Reimagining the role of mentor teachers in professional experience: moving to I as fellow teacher educator

New accreditation requirements for Australian initial teacher education programs require that universities and schools establish quality partnerships to ensure strong links between pre-service teachers’ university-based learning and school-based professional learning experiences. This paper focuses on the shifts of identity, thinking and practice that occurred for five school-based mentor teachers as they co-created new professional experience practices alongside university-based teacher educators in a Teaching Academies of Professional Practice (TAPP) project. Interview data was analysed through the theoretical framework of Dialogical Self Theory to examine how the repositioning of mentor teachers as fellow teacher educators allowed for expansion in the understanding and enactment of their role. The findings of this study suggest that partnerships between schools and universities can enhance learning opportunities for all participants when commitments are made to creating collaborative and dialogical spaces to support new approaches to teacher education.     

The slippery slope to efficiency? An Australian perspective on school/university partnerships for teacher professional learning

Large-scale school/university partnerships for the enhancement of teacher professionalism and teacher professional learning have been part of the teacher development landscape in Australia for the past two decades. This paper takes a historical perspective on Australian school/university partnerships through detailing three national projects over a 15-year period, arguing that regimes of increased compliance and accountability that have characterised education policy in Australia over the past decade in particular, have impacted upon the way that school/university partnerships for professional learning have been conceptualised and framed. The kinds of transformative and emancipatory approaches described and advocated by scholars such as Stenhouse, and Carr and Kemmis, in the 1980s, which visibly guided earlier iterations of national projects, are largely absent from their successors. Increasingly, projects have been guided by instrumentalist approaches that emphasise efficiency, such that university-based partners are positioned more as ‘providers’ of professional development than learning partners, and relationships are conceived of as short-term and funding-dependent. Finally, the paper explores the capacity of school/university partnerships to overcome this trajectory, meeting the accountability demands of the current age of compliance while also working into the more transformative domain of teacher development. It suggests conditions under which such partnerships might flourish and concludes with a challenge to both school- and university-based practitioners to reclaim this generative edge in their partnership work, regardless of the policy framework within which it is enacted.     

The Role of Stories in the Formation of a University/Public School Collaborative Identity

This paper describes how two women, a university professor and a public school teacher, discovered how they had used the power of stories to develop the trust and understandings which were precursors to their engagement in collaborative teacher research. Stories became an intervention that promoted dialogue and helped to establish a collaborative identity. Collaboration between universities and public schools allows educators to engage jointly in research and rethinking of practice. The paper discusses the difficulties they experienced trying to break down barriers while bringing both voices to their writing and research. It also raises numerous questions about university/public school partnerships and the time, energy, and commitment needed to recognize the potential of this type of inquiry to the ‘world’ of teacher research.     

Becoming a teacher: encouraging development of teacher identity through reflective practice

Models of learning to teach recognize the important relationship between university and school settings. The roles that educators in each setting play in the development of effective beginning teachers are not discrete. Rather they complement and support one another. Building upon existing literature, and utilizing recent data, this paper challenges teacher educators to consider how pre‐service teacher core beliefs and perceptions affect the dynamics of learning to teach and the establishment of a teacher identity. To facilitate these, it is argued that a consultative mentoring model that acknowledges individuality is more effective in the growth of teacher identity than the more traditional supervision model that focuses mainly on socialization. Reflective practice is promoted as crucial and its development is the responsibility of all teacher educators—both at university and in the schools.     

K–12 and University Educators Working Together Toward Change: Initiating a Conversation About Practice

This case study of a joint school/university professional development opportunity explored how 12 practitioners came together to examine change in light of discrepancies between current practice in local schools and promising practices recommended in the literature for students identified as having significant disabilities. The group met monthly over the course of one school year to study action research and to examine aspects of individual practice and their emerging identity as a community of learners. Participants explored perceptions about promising practice relative to actual practice engaged in by K–12 teachers, the impact of ongoing structured conversation on individual practice, and the impact of group membership for both individual participants and school/university partnerships. After one academic year, participants reported that the impact of this structured conversation was highly meaningful with respect to positive change in individual practice, the creation of a new support network for participants, and the development of new understandings between university and K–12 practitioners. Findings are discussed in light of implications for researchers, teacher educators, and K–12 practitioners in their various roles as agents of social change.     

“A Liberation of Powers”: Agency and Education for Democracy

In this essay Harry Boyte and Margaret Finders argue that addressing the “shrinkage” of education and democracy requires acting politically to reclaim and augment Deweyan agency‐focused concepts of democracy and education. Looking at agency from the vantage of civic studies, which advances a politics of agency — a citizen politics that is different from ideological politics — and citizens as cocreators of political communities, Boyte and Finders explore the technocratic trends that have eclipsed agency. These disempower educators, students, and communities. Using the case study of the youth empowerment initiative Public Achievement and its translation into the Special Education Program and partnerships of Augsburg College, the authors conclude with an examination of how agentic practices have survived in “shadow spaces” in schools, how such spaces might be turned into “free spaces” for democratic change, and how teacher education needs to prepare “citizen teachers” as well as promoting pedagogies of empowerment. These suggest grounds for a movement of hope and democratic change.     

TOKENS OF TRUTH

This article describes the three-year evolution of a team-taught teacher education class entitled the “Social Contexts of Education” in the setting of an urban high school. The course developed a number of innovative practices, including collaborative instruction by K-12 and university faculty and the development of a parent engagement strategy that increased parent participation by 59% in the school's Fall Parent Night in the second year of the collaborative. The authors describe the rewards and challenges of such site-based activities, and indicate that while school and university partnerships are highly valued in many contemporary policy initiatives, student teachers may resist such partnerships, particularly when they are based in urban school sites with which they may have had little prior experience.     

University–School Partnerships in English Pre-service Teacher Education: A Dialogic Inquiry into a Co-teaching Initiative

Evidence has been accumulating for some time about the impact of standards-based education reforms on schools and schooling, but there has been little research investigating the influence of these reforms on university-based initial teacher education (ITE). This article critically inquiries into the effects of these reforms on an ITE co-teaching project where a secondary English teacher in a school was seconded to work for a year as a teacher educator in an Australian university in a praxis-based partnership. Using Cavarero’s framing of ‘who’ and ‘what’ narratives, and Bakhtinian discourse theory, the authors present three autobiographical narratives exploring different perspectives on their experiences in the co-teaching partnership. The article affirms the value of school–university praxis partnerships for speaking back to standards-based reforms, but acknowledges that this speaking back involves complex relational and dialogic work in grappling with institutional and system-wide policies and practices.     

Becoming coaches: A study of two novices’ journey

This paper examines the practice of two novice teacher educators working as instructional coaches in a university-based teacher education program. Previous research suggests that the knowledge and skills required to be an effective teacher are distinct from those required to be an effective teacher educator. Yet novice teacher educators often receive minimal preparation. This qualitative study identifies dilemmas that novice coaches encounter during observation debrief conversations in order to inform coach training. The findings suggest that the process used by the researchers to surface dilemmas may also be a useful intervention in shaping the identity and practice of novice teacher educators.     

Understanding higher education-based teacher educators’ identities in Hong Kong: a sociocultural linguistic perspective

While teacher educator identities have received increasing attention over the past decade, there is a lack of research on teacher educators’ professional identities in the complex and shifting higher education contexts. Informed by the sociocultural linguistic perspective, this study investigates two language teacher educators’ professional identities in Hong Kong universities. The findings show that the participants discursively constructed their identities, such as “accidental teacher educator,” “teacher educator-researcher,” “struggling researcher,” “teacher of teachers,” and “inactive researcher” in their professional work. By drawing on the three interrelated processes of identity formation (i.e. adequation/distinction, authentication/denaturalisation, and authorisation/illegitimation), the study adds to our knowledge of the complex and contested nature of teacher educator identity in relation to the ongoing restructuring and reform in higher education. The study concludes with some implications for teacher education and higher education.     

From Teacher to Teacher Educator: Reframing knowledge in practice

This paper concludes our report of an investigation of two beginning teacher educators making the transition from classroom teacher to university-based teacher educator. The authors combined case study and self-study of teacher education practices to investigate features of the institutional context they encountered, the knowledge they employed in their decision-making, and the merging of their former identities as classroom teachers with their new identities as teacher educators. Our initial paper described the theoretical framework, methodology, and two categories of findings—institutional context and shifting role identification. This paper builds on those insights by addressing the frames of understanding and knowledge employed in this transition, and how these frames informed the decisions made in the arena of teacher education practice. We also explore the implications of these findings by discussing the need for support as educators make the transition from teacher to teacher educator.     

Science partnerships under the microscope: A study of Teacher Education Partnerships at Macquarie University

Partnerships between schools and teacher education institutions are now widely promoted as an effective pathway to the preparation of pre-service students. This paper examines the ways in which one form of school/tertiary partnership has attempted, over a 25 year period, to respond to the key questions on partnership: How do university lecturers share teacher education with their colleagues in schools? When and where does this occur? What can tertiary staff learn from the “new” teacher educators? What strategies are being considered to enhance the spirit of mutual respect which must underpin successful teamwork? How well are the vital roles of adviser, counsellor, guide, support and teacher understood and shared by school and tertiary staff as they work with pre-service students? Do the partners share similar understandings of the theory and practice of the program? The authors conclude, as a result of their own experiences in the Teacher Education Program at Macquarie University in Sydney, and as a result of recent research into the formation of specific links between school teachers and tertiary lecturers, that the success of new experiments with partnership will depend, ultimately, upon the success of the human rather than the structural relationships established.     

Pathways to Teaching: Latino Student Choice and Professional Identity Development in a Teacher Training Magnet Program Special Issue: Partnering for Equity

This paper reports on one component of a school-university collaborative in El Paso, Texas, to create pathways to college and the teaching profession for Latino and Latina high school students. As part of the Institute for Educational Inquiry's “Diversity in Teaching and Teacher Education” initiative (1997–2000) at The University of Texas—El Paso, the authors developed a program of mentoring, professional development, college socialization, and research activities with high school students and teachers at Riverside High School's Socratic Institute (SI), an innovative, predominately Latino teacher training magnet school. This article reports on a part of the school-university collaborative that brought university faculty and Latino doctoral students into contact with high school SI students in organized research. Through surveys and semi-structured interviews, Socratic student participants reveal what they know about teaching, how they assess and make sense of teaching practice, and how they take on and articulate their identity and emerging teaching personae. Responses reveal why these Latino students choose teaching as a career, and point to the Socratic Institute as an important pre-pre-service model for the recruitment of Latino/a students to the teaching profession and college.     

Pedagogical approaches to exploring theory–practice relationships in an outdoor education teacher education programme

Understanding theory–practice relationships in pre-service teacher education is an enduring concern for many teacher educators. Drawing on data from an investigation into the theory–practice nexus in an outdoor education teacher education programme, this article examines pedagogical approaches to exploring theory and practice with pre-service teachers. The investigation, a qualitative case study, examined the views of the programme’s teacher educators (authors) using an analytical lens informed by two similar theoretical models.

The article focuses on elements that were found to be central to pedagogical approaches within the programme: self-awareness, experience, reflexivity, and a “community of learners.” While the approaches represent a departure from “theory application” and “theory–practice integration” approaches, and a move towards praxis development, the study highlighted challenges and issues including the need for teacher educators to scrutinise theory–practice relationships in their own teaching and discourse. Implications and possibilities for future practice are considered.     

Mathematics professional development for elementary teachers: Building trust within a school-based mathematics education community

Despite increased attention in professional development to building communities of teachers, few studies have investigated the development of trust in these communities. This paper presents issues related to trust in a professional development project at an elementary school. The project aimed for school-based elementary teachers and university-based mathematics educators to work together to improve mathematics instruction at the school by developing a mathematics education community of learners, where learners were conceived of as both the teachers and the mathematics educators. This paper addresses the following question: What factors in the project supported the development of trust among mathematics educators and teachers as the community was formed? More specifically, the paper is about one aspect of trust, namely, building school-based elementary teachers’ trust in the university-based mathematics educators. We point to three factors that helped the development of trust and we use care theory to further understand and discuss these factors in the context of in-service teacher education initiatives.     

Teacher identity construction in school–university partnerships: Discourse and practice

This article reports on a qualitative case study that explored the experiences of two groups of secondary school English language teachers as they participated in school–university partnerships in Hong Kong. Drawing upon theories of identity construction and using in-depth interviews, the case studies highlight how teacher identity formation shaped and was shaped by participation in a school–university partnership. Implications for developing a critical perspective on school–university partnerships and for future research are discussed.     

民国时期支配阶级眼中的教师身份认同流变

民国时期是一个大动荡时期，此间支配阶级眼中的中小学教师身份认同流变，若按政权更迭为主线加以考察，则分别经历了新民教化者、封建捍卫者、军政训导员、抗战宣传员、赤化避免者五个大阶段，因其政权性质与总体施政纲要不同，每个阶段支配阶级对教师的要求又各具不同特点，但均为教师工具性特点的体现，亦为各自政权巩固所需。     

Perceptions of identity among Finnish university-based subject teacher educators

The aim of the present study was to explore how Finnish university-based subject teacher educators perceived their professional identity. Several factors related to professional identity were analysed. Subject teacher educators are initially subject teachers who have proceeded to the doctorate level. They form a small academic group within a larger faculty milieu with only partial responsibility for a teacher education programme. The study is based on focus group interviews with 15 subject teacher educators at four of the eight universities that offer teacher education in Finland. The results reveal that these teacher educators have a strong and persistent self-ascribed identity of an educational nature. The close social interplay with other subject teacher educators within the faculty seems to contribute to a confident collective identity. However, the self-identity is not congruent with the other-ascribed identity, which varies depending on the other party’s institutional context. The subject teacher educators examined in this study wished to have research included to a higher extent in their identity as subject teacher educators.