Locus and Praxis in the Denver Teacher Residency

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the concepts of locus and praxis as they pertain to teacher education practices and novice learning in the Denver Teacher Residency Program. The term locus was meant to suggest a nuanced and comprehensive way to consider the K-12 school and classroom as the essential location for learning to teach. The term praxis referred to adaptive expertise, or practical reasoning, problem solving, and wisdom informed by theory in practice. An analytical case study investigated two research questions: 1) In what ways is teacher learning deliberately located in the clinical setting of a K-12 classroom? 2) In what ways do clinical practices, learning experiences, and curricula develop the capacity for praxis in residents? An emergent research design for this case study included extended fieldwork and interim data analysis. Data collection included interviews with, and observations of program participants (residents, instructors, field coordinators, mentor teachers, program administrators), as well as document review (e.g., curricular documents, assignment descriptions, assigned texts).