Intern-Teacher Roles: Illusion, Disillusion and Reality

Interns in a field-based teacher-education program expected to improve teaching of children from low-income families. Their powerlessness in the face of what they perceived as harsh, ineffective teaching led to disillusionment. Later, most accepted teaching practices they had formerly rejected, though a few resisted institutional pressures from school and university to acquiesce. Intern perspectives on teaching can be explained as being formed by a hidden curriculum of teacher education which undermines public rhetoric favoring change; alternatively, intern perspectives can be explained as unintended consequences of the program. Further research is needed to understand the interplay of individual purposes and institutional constraints.