Search results for: Collaborative self-study

This self-study explores the experiences and challenges that the authors as mothers of young children and teacher educators have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. While describing what their children experienced through remote learning and how they tried to support their learning, they reflect on their former school experiences and their teacher education practices. To do this, they address the following two research questions: (1) What were their children’s experiences in remote learning during the pandemic?; and (2) What were their experiences as mothers and teacher educators in supporting their children’s remote learning during the pandemic? Adopting a collaborative self-study methodology, they collected stories of their experiences as mothers and teacher educators during their children’s remote learning. Their data were collected through participant observations, field notes, and artifacts that their children created, as well as learning materials received from their teachers and schools during the period. In addition, they recorded virtual conferences and wrote reflective journals. The suda approach, which was developed as a research method by the authors was used for data analysis. Originally from Korean culture, suda in simple English is ‘chatting extensively.’ It is different from small talk or chit-chat, though, as it can take a large amount of time, covering several stories in depth. The findings provide several implications for teacher education, school policy, and educational research.

This article shares insights into how the authors came to ask a question about teaching for social justice through cross-cultural collaborative self-study. Eight New Zealand pre-service teachers participated in semi-structured interviews in which they reflected on their six-week social studies methods course. Drawing on pedagogical moments that the pre-service teachers saw as being significant, this article explores the generative and ambiguous ways in which the course ‘muddied the waters’ of their unfolding conceptions and practices of social justice education. The article describes how coming to know ‘teaching for social justice’ through the eyes of these pre-service teachers provided a reflexive surface for the authors’ self-study and has shaped its trajectory. In contrast to their initial desire for greater certainty, placing the uncertainties of social justice at the forefront of their practice has become central to their inquiry.

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 Ontario city – reflect on the feedback provided by teacher candidates on workshop evaluation forms in relation to their experiences as teacher educators delivering the workshops. The authors conclude that the two-hour Sexual Diversity in Secondary Schools workshop that they presented in a Bachelor of Education program is one example of how LGBT issues might be taught to teacher candidates. Through this self-study, they came to better understand their students and ourselves. They discovered that teacher candidates are increasingly receptive to discussion of LGBT issues, particularly when portrayed in a manner that is respectful and open.

The current paper reports on a self-study of teacher educators involved in a preservice teacher unit on literacy. In this study, the teacher educators provided the preservice teachers with digital oral feedback about their final unit of work. The authors found that working as a team enabled them to provide more in-depth feedback on the assessment criteria for each assignment than was previously the case with written feedback. Through this dialogical feedback, the teacher educators were able to construct the preservice teachers’ assignments as an important textual gift for their collaborative professional learning.