Developing Teacher Identities as In Situ Teacher Educators through Communities of Practice

This paper presents an arts-integrated process for teacher educators to engage their students in critical thinking, meaning-making, and knowledge construction in order to enable pre-service teachers to analyze metanarratives that inform their teacher identities. The research team used the Parallaxic Praxis research model to frame its art-making investigations in a practice-based research process. The three researchers each created an artefact as part of their individual inquiry of the data set, comprising 90 material cloaks created by pre-service teachers, to enter into dialogue addressing the prevailing metanarratives expressed by the pre-service teacher participants.

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Structuring Disruption within University-Based Teacher Education Programs1: Possibilities and Challenges of Race-Based Caucuses

Teachers College Record ◽

10.1177/016146811912100606 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 121 (6) ◽

pp. 1-34 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Manka Varghese ◽

Julia R. Daniels ◽

Caryn C. Park

Keyword(s):

Teacher Education ◽

Education Program ◽

Teacher Candidates ◽

Teacher Educators ◽

Teacher Education Program ◽

Teaching Profession ◽

Teacher Identities ◽

White Teacher ◽

Race And Racialization ◽

Emotion Labor

Background Teacher education candidates are in different places in terms of developing their identities and relationships to equity and social justice. Various approaches have been taken within university-based teacher education programs to engage with candidates, wherever they are in this development. One such approach has been engaging or drawing on teachers’ own lenses, especially through challenging and understanding their racialized selves. Purpose This conceptual article examines how race-based caucuses (RBCs) in one teacher education program attempted to shift candidates’ understandings of their racialized selves as related to their teacher identities. Context RBCs were instituted in one elementary teacher education program to help White teacher candidates and candidates of Color construct critical teacher identities. Candidates were asked to participate in caucuses according to the ways they had been racialized within schools. Facilitators who demonstrated a willingness to sit with the work of engaging race and racialization led the caucuses. Observances For the candidates of Color, the “overwhelming presence of Whiteness” in the teacher education program and in the schools required the RBCs to focus on reframing deficit narratives of teachers of Color to an asset-based view of their value and contribution to the teaching profession. The RBC provided space for White teacher candidates to explore the consequences of Whiteness for their future identities as teachers and for the kinds of communities that they could and wanted to cultivate with students. Messiness and challenges abounded in both RBCs. Discussion and Reflections Emotions—and especially emotion labor—were central to RBCs. For teacher candidates of Color, facing one's own oppression was painful but also presented opportunities for them to articulate emotions and experiences in relatively safe spaces. In a different way, the RBCs resulted in significant emotional upheaval for White teacher candidates that shifted into deeper self-reflection and sense of awareness and allyship (for some)— although in a few cases, RBCs led to even deeper resistance. Conclusions Race-based caucusing is a messy and challenging practice that can provide opportunities to reflect constructively on emotions and produce emotional upheaval for teacher candidates. Teacher educators and programs must approach RBCs with an orientation toward hyperreflexivity.

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The Shared Reflective Practice of Co-Planning an Undergraduate Education Course between Online and Face-To-Face Teacher Educators

Journal of Scholarly Engagement ◽

10.9743/jeo.2019.2.1.4 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Katy Sell ◽

Brandon Juarez

Keyword(s):

Communities Of Practice ◽

Reflective Practice ◽

Undergraduate Education ◽

Teacher Educators ◽

Planning Process ◽

Contextual Information ◽

Theoretical Underpinning ◽

Face To Face ◽

Communication Challenges ◽

Qualitative Nature

The current paper presents a reflective account of two teacher educators, from different instructional modalities, co-planning an undergraduate face-to-face education course. Wenger’s writing around communities of practice provided the theoretical underpinning for the reflections put forward and contextual information regarding how the co-planning transpired. From a critical standpoint, observations and reflections related to the communication, challenges (and successes), and pedagogical decision-making between education colleagues are considered. Three central challenges are explored through the reflective lens: length of course between modalities, norming and autonomy, and scheduling between teacher educators to co-plan throughout the academic face-to-face semester. The qualitative nature of the study provides thick and rich detail pertaining to the shared reflections of the two teacher educators. The paper concludes with recommendations surrounding the continued exploration of how the instructional modality plays part in the co-planning process. Keywords: Teacher educators, modalities, higher education, co-planning, reflective practice

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"Go for Broke and Speak Your Mind!" Building a Community of Practice with Bilingual Pre-Service Teachers

The Qualitative Report ◽

10.46743/2160-3715/2014.1293 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Hyesun Cho

Keyword(s):

Teacher Preparation ◽

Communities Of Practice ◽

Community Of Practice ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

Teacher Educators ◽

Classroom Community ◽

Teacher Preparation Program ◽

Teacher Preparation Programs ◽

Preparation Programs ◽

Mutual Engagement

Despite the popularity of communities of practice (CoP) in education, there is a paucity of research on teacher preparation programs that are deliberately created to build and sustain CoP to help bilingual pre-service teachers’ learning. This qualitative study describes how a community of practice was purposefully developed in a teacher preparation program for bilingual undergraduates in Hawaii. Using multiple forms of qualitative data, such as classroom transcripts, interviews, online discussion posts, and reflection journals, I illustrate how a cohort of pre-service teachers and their instructor created a facilitative and reflective classroom community of practice. Using narrative inquiry and thematic analysis, I identified two overarching contextual conditions that provided a favorable learning environment for student participation: (1) sustained support and rapport within a cohort, and (2) narratives as a process of mutual engagement. Findings suggest teacher educators purposefully create CoP for pre-service teachers around shared narratives in order to foster sustained critical reflections.

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Transnational Communities of Practice: Their Development, Operation, and Contribution

Journal of Studies in International Education ◽

10.1177/1028315320964314 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 102831532096431

Author(s):

Meredith Tharapos ◽

Brendan T. O’Connell

Keyword(s):

Communities Of Practice ◽

International Education ◽

Social Relationships ◽

Situated Learning ◽

Teaching And Learning ◽

Transnational Communities ◽

Faculty Teaching ◽

University Systems

Critical to the successful maintenance and survival of a transnational education partnership is the role of faculty. Our study documents the operational and social relationships between faculty teaching transnationally. Through interviews and observation, we find that informal communities of practice (CoP) spontaneously evolve, serving to improve faculty’s teaching and learning practice while in situ. The key to CoP effectiveness is members’ cultural intelligence and adoption of a reflective practice. These findings have significant implications for university internationalization practices. CoP should be nurtured and encouraged to develop organically in a transnational environment, and formally supported by university systems and processes. Furthermore, we recommend universities facilitate development of faculty cross-cultural capabilities. Our study contributes to international education and CoP literature through its rich and detailed portrayal of the development and operation of CoP, and mapped member participation, in a culturally distant situated learning environment.

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Supporting Mathematics Teacher Educators’ Growth and Development Through Communities of Practice

Research in Mathematics Education - The Learning and Development of Mathematics Teacher Educators ◽

10.1007/978-3-030-62408-8_8 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 147-166

Author(s):

Dana Olanoff ◽

Joanna O. Masingila ◽

Patrick M. Kimani

Keyword(s):

Communities Of Practice ◽

Mathematics Teacher ◽

Growth And Development ◽

Teacher Educators ◽

Mathematics Teacher Educators

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How Do Language Learning, Teaching, and Transnational Experiences (Re)shape an EFLer’s Identities? A Critical Ethnographic Narrative

SAGE Open ◽

10.1177/21582440211031211 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 215824402110312

Author(s):

Yang Gao

Keyword(s):

Identity Development ◽

Language Learning ◽

Teacher Educators ◽

Language Socialization ◽

Life Experience ◽

Global Citizen ◽

Teacher Identities ◽

Multiple Identity ◽

Identity System ◽

Critical Thinker

Using critical ethnographic narrative as a tool and language socialization as the theoretical stance, the article analyzes excerpts of a language teacher’s life experience and presents findings to join the existing literature. The article indicates that (a) transnational teacher identities develop in a multiple-identity system including identities as an L2 learner, teacher, user, critical thinker, and global citizen; (b) the identity development is not completely staged, but instead recurring; (c) the emergence, formation, and development of the identity system requires translanguaging, transcultural, and transnational capitals, which are accrued through socializing experiences; and (d) critical thinking and intellectual agency work as stimuli to sustain the identity development. The article contributes to the existing literature by presenting a conceptual framework in studying language teacher identities. This article ends up with some advocacy that identity as a pedagogy and tool may provide teacher educators with something innovative and helpful to conduct research in the field.

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Identity Performance and Negotiation of Multilingual English Language Teachers in New Zealand - A Multiple Case Study

10.26686/wgtn.14853936.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Polpiti Acharige Apsara Kalpanie Wimalasiri

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

English Language ◽

Teacher Educators ◽

Language Education ◽

Language Teachers ◽

Language Teacher ◽

Teacher Identities ◽

Stimulated Recall ◽

English Language Teachers ◽

Interactional Functions

Identity is constituted in and through language (Norton, 2005) demonstrating social, political and cultural ideologies of individual selves in interaction. Exploring identities of individuals as language users, learners and teachers allows linguistic and applied linguistic researchers to disclose meanings behind complex language related behaviours. This supports insights for the development of language education. In the current study, I explore identity performance and identity negotiation of multilingual English language teachers (MELTs) in New Zealand (NZ). I define MELTs as English language teachers who speak any other language(s) in addition to English. Exploring how MELTs perform and negotiate their identities in NZ is important due to several factors. First, people in society have various ideological assumptions regarding multilingual teachers involved in teaching English in an English speaking country; therefore, MELTs are required to negotiate their linguistic and social identities to suit the expectations of the institutions and students they serve. Secondly, there is no known study in NZ focused on MELT identities, even though the population of NZ is diverse, comprised of multilingual communities. Thirdly, revealing identity negotiation of MELTs supports language teacher educators to understand language teacher identities with regard to classroom realities. This provides insights to develop language teacher education programmes accordingly. I employed four different research methods: semi-structured narrative interviews, identity portraits and classroom observations followed by stimulated recall sessions to explore how MELTs perform negotiated identities in the classroom (RQ 1) and what ideological and interactional functions are served when they perform negotiated identities (RQ 2). Data from narrative interviews provided insights to understand teacher identities revealed through their biographies and classroom stories. In addition, teachers’ narratives revealed how teacher identities are constructed and positioned while being negotiated in their stories. Identity portraits and the recorded interactions provided insights to understand how teachers make semiotic links to various linguistic and social identities they perform as English language teachers, providing various indexical meanings to those identities. I observed how teachers perform negotiated identities in interaction with students through classroom observations. I also conducted stimulated recall sessions to investigate teacher responses for classroom scenarios. Triangulated data from all the sources generated themes answering the two research questions. The findings of the study show that MELTs perform multiple negotiated identities in interaction with students and myself with reference to the micro and macro social contexts in which they are situated. MELTs also demonstrate positive and negative identity practices in the classroom based on their English language and English language teaching ideologies. Furthermore, MELTs’ identity performances were observed to serve various ideological and interactional functions in the classroom. For instance, their negotiated identities support them practicing either monolingual or multilingual friendly language teaching. Moreover, some MELTs employ their negotiated linguistic identities to translanguage in the classroom, catering to the language needs of multilingual students. They also negotiate their teacher identities based on contextual factors. Thus, the findings of my study support language teacher educators, researchers and administrators to understand the contribution of MELTs towards English language education in New Zealand.

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Science and mathematics teacher communities of practice: social influences on discipline-based identity and self-efficacy beliefs

International Journal of STEM Education ◽

10.1186/s40594-021-00275-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Samuel J. Polizzi ◽

Yicong Zhu ◽

Joshua W. Reid ◽

Brandon Ofem ◽

Sara Salisbury ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Communities Of Practice ◽

Community Of Practice ◽

Teacher Identity ◽

Self Efficacy ◽

Teacher Educators ◽

Teacher Characteristics ◽

Teacher Communities ◽

Exploratory Factor Analyses ◽

The Usa ◽

K 12

Abstract Background Teacher communities of practice, identity, and self-efficacy have been proposed to influence positive teacher outcomes in retention, suggesting all three may be related constructs. Qualitative studies of communities of practice can be difficult to empirically link to identity and self-efficacy in larger samples. In this study, we operationalized teacher communities of practice as specific networks related to teaching content and/or pedagogy. This scalable approach allowed us to quantitatively describe communities of practice and explore statistical relationships with other teacher characteristics. We asked whether these community of practice networks were related to identity and self-efficacy, similar to other conceptualizations of communities of practice. Results We analyzed survey data from 165 in-service K-12 teachers prepared in science or mathematics at 5 university sites across the USA. Descriptive statistics and exploratory factor analyses indicated that math teachers consistently reported smaller communities of practice and lower identity and self-efficacy scores. Correlations revealed that communities of practice are more strongly and positively related to identity than self-efficacy. Conclusion We demonstrate that teacher communities of practice can be described as networks. These community of practice networks are correlated with teacher identity and self-efficacy, similar to published qualitative descriptions of communities of practice. Community of practice networks are therefore a useful research tool for evaluating teacher characteristics such as discipline, identity, self-efficacy, and other possible outcomes (e.g., retention). These findings suggest that teacher educators aiming to foster strong teacher identities could develop pre-service experiences within an explicit, energizing community of practice.

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