The Apprenticeship of Observation in Teacher Learning

Definition

The apprenticeship of observation is a form of anticipatory socialization that is experienced by all individuals who attend K-12 schooling, and is particularly consequential for the subset of this population that eventually becomes professional educators. Based on extensive interviews with professional teachers, sociologist Dan C. Lortie found that the 13,000 h of experience teachers had spent watching their own K-12 teachers constituted a sort of apprenticeship in teaching. This prolonged period of observation is thought to have a profound impact on the work of teachers. By observing their own teachers across thousands of hours, professional educators are said to make decisions in the classroom and in their teaching based on their own individual personalities and preferences instead of pedagogical frameworks or theories; the teacher learning brought about by the apprenticeship of observation leads professional educators to identify teaching they liked and disliked. Teaching decisions made by these educators in the classroom are ultimately based on a binary choice between replicating or rejecting the teaching they previously witnessed as K-12 students. Over time, the apprenticeship of observation has, for some researchers and teacher educators, served as shorthand for describing the replication of traditional teaching approaches across time, in effect suggesting that teachers teach the way they were taught. The power and negative consequences of the apprenticeship of observation have led teacher educators to devise multiple interventions within teacher education programs and pedagogies, which have sought to challenge and overcome the apprenticeship of observation and its negative influence on professional educators’ teacher learning and practice.

1. Introduction

Teaching has been described as inherently complex work, requiring knowledge and skills that must be differentially applied across the unique settings in which the work takes place [1]. Learning to teach, the process whereby a novice develops some semblance of proficiency with teaching’s myriad knowledge and skills, has been characterized not just as complex work but also contradictory [2]. One characteristic of this learning that contributes to its complexity is its nonlinear development, in which novices may progress and regress in unpredictable ways as they learn [3]. As part of this nonlinear learning, novice teachers develop new ways of thinking and being, while they may forget, ignore, or struggle to implement particular strategies or approaches at certain times. As they transition from preservice teacher preparation programs to professional, in-service roles, novice teachers increasingly develop an awareness of what Greene referred to as the limits, structures, and arrangements of teaching [4]. These limits, structures, and arrangements indelibly shape teachers’ learning and professional practice. The ‘shaping’ of teachers’ learning is not simply a one-way process, in which the structural conditions of schools constrain teaching and learning. Britzman described this shaping as dialogic, with teachers simultaneously making decisions and thus enacting themselves as teachers through a series of complicated negotiations as they engage factors both within and beyond themselves [2].

Among the fault lines or considerations of this complicated negotiation is teachers’ own biographies. Teachers do not arrive in preservice teacher preparation programs as empty vessels waiting to be filled; by the time young people begin teacher preparation, virtually all of them have spent considerable time in K-12 classrooms, observing many teachers across various settings. This “overfamiliarity” with teaching invariably leads to a pool of experiences that inform early teacher learning, for better and for worse [2] (p. 26). Consequently, teachers’ own lives form part of what Britzman called the “implicit context of teacher education” [5] (p. 443), and perhaps the implicit context of all teaching.

The purpose of this entry to describe the development of and research on the apprenticeship of observation between 1975 and 2026. The apprenticeship of observation is a concept used to describe the particular socialization process that is said to occur as a result of teachers’ prior experiences as K-12 students. Drawing primarily from English-language literature, this entry begins by overviewing anticipatory socialization. Next, Lortie’s apprenticeship of observation, which has become the dominant explanation in the literature for teachers’ anticipatory socialization, is introduced. The following sections will document the significant influence the apprenticeship of observation has had on teacher education scholarship. In particular, these sections will highlight the ways in which teacher educators have attempted to engage with, and at times critique, the alleged deleterious effects of, the apprenticeship of observation.

2. Anticipatory Socialization

The teaching profession is certainly not the only profession or group that is impacted by socialization. Young people, much like adults, simultaneously experience socialization in various groups and organizations. Socialization has been defined as “the ongoing process of individuals exploring, joining, adapting to, and leaving organizations” [6] (p. 259). This seemingly benign definition belies the complexity and challenges of socialization as a social process and research topic. Although research on socialization has yielded some benefits in surfacing and examining instances of social reproduction, scholars have criticized socialization as a concept. In particular, such critique has frequently centered on the failure of socialization research to account for or articulate agency [7]. Early research in areas such as organizational socialization tended to examine exploration, joining, adapting to, and leaving organizations from the perspective of the organization; individuals interacting with organizations were not considered to have agency in these interactions, instead considered to be “passive recipients of the information organizations chose to provide” [6] (p. 258). Socialization, from a functionalist perspective, was understood as a form of “cultural downloading” that did not adequately consider “agency, incoherence, and conflict” [7] (p. 110).

Exploration of, or exposure to, an organization before successfully joining its ranks is regarded as a distinct stage, or interrelated stages, of socialization. Some scholars categorize any socialization that occurs prior to joining an organization as anticipatory socialization [6,8]. This initial stage of socialization has also been bifurcated in research into distinct prior socialization and anticipatory socialization stages. Prior socialization might include early childhood or other formative experiences with an organization before an individual attempts to join the organization. Anticipatory socialization, when separated from prior socialization, seeks to examine how an individual decides to enter, and then enters, an organization, often an organization related to career aspirations [9]. The period in which prior and anticipatory socialization occur often means that various individuals might contribute to such socialization, including parents, peers at school, friends, and different forms of media that individuals might access [10]. These sources, and perhaps others, contribute information and perspectives on organizations and work that both positively and negatively influence conceptions of work [10], attitudes about attractive features of occupations [11], and basic information or previews of certain jobs [6]. The extent to which agency plays a role in anticipatory socialization is debated, with scholars developing frameworks to account for both intentional decisions to pursue organizational membership as well as decisions to avoid membership [8].

Anticipatory socialization has been used to examine how preservice and in-service teachers view the role and work of teachers. For example, Templin et al. examined the anticipatory socialization process of physical education teachers. A major aspect of their findings centered on the decision to pursue preparation and professional work as a physical educator. The authors found that participants became physical educators due to factors like the ability to stay connected with athletics and sports, the service orientation of teaching work, and ease of entry [11]. Another anticipatory socialization study involving teaching was conducted by Ota, who found that teachers’ own experiences in school as students often enhanced their desire to join the teaching profession, along with the attrition rate in teacher preparation programs [12]. An important common link between Templin et al.’s and Ota’s studies is the authors’ explicit references to the apprenticeship of observation, a consistently utilized concept in teacher education literature to describe the particular anticipatory socialization experienced by teachers.

3. Apprenticeship of Observation

The idea that prior experience in schools shapes teachers’ understanding of their work is often attributed to Lortie’s Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (hereafter Schoolteacher) [13], though the idea’s roots can be traced further back in time. Legislative debates in Massachusetts discussing the funding of state-supported normal schools in the late 1830s referenced teachers’ own formative schooling experiences and whether they adequately prepared people to teach [14]. In his foundational sociological study of teaching, Waller later noted teachers “[get] something from experience which is not included in [their] ‘professional’ courses,” a sort of “rough, empirical insight” into the ways in which people interact in school settings [15] (p. 1). Lortie’s study, and perhaps especially the apprenticeship of observation, presented something of a turning point, after which scholars began to empirically examine the significance of prior experiences on teaching beliefs and practice.

Among many other aspects of schools and their organization and functioning, Lortie sought to explain the challenges inherent to learning to teach. Lortie’s study of the teaching profession included extensive interviews with teachers in two areas: (1) a suburban site Lortie called Five Towns, and (2) Dade County, FL. During his interviews with teachers, Lortie asked participants to describe “outstanding teachers” they had previously encountered when participants themselves were K-12 students. He also asked participants to describe outstanding teachers they knew while working as teachers themselves [13] (p. 251). From his participants’ responses, Lortie concluded that “[t]here are ways in which being a student is like serving an apprenticeship in teaching” [13] (p. 61). The apprenticeship Lortie described was intensive, experienced across 13,000 highly consequential hours for participants as they interacted with their own K-12 teachers. Yet Lortie identified two limitations of the apprenticeship of observation. First, he noted that K-12 students come to understand the role of teachers from “a specific vantage point,” which was as a student who was often watching and interacting with their teachers while fulfilling the student role. Second, Lortie found that students’ “protracted face-to-face and consequential” interactions with teachers were in many respects incomplete, as students lacked access to “the teacher’s private intentions and personal reflections on classroom events” [13] (p. 62). All students had access to was what they could observe in the classroom, which necessarily limited their perspective on and understanding of the teaching they observed.

Lortie emphasized the centrality of observation in the apprenticeship of teaching he described, but he asserted that students’ K-12 interactions with their teachers were not simply “passive observation” [13] (p. 61). However, Lortie argued that this agency was often a product of students’ willingness to “take the role” of the teacher so they could “engage in at least enough empathy to anticipate the teacher’s probable reaction” to their own behavior [13] (p. 62). Students’ own aspirations or goals strongly influenced their agency with teachers. Some students “aspire to ‘survive’ school” and therefore “placate” the teacher. On the other hand, their peers with greater formal schooling aspirations “learn the significance of good grades and the value of teacher favor” and therefore interact with teachers to ensure their own benefit [13] (p. 62). Lortie did not make any assertions about students’ agency in their own learning about teaching as part of the apprenticeship of observation.

The following sections are used to outline Lortie’s key findings regarding the apprenticeship of observation and to establish a pattern of similar findings that have followed throughout the past 50 years. Although Lortie may not have ascribed agency to teacher learning gleaned from the apprenticeship of observation, he found that this socialization process powerfully shaped students’ understanding of teaching and the teacher’s role. In particular, the apprenticeship of observation provided both positive and negative models of teaching, encouraged students to evaluate teaching, and ultimately led to the imitation and transmission of teaching practices. Subsequent scholarship examining or invoking the apprenticeship of observation has reified both Lortie’s emphasis on K-12 school experiences and his findings from his initial study.

3.1. Simplistic Views of Teaching

In his study, Lortie asserted that his teacher participants’ observations of teaching had led to the development of “student-oriented perspectives” of teaching [13] (p. 62). Lacey’s and Everhart’s examinations of schooling lent some support to the existence of this student-centric perspective or view. They both discussed a particular culture that K-12 students participated in across their many experiences in schools [16,17]. Everhart’s participants readily identified common teaching behaviors that were superficially accessible to them, like “sit at their desk” and “pile [work] on” students [17], as well as responses like “scream[ing]” and “be[ing] strict” with students [17] (p. 74). Lacey’s and Everhart’s findings regarding student culture appear to be consistent with Lortie’s findings, especially when Lortie argued that his professional teacher participants did not “contrast their ‘student’ perceptions with a later, more sophisticated viewpoint” on teaching [13] (p. 65).

Subsequent studies have also examined the simplicity of, or lack of sophistication in, preservice teachers’ views of teaching formed through their observation. The result of the student-oriented perspective on teaching was the formation of a central belief that teaching is “fixated upon individual personalities rather than pedagogical principles” [13] (p. 62). Grossman further elaborated on what was missing from these observations of teaching: students see the visible parts of the teacher’s role, yet “are not privy to the teacher’s private intentions and personal reflections on classroom events” [18] (p. 349). Scholarship examining preservice teachers’ experiences with teaching has highlighted the absence of pedagogical principles or thought exhibited by preservice teachers [18,19]. The apprenticeship of observation may provide an elaborate observable production of teaching, yet scholars have found this production makes teaching’s nature and implementation seem personal and simple.

3.2. Evaluations of Teaching Based on Likes and Dislikes

The student perspective Lortie, Lacey, and Everhart described serves as a prism through which K-12 students, and later preservice and professional teachers, understand and evaluate teaching. From his interviews, Lortie found that K-12 experiences enabled students to “assess teachers on a wide variety of personal and student-oriented bases,” without considering evaluative behaviors teachers might engage in, such as goal-setting and analyses of their own teaching [13] (p. 62). Since Lortie identified the apprenticeship of observation, scholars examining preservice teachers have produced similar findings regarding these teachers’ abilities to evaluate teaching. Case studies of preservice teachers [20], along with examinations of preservice teachers’ memories, have identified “personal and affectively charged” recollections of teaching [20] (p. 56) from “vivid life event memories” [21] (p. 419). Thus, the apprenticeship of observation is frequently characterized as equipping teachers with a storehouse of highly personal memories and recollections [13,18,20,21]. Although a wealth of resources might be accessible from this storehouse, these resources are often found to impair, rather than enable or enhance, teachers’ critical analysis of the teaching they previously observed [13,19].

At most, Lortie appeared to believe that teachers could articulate evaluations of previous episodes of teaching limited to identifying episodes or aspects of teaching they liked and those they disliked. Studies conducted since Lortie first identified the apprenticeship of observation have described such evaluations being conducted by both in-service and preservice teachers. Both Channa’s and Boyd et al.’s participants identified personality characteristics and teaching qualities or practices they liked; in Boyd et al.’s study, they also discussed episodes of teaching they disliked [19,22]. In at least one case, preservice teachers espoused preferences for teachers with similar political views or teachers who made students feel comfortable and at ease in the classroom [23]. These examples illustrate in-service and preservice teachers’ abilities to evaluate teaching. However, as Lortie asserted, such evaluations rely on personal preferences rather than a particular pedagogical framework undergirding teachers’ thinking.

3.3. Imitating (and Transmitting) Teaching Practices

An alleged consequence of teachers’ simplistic views and limited frameworks for the evaluation of teaching is the “unreflective imitation” of teaching practices [20] (p. 64). The understanding of teaching developed from the apprenticeship of observation is one Lortie described as “intuitive and imitative,” in which teachers learned particular practices by watching their teachers and later repeating what they had seen in their own teaching practice [13] (p. 62). Imitation of teaching practices is said to occur at the individual and societal levels. Multiple studies have sought to illustrate how individual teachers have imitated teaching practices they witnessed as students during their apprenticeships of observation [24,25]. Lortie argued that the imitation of teaching practices results in “a potentially powerful influence which transcends generations” [13] (p. 63). In other words, the apprenticeship of observation, as Hargreaves wrote, leads to “a preference for doing things as they have been done in the past” [26] (p. 147).

3.4. Efforts to Examine and Mitigate the Apprenticeship of Observation

The uncritical repetition of teaching practices, particularly those deemed undesirable by teacher educators, has led teacher educators to develop a number of approaches for examining and mitigating the alleged negative influence of the apprenticeship of observation. These approaches have taken various forms. For example, teacher educators have prompted preservice teachers to conduct autobiographical writing to surface influential models of teaching from the past [27,28]. More recently, teacher educators have utilized online mediums like blogs for preservice teachers to write about their own experiences, as well as to have their peers read and respond to such writing [19]. Howard advanced the use of autobiographical writing by asking preservice teachers to engage in critical reflection of their experiences, which required preservice teachers “to ask challenging questions that pertain to [their] construction of individuals from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds” [29] (p. 198). Other strategies utilized by teacher educators include in-class strategies, such as the modeling of novel practices, the elimination of debate concerning exaggerated examples of teaching, and targeted presentations focusing on particular teaching perspectives or practices [18,30]. Although these approaches have been reported to have some success in making preservice teachers aware of the influence of their own experiences, the success of these approaches in mitigating the repetition of traditional teaching practices appears less clear. One factor affecting the clarity of mitigation claims is the absence of longitudinal methodologies that might help to track teachers’ practice over time.

4. Critiques and New Directions

In the 50 years since Lortie’s original study, scholars have continued to examine the apprenticeship of observation amongst preservice and in-service teachers. Although references to the apprenticeship of observation in books appeared to ebb between 2007 and 2014, the concept’s use appears to be on the rise since 2014 [31]. In the following sections, recent critiques of and new directions for apprenticeship of observation research are briefly described.

4.1. A Deeper Pool of Experiences Influencing Understandings of Teaching

While Lortie emphasized the power of K-12 school experiences on conceptions of teaching, scholars have highlighted a range of experiences beyond K-12 schooling that may also contribute to early understandings of the teacher’s role and work. Most people gain considerable exposure to teachers and teaching in K-12 schools, yet they may access teaching in other places as well. Prior to preservice teacher preparation programs, young people may have opportunities to engage in teaching roles that may have been less common in the past, including teaching in homeless shelters, nonformal education programs like the Boys and Girls Club, and teaching internships completed as part of high school [14,32,33]. Other models of or influences on teaching exist outside of schools, including parents and other influential people encountered throughout childhood, adolescence and homeschooling [33,34,35]. The connectivity available today through technology and the internet offers additional models of or perspectives on teaching, including social media [36]. Young people are exposed to far more models and forms of teaching, which may also have a profound influence on their understandings of teachers and teaching.

4.2. Capacities for Analytical Thinking

The wider range of experiences with teaching that are possible today yields greater potential for nuanced and analytical thinking concerning teaching. Despite critiques identifying preservice teachers’ recollections of their own experiences as “not critical or deeply analytical” [19] (p. 37), other scholars have rejected the idea that preservice teachers cannot analyze their own experiences with teachers and teaching. Preservice teachers, according to Mewborn and Tyminski and later Knapp, could effectively use prompts to analyze their prior experiences with teachers and teaching [37,38]. Mewborn and Tyminski found that recollections of negative experiences in particular could serve as “powerful catalysts for future teachers to be explicit and analytical about the influence of former teachers” [37] (p. 31). They shared the experiences of Sherrie, a student who had been placed in a low-level math class during her K-12 school experiences, and who experienced “fear and humiliation” at the hands of a teacher who openly criticized her responses in class. The authors found that this formative K-12 experience influenced Sherrie’s explicit efforts to support students’ responses when she was teaching, in part by permitting them to decline to answer problems if they were having trouble reaching a solution. Reflections like Sherrie’s, where teachers can identify how past experiences impact present teaching behaviors, highlight another important finding: teachers may possess more awareness and agency in their learning than Lortie attributed to them.

4.3. Awareness and Agency in Teacher Learning

Lortie may have attributed a form of agency to preservice and in-service teachers, but one different in kind from the agency discussed by contemporary scholars examining the apprenticeship of observation and its influence. Agency, for Lortie, was linked to students’ aspirations; their interactions with teachers were a means to some end they might be pursuing [13]. Recent scholarship has found that preservice teachers exercise agency in other ways. For example, Crowe and McGarr examined how preservice teachers construct their own memories from their experiences, in the process enacting “agency in determining the memories they encode from their schooling” [21] (p. 422). In a study of a high school student taking part in a teaching internship, Davis’s participant was cognizant of the impact of her own K-6 Montessori schooling experiences and how she wanted to “get…back” what she had observed of teachers in the school and integrate these practices into her own teaching [14] (p. 16). These studies suggest that high school students and preservice teachers are capable of transcending their student roles, or the latent student culture of schools, to construct their understandings of and advance their own teacher learning.

This agency may be most obvious in what several scholars have referred to as the anti-apprenticeship of observation. Drawing on the power of negative prior experiences with teachers and teaching highlighted by scholars like Mewborn and Tyminski [37], Moodie described the anti-apprenticeship of observation as experiences with previous teachers who “provided models of what not to do as language teachers” [39] (p. 29). Agency, in the context of the study, was carried out when teachers had previously observed their own teachers’ strictness and boring lessons. In response, these teachers made concerted efforts to teach fun and engaging lessons and activities [39]. Rahman et al., in a study of two Bangladeshi teachers of English, also identified the anti-apprenticeship of observation as an influence on teaching practice; participants reacted to teaching practices they had witnessed in the past, like the teacher using red markers to correct students in front of the class. Much like the teachers in Moodie’s study, Rahman et al.’s participants responded by ensuring that they avoided such practices in their own classrooms [40]. The anti-apprenticeship of observation suggests that teachers may have greater agency in selecting and responding to prior experiences with teaching, thus challenging the idea that the apprenticeship of observation leads to a straightforward reproduction of observed teaching.

4.4. Extending the Apprenticeship of Observation to Cooperating Teachers and Mentors

In addition to its use in describing an early form of teacher socialization, the apprenticeship of observation has been applied to other types of educators. Lortie’s study examined the experiences of teachers without focusing on a particular level or content area. Some studies in the intervening years have targeted particular types of teachers, such as music, physical education, and STEM teachers’ apprenticeships of observation [41,42,43]. Lortie’s description of college teachers as a possibility for an additional layer of influence within the apprenticeship of observation left space for the concept to be applied to other educators [13]. Scholars in the intervening years have extended the concept to cooperating or mentor teachers to explain how they learn to mentor other teachers [44,45]. In the studies of both Rikard and Veal, as well as Lunsmann et al., the authors found an overreliance on the apprenticeship of observation as a model for teacher mentoring [44,45]. Rikard and Veal went so far as to suggest that the apprenticeship of observation served as a “determining” factor in how participants carried out their mentoring, providing a perspective that was “clearly inadequate” [44] (p. 292). Even when applied to other forms of educator learning and practice, the apprenticeship of observation retains its emphasis on prior experiences and their limits or constraints.

5. Conclusions

The apprenticeship of observation, having been researched and referenced for more than 50 years, has proven to be a durable concept in teacher education. For many scholars, Lortie’s greatest contribution is the way in which he described the deterministic impact of K-12 school experiences on teachers’ conceptions of their work [35]. This reduction of Lortie’s work, as Greenwalt characterized these scholars’ understanding of it [35], has been further simplified into the claim that “teachers teach the way they were taught” [46] (p. 51). Lortie certainly endeavored to articulate the significant influence K-12 students’ 13,000 h with their own teachers had on their conceptions of teaching. He concluded these experiences played a large part in determining the teaching practices professional educators used in their own classrooms [13]. Subsequent research has examined and extended scholarship on preservice and in-service teachers’ apprenticeships of observation [19,22,36,41,44,45], in many cases affirming Lortie’s original findings and strengthening the power of the apprenticeship of observation as a “cultural transmission model” and explanation for conceptions of teaching and teaching practices [37] (p. 30).

Yet, particularly in recent years, scholars have challenged the apprenticeship of observation as an adequate explanation for how conceptions of teaching are formed [14,31,33,35,36,37,38]. Mewborn and Tyminski “question[ed] the explanatory power that has been granted to the apprenticeship of observation” [37] (p. 30). After examining autobiography and memories, Crowe and McGarr asserted that the apprenticeship of observation’s effect “is more nuanced and less deterministic than commonly perceived” [21] (p. 420). Scholars like Smagorinsky and Barnes have suggested that “new eras of expectations” may contribute to differences in the apprenticeship of observation amongst “newer generations of teachers” [23] (p. 50). New eras have brought different experiences with teachers, from participation in teaching internships to engagement with teachers over social media [31,32,36]. In some studies, a broader range of influences beyond K-12 school experiences has been named, including parents, athletic coaches, and even homeschooling experiences [14,34,35]. What may have started as shorthand to say that teachers teach the way they were taught has, over time, blossomed as an area of inquiry in teacher learning.

Perhaps the most important, though infrequently referenced, perspective on the apprenticeship of observation’s legacy is that of Lortie. Reflecting on the significance of Schoolteacher, Lortie acknowledged both the valuation of student experiences with teachers and teaching along with teacher educators’ “deliberate efforts to overcome those influences with their teachers-to-be” [47] (p. 139). Along with this acknowledgement, Lortie also highlighted the need for additional research on the influence and importance of prior experiences. In particular, Lortie advocated for examinations of teachers’ emulation of their own teachers, as part of efforts to help teachers “to become more selective in deciding what to retain and what to alter from the past” [47] (p. 139). Another area Lortie identified for additional research was what he called the “‘malleability’ of prior influence,” and how these influences might change across time and/or through alternative preparation pathways or approaches [47] (p. 139). Lortie’s own commentary on the apprenticeship of observation in 2005, 30 years after Schoolteacher was published, helps to succinctly describe the state of this construct today: an important concept in understanding the anticipatory socialization of teachers, yet one that needs additional examination to more fully understand the influence of prior experiences on teacher beliefs and practice.