Teachers' Backgrounds and Beliefs: Influences on Learning to Teach in the Social Studies

This paper reports an interpretive case study of two certification students involved in a one-year, elementary school post-baccalaureate teacher education program. It describes how students' background knowledge, beliefs, experience, and personalities influenced what they learned in a social studies methods course and their consequent learning to teach. The paper describes the partial and differential ways in which the methods course and certification program influenced the students' beliefs and teaching practices.