jte.sagepub.com/Journal of Teacher Education

http://jte.sagepub.com/content/55/5/407The online version of this article can be found at:

 DOI: 10.1177/0022487104269804

2004 55: 407Journal of Teacher EducationRobert V. Bullough, Jr. and Roni Jo Draper

Making Sense of a Failed Triad: Mentors, University Supervisors, and Positioning Theory  

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of: 

  American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)

can be found at:Journal of Teacher EducationAdditional services and information for    

  http://jte.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

 

http://jte.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:  

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:  

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:  

http://jte.sagepub.com/content/55/5/407.refs.htmlCitations:  

What is This? 

- Nov 9, 2004Version of Record >>

at COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY on June 30, 2014jte.sagepub.comDownloaded from at COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY on June 30, 2014jte.sagepub.comDownloaded from

Page 2: Making Sense of a Failed Triad: Mentors, University Supervisors, and Positioning Theory

10.1177/0022487104269804ARTICLEJournal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 5, November/December 2004Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 5, November/December 2004

MAKING SENSE OF A FAILED TRIADMENTORS, UNIVERSITY SUPERVISORS, AND POSITIONING THEORY

Robert V. Bullough Jr.Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling (CITES)Brigham Young University

Roni Jo DraperBrigham Young University

Mentoring is often portrayed as an unqualified good. Teacher educators claim that mentoring holdspromise for beginning teacher development, increased retention of novice teachers, and mentor-teacher improvement. Drawing on positioning theory, this study describes negotiation of powerand position in a failed triad composed of a public school mentor, a university mathematics supervi-sor, and an intern teacher. Data reveal how each member of the triad sought to make sense of his orher experience and to accomplish desired aims. The activity of positioning and being positionedwithin the triad profoundly shaped each participant’s experience and ultimately interfered with theintern’s induction into teaching.

Keywords: mentoring; beginning teacher development; university supervision; positioningtheory

Mentoring is often defined as a “close, intense,mutually beneficial relationship between some-one who is older, wiser, more experienced, andmore powerful with someone younger or lessexperienced. It is a complementary relation-ship . . . built on both the mentor’s and the pro-tege’s needs” (Jeruchim & Shapiro, 1992, p. 23).Increasingly, mentoring is portrayed as an un-qualified good, a solution to a wide range of hu-man problems from learning to teach to teach-ing disaffected young people how to behavecivilly. It is “the ‘in’ thing” (Colley, 2002, p. 257).At the same time, there is a need, as Colley(2002) argued, to get beyond the “abstract levelto which [mentoring] is often confined, to an ex-periential level that is typically hidden from

view beneath the rose-tinted aura of celebrationthat usually surrounds it” (p. 270).

To meet Colley’s (2002) challenge in teachereducation is complicated by the presence of nottwo but three players: a cooperating teacher orassigned mentor, a student or beginningteacher, and a university representative, mostoften designated as a supervisor rather than amentor (although it is possible this person couldfunction as a mentor). As generally recognized,the roles and role expectations held by the threeparties often are unclear and shifting (see Slick,1997). Moreover, these triads are inevitably hi-erarchical and thus promote shifting alliances,one with the university supervisor on top andanother with the cooperating teacher on top,

407

Authors’ Note: Both authors contributed equally to this work. We thank Sarah Ellen Meehan for her assistance with datagathering.

Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 55, No. 5, November/December 2004 407-420DOI: 10.1177/0022487104269804© 2004 by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education

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with conflict a potential consequence. As Vealand Rickard (1998) argued,

Strained relations result when the university super-visor makes an appearance as head of the institu-tional triad, causing temporary disruptions of thefunctional triad. . . . The power of the functional triadcomes primarily from the fact that this triad is lo-cated in the real world where cooperating teachersbelieve real teaching occurs. (p. 114)

Beginning teachers sit in the middle and expendenergy learning how to “manage mentors”(Maynard, 2000) as they strive to balance some-times conflicting demands to maintain desiredrelationships and to obtain positive teachingevaluations.

Our purpose in this article is to explore theexperiential level of mentoring and of manag-ing mentors over the course of an academic yearin a triad composed of a senior high schoolmathematics intern, her assigned mentorteacher, and a university supervisor. At the con-clusion of the article, we will consider someimplications of the findings for teacher educa-tion. We approach our task through the lens ofpositioning theory, which offers a way for con-ceptualizing relationships and for portrayingthe play of power in role negotiation.

POSITIONING THEORY

We turned to positioning theory (in contrastto role theory) to explore how relationshipsform and develop over time, how they areunderstood by the individuals involved, andhow and why those relationships shift (Harre &van Langenhove, 1999). Positioning theorygives a context from which to analyze the waysin which humans are “continuously generatingtheir local sense of the real and the good”(Gergen, 1999, p. 176). Using positioning theoryas a dynamic analytic scheme allowed us to gaininsight into how the individuals in the triadunderstood their roles and responsibilities andhow they understood what it means to be a“good teacher.”

Positioning as an act “refers to the assign-ment of fluid ‘parts’ or ‘roles’ to speakers in thediscursive construction of personal stories thatmake a person’s actions intelligible and relativelydeterminate as social acts” (van Langenhove &

Harre, 1999, p. 17). As individuals interact witheach other, they co-construct a storyline whereineach individual plays a part, and they makethese storylines explicit through a discursiveprocess (Davis & Harre, 1999). Within stories,speakers position themselves and are posi-tioned by others, and with each shift in positioncomes a change in understanding and in action.

One can position oneself or be positioned as . . . pow-erful or powerless, confident or apologetic, domi-nant or submissive, definitive or tentative, author-ized or unauthorized, and so on. A “position” can bespecified by reference to how a speaker’s contribu-tions are hearable with respect to these and other po-larities of character, and sometimes even of role. Po-sitioned as dependent, one’s cry of pain is hearableas a plea for help. But positioned as dominant, a sim-ilar cry can be heard as a protest or even as a repri-mand. It can easily be seen that the social force of anaction and the position of the actor and interactorsmutually determine one another. Conversationshave storylines and the positions people take in aconversation will be linked to these storylines. (vanLangenhove & Harre, 1999, p. 17)

Within storylines, actors take different parts,and the parts they play and how they play themreveal the meaning of events as well as presentdefinitions of self and other. Moreover, theyopen or close opportunities for growth andshape the direction and form of self-expression.

Positioning takes place within specific con-texts of meaning, specific moral orders. Howpeople are positioned and how they positionothers reflect their sense of the moral orderand their place within it. Thus, speakers (prin-cipals, teachers, university supervisors) bringto their interactions different claims or rightsto speak, and they perform different dutiesand have different responsibilities and obliga-tions that reflect differences in the distributionof power and authority. Shifts in position bringwith them different ways of being with othersand open or constrict the range of possible waysof making sense of interaction and relationship.Moreover, positioning may be tacit or inten-tional, unrecognized or strategic. When inten-tional, an attempted positioning may be suc-cessful or unsuccessful because positioning ofself always involves positioning of others andpositioning of others always involves position-ing of self. One might seek to position another

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only to encounter strong resistance. For exam-ple, a beginning teacher might refuse to be posi-tioned as dependent or needy. In addition, posi-tioning may be forced when one personcompels another to play a part in a storyline thatwould otherwise not be chosen, as when abeginning teacher feels forced to imitate his orher mentor ’s relationship with students.Finally, positioning does not require direct pres-ence—a university supervisor can position abeginning teacher despite infrequent visits.Indeed, situations can be created and events putinto motion that position others, a point not loston ambitious policy makers who publish schooltest scores and promise punishment for declin-ing scores or on clever administrators and wisemothers. Gossip is also a tool for positioning oth-ers. Conversely, praise may do it, as when a uni-versity supervisor tells a principal that a mentorhas extraordinary ability that is untapped, andthe result is that an opportunity for learning isopened that had not formerly existed.

THE CONTEXT AND PARTICIPANTS

Recent research underscores the point thatcontext (Wang, 2001) as well as personal char-acteristics and individual biographies of bothmentors and protégés (see Clarke & Hollings-worth, 2002) profoundly affect the kind andquality of relationships that form betweenbeginning teachers and those who would assistthem in learning to teach. Moreover, as alreadysuggested, these same factors influence howindividuals position themselves and seek toposition others. Indeed, a mentor’s understand-ing of what it means to teach a particular disci-pline to particular students and in a particularschool affects how he or she positions himself orherself as a teacher and mentor and ultimatelyhow he or she positions his or her protégé.

Over the past several years, a variety of mod-els of teacher education has been developed inboth Europe and North America that increasesthe amount of time preservice teachers spend inthe classroom (Buchberger, Campos, Kallos, &Stephenson, 2000), which elevates the impor-tance of practicing teachers in teacher educa-tion. Models that incorporate yearlong teaching

internships require that mentors bear a largeburden for beginning teacher growth. Theintern involved in this study participated insuch a program. Allyson (pseudonym) was 1 of14 interns followed throughout the year by theresearch team. She completed all of herpreservice teacher education with the exceptionof student teaching, including methods andcontent area courses, and was employed at halfsalary and full benefits to teach high schoolalgebra. With salary and benefits, internshipswere seen as highly desirable. With two internsin the high school, both at half salary but teach-ing full time, a regularly employed, full-timeteacher was freed from the classroom to serve asa mentor teacher, a site-based teacher educator.Unfortunately, contrary to initial commitments,school district leaders only freed the mentor,Mrs. K., from half of her teaching assignment,which somewhat limited both her ability toassist Allyson and the time she had available tointeract with the university supervisor. Theschool was organized on a block plan so thatclasses met every other day for double the nor-mal class time. Thus, every other day on a rotat-ing schedule Mrs. K. had no formal teachingresponsibilities and could meet with the twointerns she was assigned to mentor. Allysonwas assigned to teach a full class load, whichconsisted of three classes each day.

The principal was new to the high school butnot to the school district. She described the highschool as “academically oriented” (principalinterview) and explained that some of the otherteachers were concerned that having interns atthe school rather than experienced teachersmight compromise the school’s commitment toexcellence. In fact, the university wanted toplace six interns in the school (two English, twomath, and two social studies), but the principalthought that six interns would be too many andaccepted only four (one English, two math, andone social studies). Although she had not hadan opportunity to interview all the interns whocame to her school, she interviewed the mathe-matics interns, including Allyson. Her majorconcern was that the interns be able to handlenot just accelerated students but average stu-dents as well. She wanted interns in the school

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who understood their content and could teach itin a way that high school students wouldunderstand, but she was not committed to anyparticular teaching method: “What I want toknow is when the test is completed, if a studenttakes the test, are they successful or not” (princi-pal interview). For this principal, high, stan-dardized, end-of-level test scores rather thanconformity to any particular teaching methodwas the bottom line, and all teachers whoworked in the school, including the interns,understood this.

The principal also selected the mentors. Mrs.K. was chosen because the principal thoughther to be an outstanding teacher, one whose stu-dents performed well, and knew she would bewilling to mentor interns. There was no formalprocess for selecting mentors and no concretecriteria for selection.

Nobody came and sat down with me and said,“Okay here’s what we would like to see in a mentor.Tell me about the teachers in your math department.Who would you suggest?” I just picked them andthat was it. (principal interview)

Dr. Z., the university supervisor, a specialistin mathematics education, was responsible forsupervising five interns and committed to visit-ing each intern’s classroom weekly, which hedid faithfully for the first semester of the schoolyear. Because his own children attended the in-ternship schools, Dr. Z. was very interested inthe quality of the mathematics program andanxious to help improve it. He entered thebuilding believing that the mathematics pro-gram needed improvement. Unlike some of herpeers, Allyson had not taken any methodscourses from Dr. Z., and she did not know himprior to her internship.

METHODS

The decision to focus on the triad that in-cluded Allyson, Mrs. K., and Dr. Z. was basedon three considerations. First, of the 14 interns, 5worked with Dr. Z. and as a result participatedin some way in the storyline that unfolded. Infact, through intern meetings, informal teacherand intern networks, and the six formal mentormeetings, the events surrounding the develop-

ment of the relationships of this triad touchedvirtually every participant—for good or other-wise. Other mathematics interns, for example,felt pressure to take sides between Dr. Z. andMrs. K. Second, of the university supervisorswho participated in the triads, only Dr. Z. orga-nized summer sessions with the mentors inadvance of the school year. Among the super-visors, he was most determined to influenceteacher practice. He was also the most heavilyand consistently involved in intern supervision.Finally, among the triads, data from this onespoke most directly to the challenges of mentorand supervisor management and to the natureof positioning within mentoring relationshipswhen fundamental differences in beliefs andexpectations about teaching and learning existamong the participants.

DATA COLLECTION

Because positioning is “largely a conver-sational phenomenon” (Davis & Harre, 1999,p. 34), it was necessary to gather conversationaldata—data that captured the storylines formedby the mentor, intern, and university supervisorabout their work together. This can be done inone of two ways, as conversation transpires orafter the fact as a reconstructed story. Becausethe participants were reluctant to record theirconversations as they interacted, we necessarilyrelied on other means for obtaining data thatwould capture as fully and as richly as possibleeach individual’s perspective on their sharedexperience.

Data of various kinds were gathered from thementors. First, we met with the mentors duringa regularly scheduled meeting six times duringthe academic year to discuss issues related tomentoring and to read and discuss mentoring-related research that served as a backdrop fordiscussing what was actually transpiring withthe interns. During these meetings, we servedas facilitators of the conversation in which thementors made sense of their work with theirinterns and the university supervisors. Thesemeetings were taped and the tapes transcribed.Second, each mentor produced a case record foreach intern consisting of a double-entry log in

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which the mentor described the activities inwhich he or she and the intern had engaged andthe mentor’s response to those activities—whatwas said, what was done, what happened as aresult. The logs revealed mentor concerns andshed light on the nature and quality of relation-ship that was forming with the intern. Third, thementors were asked to participate in a conversa-tion with another mentor during which theywould tell stories from their mentoring experi-ence. Because we assumed the mentors wouldspeak about what was important to them in theexperience and about their relationship withtheir interns, we gave no other specific direc-tions than to “tell stories of the year of teach-ing.” We were not disappointed; shared eventsconsistently emerged. We were not present dur-ing these conversations, but the conversationswere taped and the tapes transcribed for analy-sis. Finally, each mentor participated in a formalone-on-one interview with a research assistant,which enabled us to obtain a sense of the men-tor’s experience of mentoring, his or her viewsof the relationships that developed with theprotégés, and a personal assessment of theexperience.

All 14 of the interns, Allyson included,responded to a weekly e-mail questionnaire de-signed to elicit the high and low points of theirweek along with their views of and feelingsabout their mentors and their relationships withtheir mentors. Focusing on high and low pointsenabled discussion of issues and concernsrelated to mentoring and to supervision. Sec-ond, each intern participated in a paired, tape-recorded conversation with another intern whotaught in the same subject area. The intent ofthis conversation, as with the conversationbetween the mentors, was for the interns to tellstories of their internship year. The stories theytold were both memorable and important. Infact, these conversations proved to be a meansfor the interns to process and evaluate theirexperiences, which included exploring eventsinvolving the mentors and university supervi-sors, including Dr. Z. As with the paired mentordiscussions, we were not present during theseconversations. Finally, each intern was inter-viewed by a research assistant who well under-

stood the purpose of the project. The protocolfor this interview was designed to encouragereflection on the year and to explore importantevents and significant relationships, includingthose that involved the mentor and the univer-sity supervisor. We chose to have a researchassistant conduct these interviews because theinterns knew us as instructors, and we believedthey would be more open with her than with us.

The university supervisor, Dr. Z., was inter-viewed in the spring. Again, the intent was toobtain as clear a picture as possible of the super-visor’s experience and to encourage him to tellstories that captured that experience. This inter-view was also taped and transcribed. Finally,the principal was interviewed to give us contex-tual information that we thought might help usbetter understand the events that unfolded anddiscern how they were understood by membersof the triad.

DATA ANALYSIS

The data were read repeatedly by each of us,discussed, and then analyzed inductively. Wefirst sought to identify shared episodes, pointswhere the stories told by the three participantsconverged in revealing ways. An episode is“any sequence of happenings in which humanbeings engage which has some principle ofunity” (Harre & Secord, 1972, p. 10). However,episodes involve more than an account of thebehaviors of the individuals involved: “Theyalso include the thoughts, feelings, intentions,plans and so on of all those who participate”(Harre & van Langenhove, 1999, p. 5). By ana-lyzing shared episodes, we were able to identifyhow members of the triad placed themselvesand others within the storyline, how they un-derstood the parts played by themselves andthe others in the triad, and ultimately how theymade sense of teaching and learning to teach. Itis important to note that although Allyson, Mrs.K., and Dr. Z. authored the storyline, they werenot fully responsible for it. How they positionedthemselves and how they were positioned byone another and others, including the principalfor example, must be understood in relation tothe context, the historical subject positions of

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mentor/protégé and supervisor, and the moralorder that sustained those positions.

THE STORYLINE

In broad strokes, the general storyline of thetriad unfolded as follows: During the summer ageneral meeting was held and introductionsmade.

We had a meeting over the summer, just a coupleweeks before school started, with all the people—allof the math interns and their [mentors]. . . . All theysaid was “I’m Dr. Z. and I’m gonna be coming toyour classroom.” . . . He never said what he was go-ing to be doing. (Allyson, interview)

On his part, Dr. Z. distributed readings and helda set of meetings for the mentors. Once the yearbegan, Dr. Z. faithfully observed Allyson teacheach week until the Christmas break, when hetook leave. Given the block schedule, on alter-native days Mrs. K. did not teach. During thesedays she was available to observe and assistAllyson. Mrs. K. helped Allyson plan prior tothe beginning of the school year, but once schoolbegan she intentionally distanced herself for atime so that Allyson would be seen by the stu-dents as a teacher. In addition to her other du-ties, Allyson was assigned to coach girlsvolleyball. Rather quickly, Allyson realized shedesperately needed Mrs. K.’s help and support.She did not know how to carry out some re-sponsibilities she was assigned, like arrangingfor a bus for a game away from home. As Mrs. K.and Dr. Z. gave feedback to the interns, differ-ences began to emerge, and tensions grew be-tween Mrs. K. and Dr. Z.—with the interns inthe middle.

To make sense of what transpired, it is neces-sary to touch on motivation. Allyson, Mrs. K.,and Dr. Z. shared a set of desires representingpersonal, social, moral, and professional orders:All wanted the students to learn and enjoymathematics and have a positive classroomexperience with Allyson; all wanted Allyson tosucceed as a teacher and find employment atyear’s end; all wanted to honor the social andprofessional obligations of teachers, to modelmoral behavior, to be good team players, and tochampion mathematics. Because of these

shared goals, Dr. Z. assumed at the beginning ofthe year that he and Mrs. K. “were on the samepage.”

TWO EPISODES

We identified two episodes that profoundlyshaped how the triad worked. The first episodewe have labeled setting stereotypes, and the sec-ond was labeled by Dr. Z. as the blow-up. Settingstereotypes, which began before any membersof the triad had actually met, set the stage for theblow-up. We have chosen to document the sec-ond episode more fully than the first because asit played out, its implications for thinking aboutmentoring and mentoring practice have beencomplex and far reaching. We offer as manydirect quotations from the participants as wedeemed necessary to adequately document theunfolding of the two episodes. We have placedthe participants’ comments side by side toreveal not only the basic storyline of each epi-sode but also how the participants sought toposition themselves and each other within it. Aswe move through the two episodes, clusteredquotations are followed by our analysis of thepositioning activities that took place. Theseinterpretations are based not only on the quota-tions presented but also on other data providedby the participants.

Setting Stereotypes

Dr. Z. (interview): [I] met two times, three times [inthe summer with the mentors]. I had given [them]some things to read. . . . The first session, I had themread a book . . . [that] gives a perspective of the kindsof things we have been trying to teach the interns.[My point was to let them know] what we have beenteaching the interns so you have kind of an idea oftheir mindset coming into it. So hopefully you canaccommodate for that if their beliefs are differentfrom yours.

Mrs. K. (interview): I had met him . . . but he nevercame to see me actually teach. So he actually doesn’tknow what kind of teacher I am [but they wantedme] to mentor.

Dr. Z. (interview): I also had heard . . . that the mentorteacher was a little more traditional in her approachto teaching than what I knew I was conveying. And

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so that was one of the reasons why I wanted to holdthese meetings early on, to try to say, here is what weare trying to get these student interns to do. Please beaware of that and try to allow them the freedom totry to do it.

Before having met Mrs. K., Dr. Z. had posi-tioned her as traditional and unintentionallytherefore as deficit as a teacher and thus mentor.He had heard gossip about the math depart-ment and about Mrs. K., who within the schoolwas widely considered to be an exceptionallyable teacher, a point noted by the principal. Mrs.K. thought of herself as a highly skilled and re-spected teacher, and being chosen to mentorwas confirmation of this self-assessment. Dr. Z.presented himself to the mentors as an expert inthe discipline of mathematics and the teachingof mathematics.

During this initial meeting, Dr. Z. showedcomparatively little appreciation for the com-plex nature of adult learning and for the diffi-culty of changing beliefs if in fact a change isnecessary. He gave the mentors a set of readingsthat he assumed would be sufficiently convinc-ing that the mentors would agree to leave theinterns alone to experiment with proper mathe-matics teaching. By implication, the charge tothe mentors was to keep out of the way. Indeed,Dr. Z.’s initial request that the mentors “beaware” and “allow [the interns] freedom” posi-tioned the mentors, including Mrs. K., asimpediments to the interns’ professional devel-opment. Mrs. K. responded by rejecting Dr. Z.’sattempt to position her as deficit and insteadsought to position herself as expert. Ultimately,their attempts to position each other asunknowledgeable about what constitutes qual-ity mathematics instruction failed, which hadprofound implications for their work withAllyson.

The Blow-Up

The blow-up did not directly involveAllyson, yet she was dramatically repositionedby it and by the events that followed. Of neces-sity, she responded to the episode, in part out ofconcern for her own future as a teacher and inpart because Mrs. K. and Dr. Z. pressed her totake sides, to confirm their own positions.

Dr. Z. (interview): The blow-up. . . . One of the in-terns [not Allyson] had taught a lesson. I observed it,I gave her feedback on it, and I said, “You know youcould tweak it like this and this and this.” Well, shedid it. She taught the lesson [to another class]. Shethought it was great. But the mentor teacher came inand observed it and basically ripped it apart whenshe got done. So [the intern] came to me and said,“What do I do?”

Allyson, (paired discussion): (Referring to the othermath intern) [Our mentor] comes in and sees herclass right after Dr. Z. . . . She had fixed [the lessonfollowing] Dr. Z.’s [suggestions] and [the mentor]ripped her just up and down about how awful herlesson was.

Mrs. K. (interview): They didn’t want to show exam-ples [of how to work the problems]. Now, theywanted to teach the math without showing themath. . . . That’s . . . the . . . difference. . . . They wantedto theorize and then apply it.

These differing interpretations reveal thegrowing but not yet open conflict between thementor and the university supervisor, each ofwhom struggled to position himself or herselfas rightful and knowledgeable judges of teach-ing quality. This also shows Allyson’s need toprotect herself, to seek ways to keep from hap-pening to her what happened to the otherintern.

Despite Dr. Z.’s and Mrs. K.’s similar commit-ments to teaching young people mathematics,major differences in their beliefs about teachingmathematics surfaced early (as anticipated byDr. Z., which was why he held the meetingsprior to the beginning of the school year). AsDr. Z. revealed in the interview, he supportedreform-oriented mathematics instruction,which for him meant that teachers should createopportunities for students to form their ownunderstanding of mathematics based on thestudents’ thinking about complex mathemati-cal situations and problems. His belief was thatgiven time, opportunity, and some supportfrom the teacher, students could generate theirown theories and algorithms for dealing withmathematics and seeking solutions to prob-lems. Mrs. K. also wanted students to learn tosolve complex problems, but based on her longexperience as a high school teacher, she be-lieved it was more efficient and effective for

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teachers to model how to solve problems forstudents, allow the students to practice solvingsimilar problems under teacher guidance andthrough the use of technology and manipu-latives, and then allow students to apply theirnew skills to new problems independently.Dr. Z. and Mrs. K. may have shared the samegoals, but they understood mathematics andthe ways young people in large groups bestlearn mathematics in fundamentally conflict-ing ways. Both were certain their views werecorrect. How Dr. Z. and Mrs. K. attempted toresolve the situation only deepened these dif-ferences.

Dr. Z. (interview): I should have gone directly tothe mentor [to talk through the situation] but Ididn’t. . . . I went in and talked to the principal . . . tomake her aware of the problem. I think the mentorwalked into the principal’s office the moment I left.By the time I got home I had a scathing e-mail saying“You are undermining everything that I am trying todo.” The thing she doesn’t realize is . . . she is under-mining 4 years of [university] work.

Dr. Z. positioned the mentor as harmful tostudents. No charge could have been more shat-tering to Mrs. K. and her sense of herself as agood teacher than this one. She was, he thought,“undoing” the interns’ education and not al-lowing them to become good teachers, a goalthat he and others at the university had workedlong and hard to achieve. Dr. Z.’s claim to au-thority was based on his background as a re-searcher (which he revealed in the interview);and as a researcher, Dr. Z. believed he knew andunderstood what Mrs. K. should have been do-ing in the classroom. By implication, he be-lieved that Mrs. K.’s experience had led her toincorrect principles that needed correcting—both her theory and her practice were wrong-headed: Mrs. K. was an impediment to mathe-matics reform. But the issue was deeper. Duringthe summer Dr. Z. had given Mrs. K. and theother mathematics mentors readings that hethought should have led her to reconsider herapproach to teaching, but she had not reconsid-ered it. Grounded in what Munby and Russell(1994) called the “authority of experience,” Mrs.K. had not been influenced at all by the summersessions with Dr. Z. She knew she was an expertteacher.

However, by not bothering to meet withMrs. K. to discuss their apparent differences, Dr.Z. appeared to have dismissed the possibilitythat she was educable, let alone right. Instead,he met with the principal to share his concernsand frustrations with her, the same principalwho had chosen Mrs. K. to serve as a mentorbecause of the high opinion she held of Mrs. K.’steaching. It is not fully certain what Dr. Z’sintention was when he met with the principal(no inference can be made from the availabledata), but it is easy to understand Mrs. K.’s reac-tion to the meeting. She saw in the meeting anattempt to undermine her position within theschool and her relationships with the principaland the interns. In Dr. Z.’s view, Mrs. K. did notknow what she was doing. In Mrs. K.’s view, heknew little about high school teaching and wascaught up in unhelpful theory. The result wasthat initial differences were deepened, and Mrs.K. became increasingly resentful of Dr. Z.’s in-volvement in the school. His involvement afterall threatened to undermine her reputation—the ways faculty and parents positioned her asan outstanding teacher of mathematics and therights accorded to her by virtue of this stand-ing. She dismissed Dr. Z.’s claims to authority,sought to block his attempt to position her withthe principal as ineffective, and worked to mini-mize his influence over the interns. She could dothis because he was operating within her cul-ture and context, which she knew well and hedid not. He was only a visitor. The e-mail was awarning.

Allyson repeatedly shared feelings of beingstuck in the “middle” of the conflict, along withother interns, and of not knowing what to doabout it.

Allyson (paired discussion): [Dr. Z. told us that ourmentor] thinks that [he’s] going behind her back totell [us] how [we’re] to teach, but then [our mentor]will come to us and say the same things about Dr.Z. . . . They were at each other the whole time, and[the other intern] and I were stuck in the mid-dle. . . . This sucks.

Dr. Z. and Mrs. K. avoided one another. Butbehind the scenes each sought to weaken theposition of the other and to undermine theother’s influence over the interns. For Mrs. K.,

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Dr. Z.’s visit with the principal was proof of hisintent. From Allyson’s perspective, the resultwas that the authority claims of both Mrs. K.and Dr. Z. were weakened, and she found it nec-essary to become increasingly independent ofboth. She was not satisfied with her circum-stances, but the safe course for Allyson was dis-engagement: to avoid joining in an alliance ofone against the other or to recognizing one orthe other as dominant.

Allyson (e-mail, October 11): I need to teach my ownway and find my own groove. I can’t please every-one else . . . they [each] think I should teach just likethem. I’m going crazy.

Shortly after making this statement, Allysonchose sides—not because one side or the othernecessarily represented the kind of teacher shewanted to become but because she recognizedthat Mrs. K. held more power over her futurethan did Dr. Z., a point that Dr. Z. would be-grudgingly acknowledge later in the year. Bychoosing to align herself with Mrs. K., Allysonconfirmed Mrs. K.’s position as one who knowsand understands teaching from the inside,where claims to expertise grounded in manyyears of experience trump authority claimsbased on years of academic study. Ultimately,under Mrs. K.’s influence, Allyson concludedthat Dr. Z. was out of touch with the realities ofclassroom teaching, and thus she chose to con-form to the standards of teaching set by hermentor. This conclusion about universitysupervisors is a common one (Veal & Rickard,1998).

Allyson (paired discussion): [The other intern] and Istarted talking. We said, “You know we are gettingconflicting ideas from these two people.” . . . [We]talked to Dr. Z. and said, “Look, this is what’s goingon. We like your ideas, but we don’t necessarilythink all of them are practical, especially in a highschool situation where these kids hate math; theydon’t want to be here. You know we can’t just be like,‘Oh think about this problem.’” They’re just [not] go-ing to run off with it and do all sorts of fantasticthings—come up with their own theorems, which isbasically what he wanted them to do.

Allyson (interview): I felt like [Dr. Z.] expected me tocome in and just change the whole way that math hasever been taught in this high school.

These students have been taught like this forever.You know, if you’re gonna change this educationsystem, you gotta start when they’re young.

I felt . . . all this pressure to do something that I feltwas unrealistic.

Allyson responded to Mrs. K. as realistic,practical, and pragmatic while she situated andthen dismissed Dr. Z. as impractical and un-realistic, filled with good ideas but not forhigh school teaching. Furthermore, she rejectedDr. Z.’s expectation that she model for the othermath teachers in the school the proper way toteach mathematics. Instead, she joined Mrs. K.in marginalizing Dr. Z., who accepted their in-tentional and strategic repositioning of him—but not gracefully or well. He might have re-sisted, but he did not. Instead, Dr. Z. concludedthat Allyson had no reasonable alternative butto side with Mrs. K.

Allyson (paired discussion): [Dr. Z.] even said if itcomes down to it like teaching how I teach or teach-ing how [Mrs. K.] thinks you should teach, teachhow she suggests because she is the one who givesyou your evaluation at the end of the year, and she’sthe one who, she’s the one that basically your futurejobs are going to depend on because she’s youractual mentor.

Ultimately, Allyson distilled the reasons forher action to a single concern: desire for a posi-tive evaluation from Mrs. K. She positioned her-self to assure such an outcome. But in doing so,she did not risk a negative evaluation from Dr.Z., who given his moral order could not punishher for what he judged to be her mentor teach-er’s failings. His first obligation was to protectAllyson, even if in the process Allyson failed tolearn what he thought she should learn aboutmathematics teaching.

Dr. Z. (interview): I basically had to back off, a lot be-cause I realized that [Mrs. K.] had a lot more [power].For [the interns] to be happy, they have to please her,plain and simple.

Even as Dr. Z. was vanquished, he sought toposition Mrs. K. and Allyson as having oppos-ing interests. Playing to Allyson’s sense of vul-nerability, he portrayed Mrs. K. as a potentialthreat to her future as a teacher, not as an ally orchampion but as a potentially dangerous evalu-ator, one who might turn on Allyson. While he

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excused Allyson from having to please him, hedefined her role as mentee as “one who mustplease” Mrs. K. Unwittingly, he thereby under-mined his own expressed desire to haveAllyson experiment and push beyond tradi-tional mathematics teaching practice, and hethus truncated whatever influence he might stillhave had with her. He accentuated the sum-mative aspect of the mentor role over formativeevaluation and developmental functions,which in turn shaped how Allyson understoodher relationship with Mrs. K. Then he withdrewand placed the entire mentoring burden on Mrs.K. to make the interns “happy.”

Dr. Z. (interview): The problem is [the teachers] areall very set in their ways. And even though I tried todo things in the summer . . . there was no progress, nomovement at all.

Rather than accept the possibility that he hadunderappreciated the cultural and institutionalpressures on teachers to teach in a certain waythat he found disturbing and that he had failedto understand the depth of their commitmentsto teach in this way or to entertain the possibil-ity that his attempt at in-service education wasfeeble, Dr. Z. concluded the teachers were inca-pable of learning, of changing their ways. Thisconclusion represented an expansion and con-firmation of the deficit view of teachers that hehad brought with him to the summer ses-sions with the mentors and validated his self-assessment and position. The inference wasclear: There was little to be done to improve thesituation because teachers like Mrs. K. wouldnot change, they were “set in their ways.” Bytaking this position, he preserved his own senseof himself as a professional and his moral order,and he added a remarkable twist: He was a vic-tim of teacher incompetence. Claims like thismay produce feelings of moral superiority andbring hints of self-righteousness. What is cer-tain is that the distance between Dr. Z. and Mrs.K., between the university and the schools, andbetween theory and practice widened as aresult. Dr. Z. was able to absent himself from thesituation with a clear conscience.

Mrs. K. (paired discussion): Our philosophies didn’tmesh—the intern program really didn’t have muchof a chance at our school.

Mrs. K. (interview): I was in it for the kids; [Dr. Z.]was in it for the teachers [interns].

Dr. Z. (interview): I would like to work as a team, butit is difficult to work as a team when I don’t agreewith the beliefs of the mentor.

Mrs. K. attempted to make sense out of whathappened by simply concluding that “our phi-losophies didn’t mesh.” Both she and Dr. Z. real-ized that more was at stake than what mightotherwise be understood as merely differencesin opinion. Both recognized that their differ-ences were fundamental and that these differ-ences had practical consequences for the internsand indirectly for the students. Both alsoseemed to conclude that their positions were ir-reconcilable, and neither one was interested intrying to better understand the other. The claimswere not hearable. Dr. Z. set up an impossiblestandard for one who supposedly is committedto improving mathematics teaching: If beliefsare not already shared, it is unlikely he can suc-cessfully work with a team of teachers. Theirony is that changing beliefs is a necessarystep in the reform of mathematics education.On her part, Mrs. K. asserted that there was afundamental and also irreconcilable differ-ence in commitments: She cared deeply aboutthe students in her school, whereas Dr. Z. was,she asserted, most concerned with the interns’development and less concerned with thewell-being of high school students. Hers was amoral claim about Dr. Z., one that he wouldhave vigorously and rightly denied. Indeed, itwas his deep concern for the quality of mathe-matics education offered in the school districtthat prompted him to agree to supervise in-terns and to offer the summer sessions for thementors. Her claim was straightforward: Un-like Dr. Z., she was a protector of the young.

Mrs. K.’s attack on Dr. Z. went to the heart ofhis sense of himself as an academic and of hisauthority claims. She dismissed his expertiseand discounted his knowledge of mathematicsand mathematics teaching as naive.

Dr. Z. (interview): From the very beginning the men-tor just said, Dr. Z. doesn’t know what he’s talkingabout. You can’t teach this way; this is the way youhave to teach. [She] was very close-minded about ev-erything I tried to do.

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Dr. Z. (interview): [The mentor told me] that all therest of the mentors were feeling the same way thatshe was. But . . . when I talked to them they said, “Nothat’s not the case.” . . . I think she was just blowingoff steam and making stuff up.

Jarred by being marginalized, Dr. Z. soughtinteraction with other teachers, hoping to makebetter sense of the situation and it appears,to shore up his conception of himself as expert.It is difficult to imagine that the other mentorswould openly take sides as they most assuredlywere aware of some of the difficulties betweenMrs. K. and Dr. Z., but he still came away fromthese conversations feeling confirmed. He con-cluded that Mrs. K. was in some sense de-ranged, that she was “making stuff up.” There isno more powerful means for asserting one’sown sense of self or undermining another’splace than to position the other as psychologi-cally unstable. This was precisely what Dr. Z.tried to do.

Allyson (paired interview): [The two of them] justsat back, and they said, “We will give you sugges-tions, but if they conflict . . . either ignore us, makeyour own decisions on it.” . . . I don’t like that either.

Having disengaged from one another andhaving erected protective walls all about, Dr. Z.and Mrs. K. disengaged from Allyson, who withthe other intern mentored by Mrs. K. served asthe field of their contention. A truce was de-clared. Independently they would chat with herabout teaching, but neither felt responsible to orfor Allyson. Allyson was positioned by hermentor and university supervisor as the ulti-mate arbitrator of worth—despite her limitedknowledge of teaching. Allyson was on herown.

Results Summary

All three of the individuals who made up thetriad positioned themselves and each other tomake their work together possible and under-standable. Allyson positioned herself as a con-fused and frustrated intern stuck between thecontradictory demands of her mentor and heruniversity supervisor. Although this may bejudged an extreme example, it is certainly not an

unusual story (Graham, 1997). Allyson success-fully positioned Dr. Z. as an expert but also asirrelevant, as one whose ideas were impracticalfor her particular teaching situation, a situationshe accepted as given. She also positioned hermentor not as a more informed other who mighthelp her to develop as a teacher but as someonewho must be pleased to find future success as ateacher—success being defined as beingemployable based on positive mentor evalua-tions. Furthermore, Allyson confirmed how Dr.Z., the university supervisor, and Mrs. K., thein-school mentor, positioned one another asrepresenting opposing interests. With Dr. Z.’sbegrudging blessing, Allyson chose sides. Dr. Z.relinquished his goals for Allyson and for themathematics department at the high school,and the triad became a dyad of Allyson andMrs. K. With Dr. Z. out of the picture, Allysonwas free to position herself as the dutiful andstriving beginning teacher by aligning her prac-tice with Mrs. K.’s practice, which enabled Mrs.K. to see Allyson as competent and promising.However, it was unclear if this alignment wasconsistent with Allyson’s view of herself as amathematics teacher.

Dr. Z. positioned himself as an expert basedon his research and reading as a mathematicseducator. At the beginning of the year, Dr. Z.’sposition, along with the rights, duties, and obli-gations within the mentoring triad that flowedfrom it based on his assumption of the institu-tional dominance of the university over thepublic school, allowed him to assume he couldrightfully impose his expectations on the men-tor and on Allyson. His message was clear (eventhough ultimately rejected): The job of the men-tor was simply to allow Allyson to put intoplace the practices she had learned at the uni-versity with as little interference as possible.Dr. Z.’s goal was to infuse the mathematicsdepartment with mathematics teaching ideasthat are in line with recent reform efforts inmathematics education, and Allyson and theother interns were charged to carry out thisheavy responsibility, which Beck and Kosnik(2002) described as an “interventionist stance”(p. 7). However, when his claims were not rec-

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ognized or confirmed by Mrs. K. and the princi-pal, he abandoned this mission as hopeless. Hisgoal of positioning Allyson and the other in-terns as agents of change failed. Dr. Z. removedhimself from the triad and chalked his failure upto the impenetrable fortress of school cultureand the weightiness of tradition.

Despite Dr. Z.’s desire that the intern pro-gram change the mathematics department atthe high school and his claim that better educa-tion would result from the teaching practices hechampioned, Mrs. K. positioned Dr. Z. as anacademic interested in the interns and not in theeducation of high school students. In contrast,Mrs. K. saw her primary obligation to residewith the students at the high school and not theinterns for whom she was assigned as mentor.This way of positioning herself and Dr. Z. fitwith Dr. Z.’s rejection of her as a mentor andwith Allyson’s insistence that she as an internwas doing fine with little assistance from Mrs.K. Thus, Mrs. K. could also remove herself fromthe situation without resistance from eitherDr. Z. or Allyson. Ultimately, Mrs. K.’s role asmentor was to validate Allyson as a teacher, avalidation dependent on Allyson’s conformity.Conversely, Mrs. K. positioned Allyson as inad-equate when she attempted to teach along thelines proposed by Dr. Z.

CONCLUSION

Over the past several years, many claimshave been made for the value of mentoring.Mentoring is often spoken of as the road to suc-cess in beginning teacher development, noviceteacher retention, and mentor teacher improve-ment (Zeek, Foote, & Walker, 2001). And so itmay be. But a closer look at the politics ofmentoring, particularly within the triadic rela-tionship that is common to teacher education,reveals a much more complicated story than istypically told: a tale of power negotiation and ofpositioning and being positioned to influencelearning, preserve one’s sense of self, andachieve or maintain a measure of control overone’s situation.

On the surface, one way of characteriz-ing Allyson’s, Dr. Z.’s and Mrs. K.’s story—orstories—is to say that there was a lack of com-munication. This is certainly true. Lack of effec-tive communication between mentors and uni-versity supervisors is a widely recognizedproblem, one described by Beck and Kosnik(2002) as arising from the existence of “twolargely separate worlds . . . that reveal a gulfbetween the views of . . . teachers and universityfaculty” (p. 7). Given this way of framing anexplanation, a simple remedy would follow:Allyson, Mrs. K., and Dr. Z. needed to talk more.But such a conclusion would misrepresent thedepth and complexity of the problem faced.There is a need to attend to the conditions re-quired for communication to take place, but at-tending to those conditions requires attendingto how triad members positioned themselvesand how they responded to being positioned.

Minimally, the conditions for communicationinclude the desire to understand and to beunderstood as well as a commitment to the “sin-cerity or authenticity of self-presentations” andto the “truth of statements” (McCarthy, 1991,p. 132). Each condition indicates a willingnessto invest in the other, a valuing of what the otherknows and has to say. Remarkably, not onemember of the triad thought more talk was nec-essary or even desirable. Having listened togossip, Dr. Z. concluded even before meetingMrs. K. that he already knew her. In turn,Mrs. K. thought she knew Dr. Z. Enough said.On his part, Dr. Z. failed to appreciate that dif-ferences in approaches to instruction may repre-sent deep-seated differences in understandingthe purposes of teaching and of learning andthat teachers invest themselves heavily in theirpractices so that to challenge a practice is oftenperceived as a challenge to self. He threatenedMrs. K. But, the same could be said for Dr. Z.:Mrs. K. threatened him, including his self-conception. Both Mrs. K.’s and Dr. Z.’s practiceswere embedded in their respective moral ordersand brought with them claims to authority andas previously noted, rights, duties, and obli-gations that were taken for granted until dis-rupted by the other. In turn, all Allyson wanted

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was a congruent message, but congruence wasimpossible, and only the struggle for survivalremained and interfered with her focus onbecoming a good teacher.

Alternative subject positions that invite com-munication can be mindfully created and sys-tematically supported. They do not, we believe,just happen, at least not often. We find ourselveswondering what would have been different ifDr. Z. had initially positioned Mrs. K. as an in-telligent and dedicated teacher who could teachhim something about the school and depart-ment or as a hardworking teacher who had notread as deeply as he had into mathematicsteaching but who could become a friend. On theother side, what if Mrs. K. had positioned Dr. Z.as someone from whom she could learn? Andwe wonder, what could have been done toincrease the likelihood of these alternative sub-ject positions being formed? Clearly, as Clarkeand Hollingsworth (2002) argued, deficit mod-els of professional development of the sort heldby both Dr. Z. and Mrs. K. inevitably fail andcause harm.

It is likely that mentors and university super-visors need assistance in confronting the tacitand unrecognized models of professional de-velopment that they may hold: supervisors likeDr. Z. about mentors and interns and mentorslike Mrs. K. about interns and also supervisors.To do so, they probably need the help of an in-terested, outside third party. Such assistancecould take many forms, including joint semi-nars on mentoring and supervision that explic-itly attend to the power and dangers inherent inpositioning. Ultimately, successful models ofprofessional development and we believe ofmentoring build on strength—a point under-scored by recent developments in positive psy-chology (see Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi,2000); honor the idiosyncratic and deeply per-sonal nature of human growth and develop-ment and recognize the difficulty of unlearning.Knowing a subject area and understanding howstudents best learn it are necessary for botheffective mentoring and skilled supervision, butthey need to be grounded in respectful relation-ships (Oberski, Ford, Higgins, & Fisher, 1999).Whatever the form of assistance offered, it

should come well before starting to share a stu-dent teacher or intern like Allyson, for whommanaging a mentor and a supervisor should beof little concern.

Mentor and supervisor differences do notneed to be debilitating. As suggested by the ex-panding literature on public school/universitypartnership (Goodlad, 1994), differences needto be recognized and a common space created ofthe sort we have suggested. The meeting of atriad should become such a space: a placewithin which good talk across differences aboutgood teaching occurs earnestly, honestly, andrespectfully. That Mrs. K., Dr. Z., and Allyson allshared fundamental aims, not the least of whichwas for Allyson to have a positive learningexperience in the school, suggests that evenwithin this triad there were common but un-developed grounds for such talk. Just as talkabout teaching is a “key feature of collaborativeschools” (Williams, Prestage, & Bedward, 2001),so it is a key feature of good mentoring and oflearning to teach, but the conditions for goodtalk need to be created initially.

Despite their differences, mentors and super-visors need each other, not merely because theyshare responsibility for an intern or studentteacher. Each is essential for the other’s growthas much as for the intern’s development; to-gether they can come to understand teachingmore richly and in more interesting ways thanthey can alone. Mentoring and supervisionought not be only about an intern or studentteacher’s growth and development but aboutthe mentor’s and supervisor’s professional de-velopment as well.

REFERENCESBeck, C., & Kosnik, C. (2002). Professors and the practicum:

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Buchberger, F., Campos, B. P., Kallos, D., & Stephenson, J.(2000). Green paper on teacher education in Europe: Highquality teacher education for high quality education andtraining. Umea, Sweden: Thematic Network on TeacherEducation in Europe.

Clarke, D., & Hollingsworth, H. (2002). Elaborating amodel of teacher professional growth. Teaching &Teacher Education, 18, 947-967.

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McCarthy, T. (1991). Ideals and illusions. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press.

Munby, H., & Russell, T. (1994). The authority of experi-ence in learning to teach: Message from a physics meth-ods class. Journal of Teacher Education, 45, 86-95.

Oberski, I., Ford, K., Higgins, S., & Fisher, P. (1999). Theimportance of relationships in teacher education. Jour-nal of Education for Teaching, 25, 135-150.

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Robert V. Bullough Jr. is professor of teacher educa-tion and associate director for teacher education research,Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education andSchooling (CITES), Brigham Young University. His mostrecent book is Uncertain Lives: Children of Promise,Teachers of Hope (Teachers College Press).

Roni Jo Draper is assistant professor of teacher educa-tion in the David O. McKay School of Education atBrigham Young University. Her research interestsinclude content-area literacy—specifically issues in math-ematics classrooms—and teacher education.

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