Seeing Through Teachers' Eyes

What sources of inspiration help sustain teachers’ commitments, motivations, and care for their work? How do teachers use their ideals to inform their practice and their learning? The author proposes that many teachers have images of ideal classroom practice which she calls “teachers’ vision.”

In this book, Karen Hammerness uses vision to shed light on the complex relationship between teachers’ ideals and the realities of school life. Through the compelling stories of four teachers, she reveals how teacher educators can help new teachers articulate, develop, and sustain their visions and assist them as they navigate the gap between their visions and their daily work. She shows us how vision can:

• Illuminate those emotional and passionate moments in the classroom that enrich and enliven their work as teachers.
• Explain what teachers learn about their students, their teaching, and their schools.
• Reveal why some teachers choose to stay in teaching and others leave the profession.

Karen Hammerness is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.

“I am delighted with the work offered in this volume. I urge that all of us who educate teachers and who create the settings in which they work take its message very seriously. In seeing through teachers’ eyes, we may develop a greater capacity to enhance their development and, through them, the development of all our children.”
—From the Foreword by Lee Shulman, President, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

“A beautifully crafted depiction of what teachers see, and strive to achieve. In Hammerness's close-up classroom world, all teachers are visionaries. This is an insightful, uplifting text that teachers and teacher educators will find a joy to read.”
Andy Hargreaves, Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education, Boston College