| This qualitative study follows three English as a Second Language/Bilingual preservice teachers through a reading and language arts methods course grounded in sociopsycholinguistic theory and transaction pedagogy. Furthermore, it follows two of the three preservice teachers through their student teaching and first year of teaching. Data collection consisted of taking observational field notes, reviewing written documents such as essays, reflections and other course assignments produced by the participants, and tape recording and transcribing semi-structured formal interviews, and informal interviews immediately following or preceding field observations. Data were analyzed to address the following question: How, if at all, do ESL/Bilingual preservice teachers from a traditional transmission educational background move toward becoming transaction teachers?; The research approach used in this study was narrative analysis, which involved recursive movements from the data to the emerging plot continually testing the story against the database to produce narratives that are plausible and understandable. These narratives include the cultural context, the embodied nature of the participants, significant other people, the choices and actions of the participant, and the historical continuity of the characters. The primary purpose for using narrative analysis and construction was to safeguard the participants' agency and voice, thereby insuring a faithful representation of their lives as they see them, and to present disconnected data as a coherent whole.; The narrative analysis of the data revealed a collective text of first-year teachers, which included three themes: (1) the tyranny of efficiency and the pressure to conform; (2) the agency and experience necessary to be transaction teachers; and (3) the pain and isolation of transaction teaching. The extent to which each first year teacher lived out each theme depended upon the ways in which traditional systems, of power were supported or challenged by the culture of the school where the teacher practiced.; The researcher concluded that the ESL/Bilingual reading and language arts methods course grounded in sociopsycholinguistic, theory and transactional pedagogy raised questions and awareness that influenced the subsequent practices of the first-year teachers; however, the impact of the course was limited because of larger systemic issues not under the control of a first-year teacher. |
