Editors’ Notes

The editorial team of Action in Teacher Education is pleased to publish another issue with five articles reporting on studies that focus on critical issues and challenges in educator preparation. The five studies in this issue use a range of innovative research methodologies to tackle timely research questions, including a feminist qualitative approach, case study methods, thematic analysis, and hermeneutic inquiry methodology coupled with document analysis. The papers address important topics in our field, from K-12 pedagogical strategies (i.e., using equity-related cases in mathematics classrooms and inquiry-based collaborative learning) to issues focusing on educator preparation curricula and standards (i.e., development of critical consciousness for Black pre-service teachers and pre-service teachers’ disclosures of sexual violence in educator preparation coursework). The papers included herein, both independently and together, identify findings crucial to the kind of progress we believe we need to make in the field of educator preparation.

In the first article, “Engaging Preservice Teachers with Equity-Related Cases to Make Visible the Inequities in Mathematics Teaching,” Moldavan and Gonzalez make an important contribution to the literature by focusing on disrupting inequitable structures or spaces in mathematics that privilege certain populations, such as White, English-speaking males, while disenfranchising other populations, such as historically marginalized groups (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 2020). Using case study methodology, Moldavan and Gonzalez provided 38 preservice teachers (PSTs) with unique experiences or situations in their mathematics methods courses that caused them to examine their own biases and to challenge deficit ideas that might be held regarding traditionally marginalized students. Specifically, the authors sought to understand how mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) and PSTs utilized equity-focused, case study instruction to assist the PSTs in identifying inequities in mathematics instruction and how to respond to those inequities. Findings indicated that, for Case 1, the equity-focused case study instruction helped PSTs identify biases they held. For Case 2, findings indicated that a zero tolerance homework policy was viewed as unfair and, although the majority of the PSTs thought homework should impact a student’s grade, there was a decrease in the percentage holding that position from pre-survey to post-survey. The results offer promising implications for other educator preparation programs as they look to assist PSTs to identify biases and practices of inequity and to respond in ways that promote fairness for all students.

In the second paper, “MeToo Moments: Teacher Candidates’ Disclosures of Sexual Violence,” Moore takes up a critical and largely unaddressed issue in our field, wherein women continue to be overrepresented among educator preparation faculty as well as preservice teacher candidates: rape culture and sexual violence. In this feminist qualitative study, which is set within a larger conversation that emerged with the #MeToo movement and activism around rape culture, Moore explores the ways in which secondary teacher candidates responded to a text set of sexual assault narratives. Moore’s research was informed by her experiences as a volunteer rape crisis counselor, a feminist, and a secondary level English teacher. In a mandatory secondary-level literacy course at a university in western Canada, Moore studied the teacher candidates’ testimonial discourses that surfaced during discussions about the trauma literature. Teacher candidates in the study shared their own “Me Too” experiences and/or their experiences witnessing others’ testimonies of having experienced sexual violence. The study richly explores the complexities and interconnections between racism, sexual assault, microaggressions, and intersectionality. We are pleased to publish this innovative study in Action in Teacher Education and hope that it prompts many future studies and discussions about this important topic.

In the third article, “Exploring Critical Consciousness Development for Black Preservice Teachers,” Behizadeh, Davis, and Fernandes Williams examined beliefs and practices associated with critical consciousness development for Black preservice teachers. By adopting a case study research design, they collected data from multiple sources, including interviews and artifacts such as syllabi, professional development materials, and insights from teacher preparation program faculty, to present a comprehensive view of critical consciousness development among four Black preservice teachers. Results revealed the complexity of critical consciousness positioning and development, including awareness of self and systems, historical background and previous experiences across participants’ lives, as well as the influence of the teacher candidates’ experiences with university coursework. This study is important because it provides suggestions for specific strategies to increase critical consciousness among Black preservice teachers and identifies implications for changes in educator preparation programs along with suggestions for continuous professional development among teacher educators.

The fourth article, “Exploring Contradictions in Pre-Service Teachers’ Feedback About Inquiry-Based Collaborative Learning,” Blundell, Mukherjee, and Nykvist investigated the experience of adopting an inquiry-based collaborative approach, called creative inquiry (CI), to prepare pre-service teachers for digital learning pedagogy. In end-of-semester evaluation surveys across three years, 1,473 preservice teachers indicated overall satisfaction with the CI approach, which included using a range of digital technologies.

Four themes emerged from the comments provided by preservice teachers: technology focus, participating in learning, unit organization, and assessment. Interestingly, when comparing these four themes to the unit’s rationale and CI design, researchers found that technology focus and participation in learning contradicted some preservice teachers’ prior experience and expectations for future practice. There were also contradictions in feedback and comments about the approach to learning about digital technologies and the pedagogy of CI that were inconsistent with some preservice teachers’ preferences for coursework. These disorienting dilemmas (Mezirow, 2012) could be minimized through a constructivist, student-centered approach, i.e. transformative learning via dialogical reasoning.

Finally, in “Examining Standards Across Five K-12 Academic Disciplines in the United States: Similarities, Distinctions, and Implications for Teacher Preparation,” Burns and colleagues cited literature that suggested the field of teaching has suffered a crisis in image over the last few decades and that subject-specific standards have been used as a way to professionalize the field, as well as to ensure that teacher candidates graduated with knowledge and skills that were more uniform in nature (Call, 2018; Labaree, 2008; Robinson, 2017). Combining document analysis with hermeneutic inquiry, Burns and colleagues sought to identify existing standards in educator preparation programs, determine how the foundational concepts within the standards are similar or different, and the impact that these similarities and differences can have on educator preparation. Although some subject-specific standards may operate in isolation, and may have been created in isolation, results suggested more similarities than differences between subject-specific standards. The implications of these findings are that educator preparation programs should scaffold teacher candidates to make connections between content areas or disciplines and consciously collaborate within and across programs in order to promote a shared responsibility for the learning of teacher candidates, such as through the use of interdisciplinary teams.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).