As high school and college enrollment decline--in the midst of teacher education program enrollment declines--this population is going to be important for us to get to know more as a field. This study was intended to be one small step in that direction.

We also don't know much more than we did 30 years ago about the carryover of K-12 students into teaching. Yes, the teaching we see is consequential, but the intensity, influences, and significance of it all deserves more attention.

Teacher education continues to press downward into high schools through teacher career exploration courses, Grow Your Own Programs, Educators Rising, etc.--but we still don't know that much about how high school students understand teaching, & their decisions to teach (or not).

The participants here, through various teaching experiences they were in the process of accruing at the time, did not simply "teach the way they were taught."

This is a study of HS students interested in teaching careers, and the kinds of experiences/understandings of teaching they've developed. Study was small in scale but suggests that conceptions of teaching can be more complex and nuanced than the "apprenticeship of observation".

This is the goal, though, isn't it? Rather than some oversight or mistake in choosing ministers (or, here in the US, secretaries of education). What better way to 1) exacerbate the attrition issues and 2) pretend we aren't recruiting enough teachers so the profession can be further delegitimized.