This case study investigates the decision making of Joni, a high school English teacher, during her student teaching in an Applied Communications II teaching assignment, comprised of students in the lowest tier of a four-track senior English curriculum. This course served as a “contact zone” for a set of competing interests: Joni's stated beliefs about effective teaching based on her experiences as a student, the Applied Communications curriculum, the student-centered pedagogy advocated by her university professors and supervisor, and the students' beliefs about the Applied Communications curriculum. The analysis finds that Joni's student teaching was complicated by the different values of the various stakeholders who converged in her classroom, producing disagreement about the motive of the activity setting of her student teaching. The study concludes with a consideration of both the purpose of vocational English classes and the preparation that novice teachers receive to teach them.
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