Learning to think like a teacher educator: making the substantive and syntactic structures of teaching explicit through self‐study

Abstract

The construction of a pedagogy of teacher education requires a sustained, systematic, and careful inquiry into one’s own practice, predicated on the understanding that teaching is a discipline. This article begins by arguing that it is more appropriate to speak of a basis for knowing, rather than a knowledge base, for thinking about teaching and learning and that self‐study methodology is one way for a new teacher educator to develop his or her basis for knowing about teaching teachers. Excerpts from self‐studies that I have conducted during my first three years as a preservice teacher educator are described and interpreted with a view to examining the substantive and syntactic structures of the discipline of teaching and the influences of my prior experiences as a teacher candidate. The article concludes with a set of personal understandings that I have constructed as a new teacher educator. Self‐study methodology is offered as a way for teachers and teacher educators to make their knowledge about teaching and learning explicit by naming and analyzing both the substantive and syntactic structures of the discipline of teaching.

Keywords:

• teacher education
• teaching and learning
• teaching as discipline
• self‐study
• becoming a teacher educator
• reflection