Editors’ Notes

As we write this note, the annual celebration of Lunar New Year is coming to a close throughout the world’s Asian and Pacific Islander communities. We extend our congratulations for the incoming Year of the Ox while pausing a moment to consider the trauma of the preceding Year of the Rat. In addition to the somber advance of COVID-19–more than half a million deaths in the United States alone, as of this writing–this year has seen a tremendous increase in racially motivated hate crimes among all minoritized groups and notably against the 21 million Americans who are Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islanders. The San Francisco-based community organization Stop AAPI Hate received nearly 4,000 such incidents in the U.S. from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021 targeting Asians and Asian Americans. The recent brutal killing of six Asian women in Atlanta on March 16, 2021 heightened longstanding anti-AAPI hate crimes, and has galvanized AAPI communities in solidarity against hate and discrimination. As teacher educators, we must recognize that anti-AAPI hate, although recently encouraged by some political leaders to avoid blame for their own failure to address the pandemic, is built into our society through a long history of exclusion, discrimination, and violence, and at times encouraged to thrive within the U.S. educational system (Chang, 1993; Han, 2014; Matsuda, 1991). It is our responsibility as teacher educators to promote high-quality equitable education for ALL teachers and students no matter race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, learning ability, religion, national origin or background; it is also our responsibility to recognize, call out, and take action to correct the injustices besetting the communities in which our teachers, and their students, live, teach, and learn (Ball & Ladson-Billings, 2020; Zeichner, 2020).

With the backdrop of continued societal challenges and opportunities, we present eight articles in Issue 43(2), that explore important teacher education topics ranging from teacher educators’ self-efficacy in addressing LGBTQ issues, teacher educators’ effort to implement a funds of knowledge approach, teacher residency programs’ claims of legitimacy and approaches to define success, and the impact of teacher education programs on prospective teachers as well as their students. Methodologically, these articles provide examples of mixed-methods and qualitative case studies that have the potential to advance research and practice in teacher education.

Our first article, “Grappling with Funds of Knowledge in Rural Appalachia and Beyond: Shifting Contexts of Pre-Service Teachers,” authored by Melissa Sherfinski, Sharon Hayes, Jing Zhang and Mariam Jalalifard, presents a case study of teacher educators’ effort to implement a Funds of Knowledge approach in a rural Appalachian teacher education program. The authors adopt Bakhtin’s theory of polyvocality to examine how White pre-service teachers (PSTs) in rural Appalachia attempted to “grapple” with funds of knowledge during student teaching and in diversified settings after graduation. Results indicate that many PSTs could not engage with funds of knowledge because they had a simplified and incomplete understanding of funds of knowledge and saw the rural Appalachian children and families they worked with through a deficit lens. In further follow-ups with the PSTs after they entered teaching, the researchers found that former PSTs remaining in rural and Appalachian contexts showed emergent knowledge of funds of knowledge. However, those who moved to urban or suburban contexts with many students of color focused on order, discipline, and the control of bodies in without grappling with important issues related to funds of knowledge. On the basis of the findings, the authors provided important practice and policy considerations to support PSTs to understand the complexities of rural places and, more importantly, to transfer knowledge of funds of knowledge from their student teaching to new settings in their future teaching.

In “Queering Teacher Education: Teacher Educators’ Self-Efficacy in Addressing LGBTQ Issues,” authors Cathy Brant and Lara Willox explore teacher educators’ self-efficacy in addressing LGBTQ issues. Data included 232 teacher educators’ responses to a survey exploring their self-efficacy in working with LGBTQ students, teaching about LGBTQ events/figures, and helping preservice teachers reduce their prejudice about LGBTQ individuals. The authors applied Queer Theory to understand how the role heteronormativity plays in the lives and experiences of teacher educators. Findings include that few teacher educators addressed LGBTQ individuals and topics as a part of their methods courses, they had a moderately high sense of self-efficacy in working with LGBTQ students but lower self-efficacy in teaching LGBTQ-focused content, and they needed more information regarding the LGBTQ-focused content. In addition to integrating LBGTQ-focused content into teacher education curricula, the authors argue that teacher educators should work with their students to critically examine how heteronormativity operates and how it silences the experiences of LGBTQ individuals.

In “What Makes Teacher Preparation Legitimate? An Analysis of Teacher Residency Websites”, authors Emilie Mitescu Reagan, Joonkil Ahn, Rachel Roegman, and Laura Vernikoff conduct a content analysis of a random sample of 20 teacher residency program websites to analyze the claims of legitimacy made by these programs. Results suggest that, regardless of the institutional emplacement and partnership approach of the programs, claims to legitimacy tended to follow three strategies: claims based on program innovation, claims based on program association with partners, and claims based on program data. To be specific, legitimacy by innovation means teacher residency programs framed themselves as innovative teacher education providers that are different from the so-called “traditional” and “alternative” ones. Legitimacy by association means programs made claims through their association with medical residencies, prestigious institutions, and communities where K-12 schools are located. Finally, legitimacy by data means the residency programs used student outcome data from partner schools, resident survey data, and residency alumni retention data to make claims of legitimacy of their programs but failed to prove a direct correlation between the data and the residency programs. Through this analysis, the authors raise important questions regarding the extent to which teacher residency programs, or any new models of teacher preparation, can truly innovate within the field of teacher preparation.

Our fourth article, “Through Failure and Reflection: Conceptualization of a Successful Teacher Residency Experience” by David Marshall, Michael Scott, and Guofang Wan, explores how the stakeholders of a teacher residency program define teacher resident success during the residency year. Grounded in a qualitative case study using interviews with faculty, residency program staff, mentor teachers, and program graduates, findings reveal that stakeholders defined success as the residents’ ability to fail, reflect, and learn from mistakes. Results also emphasize that stakeholders define success through residents’ ability to build relationships with students, parents, mentor teachers, other teachers, administrators, and peers as well as their teacher identity development. Important implications for teacher educators include creating space for authentic reflection and a supportive culture for prospective teachers to take risks to fail and learn from failures.

Our fifth article, “Perceptions of Self-Efficacy in Mixed Reality Simulations,” authored by Erik Gundel and Jody Piro, is a multiple case study of the self-efficacy beliefs of pre-service teachers participating in a teacher education curriculum using mixed reality simulation experiences. On the basis of qualitative data from a purposeful sampling of 49 student participants and five professional participants, the authors found that mixed reality simulation supports self-efficacy development through mastery experiences, vicarious learning experiences, social persuasion, and the development of physiological and affective states. Within the mixed reality simulation, student participants underwent moments of mastery as they assumed the role of the teacher, observed their peers via second hand experiences, received social encouragement via feedback from the professional learning community, and learned how to manage their emotion. The authors demonstrate the potential mixed reality simulation experiences have to provide prospective teachers with opportunities to learn from mistakes, developing problem-solving skills and a disposition for teaching needed in real classroom contexts.

Our next article by Sarah Anderson, Brittany Hagen, Kayla Smith, Christopher Whitsel and Stacy Duffield evaluates the impact of new teachers on student learning. In “Multiple Measures of Student Learning: A Case Study Examination of Completer Impact,” the authors conducted a multiple case study of six teacher education graduates 2–3 years after entering the teacher corps through structured interviews as well as a range of student performance data. The findings reveal that a majority of the participants’ students experienced learning growth, suggesting that graduates are making a positive impact on the learning and development of students in their classrooms. At the same time, the authors pointed out that it is not always clear to find out whether student achievement is directly correlated to the teacher, their training, or other complex, intervening factors. Therefore, they call for further dialogue and research to better understand the relationship between program graduates’ teaching, student learning, and teacher preparation program effectiveness.

Our seventh article, “Examining Influences of an Early Whole-School Immersive Field Experience on Preservice Teachers” by Ekaterina Koubek, Amanda Sawyer, Ashley Caron and Meredith Moncure presents a qualitative case study of a Whole-School Immersive Program (WSIP) led by a student organization. Adopting structured focus groups and individual interviews, alumni surveys, and application materials, the authors attempt to understand the longer-term influence of the program on participants. Results demonstrate that the WSIP created a third space between university, schools, and community in which preservice teachers gained a deeper understanding of the school context and self-reflection skills. In addition, early immersive field experience confirmed the students desire (or lack of desire) to enter teaching. This study provides important implications for teacher educators to create third spaces that are more democratic and less hierarchical to prepare future teachers to better support students from diverse communities.

In our last article, “Data Driven Decision Making in Teacher Education: Perceptions of Pre-Service Teachers and Faculty Who Teach Them,” authors Amanda Obery, James Sletten, Rosanna Vallor and Sarah Schmitt-Wilson report on a mixed-methods study of pre-service teachers’ perception of data use in education and the skills required for successful data use by pre-service teachers and their faculty. Based on data from a Likert-scale survey given to pre-service teachers, and semi-structured interviews with pre-service teachers and teacher educators, the authors found that preservice teachers were well disposed toward data use, but unlike their faculty did not understand data on a more abstract, theoretical level, suggesting a need for greater training in data literacy in teacher education programs. Implications for teacher educators include infusing data literacy throughout the curriculum to better prepare future teachers to be data literate as well as focusing on both the theoretical and practical aspects of data-driven decision making.

It should be clear that the eight articles in this issue cover a wide spectrum of teacher education research, from teacher educators, teacher education programs, prospective teachers, to the students of teacher education graduates. We hope that the multiple voices and experiences represented in our articles will provide critical insights for teacher education programs to (re)visit our pedagogy, curriculum, field experiences, and instructional models regarding how to prepare future educators to teach ALL students in increasingly diverse communities.