Whiteness and social studies teacher education: tensions in the pedagogical task

Utilizing a critical whiteness studies framework, the authors analyzed the experiences of a cohort of predominantly White pre-service social studies teachers discussing race and Whiteness in relation to education. The pre-service teachers resisted identifying White privilege as a form of structural racism, instead preferring individualized understandings of racism. The participants also utilized their personal biographies to accept or reject aspects of race privilege. The authors highlighted three tensions for teacher educators to consider when engaging pre-service teachers in discussions about race privilege, including recognizing the unfamiliar nature of structural thinking, appreciating the limitations of personal experience, and acknowledging the challenges of structural considerations within individual classrooms. The authors’ findings – and the tensions they highlight– depart from previous literature on White teachers and race by paying specific attention to pedagogical issues related to developing a critical racial consciousness in White teachers and by attending to the ways in which Whiteness, as a structural force, limits the ability of White teachers to engage in conversations about race. The authors attempt to trouble the assumption that the pedagogical practices in teacher education adequately create an environment in which White teachers can thoroughly engage in the problematics of race, racism, and Whiteness.     

Programs of teacher education as mediators of White teacher identity

A growing body of scholarship in teacher education has explored the historical, systemic, interactional, and individual factors that create possibilities and challenges in White teachers’ reconceptualization of their racial identity and of the purpose and nature of their work in a racialized society. However, there has been little attention to programs of teacher education as critical mediators of such learning and change. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with four prospective White teachers in the United States, we develop a framework of White teachers’ racial identities as situated within racial ideologies and mediated by the context of teacher education programs. The framework helps elucidate how teachers’ racial identities are instantiated through interactions and available identities in a program space, which are in turn shaped both by ideology and program structure and culture. The framework and findings urge an insertion of our own agency, as teacher educators, into the analyses of White prospective teachers’ learning and change, by highlighting our role as individuals who co-construct the programmatic structure and culture that partially instantiates these teachers’ racial identities.     

Sexuality,schooling, and teacher identity formation: A critical pedagogy for teacher education

Offering an alternative to normative teacher education that excludes meaningful sexuality and gender education from its curriculum, this article presents a critical teacher education multicultural curriculum based in the United States that included an autoethnographic narrative assignment as reflective space for teacher candidates to consider their identities as shaped by lived experiences with gender and sexuality. Using a categorical analysis of a cohort of 38 teacher candidate autoethnographies, discussed are insights revealed about their lived histories. Patterns included gender identification, heteronormativity, patriarchy, sex education, schooling experiences, teacher complicity, and teacher identity effects and sense of agency along with implications for educating future teachers.     

Perception of teacher education and professional identity among novice teachers

This study examines student teachers’ perceptions of teacher education and its contribution to their professional life, when they become novice teachers during their internship period. The sample comprised 97 student teachers in their fourth year of studies for a BEd degree. Data were collected through questionnaires which included both a structured and an open‐ended part, with regard to five aspects of the teaching profession and teacher education: motivation for teaching, conceptions of teaching–learning, roles of teachers, components of teacher education, and agents of training. Prominent among the findings regarding the motivational aspects of teaching, is a perception of the profession as granting intrinsic rewards. Teaching is perceived as according self‐realisation, providing a sense of purpose and mission, and enabling lifelong development. The component perceived as most important to the teacher’s role is delivering universal values. Findings regarding perception of learning–teaching processes reveal a preference for a constructivist approach.     

Teachers and teacher education: a call for a renewed sociological research agenda

This article provides an overview of the main sociological approaches applicable to the study and analysis of teaching, teachers and teacher education. Analytical perspectives from sociology are then compared to research on teachers from two other disciplines, education economics and educational psychology, which have produced the lion’s share of recent research on teachers. In the article’s final section, recent results are reported from surveys of student teachers and teachers in two Nordic countries, Denmark and Finland, to exemplify the importance of institutional and other contextual variables for the study of teachers and teaching. The article ends with a plea for a renewed sociological research agenda that studies teachers and teacher education.     

Whiteness in teacher education research discourses: A review of the use and meaning making of the term cultural diversity

The term “cultural diversity” is extensively used in recent teacher education research, but its meaning appears to vary and therefore needs to be made visible. This article reviews the use and meaning making of the term cultural diversity. The analysis reveals three main patterns across the 67 studies reviewed: Cultural diversity is (1) undefined, (2) related to a set of other undefined terms and (3) used in binary oppositional discourses that produce a racialized Other. Drawing on critical Whiteness studies and critical discourse analysis, I argue that despite attempting to promote social justice, researchers are actors who produce a discursive ideology of White supremacy.     

Concepts,policies and practices of teacher education: an analysis of studies on teacher education in Portugal

Education policies, and in particular those related to teacher education, are central to the construction of Europe as a knowledge society and for facing the social and economic challenges that European countries must respond to in this millennium. This article presents an analysis of studies on the evaluation of in-service teacher education conducted in Portugal since 1992. Based on the results of this analysis, the study develops a reflection on the concepts, policies and practices of in-service teacher education, contextualising it within a wider equation related to teachers’ education in Europe. The study consisted of content analyses of scientific articles, research reports, studies of evaluation and legal documents that provide the guidelines for in-service teacher education in Portugal. At the end, a final reflection and some general recommendations for teacher education are presented. There is a focus on the importance of placing in-service teacher education at the centre of educational contexts and on the problems that this causes in teachers’ work, emphasising its importance for social justice in Europe.     

English-medium instruction in law and the humanities in higher education: the role of teacher identity

ABSTRACT

Recent research on English-medium instruction (EMI) has examined university instructors’ professional identities in science and social science rather than in the humanities. To fill the gap, this qualitative case study explores the ways in which 13 university instructors in law and the humanities in Taiwan perceived their identity and exercised their agency as teachers. The findings indicated that these instructors had three ideal teacher identities, including educators in global and local contexts, subject matter instructors, and EMI instructors. Each determined teachers’ choice, design, and enactment of EMI practices, as well as their notions of language use and objectives. This study highlights the primacy of preferred teacher identities in the manifestation of teacher agency, identifies enabling and constraining effects of teacher agency, and emphasizes the significant roles of discipline-specific communities and ethnicity and nationality in EMI practices. As such, teacher identities should be taken into consideration in professional development to empower instructors to take actions that maintain their commitments to EMI.     

Building the expert teacher prototype: A metasummary of teacher expertise studies in primary and secondary education

While expert teachers remain a frequent focus of research in education, to date there have been very few attempts to conduct systematic reviews of this literature. This paper presents the findings of the first systematic metasummary of research on teacher expertise in K12 education (primary/elementary and secondary levels), based on analysis of 106 empirical studies from 16 countries involving 1124 teachers identified as experts. The inductively-developed coding framework was applied independently by both authors to the dataset to generate agreement counts for specific coding themes, firstly for specific domains of teacher expertise, and then stratified to compare primary and secondary studies. We present 73 specific features organised into six domains in our expert teacher prototype. Salient findings indicate that, with regard to professional practice, expert teachers reflect extensively and often critically on their practice, help their colleagues frequently, and are continuous learners throughout their careers. Concerning knowledge, we find that expert teachers have well-developed pedagogical content knowledge and knowledge about their learners. In the domain of pedagogic practice, we observe that expert teachers display flexibility in the classroom, build strong interpersonal relationships with their learners, whom they engage through their choice of activities and content, and frequently make use of strategies typically emphasised in both constructivist and learner-centred education literatures. We offer our prototype as a useful initial sketch of family resemblance among expert teachers rather than a checklist of necessary or expected features of expertise, also cautioning that the prototype remains far from complete.     

Everyday life and everyday learning: the ways in which pre-service teacher education curriculum can encourage personal dimensions of teacher identity

This article presents and discusses the findings of a research project, the main objective of which is to identify curriculum components that promote personal development as a nuclear part of teacher professional identity formation through pre-service teacher education. Curriculum is viewed as an ecological scenario with different subsystems and both as formal and informal. Identity formation is conceived as an ever-provisional result of a double transaction: the biographical one and the relational one. The curricula of four different historical periods of pre-service teacher education in Portugal and the professional identity of teachers trained within them were characterised through collection and analysis of documents and biographical narratives. Crossing results from the four periods, the quality of school climate emerges as an important variable to the quality of the teachers’ identity. The lifelong learning ethos seems to emerge when the training curriculum connects everyday learning with everyday life, namely by urging the students’ involvement in school life, peer learning activities and peer and teacher educators’ informal learning activities.     

Playing with power and privilege: Theatre games in teacher education

In preparing White teachers to educate a diverse society, teacher educators must help them see the veil which colors their views of the world and privileges them. This study explores the need for playing with power and privilege to deconstruct the concept of meritocracy and challenge the idea of one-ness, thereby fostering more conscious locations of White pre-service teachers. It proposes that Boalian theatre games can serve as powerful yet playful and innovative approaches for accessing values and beliefs shaping pre-service teachers’ views of the(ir) world, influencing their roles as teachers and the pedagogies in which they plan to engage.     

International comparative studies in teaching and teacher education

This review of eight papers published in Teaching and Teacher Education over the past twenty years shows how the profession has been impacted by the forces of globalisation. The impact varies in different contexts, according to local factors. The review looks at papers that use explicit international comparisons as a means to bring local contextual characteristics into sharp relief, and discusses the values and pitfalls of this approach. The review concludes by suggesting a possible future agenda for international comparisons, one that seeks answers to the domestic challenges of the Millennium Development Goals and Education for All by looking for solutions overseas. However, international appropriation needs to remain highly sensitive to the cultural context of implementation.     

The weakening role of education studies and the re-traditionalisation of Swedish teacher education

Research suggests that certain common policy presuppositions can be identified regarding teacher education programmes in advanced knowledge-based economies, most notably?the relationship between formal education (schooling) and economic production, and the role of teacher education in respect to this relationship. This article draws on the work of Basil Bernstein to engage theoretically and critique the nature of that evolving policy relationship within the context of Sweden. While the article concentrates on developments in one country, however, it is contended that the findings are symptomatic of a wider European or even global trend in which the scientific foundation of teacher education is under threat.     

Negotiating academic teacher identity shifts during higher education contextual change

Higher education teachers’ roles and identities are constantly shifting in response to contextual change. Pedagogy, values, and professional and personal narratives of self are all affected, particularly by technological change. This paper explores the role and identity shifts of academics during the introduction of large-class videoconferencing. Their experiences of personal and pedagogical ‘doing’ and ‘being’ demonstrate how ambiguity of role, non-alignment of values with practice realities and unanticipated disruption of self-representation are variably resolved by individuals. The findings suggest that successfully negotiating identity shifts may be essential for coherent personal and professional narratives, while lack of a collective response to contextual change may explain why academic teacher identity challenges are overlooked at the institutional level. We recommend identification, discussion, and alignment of institutional, professional, and personal pedagogical goals prior to contextual change.     

The impact of a teacher education culture-based project on identity as a mathematically thinking teacher

Identity as a mathematics teacher is enhanced when a teacher explores the cultural setting of their mathematics. The reports of projects that link culture and mathematics were analysed to explore the impact of sociocultural situations together with affective and cognitive aspects of self-regulation on identity. The reports were written by pre-service and in-service, mainly secondary, teachers at the University of Goroka, Papua New Guinea. While all 239 reports were read and considered in terms of the thesis of this article, 60 (25%) were analysed in detail developing the argument. The results indicate the strengths of such projects to take account of cultural knowledge when colonised education systems are further modified through reforms that emphasise culture. The significance for teacher education is the role that an activity which links culture and school mathematics plays in building values and identities.     

Sharing the arena: Changing roles and negotiating power among teacher education participants

Abstract

This article describes and discusses the changes that took place when a group of university faculty members encouraged the participation of traditionally silent teacher education participants (supervising teachers and teacher education students) in the process of teacher education. The findings of this study include defining the delicate balance between inviting participation, negotiating roles, and sharing power in an arena traditionally reserved for only one group of participants. Participants (including university faculty) are often reluctant to give up the security of their traditional roles; therefore, they have difficulty taking on new roles. Furthermore, there is a continual tug of war between participants because of the constant negotiation and renegotiation of roles, relationships, and power. Traditional ways of interacting on the part of all participants are called into question. Understanding this balance proved to be the foremost difficulty for all participants involved.     

New teachers’ identity shifts at the boundary of teacher education and initial practice

As teachers enter the school communities of their initial practice, they experience identity shifts that reflect their learning. Throughout teacher education they have constructed an identity informed by their previous school experiences, the ideas and approaches promoted by their teacher education programs, and an ideal of the teachers they hope to become. The complex set of influences at the boundary between their lives as students and their lives as professionals causes them to confront their identities in new and sometimes disruptive ways (Flores & Day, 2006). New teaching situations introduce them to the thinking of experienced teachers, and to the needs of their first groups of learners, challenging the notions they have so far developed about who they are as teachers (Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson, & Fry, 2004). This paper reports on interviews with 35 new teachers as they graduate from teacher education programs and enter the profession, and details their learning about agency and role in community resulting in identity changes within this boundary space.