On February 25, 2017, the Association of Teacher Educators encouraged its members to ask Congress to rescind regulations that concern teacher education. With its communication, the organization affirmed teacher education as a social and political processes. The choices that teacher educators make with regard to curriculum, instruction, standards, and other professional elements have social and political consequences for which they are responsible.
Human development requires awareness and negotiation of various social systems as one cultivates an awareness of place within both proximal and distal contexts (Bronfenbrenner, Citation1979). Each individual makes choices that are shaped by social conditions that he or she inherits. Developmental differences in individual traits and environmental conditions prompt a plethora of strategies and processes by which people navigate their settings (Narvaez, Citation2014). The extent to which a person claims or dismisses responsibility for his or her choices guides the interpretation of his or her life contexts.
Teacher educators also represent the outcomes of their developmental contexts. The manners by which and professional and personal environments shape teacher educators’ identities bear on their willingness and adaptability to conform, dialogue, negotiate, challenge, and/or protest. All of these choices involve different forms of sacrifice that subordinate personal interests for the welfare of the greater good. Such a process requires a critical view of the taken for granted common sense, the acknowledgment and admission of their incomplete knowledge, and receptivity to contributions from all participants (Tupper, Citation2008; Tyler, Citation2013).
Teacher educators occupy a profession that serves as a developmental context for teacher candidates who proceed through its programs. As members of the academy, teacher educators possess the privilege of academic and scholarly freedom and responsibility to challenge and invite teacher candidates to realize that the nature of education has meaning beyond the standards created by political and professional bodies. How or whether teacher educators prompt teacher candidates to attend to and reshape the various systems that structure their practice speaks to the future of the profession.
The articles presented in Issue 39(3) speak to a number of topics that affect the nature and possible futures of our teacher education community. Beginning with the Pedagogical Innovations piece and six Empirical and Conceptual Studies contributions, this issue offers articles that invite readers to consider the nature of teacher education and the processes of its continual shaping.
The Pedagogical Innovations article, Inquiry in the Round? Education Rounds in a Teacher Residency Program, by Emilie Mitescu Reagan, Rachel Roegman, and A. Lin Goodwin, describes a preparation strategy commonplace in the medical field, yet receiving less attention in teacher preparation. The article describes the advantages and challenges of the Rounds Model and accounts of student experiences.
The first Empirical and Conceptual Studies article, Case-Based Instruction to Teach Educators about the Legal Parameters Surrounding the Discipline of Students with Disabilities, by Janet R. Decker and Barbara L. Pazey, describes the importance of teaching about the law and its applications. The authors point out that teachers lack formal training in education law and its applications and risk depriving students of their legal rights. They provide example cases to illustrate the legal issues that teachers may encounter and recommend the use of case studies in teacher preparation.
In the next work, Developing and Maintaining Inclusive Identities: Understanding Student Teaching through de Certeau’s Framework of Tactics and Strategies, Carrie E. Rood and Christine Ashby consider how graduate teacher education students applied their knowledge of university learning within the context of a professional setting that did not model the principles taught. The article considers students’ identity formation constructed through their tactical strategies as they apply instructional techniques taught at the university.
Sandra I. Musanti, in Challenging Inquiry and Building Community: Analyzing ESL and Bilingual Teachers’ Narratives informs readers about the development of community within ESL/bilingual teaching contexts. The importance of this article lies within its illumination of the support processes necessary to cultivate nurturing environments for culturally and linguistically diverse students.
The following article, Lessons from Two Exemplary Latin@ Teachers of Emergent Bilingual Learners: How All Preservice Teachers Can Be Prepared to Teach Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students, by Leanne M. Evans represents a complementary work to the article by Musanti. Evans’s analysis finds three characteristics (philosophy of relationship building, choices through shared knowledge, and commitment to community expansion) as supporting the strengths and needs of their students.
Interdisciplinary strategies represent the basis of research in Love It, Like It, or Leave It – Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Field-Based Perspectives toward the Integration of Literature in Mathematics by Suzanne M. Nesmith, Barbara Purdum-Cassady, Sandi Cooper, and Rachelle D. Rogers. The authors describe how preservice teachers perceived the integration of literature in their mathematics teaching positively, yet with different degrees of depth.
The final article is Examining Collaboration in Teacher Preparation and Clinical Practice, by Anthony Pellegrino and Margaret P. Weiss. Their scholarship points to the importance of a focus on strategies for collaboration in teacher education and provides a basis for further research.
All of the articles in this issue challenge us as teacher educators to think seriously about possible professional futures, equitable learning systems, complexities of teacher identity, and the types of knowledge communities we seek to create. The work to move us toward these new spaces will depend on teacher educators’ opposition to the systemic conditions of injustice present within academic, social, professional, and professional environments. We appreciate the opportunity to provide you with the articles in this issue. They deepened our thinking, and we hope they will inspire yours as well.
References
- Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
- Tupper, J. (2008). Interrogating citizenship and democracy in education. The implications of disrupting universal values. In. D. Lund & P. Carr (Eds.). Doing democracy. Striving for political literacy and social justice (pp. 71–84). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
- Tyler, T. (2013). The psychology of cooperation. Implications for public policy. In E. Shafer (Ed.). The behavioral foundations of social policy (pp. 77–90). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.