A Teacher At
Work
Professional
Development and the Early Childhood Educator
"A Teacher at Work is more than a story of early childhood education or professional development or the discipline of teaching. Margaret Yonemura thrusts us into the intellectual and ethical heart of classroom life. We enter a space at once mysterious and maddening, exhilarating and exhausting, idiosyncratic and complex, intimate and social. Yonemura offers us a three-dimensional portrait of a thinking, caring teacher at work."
—William Ayers, A Kind and Just Parent (Beacon Press, 1997)
The nature and demands of teaching young children have been the subjects of theory for decades, but this “classic of education” was one of the first studies to focus on actual teachers in real classroom situations. In A Teacher at Work, Yonemura examines the challenging, dynamic, intellectually alive world of one excellent teacher—Jean—and her work with the children and aides in her nursery school classroom.
Drawing on her observations of the teacher at work, Yonemura presents a unique view of early childhood education by combining her own reflections with those of Jean and a student teacher present in the classroom. The author investigates the importance of the instructor’s values and beliefs and how they influence the classroom environment in child-centered teaching. She first characterizes the individual children in the class, revealing the complexity of young children as group members. Yonemura next turns to the teacher as a catalyst and mediator of the group’s experience, and to her conscious creation of an educational program as a vehicle for shared meanings. In the final chapter, she explores the implications of her study for professional educators of all degrees of experience.
A Teacher at Work is a valuable resource for pre-and in-service teachers, as well as for anyone who wishes to gain practical insight into the workings of today’s classroom.
1997/176 pp./paper
$22.95/ISBN: 0-9658339-0-9