A number of the articles in this issue focus on the experiences of those who are learning the work of the teacher educator. This issue opens with an analysis of a physical education teacher educator’s first year of teaching. In Still Finding the Ground: A Self-Study of a First-Year Physical Education Teacher Educator, Kevin Richards (now at The University of Alabama) studies his teaching as a visiting assistant professor at Northern Illinois University (USA), where critical friend James Ressler worked with him to carry out the analysis. Working with familiar qualitative data such as journaling, student feedback, and focus group interviews, Occupational Socialization Theory was used as a framework for interpreting the data collected. The authors identified three major themes – developing pedagogy, managing relationships with students, and developing the identity of a teacher educator. One of the identity issues concerned Kevin’s lack of experience teaching physical education; exploring this issue with self-study methods helped to build his confidence in the teacher education classroom. Having a strong background in pedagogy in post-secondary settings from previous work proved valuable to Kevin. This article is a valuable addition to the growing literature about the experiences of those who are beginning their work as teacher educators.
How many teacher educators who have used self-study methods to study their own practices have also tried to teach self-study methods to their colleagues? In Those Who Can Do Self-Study, Do Self-Study: But Can They Teach It?, Jason Ritter of Duquesne University (USA) shares his two-year experience doing just that, and those who would attempt such teaching will value the analysis of his experience. Jason reports that he experienced three types of challenges in his teaching of self-study – instructional, relational, and methodological. Not surprisingly in hindsight, shifting the relationship with members of his department from a collegial one to an instructional one generated complexities that had to be managed. Jason concludes that experiences of doing self-study and familiarity with the methods of self-study were helpful background, but they did not fully prepare him to teach self-study to others. It would be helpful to have reports from others who have made similar attempts to teach self-study to colleagues.
Annelie Eberhardt and Manuela Heinz of the National University of Ireland, Galway, present Annelie’s study of her efforts to teach action research to modern-language teachers in secondary schools in Ireland. Walk Little, Look Lots: Tuning into Teachers’ Action Research Rhythm analyzes Annelie’s one-year journey as a self-described cultural stranger, a native of Germany providing professional development to experienced teachers in Ireland. In particular, she had to adapt to the fact that the teachers were more interested in resources for their teaching than in planning, conducting, and reporting action research in their own classrooms. She concludes that collaboration and careful listening are essential ingredients of efforts to introduce teachers to an unfamiliar type of research.
Struck by the Way Our Bodies Conveyed So Much: A Collaborative Self-Study of our Developing Understanding of Embodied Pedagogies reports the experiences of Rachel Forgasz of Monash University and Sharon McDonough of Federation University Australia as they both facilitated and participated in activities that explored the idea of embodied pedagogies. They begin from the position that “the body has traditionally been either marginalized or rejected outright as a source of knowledge” and thus its potential significance for teaching, learning, and learning to teach are poorly understood. As they developed their skills for facilitating workshops on the topic of embodied pedagogies, they each constructed a series of personal narratives about their workshop experiences. Analysis of each other’s narratives produced insights about embodied pedagogy, the emotions of embodied learning, and the nature of embodied knowledge. Among the many conclusions of this article is the insight that designing and conducting workshops on a complex topic is a powerful way to develop one’s own understanding of the topic and its educational significance.
Can a movie help us identify underlying assumptions in our complex world of schools and teacher education? Katherine Batchelor and Scott Sander of Miami University, USA, argue that it can and explain how in their article titled Down the Rabbit Hole: Using The Matrix to Reflect on Teacher Education. Writing two years after completing their Ph.D. studies and beginning to work as teacher educators, the authors find themselves questioning the aims of schooling and the restrictions of formal curriculum documents. When discussing the difficulties that preservice teachers have in questioning a system in which they have spent so many years, they discovered that The Matrix could help them explore their concerns. Dialogue from the film and Dewey’s analysis of rigid habits help them in their engaging analysis of issues and their efforts to find ways to help their students develop flexible habits as they learn to teach.
Margaret Peterson of the University of Maryland at College Park, Jessica DeMink-Carthew of the University of Vermont, and Rebecca Grove of Hood College, USA, report their collaborative self-study on The Influence of the Core Practices Movement on the Teaching and Perspectives of Novice Teacher Educators. Their goal is to examine the core practices movement from the perspective of those who are learning the work of a teacher educator. Drawing from their own experiences incorporating core practices into the courses they were teaching, data include student assignments and feedback, changes in course syllabi, memos recorded during and after their teaching and discussions, and their end-of-course reflections. Readers interested in the core practices movement and readers who are themselves new to the work of the teacher educator will find their analysis and discussion quite engaging.
This issue concludes not with a self-study but with a detailed analysis of a group of self-studies, specifically the 65 studies presented at the Tenth International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices at Herstmonceux Castle, UK. Authored by Juanjo Mena-Marcos of the University of Salamanca in Spain and Tom Russell of Queen’s University in Canada, Collaboration, Multiple Methods, Trustworthiness: Issues Arising from the 2014 International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices reports an analysis of the 63 empirical papers on a range of self-study issues, including collaboration, research approach, strategy of analysis, research methods, and trustworthiness. As the title suggests, analysis revealed that some of the studies presented at the conference fell short on one or more of three expected features of a self-study report: collaboration, multiple research methods, and an explanation of how trustworthiness has been established. This article also illustrates the wide range of topics to which self-study methods are being applied and the many methods of data collection being used by self-study researchers.
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Mandi Berry
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