One of the most important roles of editors involves envisioning what will interest current and potential readers. When founding editors John Loughran and Tom Russell approached Routledge with a proposal to launch Studying Teacher Education, they had to identify a subject (self-study of teacher education practices), an audience (teacher educators, beginning with the S-STEP community but extending to all teacher educators), and ways in which such a journal would benefit its readers. As the editors of a successful journal now publishing its 14th volume, we continue to consider what will interest and benefit regular and prospective readers.
The readership is diverse and changing. Dedicated subscribers may read the journal cover-to-cover while regular readers of the print version may browse topics of interest. Electronic readers are often drawn to particular articles by the author names, article titles and keywords. Those new to self-study may find all the articles fresh and insightful, while established readers may be looking for new ideas and fresh perspectives on perennial themes.
As editors, we attend to these issues through the selection and development of articles that advance the field. While thoughtful and well-written submissions are always valued, manuscripts that speak to current concerns or shed light on new contexts are particularly valued, as are ones that offer fresh theoretical and methodological approaches. In this Editorial, we illustrate our vision of the readership through a fictional account of a regular reader sitting down with this issue of the journal.
Robin, a teacher educator for 10 years, has long enjoyed reading Studying Teacher Education. It is summer in the Northern Hemisphere and Robin is feeling relaxed without the pressure of daily classes. As she pours her second cup of coffee, she looks forward to reading the August 2018 issue that recently arrived on her desk. Many articles over the years have resonated with her experiences and fostered her development as a practitioner and scholar. Robin hopes that some of the articles in this issue will inform her planning for courses in September and her research agenda for the coming year. A glance at the Table of Contents suggests that the articles are quite varied, with some specifically related to her own work and others of more general interest.
The first two articles involve technology in teacher education. While Robin is no expert on technology, she has incorporated blended learning into many of her courses and has taught the occasional course online. Opening Spaces for Teacher Educator Knowledge in a Faculty Development Program on Blended Learning Course Development, by Ramona Cutri and Erin Whiting of Brigham Young University, captures her attention by describing technology in higher education as “a train coming down the track straight for us general teacher educators” who are not trained in instructional technology. She immediately empathizes with the authors and wonders how they confronted these issues as they developed a blended learning version of their course. She finds the theoretical grounding for faculty development on blended learning approach interesting as it attends to the content expertise of teacher educators, their understanding of authentic pedagogical problems, and their epistemological orientations. She is impressed by the methodological rigour of teacher educators who carefully documented their experiences and systematically coded and analysed the emergent data. As she read their accounts, Robin resonates with their hopes and struggles. Stretching her legs and pondering the article, she is inspired by the revelation that a self-study orientation can promote and facilitate authentic engagement with technology by teacher educators. She pauses to take some notes on how she might better integrate technology into the course she was redeveloping for the coming year.
The title of the second article, Thinking with Posthuman Perspectives in Self-study Research, does not initially sound promising. Before skipping over the article, however, Robin read the abstract. The tensions experienced by the authors – Katie Strom of California State University, East Bay, Tammy Mills of the University of Maine, Linda Abrams of the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation and Charity Dacey of Montclair State University – as they attempted to collaborate authentically online reminded her of some of her critical friendships with colleagues in other countries. The theory of post-humanism, introduced to her by this article, provides an interesting way of thinking about complexities involved in communicating in our increasingly interconnected world. Robin enjoys reading about the team’s authentic interactions at the Herstmonceux Castle conference and takes a moment to think about the critical friends she will reconnect with at the 2018 conference later in the month. She too appreciates “the embodied aspect” of in-person interactions that “reignite a spark for me and my place in this collective group.” She is curious about how the team made the best of their interactions using technology to sustain the relationships developed in person. The authors’ reflections on post-humanism demonstrate that it is indeed possible to have “distributed agency among elements of technology, each other, text, data, and affective flows in the production” of research as individuals and a collective. Robin wondered how she might draw on post-humanism and these stories of experiences as she connects with current and future collaborators at the Castle Conference.
Later in the day, after a pleasant afternoon outdoors, Robin returns to this latest issue of Studying Teacher Education. As cultural diversity is the central theme of one of her courses, she is particularly excited by the next two articles. She is pleased to see the attention of the self-study community to social justice issues. While she would like to see more articles on social justice by scholars of colour and from other parts of the world, the two articles in this issue should be helpful to her as a White teacher educator teaching predominantly White teacher candidates.
Elizabeth Soslau and Nicholas Bell of the University of Delaware explore their own Whiteness and the implications for working with White teacher candidates in The Challenges of Supporting Equity Literacy Scale Development in White Teacher Candidates: A Self-study of Two White Field Instructors. Robin, like the authors and their university, grapples constantly with issues of privilege in order to better prepare teacher candidates for working with racialized and marginalized students. Intrigued by the ways in which the authors use critical whiteness scholarship to unpack their whiteness, she makes note of some of the works cited. The five vignettes at the heart of the article speak to the challenges she herself has faced working in this area. The discussion section raises important issues and some possibilities for addressing them. While the article does not offer definitive solutions, it does encourage Robin to continue her efforts to redesign curriculum with her colleagues in order to more effectively connect with teacher candidates.
Critically Teaching Criticality?: Modelling Social and Pedagogical Inquiry with Literary Texts by Mark D. McCarthy of Michigan State University, nicely complements the previous article. McCarthy delves more deeply into how teacher educators can use critical pedagogy to inquire into the experiences that inform their practice. While Robin does not use literary texts in the courses she teaches, the process outlined for developing a critical purpose is useful for her as she ponders sociocultural questions in her own context. The theoretical framework offers some new perspectives for Robin, while the section on data sources and analysis suggests alternative ways of thinking about student journals. The choice of literary texts related to the Islamic world draws Robin in, as Islamophobia is an issue that she and her teacher candidates regularly confront. While Robin tries to be culturally responsive, she shares with McCarthy concerns about the effectiveness of preaching critical multiculturalism. She nods her head vigorously as the author acknowledges that his critically-sound teaching choices may have “produced patterns of discourse that supported held beliefs of superficial change.” She underlines “teaching is a reflexive, complicated conversation regarding pedagogy and society” and re-commits to promoting inquiry by teacher candidates that disrupts naïveté and “misalignments between their intention and their practice.” As she closes the journal for the evening, Robin is grateful to S-STEP as a discourse community that integrates theory, practice and reflection as a strategy for understanding complex educational issues.
The next morning, Robin sits down to read the final two articles. She is initially concerned that these articles might be of limited interest as she is not involved in health and physical education. What’s the Middle Ground? Am I Ever Going to be the Perfect Teacher?: Self-study of a Doctoral Student’s Acculturation Process by Shrehan Lynch, K. Andrew R. Richards and Colin Pennington of the University of Alabama intrigues her due to the cross-cultural dimension of an English physical educator adapting to meet the needs of American teacher candidates. The use of acculturation theory as a frame for understanding and means of structuring the findings is illuminating. Robin is able to relate to the first author’s experiences as a new university teacher and finds the analysis based on acculturation theory to be transferable to the challenges that all teacher educators face. Considering Lynch’s transformation through the process of self-study reaffirms Robin's continuing journey toward greater personal awareness and adaptability as a teacher educator. The line “Shrehan developed an understanding of her future role as a teacher educator and became comfortable with the realization that her identity will continue to evolve, change, and adapt through her career” makes Robin think of her new colleague who might benefit from reading this story of becoming a teacher educator.
Although Robin is tempted to go for a swim, she decides to first tackle the final article by Chris North, Tracy Clelland and Heather Lindsay of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She is immediately drawn into Phases in Collaboration: Using Schwab's Deliberation to Respond to Change in Teacher Education because she too has experienced significant curriculum change due to program restructuring. She recalls that “collaboration is challenging” and admires the three authors for sharing their experiences in such a thoughtful manner. Robin was exposed to Schwab’s commonplaces many years ago and is delighted to see them used in a self-study. She nods her head many times as she reads the authors' accounts of their process of deliberation and change. She finds the excerpts from their journals to be authentic and the lessons shared about deliberation to be very useful for all teacher educators grappling with change. Robin is glad that there are no major program changes in the coming year, but she files away in her mind the application of Schwab to curriculum development, as she knows that teacher education takes place in a constantly changing world. Self-study, she thinks with a smile as she heads to the beach, helps her address these challenges purposefully and hopefully.