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This book describes efforts to develop an approach to teaching and teacher education that is deeply rooted in the study of practice. Drawing on video, graphic, and textual records of a year's worth of mathematics lessons in two elementary classrooms, research was conducted on curriculum and instruction, children's learning, and the culture of the classroom across the school year. Research on the process of using multimedia records of practice to understand teaching is also presented. First, the work discussed in this volume is situated in the context of teacher education and its epidemic challenges. It proposes the idea of investigation as a medium of learning to teach and explores what it might mean to investigate the practice of teaching. Opportunities to investigate how teaching might be designed and used in teacher education, and how beginning teachers might do such investigations using multimedia and computing tools are explored. In chapters 1 and 2, the foundations of this project are examined. Chapter 3 situates the work within the enduring arguments about teacher education and learning to teach. Chapter 4 describes the collection of records of practice that have been assembled. Chapter 5 illustrates the multimedia environment in which these records can be accessed and used to investigate teaching and learning, and the pedagogy of teacher education designed around this environment. Chapter 6 begins with reports on what happens when prospective teachers begin to investigate teaching with an overview of the character of a large number of investigations and case studies of a few projects. Chapter 7 continues with an example of work by one preservice student. Chapter 8 concludes with questions and challenges raised by this work. Finally, an essay by David Cohen is included, in which he analyzes where this work fits in with the history and politics of efforts to bring experience with "real" teaching into teacher preparation, and speculates on where the work might lead. (Contains 129 references.) (ASK)

Chapter 9 of the book "Teaching and Its Predicaments," edited by Nicholas C. Burbules and David T. Hansen is presented. It explores the predicament in teaching that emerges when teachers are aware of rather than ignorant of or confused about their values, hopes, and goals as teachers. It analyzes three episodes from elementary classrooms in which teachers reframe their goals when they realize that two or more of them suddenly have a conflict in the service of good teaching.