Learning to hope, or hoping to learn? The role of vision in the early professional lives of teachers

This article introduces the concept of teachers' vision-teachers' images of ideal classroom practice. Drawing from surveys of 80 teachers and interviews with 16 teachers, the author advances three dimensions that can be used to characterize visions-the focus, range, and distance. Portraits of the visions of two novice teachers help demonstrate the range of visions as well as the different roles vision plays in teachers' lives. Understanding and identifying variations in the range, distance, and focus of these two visions-along with differences in contexts-can help us see how these two teachers come to very different understandings about school and about teaching and learning. The article concludes with an exploration of how the concept of vision might provide novice teachers with a tool that may help them surface and interrogate their beliefs, identify steps to promising practices, and even assist them in selecting contexts in which they can thrive and flourish.