Are Teacher Education Practices Really Changing?—An Editor’s Farewell

The idea of teacher educators studying their own practices was first recognized in 1992 at an AERA symposium in which I participated and where John Loughran was in the audience. We both participated in the formation of the S-STEP Special Interest Group at the AERA meeting in 1993. We both attended the first International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices at Herstmonceux Castle, UK, and have attended the 11 conferences since. We were two of the four editors of the first International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices published in 2004. Working with John to launch this journal in 2005 and to collaborate with him as co-editors for the first six volumes was a particularly exciting time. Collaborating with Mandi Berry on the next nine volumes has been equally rewarding. Now, after 15 years, I am stepping aside as an editor of Studying Teacher Education. Twenty-seven years of participation in self-study activities have truly transformed the quality of my 42 years as a teacher educator at Queen’s University. I am delighted that Julian Kitchen will take over my role as co-editor. Through my editorial interactions with those who have contributed articles to these first 15 volumes, I have made new friends and gained many insights into this complex world of teacher education. I thank you all. This editorial has two sections. The first offers introductions to the five research articles that appear in this issue; the second offers my parting thoughts to our readers.

Articles in This Issue

Navigating the Personal Challenges and Sociopolitics of Doctoral Supervision

In this article, K. Andrew R. Richards (University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, USA) and Tim Fletcher (Brock University, Canada) explore the challenges facing the newly-appointed teacher educator who is beginning to supervise doctoral students. Kevin’s journal and his discussions with critical friend Tim were analyzed to identify turning points in Kevin’s developing understanding of the practices of doctoral supervision. Kevin’s challenges included identifying his underlying assumptions about doctoral supervision, dealing with insecurities and a sense of the imposter syndrome, and finding a way through the sociopolitical context in which he found himself. Reframing inspired by turning points in Kevin’s experiences led to changes in his supervisory practices. In dealing with sociopolitical issues, it proved helpful to Kevin that his critical friend works at a different university; readers are likely to recognize some of the internal tensions that Kevin experienced. Finally, ‘one key lesson learned from this investigation is the need for doctoral supervisors to attempt to make their supervisory practices explicit to their students, particularly when those students have aims of working in academia.’

Deploying Warrants, Producing Policy: A Self-Study of Teacher Education Policy Discussions

Recognizing that teacher education practices occur in the context of policies established in a political environment, Alexander Cuenca (now at Indiana University, USA) studied his own participation in 15 meetings over four years on an advisory board making policy recommendations about teacher education in the state of Missouri. This article provides valuable insights into state policy-making as well as the influence of federal funding incentives. Alex focuses specifically on issues of argumentation. Data in the form of his personal journals were supplemented by documents from meetings and media articles about the work of the board. Analysis proceeds in terms of the types of warrants that Alex presented during board meetings – first moral warrants, then comparative and illustrative warrants, and finally anecdotal warrants. This study illustrates ‘that the participation of teacher educators in these kinds of policy spaces is critically necessary … . the process of discussing policy was fraught with posturing, maneuvering, and struggles over ideas.’ This article takes self-study methodology into a new and intriguing arena of teacher education.

Looking to our Past to Re-Envision our Future: A Co/Authoethnographic Study of Teacher Candidate Supervision across International Contexts

In this article two international doctoral students from Saudi Arabia and a faculty member use co/autoethnography to analyze their personal narratives and recorded conversations about supervision of teacher candidates. In a course on supervision taught by Jennifer Jacobs (University of South Florida, USA), Shahad Babacer and Fawaz Alrouqi began to reframe their prior supervision experiences at home; after the course, the three of them continued their analysis of concepts and issues associated with teacher supervision. Their autobiographical narratives were coded and efforts were made to ensure trustworthiness of the findings. Themes across their three stories included becoming a teacher, relationships in the context of supervision, and pedagogical practices in supervision. This article provides intriguing accounts of the new insights about supervision achieved by Shahad and Fawaz and by Jennifer. The article concludes with valuable comments on three topics: the importance of reflecting on past experiences to inform present thinking, using a cultural lens to analyze beliefs about supervision, and using self-study to build connections and relationships.

Muddying the Waters: Studying Teaching for Social Justice in the Midst of Uncertainty

Ashley Lucas (Towson University, USA) and Andrea Milligan (Victoria University, New Zealand) developed an international friendship that ultimately led them to develop a self-study of their teaching for social justice. The authors draw insights from pre-service teachers in New Zealand to refocus their commitment to teaching for social justice. Recognizing that social justice is a conceptually ambiguous term, they first admitted their own uncertainties about the term. They moved on to clarify their research focus and then to use the experiences and insights of their students to develop the focus of their research. The experience of their self-study has led each to make changes in practice. Ashley found that moving beyond a definition of social justice to emphasizing its conceptual complexity was a liberating process for her students, who could then participate more productively in discussions of social justice. Andrea now emphasizes the topic of social justice more extensively and carefully considers the teaching approaches that she uses. Focus-group interviews with their students played a critical role in their reframing of the concept of social justice and the ways they would approach it in their classes.

The Handmaid’s Tale: Using Literature and Online Journaling to Facilitate a Self-Study of Feminist Identity in an International Research Collective

Amber Strong Makaiau and Charmaine Mangram (both at University of Hawai’i at Manoa, USA), Karen Ragoonaden (University of British Columbia, Canada), Lu Leng (Jinan University, China) and Misuyo Toyoda (Niigata University, Japan) collaborated across four countries to engage in a self-study of their feminist identity as teacher educators. This unique exploration of three research questions took place over a period of six months in their shared online journal. Central and critical to their collaboration was the perspective provided by Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. ‘Collaborative analysis of the journal entries produced three major themes: fiction as self-study, scholarship as hope, and scholarship as freedom.’ In their conclusion they state that ‘through self-study, online journaling, and fiction, we found common ground in our search for equity in the academy.’ Here again we see both the power and the flexibility of self-study methodology.

Parting Thoughts to Our Readers

The idea of studying one’s own practices in teacher education has not spread like wildfire through our teacher education programs, nor has it transformed the structure of most programs. As I pass the role of co-editor to Julian Kitchen, I leave you with the question Are Teacher Education Practices Really Changing? And is that an important question to ask? I expect that we all have a range of possible explanations for the remarkable stability of teaching in our schools and universities and particularly in programs of teacher education (Vick, 2006). At the end of June 2019 I retired from Queen’s University after 42 years of truly memorable adventures in teacher education. During that time I have relied heavily on the insights provided by three powerful analyses of schools, teachers, and learning from experience: The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change (Sarason, 1971), Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Lortie, 1975), and The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (Schön, 1983).

When I joined Queen’s University in 1977, our students’ practicum placements lasted only two weeks; eventually, they were extended to three weeks. For two years, 1997–99, the practicum began on the first day of school and continued for 14 weeks of practicum (with two weeks of classes near the midpoint). That very real change was quickly judged by most of my colleagues to be too radical, requiring too many changes in our teaching practices. Fourteen weeks of teaching experience had shifted teacher candidates’ expectations dramatically. My personal focus on the power of learning from experience and the authority that experience generates (Munby & Russell, 1994) remains strong and has served me well. Today at Queen’s, practicum placements of four to seven weeks continue to be preceded by weeks of classes in which teacher candidates are presented with book knowledge that is, apparently, to be converted by them into craft knowledge (Brown & McIntyre, 1993; Cooper & McIntyre, 1996). That conversion appears to be much more complex than our programs acknowledge. Real changes in practices can be threatening to teacher educators as well as to teachers. Personally, I have found that well-thought-out and well-supported change is rarely perceived as threatening by students.

It is my hope that self-study methodology (LaBoskey, 2004) and the self-studies reported in this journal will go beyond our individual classrooms to encourage significant change in the structure of our teacher education programs and in the quality of teacher candidates’ professional learning. As we study our teacher education practices, I suggest that we need to be particularly attentive to the changes we make (and do not make) and to the insights that lead to and support our changes.

In closing, I extend special thanks to Dr. Fernando Murillo, now working at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. In the last 15 issues (volumes 11 to 15) of Studying Teacher Education, every article has included an abstract in Spanish as well as in English. I first met Fernando in 2010 when he served as my translator for a full week on my first visit to Chile. Fernando is impresssively bilingual and has graciously provided the journal with translations of abstracts during and after his four years as a PhD student at the University of British Columbia. We have decided to at least temporarily halt the provision of abstracts in Spanish. There is no easy way to determine if abstracts in two languages have been helpful to those whose first or only language is Spanish. If any readers have comments on this change, please share your thoughts with me by email. To Fernando we say ‘¡Muchisimas gracias!’

Thanks to the many activities I have enjoyed in Chile since working with Fernando, there is now a book (Russell, Fuentealba, & Hirmas, 2017) that contains 11 articles in Spanish that were previously published in Studying Teacher Education; that book can be downloaded from the OEI.CL website at https://oei.cl/Oei/Noticia/formadores-de-formadores-descubriendo-la-propia-voz. I look forward to following this journal’s contributions to the development of research in self-studies of teacher education practices.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.