Emily J. Klein

Networking for Teacher Learning: Toward a Theory of Effective Design

This article focuses on one theory of school reform that seeks to counteract insularity among teachers with respect to questions of what to teach and how. It networks teachers across schools and gives them access to outside expertise in their content areas. In this approach teacher learning happens within a series of face-to-face and virtual meetings, sometimes over many years. In this article, we focus on teacher networking and, more specifically, on how teacher networks design for teacher learning. By describing several dynamic tensions inherent in the designs of a sample of teacher networks, and by raising questions about these tensions and their relation to teacher learning, we hope to contribute toward the building of a theory of effective network design. We illustrate these design concepts with references to the work of seven networks that aim to revamp teachers’ knowledge in the humanities. In the final section of the article, we offer several sets of questions that derive from our analysis and that might form the basis for further research. One theory of school reform prominent in the United States today emphasizes the role of teachers. This theory presumes that improvements in the learning of American children depend ultimately on improvements

Finding a third space in teacher education: creating an urban teacher residency

This paper describes an urban teacher residency program, the Newark Montclair Urban Teacher Residency, a collaborative endeavor between the Newark, New Jersey Public Schools and Montclair State University, built on a decades-long partnership. The authors see the conceptual work of developing this program as creating a “third space” in teacher education. We detail the ways in which we conceptualize epistemology and clinical practice in teacher education, and changes in the roles of the community, and P-12 teachers that occur in a third space. Providing an account of our messy and nonlinear process demonstrates the struggles of creating new spaces for teacher education. We believe the theory that informs our work, the challenges we face, and the strategies for meeting those challenges illustrate the tenuous and ever-evolving nature of doing work in the “third space.”

Tensions of Reimagining Our Roles as Teacher Educators in a Third Space: Revisiting a Co/Autoethnography through a Faculty Lens.

This co/autoethnography uses our lens as university faculty to examine how engaging in a year-long self-study with mentors nurtured a complicated third space where we could together begin to reimagine our roles as teacher educators. Two secondary faculty members and a doctoral assistant used co/autoethnography to revisit a collaborative self-study with mentors to better identify both the individual and programmatic complexities that arise when a third space is opened and we are invited to reinvent our perspectives and responsibilities as co-teacher educators. We ask two questions: What happens when faculty facilitate a third-space teacher education program with mentor teachers? How does this third space influence the teacher education practices in an urban teacher residency program? We present a series of tensions about our work together as teacher educators in the third space. They include professional into authentic relationships, authority into collaboration, collaborative agency into individual agency, and apprenticing to master teacher into apprenticing within a collective. Following findings about each tension, we discuss how we as faculty navigated each tension. Finally, we consider the implications of our work for all field-based teacher education programs.

Rethinking Professional Development: Building a Culture of Teacher Learning.

This article describes a case study of an educational organization, the Big Picture Company, trying to implement a highly unusual school design. It offers a close look at its professional development strategies and how its comprehensive program helps create a culture where teachers can, and do, learn. I detail five professional development strategies Big Picture employs to build communities of practice: Mentoring: The buddy system; Networking: Extending the community; Observation days: Two-way feedback in action; Case studies: Group learning to tap into the collective knowledge base; and Workshops: Learning from experienced teachers and honing individual skills.

Deepening Roots: Building a Task-Centered Peer Mentoring Community

The article describes a task-centered, peer-mentoring (TCPM) group initiated by a group of female junior faculty to support one another toward tenure and work/life balance. It describes a qualitative study that investigated the peer-mentoring experiences of the participants and explored the implications and complications of peer-mentoring relationships for women in academia. The article begins by describing the groups formation in the context of literature that highlights challenges faced by untenured female faculty; next, it describes the task-centered group process and offers a theoretical framework based on feminist pedagogy. The results of the study and implications for further research and peer-mentoring practice in higher education are presented.

Exploring Inquiry in the Third Space: Case Studies of a Year in an Urban Teacher-Residency Program

ABSTRACT Using case studies, we describe what happens from novice to apprentice when preservice teachers learn to teach in an urban teacher-residency (UTR) program with a focus on inquiry. Our UTR operates within a “third space” in teacher education, seeking to realign traditional power relationships and to create an alternate arena where the roles of the university, school, teacher candidate, and community can be reimagined. This third space encourages preservice teachers to be inquirers themselves in order for them to support their students as inquirers.

Professional development for teacher leaders: using activity theory to understand the complexities of sustainable change

ABSTRACT This article presents findings from a two-year, qualitative study of K-12 teacher Fellows involved in a grant-funded professional development program. Aiming to foster sustainable change in districts and support emergent teacher leadership, the program enabled Fellows to collaboratively reflect on practice and develop as teacher leaders who lead informally from the classroom. Using activity theory as an analytical lens, the following main themes emerged in the data: (1) Teacher leaders have complex definitions of teacher leadership that parallel teaching beliefs; (2) Teacher leaders need strong communication skills to collaborate within different contexts; (3) Teacher leaders benefit from work on vertical articulation; and (4) School culture and administrative support influences teacher leadership. We explore the implications for professional development programs in districts, and in particular, those that address the need to cultivate teacher leadership.

Articulating the Intimate Knowledge of Teaching

The dilemmas of creating a strong mentoring program in the third space are multiple. As described above, for all mentors, the prospect of trying to explain the intimate knowledge of teaching and practice can be daunting and isolating.

Making the leap to teacher: Pre-service residents, faculty, and school mentors taking on action research together in an urban teacher residency program

This article explores what happens when school mentors and university faculty co-facilitate a cycle of action research with pre-service science teacher residents in an urban teacher residency. The voices of all three constituents describe the process of doing action research together in community and its impact on their practice. The pre-service teacher residents narrate their questions, how they explore them, and highlight their findings. They discuss how the use of action research as a methodology deepened and extended their development as critically reflective practitioners. Finally we discuss the implications of the inquiry stance of action research for both the individuals and the schools and districts of which they are a part.

Tending to Ourselves, Tending to Each Other: Nurturing Feminist Friendships to Manage Academic Lives

This chapter explores how two feminist academics and close collaborators have tried to navigate the patriarchal hierarchies of traditional academic spaces. We unpack how those relational ways of knowing and being in the world have supported our living as women in academic worlds, how we have together navigated the pressures that discourage collaboration, and how those pressures affect us individually and as partners. Our epistemology of friendship empowers us to disrupt the institution and explore what that looks like in our day-to-day experiences as women, mothers, academics, friends, sisters, daughters, and teachers. It is important to consider our epistemology of friendship as means of resistance that sustains ourselves and our partnerships and within sometimes oppressive institutions.