Judy Williams

Examining Teacher Educator Practice and Identity through Core Reflection

This article reports a self-study that used a model of core reflection to examine the identity and practices of two teacher educators. Core reflection is a process by which teachers reflect on their practice, incorporating an examination of personal beliefs, mission and identity. During three sessions of core reflection we examined the experiences of one of the participants in relation to her teaching ideals, perceived difficulties or obstacles to achieving these ideals, and sense of self as a teacher educator. We concluded that the use of core reflection was valuable in supporting collegial and reflective conversions in a trusting environment. The process also helped us to identify the importance of qualities such as confidence and authenticity and to recognise how acknowledgement of such qualities can help teacher educators to understand their practice and identities more deeply.

Digital Oral Feedback on Written Assignments as Professional Learning for Teacher Educators: A collaborative self-study

This article reports on a self-study of teacher educators involved in a preservice teacher unit on literacy. In this study the teacher educators provided the preservice teachers with digital oral feedback about their final unit of work. Rather than marking written work as individual lecturers, we collaboratively read each assignment and recorded a sound file of our conversation. We constructed our collaborative marking of each assignment as a “cultural gift” to our own professional learning. We found that we were providing more in-depth feedback on the assessment criteria for each assignment than we would have with written feedback prepared individually. We also uncovered tensions in relation to our preferred modalities associated with the digital marking.

Professional Learning Through Transitions and Transformations

This book examines the personal, professional journeys of teacher educators who have undertaken self-studies, and/or researched the professional development of teacher educators. The theme of the book is how change has shaped the professional identites and practices of these teacher educators, concluding with a discussion of the connections between the diverse experiences of the authors, and what can be learned from their accumulated wisdom about what it means to be a teacher educator in a dynamic and ever-changing educational landscape.

Re-imagining Professional Experience in Initial Teacher Education

This opening chapter is written by the book’s editors. They set out the historical, cultural, policy and research contexts for Re-imagining professional experience in initial teacher education: Narratives of learning, and present a rationale for the collection at a time when teacher education in Australia, as elsewhere, is attempting to deal with significant policy pressures. The chapter offers a definition of professional experience that underpins all of the chapters that follow, and proposes a conceptual and methodological framework for engaging with those chapters. Each of the editors contributes a short autobiographical narrative to convey some of their personal and academic backgrounds as teacher educators and to illustrate some of the powerful ways narrative can be used to represent and inquire into professional experience. The chapter concludes with brief summaries of all other 11 chapters of the collection.

Theorising the third space of professional experience partnerships

Across the international research literature, references to the problematic ‘theory-practice gap’ in initial teacher education abound. Essentially, this refers to the dialectical positioning of university-based learning about teaching as abstracted theory in opposition to situated school-based learning about teaching through practice. This perceived theory-practice gap is exacerbated by the fact that the distinction between university-based and school-based learning is not only figurative but also literal, resulting in confusion amongst preservice teachers who often perceive an irreconcilable tension between the theories learned at the university and the practices observed during their professional experience in schools.

Reimagining the role of mentor teachers in professional experience: moving to I as fellow teacher educator

ABSTRACT New accreditation requirements for Australian initial teacher education programs require that universities and schools establish quality partnerships to ensure strong links between pre-service teachers’ university-based learning and school-based professional learning experiences. This paper focuses on the shifts of identity, thinking and practice that occurred for five school-based mentor teachers as they co-created new professional experience practices alongside university-based teacher educators in a Teaching Academies of Professional Practice (TAPP) project. Interview data was analysed through the theoretical framework of Dialogical Self Theory to examine how the repositioning of mentor teachers as fellow teacher educators allowed for expansion in the understanding and enactment of their role. The findings of this study suggest that partnerships between schools and universities can enhance learning opportunities for all participants when commitments are made to creating collaborative and dialogical spaces to support new approaches to teacher education.

Monash University International Professional Experience Program

This collection presents a variety of perspectives and experiences of learning about teaching and learning during International Professional Experience (IPE), in a range of global contexts. As such programs are becoming increasingly popular in many universities, it is timely to explore this dimension of teacher education, and the personal and professional learning gained by pre-service teachers, their university and school-based mentors and host communities. In this chapter, the editors provide an overview of the IPExperience program presented in the book, including policy and institutional contexts, the development of the IPE program, discussion of key concepts and a summary of each chapter.

Learning from stories of becoming

In this chapter, the editors of this collection reflect on what they have learned from the stories of professional becoming presented in the various chapters. First, they provide an overview of the existing literature on what it means to become a teacher educator, and on the process of constructing a new professional identity. Following this general discussion of what it means to ‘become’ a teacher educator professional, they take a collaborative and dialogical ‘turn’ by eliciting their own learning as teacher educators by way of a discussion about what they learned by reading and reflecting on these narratives, and engaging with the ideas contained within over an extended period of time. This approach to understanding what it means to become a teacher educator mirrors key themes of the book – that learning about becoming a teacher educator involves deep reflection, dialogue and collaboration, sometimes taking place over vast distances and between different spaces of practice.

On the journey of becoming a teacher educator

As editors of, and contributors to this collection, we invite you to share in the personal and professional narratives of a diverse group of teacher educators, as they take you through their unique and thought-provoking journeys of professional becoming. This book arose from discussions of our own journeys from primary school teacher to teacher educator, coincidently in our own alma maters, where we undertook our initial teacher education, many years before. We met at the 7th Castle Conference, hosted by the Self Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) Special Interest Group (SIG) of the American Education Research Association (AERA) at Herstmonceaux Castle, East Sussex, England, in 2008. There we shared many similar experiences of being primary school teachers, eager to expand our intellectual and pedagogical horizons by undertaking graduate studies, culminating in a doctorate and moving into academia. Over the next 3 years or so, we maintained contact, including visits between our respective universities. As we shared our experiences, we discussed our professional learning as teacher educators, and the challenges and opportunities afforded by the transition from teacher to teacher educator. One outcome of these discussions is this collection of narratives from teacher educators who share their own varied and interesting professional journeys, and contribute meaningfully to the collective wisdom of the profession of teacher education. During our discussions we pondered the questions: What would we have wanted to know at the beginning of our transition into teacher education? How can we provide important insights into what it means to be(come) a teacher educator in times of political, economic, pedagogical and social change, that would be of value to others, particularly those starting out on their own journeys? The collection that follows is a response to those questions.

Narratives of Learning from Co-editing, Writing and Presenting Stories of Experience in Self-Study

Abstract In this self-study, we look at the contribution made towards our professional learning through an aspect of teacher education work that is not commonly featured in the research literature: exploring the implications of our work as co-editors of an international collection about teacher educators’ journeys of professional becoming. Through this self-study, we argue that this type of work is valuable to individuals and institutions in relation to its impact on the professional learning and career development of teacher educators. Adopting a narrative approach, we examined our experiences of co-editing the book and the associated activities such as conference presentations, to understand how this influenced our professional learning and identity as teacher educators. Findings include having a stronger sense of the evolution of our professional selves over time and greater insight and awareness of our strengths and uncertainties. A clearer perspective on our own career development and professional becoming was evident, and many parallels could be drawn between our experiences of professional becoming and those of the chapter authors in the edited book. We conclude that while activities such as book editing do not usually count in institutional metrics as outputs, they are nonetheless a significant opportunity for professional learning and make a contribution to knowledge and to teacher education practice, and should be recognised as such by institutions and colleagues.