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.     

Joseph Schwab,self-study of teaching and teacher education practices proponent? A personal perspective

The field of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices, like a number of other areas of inquiry, appears negligent in paying intellectual debt to Joseph Schwab who revolutionalized the fields of curriculum and teaching in the 1970s with his ideas about the practical. In this article, I trace my personal journey of coming to know Schwab's contributions and how I came to vicariously know Schwab as a professor who not only paved the scholarly way to self-study, but also appeared to practice a form of self-study by making his personal teaching an object of inquiry. To my way of thinking, Schwab practically and theoretically blazed a trail for the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices long before the line of research became recognized as a legitimate strand of inquiry. Furthermore, Schwab's thinking provides, for me and others, a possible plotline that could lead to renewal in the field of teaching and teacher education.     

Beginning teacher attrition: a question of identity making and identity shifting

While there is discrepancy about the actual percentage of early career teachers that leave teaching in their first five years, one consistent discovery in a number of countries is that attrition is high for early career teachers. I became curious about early career teacher attrition as I watched colleagues leave the profession that they thought was a lifelong calling. In order to inquire into this phenomenon, I moved through a three-stage research process. First, I engaged in writing a series of stories about my experiences as a beginning teacher. Using autobiographical narrative inquiry, I then inquired into the stories in order to retell them looking for resonances across the stories. Secondly, I conducted a review of the literature, analyzing the studies to identify how the problem of early career teacher attrition was conceptualized. I identified two dominant problem frames: a problem frame situated within the individual and a problem frame situated in the context. Lastly, I offered a different conceptualization of the phenomenon of early career teacher attrition that draws on my autobiographical narrative inquiry and the literature review. I frame the problem of teacher attrition, not as a personal or a contextual problem frame, but as a problem of teacher identity making and identity shifting.     

Constructivist Practice in Preservice Teacher Education in Mathematics: (re)producing and affirming the status quo?

Teacher educators often tend to place enormous faith in constructivist approaches to teaching, which emphasise collaboration, inquiry and problem solving. With reference to my own pedagogical practices in preservice teacher education, I argue that constructivist practice may in fact cement, rather than challenge, the taken‐for‐granted cultural, sexist and racist assumptions informing teaching‐mathematics‐as‐usual. I suggest that students should experience a different mathematics; a mathematics that reveals how processes of collaboration and inquiry, based on constructed binaries, selectively constitute mathematical subjectivities. Preservice teachers and teacher educators who are aware of activities and practices which are overly regulatory and/or discriminatory might work together to re‐vision and enact an alternative mathematics: a mathematics able to challenge and disrupt the status quo.     

Critical Factors in On‐Campus Clinical Experiences: Perceptions of Preservice Teachers

In this paper, I present the findings of a self‐study into my teaching practices as a sociology‐of‐education lecturer working in the pre‐service teacher education programme of a regional university in New South Wales, Australia. The principal data source is a logbook of the teaching practices which characterised several tutorial classes taught in 2007. To understand these practices, the paper draws upon Aristotle's concepts of techne and praxis, and Bourdieu's understanding of practices as socially constructed and contested. The paper situates tensions between more technicist and praxis‐oriented teaching approaches to pre‐service teacher education, within the teacher education and university contexts in which these classes were undertaken. In doing so, the paper reveals tensions between assessment‐driven and more authentic teaching practices, and more student‐ and teacher‐centred teaching practices. The paper also shows how accountability pressures within tertiary settings have led to a more instrumental approach to tertiary teaching. I conclude that there is a need for greater attention to the conditions of work which influence teacher educators' practices, rather than fetishising individualistic instantiations of such practices.     

Negotiation,embeddedness, and non-threatening learning environments as themes of science and language convergence for English language learners

In this review, we explore the notion of teaching science to English language learners (ELLs) as a balancing act between simultaneously focusing on language and content development, on the one hand, and between structuring instruction and focusing on student learning processes, on the other hand. This exploration is conducted through the lens of a theoretical framework embedded in the Science Writing Heuristic approach, an approach exemplifying immersive orientation to argument-based inquiry. Three learning processes (learning through the language of science, learning about the language of science and living the language of science) and three classroom structures (collective zone of proximal development, symmetric power and trust relationships and teacher as decision-maker) are explored in relation to learning theories and empirical findings from second language acquisition and science, multicultural and teacher education bodies of work. Three themes – negotiation, embeddedness and non-threatening learning environments – to inform ELL science education emerged from the review.     

The Problem of “Just Tell Us”: Insights from Playing with Poetic Inquiry and Dialogical Self Theory

Contemporary approaches to pre-service teacher education and in-service teachers’ professional development increasingly reflect the general paradigm swing in education, advocating for dialogic co-construction of understandings of teaching and learning rather than monologic telling of how to be a teacher or how to improve teaching practice. However, teacher–learners sometimes have difficulty adapting to the different stance required of them to participate effectively in this change of approach. Successfully facilitating the development of learners to take an active, inquiry stance requires engaging in the process of development of oneself: being open to new approaches, being prepared to be uncomfortable and being willing to extend one’s comfort zone as a teacher educator. In this self-study project, I use iterations of poetry writing and reflection to document my introduction to Dialogical Self Theory (DST) and the development that these explorations provoke. By exploring different perspectives of why learners sometimes ask teachers to “Just tell us,” I have become more thoughtful about the nature of dialogue and how this might be supported in engaging with learners. I argue that using DST as an analytical tool has not only provided meaningful personal insights that have affected my own professional practice as a new teacher educator, but also shown potential for facilitating the development of teachers at all stages of their professional becoming.     

Looking Inward: The impact of race,ethnicity, gender,and social class background on teaching sociocultural theory in education

In this paper I examine how and to what extent various elements of my biography—race, ethnicity, gender, age, social class background, and prior personal and professional experiences—influenced my relationships with students in a graduate course examining the impact of race, gender, and social class on education. My lived experiences as an immigrant woman of color in United States society and my prior professional experiences as an urban teacher are shown to have strengthened my expertise and confidence in teaching this course. Nevertheless, experience confirmed my initial concerns that my race, gender, and social class background negatively influenced some students' perceptions of my teaching competence and position of authority in the classroom. The paper concludes with recommendations for teacher education, including encouraging teachers to continuously engage the question of how their biographies shape their pedagogies and relationships with students, an important undertaking as our schooling populations become more racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse. I also recommend that universities continue to recruit faculty who are not only from racial minority backgrounds but also from varied ethnic and social class backgrounds.     

Learning from dilemmas: teacher professional development through collaborative action and reflection

This article aims at describing and analysing the interpersonal and intrapersonal dilemmas experienced by a group of five university teachers as they engaged in collaborative inquiry, including the ways in which teachers managed these dilemmas and how this contributed to their professional development. The results are based on qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews, working sessions, participant observation and teacher narratives. Our findings illustrate how interpersonal and intrapersonal dilemmas co-occur when teachers engage in collaborative inquiry. Working together towards shared goals brought to the surface differences in beliefs and expectations that generated conflict and tension, which sometimes interfered with teachers’ willingness to work together. At the same time, introducing changes to their teaching practice – a major goal of inquiry communities – challenged teachers to question and revise their personal beliefs about teaching and learning, thereby triggering intrapersonal dilemmas. Our findings also confirm the key role of critical reflection for bringing these dilemmas to the surface and benefiting from the opportunities they provide for learning and change. Areas that warrant further exploration to better understand the dilemmas within inquiry communities and how to support teachers in handling them are discussed.     

Changing our minds,changing our bodies: Power as embodied in research relations

When experienced teachers respond at the moment to situational complexities, it is a complex phenomenon of adaptation. At a surface level these spontaneous actions can be described as immediate responses to cues [from the students, the teachers, or elsewhere in the environment]. An in‐depth examination of spontaneous teaching practice, however, reveals how complex and personal is this phenomenon of adaptation. Examples of spontaneous teaching practice and excerpts from two teachers’ explicated understandings are used to delineate each teacher's uniqueness in personal theory and practice, and to illustrate how these teachers implicitly work to maintain a sense of “rightness” in their teaching. The notion of a signal, as a personal cue acting at the belief level, is developed to explain what it means for a teacher to “just know” when something is or is not working or does or does not feel right.     

Social Justice in Teacher Education: A Qualitative Content Analysis of NCATE Conceptual Frameworks

A review of theoretical or conceptual writing on teacher education reveals numerous examples of the term “social justice” in discussions of preservice preparation. Despite this widespread use, little research documents if and how teacher education programs utilize the concept in their programs. This study examines how institutions that included “social justice” within their NCATE accreditation documents used the term in their articulation of program practices, goals, and values. Based on an extensive qualitative content analysis of NCATE conceptual frameworks, the authors assert that the social justice reform agenda is only weakly represented in accreditation artifacts and that there is little consensus on the enactment of social justice in teacher education, even among those programs that invoke the terminology.     

Understanding the Complexity of Becoming a Teacher Educator: Experience,belonging, and practice within a professional learning community

This article reports a literature review of self-studies by beginning teacher educators examining their experiences of the transition from classroom teaching to teacher educator. The authors conclude that becoming a teacher educator involves several complex and challenging tasks: examining beliefs and values grounded in personal biography, including those associated with being a former schoolteacher; navigating the complex social and institutional contexts in which they work; and developing a personal pedagogy of teacher education that enables construction of a new professional identity as a teacher educator. This research provides beginning teacher educators with a reference point for understanding their personal and professional transition to university-based teacher education. It also provides teacher education faculty and administrators with key information about how the transition from teacher to teacher educator can be supported and enhanced within professional learning communities.     

In support of teachers’ learning: specifying and contextualising teacher inquiry as professional practice

Drawing upon research into a case study of teacher inquiry in one school in Queensland, Australia, recent theorising into professional practice, and relevant literature on teachers’ learning, this article reveals the complexity and particularity of teacher inquiry processes in support of teachers’ learning. Specifically, the research reveals how particular actions, dialogue, and relationships collectively constitute a practice of teacher inquiry which seeks to promote substantive teacher-led learning. The research draws upon a group of Year 5 teachers engaged in collective inquiry into their work in what was described as an “Inquiry Cycle” approach in a school in northern Queensland, during a period of support for substantial curriculum reform. The research reveals the Inquiry Cycle approach as characterised by specific actions, dialogue, and relationships – “doings,” “sayings,” and “relatings” – productive of the development of a learning culture focused on significant curriculum reform; overt support for whole-school “explicit” approaches to teachers’ pedagogies; and active/robust critique of data-focused assessment processes. The research reveals necessary texture and detail in support of teachers’ learning, and the specific circumstances and contextual “arrangements” that help constitute this learning.     

Talking back: teaching and learning through autobiographies in multicultural education

This research essay is intended to situate the curriculum in my multicultural education courses – of talking back through autobiographical inquiry – within real schools, a site where curriculum theorists rarely situate their work. The literature by curriculum theorists that precedes my study generally has focused on how pre-service teachers in multicultural education courses are changed (or not) as a result of course readings, discussions, and critical autobiographical reflection, all of which happen within the confines of the university classroom. My research essay extends the work of curriculum theorists on autobiography in education by focusing on the ways in which pre-service teachers use autobiographical inquiry to reflect on the impact of the context of real public schools and K-12 students on their constructions of themselves as teachers. In my extension of this work, I draw on bell hooks’ notion of “talking back” as an overarching framework in analyzing the autobiographical reflections of pre-service teachers.     

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.     

Deploying Warrants,Producing Policy: A Self-Study of Teacher Education Policy Discussions

ABSTRACT

The practice of teacher education is inextricably linked to the policy environment in which it occurs. Calls by policymakers and politicians for accountability measures, standardization and performance assessments are efforts to influence the direction of the preparation of educators. In this self-study, I examine my participation in a state-level teacher education policy decision-making body in the United States in order to illuminate how policy decisions are made about teacher education. More specifically, I discuss the kinds of warrants about teacher education practice that I deployed as I navigated the political and practical consequences of policy decisions. This study serves not only to illuminate the nature of policy discussions in teacher education, but also to encourage teacher educators to engage directly the policy-making arenas that implicitly and explicitly influence their work.     

Caring in the Ivory Tower

In this paper I argue that the teacher educators who deliberately create and nurture caring teacher–student relationships, despite the many challenges, benefit both themselves and their students in several ways. Although the notion that teachers should care for their students is not new, it may well be that professors too seldom communicate their caring clearly to students. First, I outline the literature on caring in education and provide examples of how professors show they care – and why students find this so important. Building on my belief that all (good) teaching involves humans in relation, I then describe how I use beginning-of-the-semester, one-to-one meetings with new students as one example of how caring can be operationalized. In an era when content-matter dissemination and accountability are increasingly reified, it is crucially important to see and treat our students as whole people rather than consumer-critics so that the dominant reductionist and consumerist traditions can be challenged and ultimately transformed.     

Situating teacher inquiry: a micropolitical perspective

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have become a popular strategy in various forms (e.g., data teams, grade-level teams) and with various champions (e.g., district leaders, university researchers, teacher advocates). Although well-implemented PLCs have been shown to distribute leadership, the tension between democratic inquiry processes and the demands of accountability remain understudied. This study asks how teacher inquiry is situated within conflicting school priorities and the impact of competing power structures on PLCs through a case study of a teacher inquiry initiative at 6 urban elementary and middle schools in the US. Data were collected over 3 years of PLC implementation. District officials, principals, reform coaches, and teachers at each setting participated in more than 300 interviews, regular site visits, and annual teacher surveys. The influences of power structures – such as district mandates, accountability pressures, and principal leadership – emerged as strong themes in teacher narratives of what it means to “do” inquiry in their PLCs.