Editors’ Notes

Dialogue as a pedagogical practice is a central tenet in the scholarship of many critical educators (e.g., Delpit, 1988; Freire, 1970; Jones, 1999; Milner, 2003). Freire (1970) contended that dialogue must inform praxis, which he defined as “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (p. 49), if education was to create true intellectual liberation. Milner (2003), building on Freire, encouraged the use of “critically engaged dialogue” (p. 200) with preservice teachers as an approach to help them think deeply about issues of race in American education. Both educators recognize that the language of pedagogy can profoundly shift perspectives on complex issues for teachers and students, and dialogue can be a tool for that change. In this issue, two pedagogical innovation and three empirical studies create dialogue among research voices about effective methods and practices of teaching. Also, because this is our last issue, each of the four editors contributed a short section in their own voice that comments on their experiences to create a closing dialogue to our two terms managing Action in Teacher Education (ATE).

In the first pedagogical innovations article, “Preservice Teachers’ Critical Connections to Effective Mathematical Teaching Practices: An Instructional Approach Using Vignettes” Wilkerson, Kerschen, and Shelton focus on a secondary mathematics methods course. Their study illustrates how a using a sequence of vignettes developed around a course focused on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Mathematical Practices (MPs) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Mathematical Teaching Practices (MTPs) in concert with systematic reflection can help preservice teachers prepare to teach mathematics content. The second pedagogical innovations article recommends an alliterative framework (borders, boundaries, barriers, and bridges) and an analogy (seeds) to expand the sociopolitical consciousness of teachers. Stenhouse and Bentley in “Picturing Borders, Boundaries, Barriers, and Bridges and Sowing Seeds of Sociopolitical Consciousness Through Alliteration and Analogy” argue that this framework serves as a catalyst for two shifts in teachers’ consciousness: the first sustains a shift from sympathy to empathy, and the second a shift from individual to institutional and systemic patterns of inequity. Both articles promote innovative teaching practices that will engender thoughtful dialogue about educating teachers.

Laman, Davis, and Henderson report results from a qualitative study in an urban setting framed in culturally sustaining pedagogies. Their research suggests teacher candidates’ relationships among teacher deficit perspectives are related to race and class-based assumptions about children and their families, and about the community in which they lived. Their study has important implications for student learning. Lillo’s “Acknowledging Potential in Preservice Teachers’ Collaborative Practices” forges an innovative framework centered on cohesion to examine relationships between preservice teachers’ peer relationships and course content in their preparation program. Lillo positions her findings as unexpected and reminds readers of the value of “listening” to data to remain open to rich, unexpected outcomes from research projects. The final study, “Clinical Pedagogy and Pathways of Clinical Pedagogical Practice: A Conceptual Framework for Teaching about Teaching in Clinical Experiences” shares results organized around six clinical skills—noticing, ignoring, intervening, pointing, unpacking, and processing—and argues for the salience of sequencing these skills for effective clinical experiences. Burns and Badiali’s research makes a cogent argument for the complexity of teaching in a clinical setting, indicating it is a “third space” between school and university settings. The five studies in this issue create a Freirean dialogue that questions how we as a field conceptualize processes of sequencing, framing, and collaborating and how these concepts inform learning for preservice and inservice teachers. We hope the questions these authors pose will reverberate deeply with ATE readers.

Our last section includes narratives from each editor describing aspects of their editorial experience. We end our ATE editorship with a dialogue among voices.

Elizabeth White

I have served as an Editor for Action in Teacher Education for the past 2 years. Being part of the Editorial Team has been an enriching experience, as it has given me an opportunity to better understand the editorial process and engage in scholarly dialogue with colleagues. Editing for Action in Teacher Education has also helped me develop as a scholar and deepened my knowledge of research on teacher preparation and education. I would like to thank reviewers for taking the time to provide thoughtful and critical reviews and to my wonderful coeditors for their collegiality, insights, and expertise. It has been a pleasure to work with and learn from each of you!

Kyle Miller

For the past 2 years, I served as a coeditor with Action in Teacher Education. This experience helped me grow as a scholar and was one of the most valuable experiences I can report as a faculty member. First, serving as a coeditor helped to complete the picture of the peer-review process. In many ways, it demystified how journals determine which articles will make it to publication and how many perspectives contribute to the process. This understanding has benefited me greatly as an author and a reviewer in how to articulate one’s research process, and how to strengthen the work of other scholars through specific and honest feedback. Second, this experience helped me grow as an educator and instructor.. Reviewing a wide range of articles for ATE always made me think of the opening in A Tale of Two Cities :“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” This opening seems to summarize the current landscape of education. The empirical studies located and named many of the challenges we face in teacher education, but with hopeful recommendations and examples of how we can overcome these challenges. Further, the Pedagogical Innovations offered new ways of approaching the teaching and learning process that stretched my thinking about my pedagogical practices. I would like to thank my coeditors for including me in this process and supporting my growth as a scholar and educator.

Lara Handsfield

My experience coediting Action in Teacher Education has sent my scholarly gaze inward and outward simultaneously. Inward: The privilege of reading and adjudicating countless manuscripts in the field; closely attending to and critiquing methodologies, theoretical framings, and interpretations; and synthesizing the voices of reviewers has heightened my awareness and reflexivity regarding my research processes, including my own idiosyncrasies and strengths as a writer. Outward: To engage with scholarship and the ATE community from the vantage point of coeditor has helped me to stretch the boundaries of my own scholarly pursuits. The effect has been humbling (my own research is but a blip in the larger sphere of teacher education research!) and empowering. The ongoing feed of alternative methodologies and interpretations and cutting-edge research findings that the editorship has provided inspire me to look beyond my present work to new problems and insights in the field. Our editorial processes were dialogical, critical, and constructive for us and, I hope, for the authors with whom we have worked for the past six years. I am not only a better researcher for years editing ATE; I am also a better teacher educator. And for this I am grateful.

Tom Crumpler

When we took on the editorship of Action in Teacher Education 6 years ago, I knew it was an opportunity to help make a difference in research in teacher education. I am thankful to the Association for Teacher Educators (ATE) for supporting our editorship through both terms, and it has been a pleasure to work with such excellent ATE colleagues. Serving as editor has deepened my knowledge about challenges of effectively educating preservice teachers and the complex work of supporting professionals in classrooms; it has increased my awareness of how an emphasis on accountability for teachers also raised new political issues about assessing teachers; it has expanded my understanding of clinical experiences in teacher education programs and helped me recognize that we still need to know more about relationships between theory and practice; and, perhaps most importantly, editing this journal reminded me how much work still must be done to diversify the teaching force in American education. Raised awareness about these topics are gifts from authors published in this journal for which I am grateful. Working with my friends and coeditors, Dr. Beth White, Dr. Kyle Miller, and Dr. Lara Handsfield has been a rare opportunity for rich dialogue, and I am a better writer and reader as a result of their company. Finally, we are pleased to welcome the new team from the University of Nevada Las Vegas and wish them much success as they begin their tenure as editors of this journal.