Teacher Educator Identity in a Culture of Iterative Teacher Education Program Design: A Collaborative Self-Study

Faculty in the School of Education have collaborated to re-envision teacher education at our university. A complex, dynamic, time-consuming and sometimes painstaking process, redesigning a teacher education program from a traditional approach (i.e. where courses focus primarily on theoretical principles of practice through textbooks and university-based classroom discussions) to a model of teacher education that embraces teaching, learning and leading with schools and in communities is challenging, yet exciting work. Little is known about teacher educators’ experiences as they either design or deliver collaborative field-based models of teacher education. In this article, we examine our experiences in the second implementation year of our redesigned teacher education program, Teaching, Learning, and Leading with Schools and Communities (TLLSC) and how these unique experiences inform our teacher educator identities. Through a collaborative self-study, we sought to make meaning of our transformation from a faculty delivering a traditional model to educators collectively implementing a field-based model, by analyzing the diverse perspectives of faculty at different entry points in the TLLSC development and implementation process. We found that our participation in an intensive field-based teacher preparation model challenged our notions of teacher educator identity. In a culture of iterative program design, this study documents the personal and professional shifts in identity required to accomplish this collaborative and dynamic change in approach to teacher education.     

Walking the Roads as Immigrant Mothers and Teacher Educators: A Collaborative Self-Study of Three Korean Immigrant Early Childhood Educators

Offering an analysis of our multifaceted experiences as three Korean immigrant early childhood teacher educators in the United States, this critical collaborative self-study examines how positions as immigrant mothers and teacher educators interplay with each other. This study also explores ways in which the intersectional experiences influence our teaching pedagogy and practices. We found that we as immigrant mothers have challenges pertaining to parental involvement and maintaining our heritage language, meet tensions when advocating for diversity, and experience role-model pressure as teacher educators. Keeping these challenges in mind, the interactions between our two roles benefitted our students as our teaching became more critical and deeper. This collaborative self-study unpacks the intersecting positions of immigrant mother and teacher educator insightfully and reveals the development of pedagogical practices. It also suggests directions for classroom teachers and future researchers in relation to immigrant children and families.     

Researching Teaching about Teaching: Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices

The growth in the field of self-study of teacher education practices has largely been based on teacher educators' desire to better understand teaching and learning about teaching. This paper reviews research over the last decade that has been important in shaping understandings of self-study and the issues, concerns and agendas that are emerging as crucial to furthering the work. A major purpose of the paper is to draw particular attention to ways of expressing the learning from self-study so that it might be meaningful and applicable in practice for other teacher educators; especially in relation to developing a pedagogy of teacher education.     

The Challenges of Supporting Equity Literacy Skill Development in White Teacher Candidates: A Self-Study of Two White Field Instructors

In classrooms, race-based bias, discrimination, and inequities result in unsafe and unproductive learning environments. Teacher educators are charged with helping preservice teachers develop racial literacy skills. This self-study explores the ways in which two White teacher educators recognize and attempt to manage challenges during field instruction of White teacher candidates. The teacher educator researchers explore their own Whiteness and use a racial lens to critique their practices. Post-lesson-debriefing conferences between teacher educators and their candidates are shared as illustrative vignettes to reveal instructors’ teaching challenges and failures. Implications for working with White teacher candidates, improvements to field instruction practices, student teaching curricula revisions, and programmatic changes are posited.     

DESCRIBE IT: A Strategy for Teacher Candidates Implementing Behavior Interventions

Teachers with years of experience in the classroom rely on that experience to help them develop behavior intervention plans for students with behavioral challenges. New teachers, however, may struggle with the complex steps needed to develop successful plans as they address other aspects of their professional work for the first time. DESCRIBE IT is a strategy that novice teachers can use to help generalize the process of behavior intervention planning they learned in university courses to their practice in the field. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how DESCRIBE IT guided one special education teacher through the process for behavior intervention planning and implementation. Use of DESCRIBE IT may help new teachers plan and monitor behavior interventions as they start their careers.     

Redefining Interdisciplinary Curriculum: A Journey of Collaboration and Change in Secondary Teacher Education

When beginning to teach a secondary education course focusing on interdisciplinary curriculum together, four women teacher educators determined changes we hoped to make for the following semester. For example, we took up the notions of difference, arts integration, and collaboration all under the umbrella of interdisciplinary curriculum. We were in search of a model of interdisciplinarity that could incorporate our understanding of education and our teaching interests. We designed this model in order to guide our students into identifying themselves as educators rather than purely content-area specialists.Similarly, we saw this course as an opportunity to encourage collaborative practices. We could model team-teaching as our students planned interdisciplinary units together. Likewise, we could demonstrate to our students that transcending their own disciplines allows for more powerful teaching and learning. We saw redefining interdisciplinary curriculum as a route to encourage preservice teachers to teach for social justice and to show teaching's potential as a collaborative profession.This article narrates how we experienced the changes of crossing disciplines, co-teaching sections of the course, exploring arts integration, and providing practical experiences in four different voices. We use our varied voices as we hope the reader may then come to better understand our individual experiences as well as our collaborative journey. While we encountered several roadblocks on our travels, we also found that we offered opportunities for creating new knowledge among ourselves and our students.     

A Collaborative Self-Study: Advocating for Democratic Principles and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a collaborative self-study of three teacher educators and how they understood, practiced, and promoted democratic education in response to the divisive rhetoric of 2015–2016 at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) in Southern California. The prevalence of neoliberal ideologies throughout the 2016 election season challenged our understandings of democratic education. Therefore, we explore how teacher educators promote democratic education and pedagogy during times of political uncertainty.     

The Burden of Teaching Teachers: Memoirs of Race Discourse in Teacher Education

This paper presents the views and educational experiences of two African American female scholars, from a critical race and black feminist theorist perspective, teaching in the area of social justice to predominantly white female pre-service teachers. These testimonies reveal the struggles encountered by these scholars when engaging students in a historical and contemporary examination of race, privilege, and systemic inequalities. The objectives of this paper are to expand on the literary dialogue of such resistance and attempt to bring awareness into the arenas that need the most exposure, i.e. departmental, faculty, and tenure review meetings. It is commonly written and verbalized that institutions are interested in attracting and retaining faculty of color. We argue that the ways we are supported must shift. This problem of student resistance, who they resist and why, should become open for discussion on college campuses across the nation. Dawn G. Williams is an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Policy at Howard University. Venus Evans-Winters is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University.     

实习支教,置换培训：一种双赢的教师教育模式

师范生实习支教,置换教师培训是通过组织高师院校师范生到农村中小学进行教育实习,在一定时期内顶替现职农村学校教师的岗位,被置换出的农村教师参加由高师院校组织的短期脱产培训。这是一种双赢的教学和培训模式,它有效提高了师范生的教学技能,切实解决农村教师队伍素质不高这一制约农村基础教育发展的根本问题。文章从当前教育实习和教师培训中存在的问题入手,讨论＂实习支教,置换培训＂的实践价值并对其有效实施提出了相关的建议。     

Self-Study Enabling Understanding of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: An Exploration of Collaboration among Teacher Educators for Special and Inclusive Education

ABSTRACT

While teaching is increasingly being accepted as a discipline, there is a growing emphasis on teacher educators researching their own practice to advance the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). This study sought to explore the extent to which self-study contributes to teacher educators’ understanding of the SoTL within the discipline of teaching. While self-study is generally accepted as a scholarly approach, the aim here is to address the call in the literature for self-study researchers to evince a commitment to a practice-based and theory-building research agenda by linking with public theories, in this case the SoTL. Additionally, given that self-study is collaborative in nature, findings here may help to address the dearth of knowledge reported in the literature about teacher educator collaboration. A self-study approach was adopted to explore a journey of two teacher educators as they designed, implemented and evaluated new modules in special and inclusive education within an initial teacher education programme in the Republic of Ireland. Analysis and synthesis of data from 24 student teachers and two teacher educators provide insights and understandings into the collaborative interactions and factors that enabled and hindered these interactions. This may support other teacher educators in developing a collaborative pedagogical culture to enhance greater understanding of the SoTL We argue for adopting self-study as a scholarly approach to engage with other theories, such as the SoTL, thus contributing to the broader field of teacher education research.     

教师教育大学化:反思与重构

教师教育大学化已成为教师教育改革的世界趋势,大学教育之共识是科学研究与人才培养相统一,但是,以往“学术性与艺术性”的分歧、当前“专业化与解制化”的争议,始终牵伴着各国大学的教师教育改革之路,也困扰着教师培养模式的选择,甚至陷入教育伦理困境:一些大学倾向以实习课程来增加职前教师的教学经验,却无法避免其教学行为失误给予中小学生的消极影响。秉承历史与逻辑相统一的研究原则,系统梳理大学介入教师教育的历史,重点考察教育研究与职前教师培养的关系演变,尤其聚焦教师教育大学化进程中的主要矛盾,即教育理论课程与实习课程的割裂问题。作为以培养教师为主责的师范大学,借鉴现象学哲学家胡塞尔开启的“意识-经验”关系新视域,重构大学视域教师教育改革的方法论,关注教育理论与教学经验之间的内在联系,探寻“理论-实验-实习”一体化的教师教育课程改革新路径。     

Some Recent Developments in Teacher Education in Mathematics and Science: A Review and Commentary

Teacher preparation in science and mathematics will be best served, says the author of this roundup, by improvements both in the pedagogy and content of the undergraduate science and mathematics courses required of future teachers and in the reform of required science and mathematics methods courses. In a review of the history and politics of teacher education, the author underscores the twin goals of achieving program coherence and higher standards. She compares the place of mathematics education in mathematics departments with that of science education in science departments and recommends the replacement of bare bones methods courses with those combining pedagogy and content. Included is a selective bibliography.     

职前教师教育中的“用电影教”——意义、主题与过程的分析

职前教师教育项目所进行的教学改革,多是针对传统的“传递取向教学法”的不足而设计的,“用电影教”即为改革举措之一。“用电影教”能使教学适应职前教师的认知特点,促进教育理论与实践的联结,为职前教师的思考和讨论提供“催化剂”,并发展其技术品性。在职前教师教育中,“用电影教”可用于教授诸多学习主题,在教学过程上具有一定的灵活性,但也遵循一些共性的要求。对职前教师教育中的“用电影教”进行研究,能够为职前教师教育的教学法改革提供参考。     

Policy Changes in Brunei Teacher Education: Implications for the Selection of Trainee Teachers

To improve quality, teacher education programs in Brunei were recently eliminated at the undergraduate level and changed to master of teaching degree courses. Prospective teachers are required to obtain content-rich initial degrees prior to applying for teacher training. This study argues that the high entry qualification to teaching may, in itself, not guarantee teacher effectiveness. This study was to determine if those in teacher training were good candidates for long and effective teaching careers.     

International Collaborations in Teacher Education: a constructivist approach to using electronic mail for communication in partnership with schools

ABSTRACT

This article deals with collaborative projects carried out in co‐operation with teacher‐training/Higher Education institutions and schools around the world. Partners for these links included the University of Helsinki (Finland), City College (New York, USA), the Academy of Sciences (Moscow, Russia) and the University of Oldenburg (Germany). A rationale is offered for the use of telecommunications, especially electronic mail, in co‐operative projects of this kind and the potential is explored for further networks with research and development aspects. The article draws upon previous presentations and discussions at conferences in Germany, Australia, USA and the United Kingdom. Recent developments concerning links between initial teacher education and schools in Britain are examined briefly and suggestions offered for ways in which electronic mail can facilitate such links.     

美国一流研究型大学教师教育模式及启示——以斯坦福大学教师教育为例

斯坦福大学教师教育专业化模式包括培养领导型教师的愿景、分类培养教师的目标定位、融合型课程结构、"递进式责任制"实习模式、以教师专业标准和学术研究为依托的质量保障等.我国高水平综合大学可以在借鉴美国一流研究型大学教师教育模式的基础上,充分发挥生源优势,提升教师教育课程的融合性,深入挖掘教育实习在教师专业成长中的价值,以培养具有专业权威的领导型教师.同时,要加强教师教育研究,促进教师教育学科与教师培养的协同发展.     

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.     

Reflective Practice in Physical Education and Physical Education Teacher Education: A Review of the Literature Since 1995

Reflection and reflective practice are key concepts in the educational literature as well as in research on physical education (PE) and physical education teacher education (PETE). The purpose of this article is to review the current empirical knowledge base for reflection and reflective practice in PE and PETE from 1995 to 2011. The review includes empirical research published in peer reviewed journals on the topics on reflection and reflective practice in the contexts of PE and PETE. There were 33 articles included in the review. Most of the research is conducted in the PETE context, where it was found that pre-service teachers do develop their reflective capabilities. However, the results also indicate students make little progress on critical reflections. In the PE context, it was found that teachers express a need for reflective communities. Theoretical and methodological challenges with the reviewed literature are discussed and suggestions for further research proposed.     

Inquiry-Based Lessons That Integrate Technology: Their Development and Evaluation in Elementary Mathematics Teacher Education

Technology-enhanced mathematics tasks were introduced to elementary pre-service candidates (n = 84) and in-service teachers (n = 38), who then, either in partners or small groups, created and taught inquiry-based lessons incorporating technology, with individual reflections. The lessons were coded using the following criteria: (a) The students themselves used the technology for inquiry learning, (b) technology was integral to the learning task, (c) the lesson focused on mathematics concepts—not the technology, and (d) the task would have been more difficult to accomplish without the technology. The lesson analysis revealed that, after instruction on inquiry learning and technology integration, each group achieved a high level of proficiency using these criteria. Further, the analysis assisted the instructors in identifying issues and concerns regarding implementation of technology in elementary mathematics instruction.     

Child Care and Early Education: Satisfaction with Services Among Rural Families

Parents were surveyed regarding their satisfaction with early childhood services. Participants were 65 families who had at least 1 child younger than 5 years of age enrolled in a child care center or an early education program in a rural county; a majority of respondents were single, African American females with annual incomes below $20,000. Parents responded to the 20 items of the questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The average score for overall level of satisfaction was 4.64 for the child care group and 4.37 for the early education group; the average for individual items ranged from a low of 3.85 to a high of 4.64. Differences between child care centers and early education programs were not statistically significant. Applications, implications, and recommendations for early childhood services are discussed.