The Learning of Teaching: A Portrait Composed of Teacher Voices

In this portrait, Irene Liefshitz considers learning as an aspect of teaching—how teachers learn to teach, what they learn about teaching, and how they are transformed by teaching. Because unsolicited, free-ranging, teacher-to-teacher conversation about teaching rarely makes it to education research, the author analyzes conversations between teachers recorded for the StoryCorps National Teachers Initiative to inquire how teachers talk about learning and what they say about it when no researcher is guiding their conversation. Such centering of teacher voice is a practical and political stance and positions education research as an act of listening. By transmitting and interpreting teachers’ talk, the author makes a case for focusing research agendas on teacher learning based on what teachers say is important to them, for promoting a scholarship of voice in research on teaching, and for further use of the StoryCorps National Teachers Initiative as a rich data source of teacher voice.