Teachers' Beliefs and Practices: Dissonance or Contextual Reality?

Third of a 4-part longitudinal study examining the unfolding reading cognition of novice teachers, a study focused on seven teachers during their first year of teaching in elementary schools in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. The teachers' reading beliefs and practices were identified using a variety of approaches including lesson plan review, informal discussions and a video or audio tape of classroom lessons or activities that the teacher felt exemplified his/her reading beliefs and practices. For five of the seven teachers, stated reading beliefs and actual practices were quite similar. Another teacher indicated that her current understanding of the reading process was "probably very warped" due to the context she found herself in as a teacher in an inner city school with limited resources. The other indicated that he did not have a reading philosophy because he had not been involved in the selection of the new reading program due to a change in position. The teachers also employed various aspects of the model developed as part of their preservice program to guide their decisions. Those teachers who viewed reading as a complex communication process with emphasis on meaning continued to do so, and the two teachers who viewed reading more as a process of decoding symbols continued to hold to this belief. (Contains 13 references.) (RS)