Transition to Science Teacher Educator: Tensions Experienced while Learning to Teach Lesson Sequencing

This self-study investigated the tensions that I (Heidi) encountered when teaching elementary preservice teachers how to develop a coherent sequence of five science lessons. Four lesson planning components guided me in developing a series of lessons to support the preservice teachers with this exercise. Employing self-study methodology, data sources included preservice teachers' artifacts, an audio-recording of the preservice teachers discussing the planning of their lesson sequence, and two reflection journals, one kept personally and one kept collaboratively with my co-author and critical friend (Meredith). Findings indicate that a tension of telling and growth developed gradually during the three weeks of teaching. The collaborative journal revealed that this tension was promoted by two other tensions: confidence and uncertainty, and planning and being responsive. Implications regarding the need for explicit teacher educator coursework and reflective practice opportunities are discussed as potential avenues for Ph.D. programs to consider to lessen the tensions that doctoral students may experience during their transition into the role of teacher educator.     

Making Practice Visible: A collaborative self-study of tiered teaching in teacher education

In this article we document the impact of tiered teaching on making the complexity of pedagogy transparent when teaching science education to pre-service primary teachers. Teaching science methods classes together and researching our teaching has enabled us to reframe our assumptions and move beyond the simplistic and misleading idea that teacher education is the modeling of exemplary practice. This self-study has evolved over three years. We were faced with the tension between modeling exemplary practice to teach science education and science content and making our teacher education practices explicit to our students. Tiered teaching has allowed us to manage this tension. Four major themes emerged from this self-study: the cost of tiered teaching; the shift in priority to less science education and more teacher education; our own growth in expertise; and the transformation of our practice.     

Personally driven professional development: reflective self-study as a way for teachers to take control of their own professional development

This article is about personally driven professional development through the use of reflective self-study. The argument that teachers need to take responsibility for their own learning while also taking decisions on how and in what areas to develop is strongly made throughout the article. Data for this article were gathered over a 10-year period where the author engaged in several studies using self-study as methodology. Between studies, the author kept using reflective self-study as a professional development tool, and it is these data between various studies that were analysed using thematic and reflective analysis. Such analysis resulted in various overarching themes that show how reflective self-study can be of benefit if used by teachers researching their own classrooms. Benefits include teachers taking full ownership of their learning, relevance of learning, learning that is ongoing and not restricted to specific times and places, taking problematic situations as learning opportunities and how other sources take on new relevance through reflective self-study. Some implications for teacher-education programmes and current school structures are also discussed.     

Learning through Leading: A Self-Study in District Administration

There is little research in the area of understanding educational leaders’ psychological processes. This lack of understanding leaves educational leaders to develop their own sense-making practices while in the complex and stressful act of leading. This self-study, conducted over more than half a school year in 2014–2015, was my own effort to do just that: to understand myself as a leader by examining various influences on my role using a four-quadrant framework for leadership. The findings highlight two significant areas influencing my leadership practices: the internal-entity quadrant, defined as the leader’s personal values and beliefs, and the internal-context quadrant, defined as the leader’s perception of the various contextual influences surrounding her role. Adopting this framework for my thinking allowed a more objective view of my practice and the beliefs and assumptions operating within my practice. While this work is, at a personal level, my own struggle to understand the complexities of leading, it is also examines one way in which district leaders might begin to think about their own sense-making practices using self-study methods.     

Capturing the Complexity of Practice: A self-study in the context of engineering education

This article is based on a project in which a teacher educator, acting as a critical friend, worked with six engineering teachers in a Masters program in Machine Engineering in order to stimulate their reflection on their own teaching and learning as a way of developing their scholarship of teaching. The article draws particular attention to ways of expressing the learning from self-study in order to illuminate the complexities of teaching and to begin to encourage the articulation of the scholarship of teaching as a consequence of a collaborative experience. The results highlight how making teaching visible through the use of self-study offers new ways to capture the complexity of practice, which in this article is considered to be an important aspect of developing the scholarship of teaching.     

A critical evaluation of the usefulness of a coding scheme to categorise levels of reflective thinking

The use of reflective learning journals to encourage higher order learning outcomes is a growing area in higher education research and practice. However, without a unified and clear definition of reflection, identifying and assessing reflection is problematic for educators. In an attempt to address this issue, in 1999 Kember and colleagues devised a coding scheme based on the work of Mezirow, to identify and assess levels of reflective thinking in students' written journals. We evaluated the usefulness of this coding scheme in a business education context. Findings revealed that the scheme was useful in identifying categories of reflective thinking. Inter‐coder agreement was 0.802 which is satisfactory. On average, 65% of the journal content was coded as non‐reflection and 35% as reflection. A further outcome of the research was to refine the coding scheme and to provide suggestions for its application in teaching practice.     

Understanding the Theoretical Framework of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A collaborative self-study to understand teaching practice and aspects of knowledge

This paper describes a self-study research project that focused on our experiences when planning, teaching, and evaluating a course in initial teacher education. The theoretical framework of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) was used as a conceptual structure for the self-study. Our understanding of the framework in relation to our teaching practice was in focus. The principal educational goal of the course was to develop the pedagogical use of web 2.0 resources to support learning in the preschool/school context. As a result, the focus, content, form of distribution, teaching, and assessment of the course went beyond what is common in initial teacher training in Sweden. The potential of the different digital tools was explored by situated use in the design and teaching of the course. Analysis highlights the challenges and opportunities that teacher educators and student teachers may encounter while working with, and learning about, information and communication technologies to support learning. Some of the findings discussed are related to the identified challenges and opportunities for both teachers and students to integrate content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and technological knowledge into a TPACK. Taken-for-granted organizational and institutional assumptions about teaching, learning, and assessment in teacher education were identified in the study.     

Learning to Teach Elementary Mathematics: Ecological Elements of a Field Experience

Three elements of the ecology of a mathematics methodsfield experience were particularly important topromoting a shift in locus of authority thatprecipitated reflective thinking among the preserviceteachers: (a) an inquiry perspective, (b) the cohortgroup, and (c) school-university collaboration. Thearticle describes these three aspects of the ecologyof the field experience and provides the perspectivesof the mentor teacher, preservice teacher, and teachereducator. Also included are new challenges andproblems that arose with each aspect.     

Walking the Talk in Initial Teacher Education: Making Teacher Educator Modeling Effective

This self-study investigated student teachers' perceptions of teacher educators modeling practices within a large lecture class in an initial teacher education program. It also studied factors that affected student teachers' developing ideas and practice. Phase 1 collected data from student teachers through focus group interviews and course and teaching evaluations, as well as data from lecturers. Phase 2 collected further qualitative data from teacher educators to inform questions arising from Phase 1 findings. While student teachers' perceptions of critically reflective processes and teaching models modeled by lecturers were varied, they affirmed the positive value of lecturer modeling. Data highlighted gaps between lecturers' intentions and the student teachers' perceptions. Data confirm that effective modeling is difficult to achieve, particularly in large lectures. Student teachers were challenged by the demands of engaging critically with new content while also being attentive to modeling. Recommendations include explicitly unpacking our teaching practices, using training strategies to support student teachers in developing the ability to reflect critically, and increasing opportunities for student teachers to practice various teaching models and strategies.     

Preparing Mathematics Teachers to Teach English Language Learners: What We Know and What We Can Do

Abstract

A recent issue of The Educational Forum contained eight articles theming the preparation of teachers for linguistically-diverse classrooms. This article extends that discussion, and in it this scholar introduces practicalities for mathematics teachers in linguistically-diverse classrooms, and provides suggestions for teacher educators whose target audience is prospective mathematics teachers. The author’s intention is to contribute to the discussion of supporting ELLs in mathematics classrooms, and to advance the praxis for teachers and teacher educators.     

Responding to the Challenges Posed by Summative Teacher Candidate Evaluation: A collaborative self-study of practicum supervision by faculty

In our pre-service department, university practicum supervisors are faculty members who offer academic, social, and personal support to teacher candidates during their year-long program. Their role is described as one designed primarily to provide formative assessment and feedback to improve classroom practice and reflection on practice. This collaborative self-study describes how two new faculty members responded to the challenges posed by the teacher candidate evaluation process. Methods used included formal tape-recorded discussions during meetings of the self-study group of newly hired faculty, email correspondence, field notes, feedback from public forums about our work, and teacher candidate insights concerning the practicum evaluation process conducted by faculty. New strategies were developed to address the tensions associated with using summative evaluations in a formative framework and to improve practice during faculty practicum supervision.     

特殊教育学校教师阅读专业书刊的调查--对部分特殊教育学校教师的调查

本调查针对目前一部分特教教师淡漠读书的现象,采用问卷法和访谈法调查特殊教育教师阅读专业书刊的情况,结果显示特教教师普遍缺乏积极主动的阅读兴趣;影响特教教师阅读意识的因素有教师的专业素质不高、缺乏完善的对特教教师阅读的质量监督评价系统、教师缺乏较强的成就动机、教师工作负担重、专业书刊少等.     

Making It Better for Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,and Transgender Students through Teacher Education: A collaborative self-study

Teacher education programs have a critical role in helping incoming teachers develop a deeper understanding of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues and their moral and legal obligations to counter homophobic bullying. In this self-study, two educators – a university professor and a classroom teacher, who facilitated a workshop titled “Sexual Diversity in Secondary Schools” in a faculty of education in a mid-sized Canadian city – reflect on the feedback provided by teacher candidates on workshop evaluation forms in relation to their experiences as teacher educators delivering the workshops. In particular, they consider (1) their commitment to this work; (2) why they taught the way they did; (3) the impact their approach had on teacher candidates in the workshops; and (4) what the study revealed about their teacher education practices.     

Taking a Return to School: Using Self-Study to Learn about Teacher Educator Practice

The work of teacher educators is complex and multifaceted and requires knowledge of pedagogy and practice in both schools and teacher education institutions. This complexity, combined with calls for teacher educators to work in close partnership with schools, sees some in teacher education working in hybrid roles and across the boundaries of schools and universities. Drawing on a self-study conducted over a one-year return to teaching, I explore my return home to teach in a secondary school and I examine the continuing impact of this experience on my practice as a teacher educator. Using the concept of tensions as a conceptual framework to analyse the data I explore three tensions in this article: (1) teacher as technician versus teacher as pedagogue; (2) challenging versus being responsive to other’s views of learning; and (3) teacher versus teacher educator identity. I explore how a return to teaching in school and the tensions I experienced enabled me to develop my practice and understandings as a teacher educator. I argue that rich professional learning can result from using self-study to examine teacher educator practice, particularly for teacher educators working in hybrid roles and partnership contexts.     

Cultural Perspectives on Teaching and Learning: A collaborative self-study of two professors' first year teaching experiences

In this collaborative self-study, two first-year assistant professors examine their views of teaching and learning from two cultural perspectives. Drawing from multiple data sources, including reflective analyses of teaching, monthly peer-support meetings, and the Students Opinion Information Survey, the study explores the differences in views of teaching and learning between Chinese and American cultures and how these differences affected our teaching practices. By exchanging views of teaching and learning, two first-year professors gained a more profound understanding of their own cultures and identified the strengths in each culture in order to provide better instruction to their students.