Editor’s Notes

Abstract

Teacher educators wrestle with a myriad of issues and phenomena throughout their professional lives. These experiences help to shape their approach to preparing future teachers and providing development opportunities to practicing teachers. As Dinkelman (2011) notes, “Teacher educator identities reflect an unstable and ever-shifting weave of personal and professional phenomena” (p. 309). In this issue of Action in Teacher Education, the first four articles examine the personal and professional phenomena of teacher educators. The last two articles shift the focus from teacher educators to teachers and preservice teachers. They explore the phenomenon of developing pedagogical skills in practicing and future teachers. All these articles carry forward research in teacher education that offer valuable insights into teacher educators and the development of pedagogical practices. In the first article, Liao and Maddamsetti examine the phenomena of transnational teacher educators teaching diversity courses in the U.S. Their article, “Transnationality and Teacher Educator Identity Development: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Study”, uses the authors’ own experiences as data sources to extend the field’s understanding of teacher educator identity development. This collaborative autoethnographic study analyzed teaching artifacts and shared conversations and found that while each participant had different journeys, they both grew from feeling illegitimacy to growing feelings of legitimacy in their roles as teacher educators. They also found, “Common to our teacher educator identity were also our desire and effort to address the ways in which we had been positioned as others and to find ways to develop agency in our teaching practice”. This study extends the understanding of international students’ experiences in becoming teacher educators in the United States. Next, Frambaugh-Krtizer and Petroelje Stolle address the phenomenon of transitioning a course from face-to-face instruction to an online format. In “Seeking Pedagogical Equilibrium while Teaching Synchronous Online Classes: A Collaborative Self-study”, the authors examine their experiences of being required to begin teaching graduate literacy courses online. They state that, while their preference was to teach courses face-to-face, they were not resistant to teaching online. In analyzing the data from their synchronous online courses, they found nuanced tensions in three areas: feedback, relationships, and attitudes. Frambaugh-Kritzer and Petroelje Stolle conclude:, “Due to our independent experiences, together we were able to confirm that teaching on BBC brought these nuances, but thoughtful reflection offered us new insights into engagement and the pursuit of pedagogical equilibrium”. The researchers demonstrate how coursework can be successfully transitioned to an online environment. Jordan Moore and Mee Bell build on literature that shows that teachers identify themselves as models of effective teaching practice for their students. In “Is Instructor (Faculty) Modeling an Effective Practice for Teacher Education? Insights and Supports for New Research”, the authors conducted a systematic literature review on the topic. They show that teacher educators believe that modeling is an effective instructional technique; however, the empirical support for this is thin. In fact, the authors found only 26 articles that fit their criteria of research on teacher modeling. Even with this “paucity” of articles, the authors were able to employ a useful four-