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As attacks on teacher education mount, teacher educators have been urged to take a more active part in policy deliberations. Yet the question of how teacher educators get their voices heard in poli...

The Association of Teacher Educators Reflectivity Commission was established in 2004. This literature review updates the Commission’s work by examining 24 empirical research articles publis...

As EdD programs are revised across the United States, it is important to understand how the development of innovative approaches to these degrees gains traction in higher education settings, especially those with a history of traditional PhD preparation. In this article, we describe the creation of a job-embedded online EdD program designed as a professional practice doctorate for full-time education practitioners. The nature of the program, the challenges that we have confronted, and our emerging strategies for addressing challenges contribute to the conversation about changing paradigms of doctoral preparation.

The purpose of this study was to understand the ways virtual school teachers experienced professional development framed as a year-long collaborative action research endeavour. These virtual school teachers taught completely online courses for a large virtual school and did not reside within the same geographical location. Thus, the professional development was supported by the use of various synchronous and asynchronous technology tools. This study provides insights into what constitutes powerful online professional learning opportunities not only for virtual school teachers, but for their traditional face-to-face school counterparts, as well as the ways synchronous and asynchronous technology tools can be utilized to scaffold professional learning.

This study examined the nature of thirty virtual educators' action research questions during a yearlong action research professional development experience within a large, state-funded virtual school. Virtual educators included instructional personnel (i.e., individuals responsible for teaching virtual courses) and noninstructional personnel (i.e., individuals responsible for other roles in the virtual school such as administration or course design.) Action research questions emerge from the intersection of educators' professional contexts and their real-world challenges or passions and analyzing the nature of these questions provided a glimpse into the priorities and practices of the participating instructional and noninstructional virtual educators. Studying completion rates and personalizing the curriculum were trends within questions posed by instructional personnel whereas noninstructional personnel primarily focused on macrolevel issues within the virtual schools, such as communication. Future resea...

Despite the profound impact of action research coaches on teachers’ experiences of the inquiry process, little research exists in the field regarding the coach’s role. In this exploratory study, two groups of action research coaches – one novice and one experienced – share their experiences of coaching inquiry during the 2009/10 school year. Out of the focus group interviews conducted with each group of coaches, four challenges arose that spanned across the coaching of both groups, despite the level of experience: time, coaching wondering development, coaching data analysis and administration. Implications and future research directions based on this work are discussed.

In this article the four coauthors share the process of moving a paper from a conference presentation to a manuscript that is acceptable for publication. The first two authors discuss the ways in which an experienced teacher educator mentored an emerging scholar through the submission process. The last two authors discuss the editors’ role in shaping the final version.

This qualitative study was designed to examine teachers’ and principals’ perceptions of the impact of a graduate program designed to prepare teacher leaders. Impact was investigated through interviews with 20 graduates and 6 principals. Using Mezirow’s concept of transformational learning, the study documents perceived transformation of teachers’ frames of reference: two related to teaching (adopt an inquiry stance; learn to view oneself as an autonomous professional), and two related to leadership (adopt a leadership stance; view student learning as a communal responsibility). The study includes implications for the design of graduate level teacher education programs to enhance their impact and effectiveness.

Given the increasing challenges faced by high-poverty urban schools, mentoring has become the panacea for policy makers interested in a quick-fix solution to the teacher quality dilemma. As a result, mentoring programs have experienced exponential growth with little empirical attention during the last decade. This 16-month qualitative investigation within a large city in the northeastern United States, sought to better understand the work of mentors in high-poverty urban schools. Analysis of the data collected led to the identification of three assertions that highlight the interplay that occurs in the urban teacher mentoring context between four critical concepts: novice teacher survival, novice teacher success, onus of responsibility, and a social justice stance. Implications are discussed related to the need for adequate resources, placement, and preparation of mentors in high-poverty schools. Additionally, the study also asserts the role that a passion for or a disposition toward social justice plays ...

(2008). Resisting ‘Crash Diet’ Staff Development. Kappa Delta Pi Record: Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 66-71.

National agencies advocate the use of field experiences to help prepare teachers to integrate technology in their classrooms. However, prospective teachers often fail to synthesise the integration of technology with the complexities of teaching during such experiences. This study suggests teacher inquiry, a strategy for helping educators systematically and intentionally study their own practice, provides important benefits for prospective teachers participating in curriculum-based, technology-enhanced field experiences. Specifically, this study explores whether or not engagement in teacher inquiry can promote conceptual change related to teaching with technology. Thirteen inquiries conducted by prospective teachers in six elementary schools were analysed and one instrumental case was identified. The case exemplifies how curriculum-based, technology-enhanced field experiences and teacher inquiry may coalesce to support conceptual change for prospective teachers. In fact, the marriage of curriculum-based, technology-enhanced field experiences and teacher inquiry embodies research-based conditions necessary for conceptual change. Teacher inquiry is widely recognised and supported in the general teacher education literature yet its use by prospective teachers in curriculum-based, technology-enhanced field experiences is novel. This exploratory study highlights its potential and encourages further research into its usefulness as a tool to prepare the next generation of teachers to be effective technology-using educators.

Having facilitated, read, and collected more than 200 teacher research pieces written by prospective and practicing teachers, the authors conducted a systematic analysis of the domains and contents of teachers' questions as they embarked on their first research study. Focusing on the questions teachers ask led to the generation of a typology of “six passions” for teacher inquiry: An individual child; curriculum; teaching strategies and techniques; beliefs about management, teaching, and learning; personal and professional identity; and teaching and learning context. This article shares examples of teacher research in each of the six passions and the process of locating questions for teacher research efforts.

This phenomenological interview study identifies the insights and experiences of one early childhood teacher, Anna, through her recollection of becoming an early childhood teacher leader and an advocate for social justice. This study falls at the nexus of the literature in early childhood education (ECE), teacher leadership, and social justice as the researchers seek to understand the lived experiences of a teacher, who is committed to each of these three activities. As a result, the purpose of this exploratory study was to understand how the early childhood teacher might define, understand and play out leadership roles in her position. Two assertions emerge from the merging of themes into categories and categories into assertions. The first assertion describes the importance of experiences in childhood and how they are directly linked to the way one perceives, understands, and carries out leadership in early childhood settings. The second assertion outlines how the visions of leadership in early childhoo...

This 18-month ethnographic study provides a snapshot of teachers’ use of space and voice as they work in a newly formed Professional Development School (PDS) committed to shared responsibility for teacher education and developing a culture of simultaneous renewal through inquiry. The study identified the tensions produced when a PDS functions within a hierarchically organized district where teachers do not feel empowered to participate in decisions beyond their classroom and where mandates and standardization drive teachers’ work. This work informs those new to PDS work of ways teachers may first occupy the new spaces PDS work creates for teachers to be decision makers and teacher educators. Implications for the future of teachers’ work within partnerships focused on reform are discussed.

In recent years, there has been a move to reconceptualize teacher education from a set of technical skills prospective teachers must master and subsequently demonstrate during field experiences to a more reflective and critical examination of one's own teaching practices. Reflection can be seen as a way to integrate one's technical, scientific knowledge of teaching with the values, beliefs, and experiences that form one's personal knowledge of teaching. Bowman (1989) argues that this subjective knowledge base needs to be legitimized in order to fully understand the teaching process.