Alexander Cuenca

In Loco Paedagogus: The pedagogy of a novice university supervisor

The peripherality of the university supervisor during the student teaching experience has often been considered extraneous to the work of preparing preservice teachers. Despite the supervisors potential to support learning, the low status of supervision in the preparation of prospective teachers has led to a lack of commitment in preparing, advising, and assisting novice supervisors entering the field. This self-study provides an insiders account of my practice as a novice university supervisor. My findings suggest that I constructed a pedagogy of field-based teacher education guided by a rationale I term in loco paedagogus, whereby I instruct students based on how I would react in a similar situation. Drawing on these findings, this article highlights the need to recognize how beginning university supervisors learn to teach teachers.

Embracing Institutional Authority: The Emerging Identity of a Novice Teacher Educator

This self-study explores the emerging identity of a first-time teacher educator using a framework that views identity as natural, institutional, discursive, and affinity. This framework provided an opportunity to unpack empirically how these various strands of identity intersected within the classroom of a novice teacher educator. Situated in the context of an elementary social studies methods classroom, this study reveals various struggles with the institutional authority of being a teacher educator. Issues such as how preservice teachers perceive a novice teacher educator, the acknowledgment of lack of experience, and the process of negotiating institutionalized and systemic power within the classroom are discussed. Because this study also featured a mentor professor as a critical friend, the implications of self-study work and mentoring first-time teacher educators are also featured in the discussion section. Considering the importance of identity in shaping the practice of new teachers, this self-study reveals the importance of further complicating the emerging and evolving identities of new teacher educators.

Care, Thoughtfulness, and Tact: A Conceptual Framework for University Supervisors.

The pedagogical work of university supervisors has received little attention in teacher education literature. Based on this concern, this paper provides a conceptual framework for university supervisors, recasting their role as teacher pedagogues focused on responding to the particular contextual needs of student teachers as they learn to teach. Using care, thoughtfulness, and tact as a conceptual framework, the author argues for an interactive and responsive pedagogy of field‐based teacher education grounded in the university supervisor’s concern for the development of the student teacher.

Democratic Means for Democratic Ends: The Possibilities of Bakhtin's Dialogic Pedagogy for Social Studies

In light of the common mission of social studies education to prepare future democratic citizens, the field continues to be rooted in didactic and monologic practices. Finding an alibi in the current accountability movement that favors teaching about democracy instead of teaching through democracy, many social studies teachers have reneged on their responsibility to engender the democratic capacities of students. In this article, I draw on the writings of literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin to examine the possibilities that emerge when grounding pedagogy in dialogue. Based on Bakhtins writings, I sketch three possible pathways that a dialogic pedagogy allows social studies educators to explore: (1) nonneutrality of language, (2) testing of authority, and (3) development of voice. Through my discussion of Bakhtins history, pedagogic action, philosophy, and sociology, I argue that pedagogy in social studies grounded in dialogue provides an aesthetic for democracy as a means to an end.

Negotiating accountability during student teaching: the influence of an inquiry-based student teaching seminar

Drawing on the work of Russian literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, this article explores how an inquiry-based social studies student teaching seminar helped three preservice teachers negotiate the pressures of standards-based reforms during student teaching. The author first examines how initial perceptions of standardization and high-stakes testing corroded images of powerful teaching and created an ex post facto relationship with teaching social studies. The author then explores how an inquiry-based seminar mitigated these initial impressions by (1) suspending the authority of accountability; (2) creating contact through collaborative inquiry; and (3) refracting practice.

The Problematology of Supervising Student Teachers

Recently, while watching the news regarding the latest sex scandal involving an American politician, I was reminded of Bill Clinton’s discussion of his affair with Monica Lewinsky in a 2004 interview with Dan Rather on 60 Minutes. Clinton said that he had the affair “Just because I could” (McDermott, 2009, para. 15). He went on to say “I think that’s just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything – when you do something just because you could” (para. 16).

Two Roadmaps, One Destination: The Economic Progress Paradigm in Teacher Education Accountability in Georgia and Missouri.

The current accountability conversation in teacher education is the direct result of the policy paradigms that shape our understandings of schooling and reform. The authors present cases from Georgia and Missouri illustrating how these policy paradigms have resulted in outcomes-based accountability initiatives for teacher education. Specifically, the authors discuss the procedures these states are using to connect P–12 teacher performance with teacher preparation programs. The authors conclude that the impact of these reform initiatives have the potential to turn teacher education into an individualistic, economic good.

Stand(ard) and Deliver: Yet Another Standards-Based Framework and the Ground-Level Work of Preservice Teacher Education

The C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards, InTASC, and edTPA represent recent, influential standards-based initiatives directed toward the reform of preservice teacher education programs. Carried by the same neoliberal reform currents propelling broader educational reform in the United States, all three initiatives share common intellectual underpinnings. What does this apparent uniformity of purpose mean for the ground-level work of teacher education? We employ a self-study conceptual analysis of how we interpret reform-based standards in the context of our work in a social studies teacher education program. Reforms are continuously interpreted and adopted in education programs. Yet little is written about how educators take up these reforms and implement them in their work. This analysis reveals the meanings brought to bear on the comparatively stable discourse evident in this most recent reform movement, and troubles the assumed relationship between reformed standards documents and reformed teacher education.