J. Gary Knowles

Teacher Development Partnership Research: A Focus on Methods and Issues

Our purposes in writing this article are to reflect on our own research practice and to raise for discussion some of the issues associated with “alternative” approaches to studying teaching and teacher development. Situating our work within a personal and contextual research framework that is built on the foundations of a hermeneutic perspective, we briefly review the progress towards alternative approaches to research on teaching and teacher development, and then focus on the researcher-teacher relationship in discussing collaboration in partnership research. We use three organizing frameworks: (a) examples of our own research with teachers; (b) a matrix displaying the phases of research activities and the roles of researcher and teacher; and (c) a matrix displaying the phases and scope of the issues in teacher development partnership research that suggest a series of guiding questions that we think need to be asked at the outset and throughout any inquiry.

Teaching and nurturing: changing conceptions of self as teacher in a case study of becoming a teacher

Interest is growing in better understanding how teachers think and how they come to think like teachers. From a theoretical orientation informed by insights gained from symbolic inter‐actionism, recent research in the role metaphors play in self‐understanding, and schema theory, the authors present a case study of the first year of teaching of a divorced mother of five young children. Over the course of the year this teachers understanding of herself as teacher changes, as indicated by changes in her personal teaching metaphor, teacher is nurturer. The reasons for these changes are explored. Of particular note is the struggle this teacher has balancing the demands of home and work. Finally, some implications for teacher education are discussed.

From Pedagogy to Ideology: Origins and Phases of Home Education in the United States, 1970-1990

The recent emergence of home education is linked to the influence of educational reformers who published in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. This article examines the evolving milieu of home education since 1970 by briefly surveying the home-school movement in the broader historical context. Developments within the home-school movement and changing perceptions of home schools are also presented. We interpret the dynamics of the home-education arena and trace home educations growth as a rational and legitimate educational choice by increasingly large numbers of families. There are five phases within the 20-year growth period that illustrate the fluid nature of home education as a social movement.

We're Just Like the Beginning Teachers We Study: Letters and Reflections on Our First Year as Beginning Professors

ABSTRACTThis article transcends our current research focus on the development, socialization, and induction of beginning teachers to the world of classrooms and schools. We examine the contents and pressures associated with our own inductions into the university professoriate. In many ways, as new professors, we have relived elements of our own first years as teachers in elementary and secondary schools, both through our own experiences as neophytes in the world of higher education and, vicariously, through the experiences of those we study. Though the contexts and roles associated with working in postsecondary institutions are vastly different from those in the elementary and secondary schools and classrooms of the beginning teachers we study, the similarities to our experiences as neophytes are striking.Since we work at institutions over 200 miles apart, our ongoing correspondence about the dilemmas, frustrations, and joys concerning our transition to the professoriate has recorded our stories. We have ...

Family Unity Objectives of Parents Who Teach Their Children: Ideological and Pedagogical Orientations to Home Schooling.

This article examines parents who teach their children at home. Using the results from two qualitative studies the article suggests, while families have complex motives for teaching their children at home, an important commonality underlies their decision. Regardless of their orientation to home schooling the parents in these two studies felt that establishing a home school would allow them to maintain or further develop unity within the family. The article suggests a familys decision to home school is often made in an attempt to resist the effects on the family unit of urbanization and modernization. The policy implications of this finding are discussed.

University supervisors and preservice teachers: Clarifying roles and negotiating relationships

Abstract We focus on the preservice teacher‐university supervisor relationship within the context of field experiences to explore the general question, “How can we, as university teacher educators, better assist preservice teachers in their development through field experiences?” Our discussion is based on: reflective accounts of preservice teachers written before, during, and following periods of field experience; our experiences as teachers and teacher educators, which include being faculty supervisors; and on research on the role of the university supervisor in field experiences. We first describe some typical perceptions associated with the preservice teacher‐university supervisor relationship, and then go on to suggest some specific ways to enhance the understanding that preservice teachers have of the roles of university supervisors and, hence, to facilitate the negotiation and development of productive preservice teacher‐university supervisor relationships.

Research, practice, and academia in North America

The self-study of teacher education practices has found its place on the teacher education landscape as a principled, scholarly practice that has begun to shift understandings about the nature and significance of teacher educators’ work and what counts as acceptable academic scholarship. Self-study scholars have brought their individual career histories and commitments to teacher education to bear on their academic roles within the context of the university and, in so doing, have taken up a challenge to shift status quo perspectives on the role and status of teacher education in the academy. Through individual and collective action self-study scholars have responded to criticisms levied against the place of teacher education in the academy, dilemmas presented by the nature of their work and roles, and challenges facing them in their professional and academic work. In this chapter we focus on the tenure system in North American universities and the role it plays in monitoring, mediating, and moderating the individual and collective practice of teacher educators. We Offer a framework for reconsidering the norms of academic convention and the socializing forces that gOffern teacher educators’ work in the academy and a vision of what such a reorientation might mean in practice. We then draw on this framework to explore how the self-study of teacher education scholarship and practice, as a genre, has positioned itself to challenge the status quo of academic convention for schools, departments, and faculties of education.

We watched them “fail”: university supervisors’ perceptions of “failure” in student teaching1

Student teaching is a public act, one in which there are several pairs of scrutinizing eyes looking on: pupils, cooperating teachers, principals, parents, and university supervisors. The majority of student teachers perform satisfactorily and develop strategies to cope with the demands of their classrooms. Some, however, “fail.” They either remove themselves voluntarily and are given a grade deemed to be unsatisfactory for obtaining provisional teacher certification or a teaching position, or they are given a failing grade. Focused on “failing” student teachers, this article explores the perceptions of university supervisors with direct responsibility for assessing preservice teachers in their capstone preservice practicum. These individuals have considerable influence over the future of student teachers because of the weight their evaluations have for future employment. The questions addressed include: What does it mean to “fail” in student teaching? Why does it happen? What are the characteristics of st...

Drawing on the Arts, Transforming Research: Possibilities of Arts-Informed Perspectives

An exploration of the possibilities for and challenges of arts-informed research is the focus of this chapter. It begins by recounting the beginnings and foundational elements of arts-informed research and illustrates the various ways in which it is embraced by a variety of qualitative researchers (as a stand-alone approach or in combination with other perspectives). The chapter emphasises the transformational possibilities that come with presenting scholarship in alternatives ways to traditional academic discourse. The barriers and challenges to researching through the arts are also addressed. The chapter then provides examples from the work of graduate researchers and others and, in doing so, it illustrates and discusses the utility and constraints of arts-informed research.

Teachers' Stress and Coping Strategies in a Fundamentalist Christian School

A nine-month ethnography of a K-12 fundamentalist Christian school focussed on stress as a central element in the lives of teachers. In addition to elements of stress typically found in public schools, the teachers encountered additional complicating factors which influenced how the stress elements were experienced. Features of the fundamentalist Christian experience provided the teachers a unique method of coping with the dilemma of maintaining religious fervor and spiritual commitment in a highly stressful work environment.