I have a new article out in the Australian Journal of Teacher Education. It's the first in a series of articles I have coming out from my most recent line of research.

Here's the short version:

- Person A wants to be a teacher. Person A also has a pretty clear set of expectations about what that's going to be like.

- Those expectations are most likely wrong. We profs call them "misaligned."

- If Person A doesn't revise her expectations, she's going to run smack into a brick wall of reality once she enters a classroom. It's going to hurt. It's going to be disillusioning. And, unfortunately, it's probably going to result in her leaving the profession early. This smackdown with reality is referred to as "practice shock."

- So, teacher preparation programs like the one I work in will do their students a great deal of good if they can help them confront and revise their expectation before they get in the field. That way, when they do experience practice shock (because there's no way to avoid it completely), they'll be able to use it as a platform for growth instead of become disillusioned and burning out.

But how can preparation programs do that? That's what my research is about.

Here's the article. Remember, this is just the first step in a long research process. I don't have all the answers. Heck - at this point, I don't even have all the questions.

And here's a picture of a kangaroo, because, you know, Australia.