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Davis, W.J. The Apprenticeship of Observation in Teacher Learning. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/59659 (accessed on 07 April 2026).
Davis WJ. The Apprenticeship of Observation in Teacher Learning. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/59659. Accessed April 07, 2026.
Davis, William J.. "The Apprenticeship of Observation in Teacher Learning" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/59659 (accessed April 07, 2026).
Davis, W.J. (2026, April 07). The Apprenticeship of Observation in Teacher Learning. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/59659
Davis, William J.. "The Apprenticeship of Observation in Teacher Learning." Encyclopedia. Web. 07 April, 2026.
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The Apprenticeship of Observation in Teacher Learning
This is a peer-reviewed entry published in Encyclopedia Journal, full entry can be found at 10.3390/encyclopedia6040082

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.

anticipatory socialization professional educators or teachers life history teacher learning
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.

References

  1. Thorpe, R. Sustaining the Teaching Profession. N. Engl. J. Public Policy 2014, 26, 5. Available online: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol26/iss1/5 (accessed on 30 March 2026).
  2. Britzman, D.P. Practice Makes Practice, 2nd ed.; State University of New York Press: Albany, NY, USA, 2003.
  3. Strom, K.J.; Dailey, A.; Mills, T. Nonlinear Negotiations: Constructing practice as a first-year teacher. Teach. Educ. Q. 2018, 45, 7–28. Available online: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/90023439 (accessed on 30 March 2026).
  4. Greene, M. Teaching: The question of personal reality. Teach. Coll. Rec. 1978, 80, 23–32.
  5. Britzman, D.P. Cultural myths in the making of a teacher: Biography and social structure in teacher education. Harv. Educ. Rev. 1986, 56, 442–456.
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