Abstract
Journal of Teacher Education’s (JTE) Major Forum at the 2013 AACTE Annual Meeting (Knight, Edmondson, Hollins, Imig, & Gitomer, 2013) focused on the current and future preparation of teacher educators. The topic attracted a large audience and the presenters generated a great deal of interest among attendees. However, from questions and comments, it was clear that while some in the audience considered “teacher educator” education a separate area of study, others considered the research on teacher education as the appropriate knowledge base for the practices and preparation of teacher educators. The participants noted that a similar assumption was made initially when considering the relationship between research on teaching and teacher education. We subsequently learned that while research on teaching informs research on teacher education, the latter needs a specialized knowledge base of its own. While we are making gains in building that specialized knowledge base for teacher preparation and professional development, we have neglected the study of teacher educators. The assumption that a good teacher will become a good teacher educator is prevalent in the field but has not been systematically examined. As a result of this discussion, we raised the following question: Does the preparation of teacher educators warrant attention to the development of a pedagogy of “teacher educator” education separate from that of teacher preparation? The mission of JTE is to build and refine the knowledge base on teacher education to inform policy and practice. However, we have paid relatively little attention in the past to an important component of teacher education—the quality of teacher educators. We know little about the learning, practices, and preparation involved in “teacher educator” education.
In addition to highlighting what we know (or do not know) about current practice and preparation of teacher educators, the topic of the AACTE major forum highlighted the development of “next generation” teacher educators. Standards-based curriculum and assessment (Common Core State Standards for English/Language Arts and Mathematics and the Next Generation Science Standards), and the accompanying accountability associated with their implementation (see JTE theme issue Volume 63:5), place considerable demands on acquisition of the kind of teaching skills that few teachers currently possess (Lampert et al., 2013). As a consequence, the current assessment and accountability challenges also place demands on preservice and inservice teacher educators to enable teachers to effectively incorporate the standards into instruction (Moon, Passmore, Reiser, & Michaels, 2014). Defining the knowledge and skills that teacher educators will need to prepare teachers for the challenges of standards-based instruction is a necessary first step. Determining how teacher educators can acquire this expertise is a high-priority research task.
As a result of the discussion focused on preparation of teacher educators as distinct from teachers, we initiated a call for manuscripts focused on teacher educator practices and professional development. Much has been said about the complexity of teaching and teacher learning and the need for research that reflects that complexity. We assume that teacher educator learning and teacher educator preparation are similarly complex. However, we lack a well-developed knowledge base that would explicate this complexity. In our call for manuscripts and in our JTE Major Forum, we posed the following sets of questions that were designed to begin a more focused discussion of a pedagogy of teacher educator education and stimulate research on the topic:
Who are teacher educators and what are the current knowledge, skills, and dispositions that they possess? What practices characterize the work of teacher educators? Are the practices similar for preservice and inservice teacher education?
What forms of knowledge do teacher educators use that differ from those used by teachers in general, and how do these forms of knowledge develop?
What influences shape the roles and practices of teacher educators? Who prepares teacher educators? And how? How do teacher educators learn to do their work? What might high-quality preparation of teacher educators entail?
How do contexts matter in the ways teacher educators learn and develop?
What does next generation teacher education look like and what are the knowledge, skills, and dispositions teacher educators will need? How might accountability policies influence the education of teacher educators and their ongoing work?
What constitutes new generation teacher educator quality and effectiveness? Can we prepare tomorrow’s teachers with today’s teacher educators?
What is the role of research in new generation teacher educator preparation? What are the relationships between research and practice related to the development of teacher educators?
Highlights of the Current Issue
As a result of the call for manuscripts on the topic of the practices and professional development of teacher educators, we received the largest number of submissions we, as editors, have ever received for a theme issue. Six articles emerged that address aspects of the questions posed in the call and represent the diversity of approaches to the study of teacher educator education. A seventh article, while not a formal theme contribution, is included because it can inform our understanding of teacher educator professional development.
The lead article by John Loughran, “Professionally Developing as a Teacher Educator” addresses the questions related to definition of teacher educators, how they develop, and the role of research in this development. He explores a framework for conceptualizing professional development of teacher educators and how this conceptualization might translate to practice. From his perspective, a teacher educator is someone who works in a tertiary institution and teaches prospective teachers enrolled in a preservice teacher preparation program. He acknowledges that because many teachers were initially situated in schools, the transition to academia is likely to be difficult. Therefore, we need to understand and study the learning of those who are “learning about learning to teach.” Effective teacher educators will need to be good consumers of research as well as engage in rigorous self-study, which goes beyond stories. While we need to examine values and beliefs in the context of teacher educator learning, we also need to understand that questions of values and beliefs cannot be resolved through empirical studies.
The second article is by Lin Goodwin and her colleagues, “What Should Teacher Educators Know and Be Able To Do? Perspectives from Practicing Teacher Educators” and focuses on the practices of teacher educators. Similar to Loughran, teacher educators in this study are university-based, doctoral-prepared faculty who engage in “teacher educating.” In a mixed methods study, the researchers administered a survey to 293 teacher educators asking about their practice, how they were prepared, and their suggestions for future teacher educator preparation. Based on the survey findings, they selected a smaller group for more in-depth interviews. They then reanalyzed the survey data in relation to results from the interviews. The findings indicated that most respondents had become teacher educators by happenstance and had experienced little opportunity for knowledge or skill acquisition during their doctoral work. They typically relied on their own teaching backgrounds in K-12 schools or practices acquired “by osmosis” from faculty in their doctoral programs. Many were prepared to be education researchers but viewed their research as unrelated to teacher education.
The third article, by Alison Castro Superfine and Wenjuan Li, “Exploring the Mathematical Knowledge Needed for Teaching Teachers,” addresses the question of the knowledge base needed to teach disciplinary content to preservice elementary teachers and how that knowledge differs from that of K-12 teachers. They examine the learning trajectory of mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) with different kinds of expertise—mathematics, pedagogy, and school teaching. Using a multimedia database that includes videos of the class, audio of small group discussions, and various artifacts, the researchers compare the instructional interactions of MTEs with different expertise around similar math tasks. They also compare what MTEs and preservice teachers are doing and saying in relation to a task requiring specialized content knowledge. The findings highlight the forms of knowledge that MTEs draw on and how they differ from the knowledge forms of the preservice teachers. This approach, although developed in the context of mathematics, has implications for teacher education in other subject areas.
The context for studying teacher educators changes in the next two articles. The fourth article, “Teacher Educator Professional Learning in the Third Space—Implications for Identity and Practice” by Judy Williams, situates the study of teacher educators working in schools with mentor teachers and preservice teachers in the space where universities and schools intersect. Her study examines the perceptions of 18 field supervisors in three countries to determine the challenges they face and how their previous experience as classroom teachers contributes to their identity development and pedagogy in this hybrid space. Themes related to managing shifting identities, changing perspectives, and negotiating relationships emerge.
Megan Hopkins and James Spillane, “Schoolhouse Teacher Educators: Structuring Beginning Teachers’ Opportunities to Learn About Instruction,” also focus on the school as the site for their study, but in this case, the schoolhouse is not a hybrid space. The authors define teacher educators as professionals working in schools and investigate who supports the learning of novice teachers and how these on-site educators provide newly inducted teachers with opportunities to learn. Using social network analysis on data obtained in 24 schools through surveys and interviews of novice teachers, the authors investigated beginning teachers’ advice and information seeking behaviors for math and literacy. The findings highlight the importance of formal organizational structures in the process, particularly grade-level teams, principals, and instructional coaches.
The final theme article, “A Framework for the Facilitation of Teachers’ Analyses of Video,” is by Elizabeth van Es, Jessica Tunney, Lyn Goldsmith, and Nanette Seago. The researchers investigated how teacher educators facilitate substantive analysis of video for teacher learning. In particular, they examined the use and coordination of facilitation moves during high-quality discussion by teacher educators across two different professional development programs—a video club for elementary teachers and a program on linear functions for secondary math teachers. Findings resulted in a framework for facilitating video analysis consisting of four practices and their accompanying moves that can be used as a guide by teacher educators.
The final article in this issue, “Practice-Based Teacher Education: Learning from the Past,” by Francesca Forzani, is not directly related to the theme of the practices and professional development of teacher educators. However, the editorial team felt that the historical background provided by the author is important in any discussion of the acquisition of knowledge and skills by teacher educators related to the implementation of practice-based teacher education. The author compares how the current practice-based teacher education movement (see, for example, Lampert et al., 2013, and McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanagh, 2013) builds on but differs from similar approaches from three other periods in history. Three characteristics differentiate this approach to acquisition of focal characteristics of teaching: (a) the learning goals for students target higher order skills, (b) teaching in this manner is partially improvisational so novices need to be trained to deal with uncertainty, and (c) the subject matter of the practices is a critical component of acquisition of the practices.
We hope that the articles in this issue stimulate your thinking about the practices and professional development of teacher educators. We invite you to participate in conversations about the implications of the findings of these studies for research, policy, and practice in teacher education. We look forward to receiving manuscripts from you in the future as well as your ideas directed toward improvement of JTE.