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 ad- justment 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 in- struction 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 pro- fession. The purpose of this paper is to report the results of the teacher develop- ment study undertaken at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), Faculty of Education.