2003 Volume 12 Pages 80-90
In recent decades, a wealth of research on teachers' anticipatory socialization has clarified the process through which they learn what is needed to become teachers, especially in pre-service teacher training systems. However, the research does not pay attention to the period from babyhood to school education, or the relationship between anticipatory socialization and organizational socialization.
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between teachers' opinions about education and their own school experience as pupils or students, based on the results of questionnaires given to 364 primary school teachers. The approach to the analysis is drawn from the frameworks of reproduction and anticipatory socialization based on the theory of legitimate peripheral participation. For this analysis, the following hypothesis is examined: teachers who fitted in the school education system when they were children are positive torchbearers of teachers' culture.
The findings are as follows. The teachers who fitted in think more highly of their occupation and children than those who did not, and are more eager to communicate with their pupils.
These results suggest the following. (1) One of the factors that forms teachers' identities as teachers is not only their experience in pre-service teacher training systems, but also their experience as pupils or students in the primary and secondary education system. (2) Pupils or students unconsciously learn what is needed to become the torchbearers of teachers' culture through communication with teachers. (3) It is easier for teachers who voluntarily acquired what is needed to become the torchbearers than those who did not to be organizational-socialized in the community of teachers, and the former group therefore contribute more to the handing on of teachers' culture.
