Professional identity and educational reform: confronting my habitual practices as a teacher educator

This essay explores my role as a teacher educator within a changing policy and curriculum landscape, including managerial attempts to define acceptable educational ‘outcomes’ and other globalising pressures to regulate education. I interrogate my professional knowledge and experience as a teacher educator, raising questions about the adequacy of my support for student teachers as they enter this new landscape. I conceive the key challenge facing me at the moment as a challenge to my professional identity that requires me to find new ways of understanding and talking about my work (cf. Teaching and Teacher Education 19(1) (2002) 5). The essay might be read as a ‘self study’, in which my ‘self’ is conceived as a function of the networks or relationships in which I operate as a teacher educator and the larger structures that shape my professional world.     

Looking Backward,Moving Forward: Understanding my Narrative as a Teacher Educator

This paper examines the transition that classroom teachers experience moving into the academy as teacher educators, considering the change in professional identity and the subsequent alignment of situational and substantial selves. We outline the findings of a qualitative case study that utilised self-study and teacher narrative to explore the road travelled by a group of new teacher educators in a regional university in rural Australia. To frame our work we drew from theories related to teacher professional identity and career transition. The research explored patterns of experience between ourselves and the other participants that helped to explain the transition process for new teacher educators and allowed us to see our own experiences in new ways. The significance of the study resides in the fact that new teacher educators, as a group, have not been thoroughly researched and consequently are not well understood. The academic role is complex and the road from classroom teacher to teacher educator can be described as rocky. We conclude that it is important to recognise both the context and process of the transition in order to retain teacher educators in higher education.     

Biography,Identity, and Inquiry: The making of teacher,teacher educator,and researcher

This is a self-study of my professional and cultural biography and identity, a history which directed me first toward the work of urban teaching and then into teacher education and research into comparative educational issues of racial and national identity. I use this inquiry to demonstrate how biography and identity influences the lived experience of teaching and the researcher's stance. I also examine areas where preservice urban teacher education programs must improve. My personal recommendations describe experiences that would have better prepared me for urban teaching. Suggestions include expanding coursework in the historical, political, and sociocultural influences on urban education and in designing culturally responsive curricula. I also recommend restructuring field experiences to offer richer classroom-based learning opportunities for preservice teachers and extending fieldwork into urban communities. Finally, I suggest ongoing inservice teacher education in learning-community models that respond to educators' context-specific teaching concerns.     

Changing Conceptions of Effective Teacher Education: The journey of a novice teacher educator

This article examines my three-year journey developing a personal pedagogy of teacher education. As an autobiographical self-study, nodal moments are revealed that raise and reflect the tensions I experienced and the challenges I encountered. These included developing an awareness of my incomplete understandings of key components of teacher education, particularly the importance of fostering critical reflection. Acknowledgement of the benefits and complexities of first facilitating and later assessing reflective practice followed next. My transformation from a confident school-board resource teacher to an uncertain teacher educator, who reiteratively questions her practices as she comes to understand and teach to promote conceptual change, resonates with the uncertain terrain of teacher education. I explore the implications of this self-study by discussing the need for support, suggesting that teacher educators, particularly part-time instructors, be provided with opportunities to examine their teacher education beliefs. I recommend self-study groups as vehicles for this support.     

The Impact of a Pedagogy of Teacher Education Seminar on Educator and Future Teacher Educator Identities

Educators require support as they move from classroom to higher education settings. This collaborative self-study provides insight into one such support space, a doctoral seminar titled Pedagogy of Teacher Education, and how our identities as educators and future teacher educators developed through participation in the course. Several important themes emerged as we negotiated and adopted new identities as educators, and future teacher educators and researchers. These themes include our development of a collaborative mindset, a teacher educator-researcher perspective, and a critical self-awareness. The findings draw on our professional and personal histories to explore the prominent features that influenced and shaped our identities as educators and future teacher educator-researchers. In sharing our development as educators and future teacher educators, this article provides insights into the ways in which doctoral students in education begin to develop their identities and pedagogies through guided support from more experienced teacher educators.     

人生如旅:一位教育学者自我身份认同的再寻觅

文章采用自传式的叙事法,以“关键事件”阐述“流动性”的个人故事如何建构其身份认同的历程.作者以自传式的书写方式叙述其生命故事,以“我”入文,既拉近研究者与读者的距离,也突出质性研究最大的人本关怀取向.通过三个小故事展示“在地性”、“流动性”、“空间性”和“暂时性”如何型构身份认同.     

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.     

Bridging the Gap from Teacher to Teacher Educator: The Role of a Teaching Portfolio

This article explores the role of a teaching portfolio in supporting the transition from teacher to teacher educator. It uses aspects of self-study to catalogue the challenges and successes during this transition. Despite well-documented acknowledgement of the differing demands of teaching when compared to teaching how to teach, little is written about potential supports during transition to teacher education. This article cites benefits associated with developing a teaching portfolio during this period of transition. The process of reflecting on a teaching philosophy, interrogating pedagogy and developing a personal and professional development plan facilitate the formation of an adapted teacher identity. In addition, the scholarly, evidence-based process of portfolio writing acts as a bridge into the research and writing world of an academic. The portfolio writing process this researcher engaged in was based on iterative feedback from more experienced colleagues internal to the institution and from external panels. This led to a supportive and collaborative induction to the role of teacher educator from a number of perspectives. The researching of my self enabled deep reflection on my teaching philosophy, supported early academic writing and facilitated relationships with staff who acted as critical friends and mentors. This promoted the implementation of an effective teacher education pedagogy through structured, reflective, and evidence-led modifications to practice. This article creates awareness of the broader role of a teaching portfolio for teachers and teacher educators, in creating rich learning experiences for the pre-service teachers we teach.     

What Does the No Child Left Behind Act Mean to Early Childhood Teacher Educators?: A Call for a Collective Professional Rejoinder

This article is a call to become more critically aware of the new law commonly referred to as No Child Left Behind Act, which was put into effect in 2002 in the United States. The article is also an invitation to early childhood educators worldwide to engage in a dialogue that raises several questions: (a) How does such legislation affect early childhood educators and teacher preparation programs?; (b) How might teacher educators react and respond to the new law as they continuously practice informed decision-making about teacher preparation that is socially responsible? In view of these questions, it is a hope that we can see the initiation of nationwide dialogue regarding the issue of the No Child Left Behind Act. Primarily, how does the new law affect teacher educators and teachers? It is inevitable for us to be united and politically informed to prevent further scrutiny of questionable politically and economically driven educational practices in the United States, not to mention “test-heavy” evidence-based education reform.     

Embracing Institutional Authority: The Emerging Identity of a Novice Teacher Educator

This self-study explores the emerging identity of a first-time teacher educator using a framework that views identity as natural, institutional, discursive, and affinity. This framework provided an opportunity to unpack empirically how these various strands of identity intersected within the classroom of a novice teacher educator. Situated in the context of an elementary social studies methods classroom, this study reveals various struggles with the institutional authority of being a teacher educator. Issues such as how preservice teachers perceive a novice teacher educator, the acknowledgment of lack of experience, and the process of negotiating institutionalized and systemic power within the classroom are discussed. Because this study also featured a mentor professor as a critical friend, the implications of self-study work and mentoring first-time teacher educators are also featured in the discussion section. Considering the importance of identity in shaping the practice of new teachers, this self-study reveals the importance of further complicating the emerging and evolving identities of new teacher educators.     

The Teacher as Guide: A conception of the inquiry teacher

This article explains how teachers might navigate inquiry learning despite the experience of a constant tension between abandoning their students and controlling them. They do this by conceiving of themselves as guides who decide the path with students, not for them. I build on a conception of teaching as guiding from Burbules, and argue that inquiry teachers should take the particular stance of an expedition-educator (rather than the stance of either a tour-leader or an expedition-leader). They should guide students to make progress during co-inquiry, rather than leading them to follow the teacher’s agenda. This stance gives a heuristic they can use to balance control and abandonment in their pedagogical practice—they judge which pedagogical actions to take, and when, according to which actions are likely to help their students to engage in autonomous inquiry and hence learn to guide themselves. Students thus can learn to inquire by participating in an inquiry which is guided, but not controlled, by their teacher.     

The Impact of a High Stakes Teacher Evaluation System: Educator Perspectives on Accountability

The use of student achievement data to evaluate an individual teacher's effectiveness has become a new focus in educational policy. This article focuses on the underresearched teacher perception of this new policy measure. Drawing on ethnographic research procedures, this article explores how first-grade teachers in one state navigated a new high-stakes teacher evaluation system. Although the results indicate that teachers have a desire for accountability, findings also show a variety of beliefs on the validity of teacher evaluation, as well as differing applications of scoring measures across school contexts.     

The researcher as teacher: constructing one's place in the story of events of preschoolers

This article focuses on the author's work as a researcher‐teacher, examining storytelling activities of preschool children in her own classroom. By examining ways in which one university‐based researcher dealt with the demands of being both teacher and researcher, this paper proposes that university‐based researchers who take on the role of teacher both construct and define an enactment‐of‐self in the classroom. In a Janus‐faced kind of interplay, the researcher draws on teacher skills, and the teacher draws on the research perspective and continuously walks the line between the moment‐to‐moment demands of each role.     

Developing a Vision of Teacher Education: How my classroom teacher understandings evolved in the university environment

Drawing on my experiences as a former classroom teacher making the transition to teacher education, this study examines how my vision of teacher education developed over the course of my first three years as a graduate teaching assistant in a social studies education program in the United States. A qualitative self-study methodology was used to identify and describe sources of tension and growth that contributed to the evolution of my classroom teacher understandings as I forged a distinct vision for teacher education. My vision of teacher education was informed by completing graduate coursework, engaging in the work of teacher education, interacting and collaborating with peers, and studying my practice as it developed and unfolded. Throughout the article, I discuss the potential of self-study methodology to encourage new teacher educators to examine both the features and motivations behind their practice, as well as the effects of this examination on the development of a vision of teacher education.     

Dubious Sovereignty: Federal Conditions of Aid and the No Child Left Behind Act

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) represents the greatest extension to date of Federal authority over public school governance. In NCLB, Congress used its conditional spending power to push states and localities into enacting particular kinds of testing and accountability policies. This article places NCLB in the context of Congress's generally increasing willingness to exert itself via conditions attached to federal financial aid. It also analyzes the implications of NCLB for federalism and intergovernmental relationships in education governance.     

No Child Left Behind and the Spectacle of Failing Schools: The Mythology of Contemporary School Reform

This article discusses what David Berliner (2005) has called the perverse “spectacle of fear” (208) surrounding issues of teacher quality and accountability in contemporary school reform. Drawing principally on the critical semiotics of Roland Barthes' essay, “The World of Wrestling” (1957), it examines the way that this spectacle works to undermine public education and explicates the powerful mythology behind it. The article then concludes with some suggestions on how this destructive “spectacle of fear” might potentially be disrupted using the agencies of Deweyan “strong democracy”.     

Developing a professional vision of classroom practices of a mathematics teacher: views from a researcher and a teacher

The term professional vision points to the many nuanced ways professionals see. This paper traces the development of a professional vision of a researcher and a teacher looking at classroom practices. The researcher’s interest was to capture and study notable aspects of the teacher’s practice. Through a coding scheme, disparate classroom events were organized and analyzed to yield a researcher’s professional vision of the teacher’s practices. For the teacher, through reviewing the video records of his own classroom practices, his professional vision provided a basis for him to reflect and develop professionally. Leveraging on the work of the researcher, he initiated and transformed his own practices. Their collaboration yielded a mutually informed development of professional vision of classroom practices. In juxtaposing the two developments, the researcher and the teacher’s views can be contrasted, their distinctive interests highlighted and common grounds explored. Some implications for developing professional vision are drawn, and it is in the common grounds of the teacher’s professional development and seeing with a goal of enhancing of student learning that hold some promise of a mutual interest in developing a professional vision of classroom practices.     

Being a teacher educator: professional identities and conceptions of professional education

Background:?In the context of Cyprus’ accession to the European Union (2004) and a noteworthy increase in immigration towards Cyprus, the Cypriot state was called upon to build more complete and coherent policies addressing culturally diverse educational settings. Cypriot education has historically enforced the nation-building project. However, since its accession negotiations to the EU, Cyprus received calls for harmonising its intercultural education to European standards.

Purpose:?This study aims to examine the content of intercultural policies in Cyprus, which have been initiated and/or developed by the national state and particularly the Ministry of Education and Culture. Furthermore, it explores the ways in which Cypriot policies are shaped by European influences, and the implications of this process for national constructs of intercultural education.

Sources of evidence:?We collected a purposive selection of thirty policy documents regarding intercultural education that were produced by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Cyprus. In addition, six Cypriot policy-makers working in the MEC's departments were interviewee participants. They were selected purposively according to the level of their involvement in the development of Cypriot intercultural policy.

Design and methods:?Data were coded to identify groups of concepts, issues, perceptions and behaviours and interrelationships within a theoretical model. Data triangulation contributed to the development of thematic categories that emerged from the data.

Results:?The analysis of the documentary evidence in this study suggests that the language of European policy has imbued the Cypriot socio-political environment with inclusive discourses enhancing intercultural education. Analysis in this study identifies that the Cypriot Ministry of Education and Culture maintains an assimilationist orientation in its broader educational goals, despite adopting such (inclusive) discourses.

Conclusions:?This study argues on the basis of this evidence that Cypriot intercultural policy appears symbolic, indicating ‘simulated’ development and implementation processes. Arguably, there remains a high degree of ambivalence towards the process of transformation needed to Europeanise intercultural policy in Cyprus.