In/Visible POC: Narratives of a Brown Professor in Teacher Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862110517
Author(s):  
Vidya Shah
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Racial Ambiguity ◽  
Diverse Context ◽  
Faculties Of Education ◽  
Relational Harm ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

In this article, I reflect on experiences of Brown (or South Asian) in/visibility in teacher education. Using an autoethnographic approach, I share reflexive personal and professional counternarratives of my experiences as a Brown person and Brown teacher-educator committed to issues of justice in the diverse context of Toronto, Canada. I explore how Brown invisibility operates in desiring recognition, insider knowings, investments in ambiguity, and relational harm and liberation. I trouble the ways in which theoretical frames open and limit experiences and expressions of Brownness, locating myself in between postcolonial and anti-colonial theorizing and notions of racial ambiguity in DesiCrit. I conclude with the importance of making visible the experiences and constructions of Brownness in faculties of education and education more broadly, as a form of solidarity that both resists Brown invisibility and exposes Brown complicity in an aspirational whiteness that maintains racial hierarchies through its invisibility.

scholarly journals Towards an Understanding of the Work of Teacher Education Professoriate in India

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-114
Author(s):  
Rajashree Srinivasan
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Professional Development ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
School Education ◽  
Work Identity ◽  
Education In India ◽  
New Vision

Reforming the teacher education system has been a key government policy towards improving school education in India. While recent curriculum and governance reforms articulate a new vision of teacher education that underscores a symbiotic relationship between teacher education and school education, it fails to engage enough with the most important participant of the teacher education system—the teacher educator. Changes to curriculum and governance process in the absence of a pro-active engagement of teacher educators with the reforms can do little to influence the teacher education processes and outcomes. The work of pre-service teacher educators is complex because their responsibilities relate to both school and higher education. The distinctiveness of their work, identity and professional development has always been marginalized in educational discourse. This article analyses select educational documents to examine the construction of work and identity of higher education-based teacher educators. It proposes the development of a professional framework of practice through a collective process, which would help understand the work of teacher educators and offer various possibilities for their professional development.

scholarly journals Continuous Professional Development for Teacher Educator Development in Myanmar Education Colleges

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Win Phyu Thwe ◽  
Anikó Kálmán
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Curriculum Reform ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Economic Education ◽  
International Standards ◽  
National Education ◽  
Curriculum Framework ◽  
New Curriculum

This article reports on the role of teacher education in the curriculum reform of basic education in Myanmar. There was political change in Myanmar, a transition from military administration to democracy in 2010. Political change impacts on various sectors such as economic, education and health. As the education system was changed to meet the international standards, curriculum in basic education and teacher education were updated.  In the previous education of Myanmar that has progressed from the old monastic education to the current modern education, there has never been a curriculum framework although syllabi, textbooks, teacher’s guides with different teaching methods and various assessment forms were designed and used. Therefore, Myanmar Ministry of Education is now implementing the educational reforms by setting the curriculum framework with the direction of the National Education Law (Soe, et al.; 2017, Htet, 2020). This paper provides an overview of teacher education, basic education, curriculum reforms. Although teacher education including three institutions cooperates with basic education in implementation of the new curriculum, it found that there are still few weaknesses in implementation of the new curriculum of basic education. Soe et al. (2017) recommended that the new curriculum will fulfill local needs and circumstances and discourage the practice of rote-learning and will ensure that students grow as independent thinkers with their own sense of creativity.

scholarly journals TWO OBSTACLES TO ENABLING CHANGE IN ELF-AWARE TEACHER EDUCATION AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (65) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Nicos C. Sifakis
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
English Language ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Teacher Reflection ◽  
Traditional Teaching ◽  
Efl Teacher ◽  
Teachers Attitudes

<span lang="EN-GB">In this paper I discuss the possibilities, opportunities, challenges and (even) perils in applying the ELF-aware perspective in teacher education. I focus on presenting two obstacles in enabling this application, the first related to teachers’ attitudes, which tend to be fundamentally negative, and the second referring to an uncertainty about establishing, applying and evaluating appropriate ELF pedagogy. The obstacles are discussed with reference to examples from my personal experience as teacher educator, and argue (a) that these obstacles are also present in more “traditional” teaching and teacher education practices and (b) that they can be overcome if they are perceived as opportunities for integrating real-life interactions involving non-native English language users in the EFL classroom and prompting EFL teacher reflection and growth.</span>

scholarly journals Journeying Through Informing, Reforming and Transforming Teacher Education: Reflections on Curriculum Images

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-20
Author(s):  
Sadruddin Bahadur Qutoshi
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Professional Lives ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Auto Ethnography ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Ways Of Being

This paper aims to address ‘how an auto/ethnographic muse explores informing, reforming and transforming states of teacher education and research practices.’ I critique informing and reforming states of teacher education in Pakistan for the limitations associated with these approaches rooted within the colonial system of education.  Within these two approaches to education, I share the experiences of teaching, learning, research practices, and beliefs, which could not address a broader view of teacher education. To address the research problem, I applied an unconventional approach to research by using auto/ethnography as a methodological referent within a multi-paradigmatic research design space. In so doing, I used the paradigms of interpretivism, criticalism, postmodernism, and integralism as data referents, which enabled me to capture the lived experiences of my professional lifeworld at different stages. Moreover, I used critical reflections on the experiences as a teacher, teacher educator, and researcher as epistemic techniques to explore, explain and construct meaning out of the perceptions, beliefs, and practices. Perhaps, engaging autobiographically as an approach to knowing deep-seated views and practices and critically reflecting on the embodied values of practices open new ways of being and becoming a transformative learner(s). This paper invites readers to reflect critically on their own deep-seated practices by using such unconventional approaches to research that would enable them to experience a paradigm shift in their thinking, believing, viewing, and doing. I believe that in doing so, practitioners as researchers, with their own embodied values of practice in their professional lives, can transform self/others by creating their own living-educational-theories.

scholarly journals Practice-Focused Research in Initial Teacher Education

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Abbiss ◽  
Eline Vanassche
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Initial Teacher Education ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Theoretical Contribution

A review of the field of practice-focused research in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) reveals four broad genres of qualitative research: case studies of teacher education programs and developments; research into student teacher experience and learning; inquiry into teacher educators’ own learning, identity, and beliefs; and conceptual or theory-building research. This is an eclectic field that is defined by variation in methodologies rather than by a few clearly identifiable research approaches. What practice-focused research in ITE has in common, though, is a desire on the behalf of teacher educator researchers to understand the complexity of teacher education and contribute to shifts in practice, for the benefit of student teachers and, ultimately, for learners in schools and early childhood education. In this endeavor, teacher educator researchers are presented with a challenge to achieve a balance between goals of local relevance and making a theoretical contribution to the broader field. This is a persistent tension. Notwithstanding the capacity for practice-focused research to achieve a stronger balance and greater relevance beyond the local, key contributions of practice-focused research in ITE include: highlighting the importance of context, questioning what might be understood by “improvement” in teacher education and schooling, and pushing back against research power structures that undervalue practice-focused research. Drawing on a painting metaphor, each genre represents a collection of sketches of practice-focused research in ITE that together provide the viewer with an overview of the field. However, these genres are not mutually exclusive categories as any particular research study (or sketch) might be placed within one or more groupings; for example, inquiry into teacher educators’ own learning often also includes attention to student teachers’ experiences and case studies of teacher education initiatives inevitably draw on theory to frame the research and make sense of findings. Also, overviewing the field and identifying relevant research is not as simple as it might first appear, given challenges in identifying research undertaken by teacher educators, differences in the positioning of teacher educators within different educational systems, and privileging of American (US) views of teacher education in published research, which was counteracted in a small way in this review by explicitly including voices located outside this dominant setting. Examples of different types of qualitative research projects illustrate issues in teacher education that matter to teacher educator researchers globally and locally and how they have sought to use a variety of methodologies to understand them. The examples also show how teacher educators themselves define what is important in teacher education research, often through small-scale studies of context-specific teacher education problems and practices, and how there is value in “smaller story” research that supports understanding of both universals and particularities along with the grand narratives of teacher education.

Exploring Freirean Culture Circles and Boalian Theatre as Pedagogies for Preparing Asset-Oriented Teacher Educators

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Jamy Stillman ◽  
John Luciano Beltramo
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Role Play ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Contingent Work ◽  
Conditions For Learning ◽  
Critical Pedagogies ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Educator Development ◽  
Audio Video

Background/Context Teacher educator development remains an undertaking that is both understudied and underavailable as an explicit professional path, despite scholarship suggesting that teacher education's transformative potential hinges on teacher educators’ pedagogical work. Purpose, Practice, & Participants This article reports on a qualitative study that explored the development of teacher educators who expressed deep commitments to educational equity for minoritized youth. Fifteen current and prospective teacher educators participated over three years in situated adaptations of two critical pedagogical approaches: Freirean culture circles, where participants engaged in critical dialogue around conflicts encountered in their teacher education work that involved issues of inequity, particularly deficit-based ideas of P–12 students and their families, and Boalian theatre (or teatro), interactive role-play where participants dramatically re-enacted these conflicts and imagined potential responses to them. This study examines the ways in which these critical pedagogical spaces facilitated participants’ development as asset-oriented teacher educators. Research Design & Data Collection This research represents an ethnographic self-study, as the authors engaged in culture circles and teatro as participant-researchers. To study these spaces of critical teacher educator development, the authors collected ethnographic data, which included semistructured interviews with each participant, field notes, and audio/ video recordings of dialogue and role-play, as well as participant written reflections. Findings/Results Through their engagement in culture circles and teatro, participants came to recognize some of the micro-pedagogies of asset-oriented teacher education, grappled with the relational dimensions of teacher learning, became familiar with possible tools of asset-oriented teacher education, and interrogated the social, political, and historical dimensions of the work. In doing so, they understood each area as linked both to specific settings and individuals and as connected to more common dilemmas that may play out across teacher education contexts. Conclusions/Recommendations While cautioning against widespread, mechanistic implementation, the authors recognize culture circles and teatro as offering special promise for the development of asset-oriented teacher educators. In particular, findings suggest that these critical pedagogies support the conditions for learning—particularly spaces that center participants’ identities and experiential conflicts—that can cultivate complex understandings about, and tools for engaging, the contingent work of asset-oriented teacher education. Such spaces seem particularly well equipped to cultivate critical understandings deemed essential for transforming the field of teacher education.

The Adoption of Instructional Technologies in Teacher Education

2018 ◽  
pp. 2183-2197
Author(s):  
Steve Nwokeocha
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Instructional Technologies ◽  
Positive Side ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Multiplier Effect ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Practical Experiences

This chapter advocates for a turn to the positive side of the situation and the need to create a multiplier effect with available technologies and capabilities which at the long run could enable Nigeria to leapfrog and catch up with the advanced countries in terms of quality of teaching and learning. The chapter consequently discusses some of the new ideas and concepts that may well be exploited to improve teacher education through technology. It calls for more research, sensitization and capacity building of teachers and students about such new ideas and concepts for the benefit of the Nigerian education system. The chapter is written primarily based on the practical experiences of the author as a teacher educator and active participant in world conferences that, over the years, have devoted attention to best practical cases that have worked in various developing parts of the world.

When Asked, Teachers Said…

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
United States ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
The United States ◽  
Teacher Education Programs ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Racial Hierarchies ◽  
The U.S

The authors perceive that institutionalized racial hierarchies are the greatest barrier to educational equity in the United States. While P-12 teachers may express the desire to make their classrooms spaces of joy, creativity, and intellectual brilliance, it is primarily through intentional skills development that teachers succeed. The authors assert the need for greater investments by school districts and teacher education programs in professional development for in-service P-12 teachers that further empower them and, in turn, their students, to contribute to the dismantling of racism in the U.S. Teacher educators, administrators and policy makers need to position themselves as cultivators and supporters of P-12 teachers in ways that encourage and sustain their antiracist advocacy and equity work in their teaching.

scholarly journals The Challenges Facing the Foreign Language Teacher Educator: A Proposed Teacher Education Model for EFL

1970 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Carol Goldfus
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Procedural Knowledge ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Teacher Educator ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Declarative Knowledge ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
The One

As a result of the multi-cultural classroom in the 21st century, language teacher educators face new challenges; for example, young learners and those with language-based difficulties. In order to respond to these evolving needs, a new professional approach that combines theoretical knowledge with practical application is proposed. This approach targets what it is that teachers should know about literacy acquisition in at least two languages - a mother tongue and, in this case, English. The contribution of this proposed model to language education is to produce a teacher with declarative knowledge and research tools on the one hand, as well as the ability to cope with a heterogeneous classroom in a multicultural society on the other. This paper also intends to show how pre-service teacher education would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach with a combination of declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge with all teaching being ‘science-based practice’.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/nelta.v16i1-2.6125 NELTA 2011; 16(1-2): 1-12

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