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This paper reports the results of a deliberate effort to help preservice science teachers improve their ability to learn from experience and take charge of their own professional development as teachers. The study was conducted by a teacher educator who simultaneously taught a physics methods course and a 12th-grade physics class and thereby learned to "listen to his own experience" and listen to his students. Data sources for the study included small-group interviews with and personal journal entries by student teachers at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario (Canada). Student teachers were asked to "listen to yourself" (their own sense of good teaching and learning) and to "listen to your students" (what they say about good teaching and learning). The "before and after" story of a student teacher who became a physics and mathematics teacher is offered to illustrate the point that it is necessary to examine one's own teaching during the preservice program in order to be able to subsequently judge the impact of experience. Analysis of students' statements after their practicum experiences indicate that the "authority of experience" can be taught in a significant way to those entering the profession. (JDD)

This paper is a personal interpretation of how two half-year daily teaching assignments in grade 12 physics influenced the career of a science teacher educator at Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada). The teacher educator felt that this experience helped him speak to his preservice teachers more realistically and convincingly about the daily challenges that teachers face. The paper argues that students can best learn from their own experiences by having them take charge of their own professional development and that extensive teaching experience both before and after course work is needed. At Queen's University, a nontraditional approach to becoming a science teacher involves alternating paid work terms with academic terms. This approach, which creates a pattern of"experience-coursework-experience," is seen as appropriate in valuing and understanding the role of experience in learning to teach. Educational research focuses on the importance of personal experience in the learning process, but teacher education seems not to have taken this focus into its own programs by arranging for its students to have significant personal experience of teaching both before and after their education courses. (JDD)

An educator who teaches physics to grade 12 students and a physics curriculum and methods course to preservice teachers analyzes the impact of context on teaching practice. A paper by A. Richert titled "Voice and Power in Teaching and Learning To Teach" is used as the foundation for interpreting the author's experience of teaching physics in grade 12 at the same time he was teaching others to teach physics. The paper outlines some personal values, contrasts the contexts of school and university, compares the second year of experience to the first, bridges the worlds of theory and practice, notes the importance of teacher research, and examines differences between transmission teachers and interpretation teachers. The paper concludes that learning how to connect the two parallel tracks of experiences and thinking about "teaching and learning" is central to personal development as a teacher but is ignored by both schools and universities. The paper also concludes that, as university-based researchers in education have worked to study teaching from the "outside-in" perspective, they seem to have overlooked the golden opportunity to do research on their own teaching within teacher education programs. (Contains 14 references.) (JDD)

This paper develops the idea of "the authority of experience" to explain the unease about teacher education represented in comments of 19 graduate students enrolled in a preservice physics education methods course which combined on-campus classes and teaching placements. Interviews with the student teachers after the first half of the year-long course are organized under four themes: expectations about learning to teach, observation skills, the credibility of a professor who teaches every day, and overall perspectives on teacher education. The study found that teacher education is a transition from being under authority to being in authority, and this is an uneasy transition: some students wished to be told what to do when they assume authority, and some did not; some students saw no point to classes that did not speak directly to what to do as teachers, and others found such discussions appealing; some found the professor to be authoritative because he was also teaching secondary school physics, while others found his colleagues no less credible for other reasons. The paper recommends that the authority of experience be brought to the surface so that it is not ignored by students. This can be accomplished through metaphor, life histories, narrative, and journals. (Contains 18 references.) (JDD)

A teacher educator took over a high school physics teachers' class for a semester in exchange for the physics teacher taking over his university physics methods classes. The paper presents the perceptions of people involved in the experience. Students at both schools accepted the situation well. University students, invited to observe their university teacher at the high school, found it difficult to criticize his expectations as unrealistic, since he was out teaching high school every day. Some students felt free to criticize his teaching since they had been asked to observe; others hesitated because they were not used to criticizing teachers' work. Students had some difficulty finding value in repeated observations of one teacher. The teacher found student comments helpful. He decided that teaching one class a day while also teaching beginning teachers shifted his expectations for preservice education. He rethought the structure of preservice teacher education to make it more applicable to future classroom teaching. Three appendices offer an excerpt from a recorded after-class discussion with class observers, student comments showing different perceptions, and comments from a meeting with a graduate student who had videotaped a lesson. (SM)