Learning Within Teaching: An Examination of Teachers Learning in Reading Recovery

This author explores teacher change within a year's professional development course in Reading Recovery. Through examples of conversations during in‐service sessions, colleague visits, and peer collaboration, the roles of practical innovation and peer dialogue in the development of theoretical constructs are explored. In particular, one class of teacher leaders (N = 17) was assessed to examine the changes that occurred in their orientations to the teaching of reading in a year's Reading Recovery professional development course. There were significant changes in the teachers’ orientations to reading, moving from a skills orientation toward a whole‐language orientation. Group reflection, learning through teaching, skilled observation, teacher decision making, and coaching were characteristics of the staff development program that emerged as having a high relationship to teacher change.