Section archive - Teacher Educators

The purpose of this self-study was to examine an internal conflict the lead author was feeling about her credibility to teach pre-service elementary teachers when she was similar in age to them and had no K-12 teaching experience.  Having taught only as an undergraduate science teaching assistant, she was now assigned in her doctoral program to be an early field experience instructor for elementary education majors.  Using Relational Cultural Theory  and the framework of deliberate relationship, the role of rapport was analyzed in relation to authority and credibility. Findings show the lead author’s rapport with her pre-service teachers was valuable in supporting her authority and credibility as an instructor, but only when boundaries to rapport were maintained. Specifically, findings show the difficulty in balancing caring for pre-service teachers with appropriate boundaries, and need for diligent transparency of practice.  Implications for successful teacher-student relationships when feeling tensions between developing rapport and authority are discussed.  Positive, mutually-beneficial relationships with high rapport are possible as long as the instructor maintains appropriate boundaries with pre-service teachers by focusing on the teacher-student relationship rather than attempting to establish friendships.

This case study interpreted the experiences of a teacher as she grew her coaching and mentoring practices by working with preservice teachers and participating in professional development focused on reflective coaching, mentorship, and literacy teaching. The authors drew on the notion of “becoming” from critical and sociocultural theories in analyzing how she constructed a teaching identity through mentoring, and how her identity enabled her to enact reflective coaching practices. Their findings outline her agentic moves to provide the preservice teacher with reflective support, rather than evaluative critique, in opposition to the surveillance and regulation that characterize many existing teacher evaluation models.

This In Practice paper reports on an autoethnographic study based on the author’s 12-week teaching practicum experience in two secondary schools in an initial teacher education programme to professionally develop himself as a teacher educator. As a novice teacher educator, the author took on the role as a student teacher in the practicum. Through ongoing dialogues with different stakeholders in schools and the author’s own reflective self, the practicum experience provided an opportunity for the author to understand the tension between theory and practice, learn to give feedback as a teaching practicum supervisor and facilitate the development of schools. This paper offers implications on the benefits of engaging in self-study such as autoethnography in the school context for novice teacher educators to understand the educational reality and professional lives of schoolteachers as well as professionally develop themselves in their teacher education career.

This paper reports phenomenographic research focused on studying the conceptions of modeling held by teacher educators. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted face-to-face with twenty-four teacher educators working in three Chilean primary school teacher education programs. The analysis identified four categories of description, ranging from modeling as teaching pedagogical activities to modeling as developing teaching linked to the school classroom. Besides, four dimensions of variation were found, providing a more accurate picture of this teaching practice. The author recommends continuing the study on this topic for improving the teaching practices enacted by teacher educators.