The Chimera: Multiple Selves, Conflicting Desires, and Fluctuating Power Relations in Qualitative Research

In this article, I (re)constructed and (re)presented a dialogic inquiry among my chimeric selves engaged in a study which I conducted from 2013 to 2017 to examine teaching experiences of graduates from a social justice-oriented preservice program. I interrogated the roles of my different, disparate, and discontinuous selves in the research process – as a former teacher, a former instructor of my research participants, a researcher with particular academic and political opinions, and as a foreigner working toward a doctoral degree from/in a U.S. higher education institution. In this article, I demonstrated how my chimeric selves with conflicting desires and agendas merged and clashed in the research process. I also portrayed how my chimeric selves added layers to the complex relationship between the participants and me and, accordingly, how power relations in the research were momentary and uncontrollably shifting.

First Person: The pandemic’s silver lining: Real talk for future teachers

When the COVID-19 pandemic closed her university campus, Jamie Hipp had to move her popular arts integration class for preservice teachers to a virtual format. She was surprised to learn that her students wanted more than regular sessions during their scheduled class times; they wanted additional opportunities for “real teacher talk” about going on interviews, setting up a classroom, and other practical matters that weren’t being covered in their preservice program. Hipp set up a series of virtual sessions on topics of interest to students, in addition to regular class sessions. The sessions went so well that Hipp intends to continue having them, even after the pandemic is over and her campus reopens.

Survival Kit or Lessons for Life? Future Directions for Preservice Teacher Education from the Perceptions of Newer Teachers

Recent literature, supported by a survey of secondary school teachers in southwestern Ontario, Canada, indicates that preservice teacher education does not adequately prepare graduating teacher candidates to thrive in a profession that is ironically, driven by change. Attempts at reform have focused on the basic aspects of the typical preservice program: foundations, curriculum methods and field experience. The results have been decidedly discouraging. Positive improvement will hinge both on a recognition by teacher-education institutions, of the inevitable compromise between short-term necessity and long-term vision, and on their willingness to implement, carefully and constructively, promising innovations such as action research and centers of pedagogy.