Abstract
This introductory paper first reflects the genesis of research in mathematics and science teacher education. The analyses show a movement from foci of research in mathematics and science education from students to teachers, and then to teacher educators. Next, an overview of research in mathematics and science teacher education and its development is provided, including teacher educators’ growth. This is followed by a comparative look at the seven papers in this special issue through three lenses, focusing on who the teacher educators in these papers are, the practices which are the focus for development, and the contexts in which the professional growth is situated. The seven papers not only exemplify how teacher educators might critically and systematically reflect on their own growth, educate new teacher educators, and do corresponding research, but also demonstrate the considerable progress the research community has made with respect to the professional growth of mathematics and science teacher educators in the last decade. Finally, challenges and questions are raised, in particular in relation to raising the quality and quantity of proficient teacher educators in order to strengthen teacher education research, and to have enough human resources to offer more and better professional development opportunities and to support schools.
Highlights
This introductory paper first reflects the genesis of research in mathematics and science teacher education
There continues to be little research available on the professional growth of mathematics and science teacher educators. The purpose of this special issue is to bring to light how researchers are working within and across the science and mathematics education communities to enhance teacher education by discussing important aspects regarding the professional growth of mathematics and science teacher educators
What frameworks for professional growth are guiding our ideas about how to study teacher educators’ learning and development, what models or programmatic experiences appear to be working well, and what common practices are occurring in science and mathematics education with respect to professional growth of teacher educators? needing consideration is what methodological approaches can best serve our collective inquiry into this area of research? These and other questions related to understanding how mathematics and science teacher educators develop their beliefs and competencies for teaching teachers, as well as how these educators are learning to grow their own practice, were encouraged for submission to this issue in the open call we published
Summary
The term “teacher educator” commonly refers to both those who educate prospective teachers and those who educate practicing teachers, that is, those who initiate, guide, and support teacher learning across the lifespan (e.g. Even, 2008; Krainer & Llinares, 2010). Since the mid-2000s, there has been a steady increase in the number of science education scholars engaging in self-study research, including the publication of two books devoted to the topic (Bullock & Russell, 2012; Buck & Akerson, 2016) This shows that, as a tendency, research on students emerged first, followed by research on teachers, and only more recently a focus on teacher educators. The complexity has to do with the double goal and role of understanding and improving teachers’ learning (research vs teacher education) This needs a certain balance between nearness and distance and a high quality of reflection on advantages and disadvantages of nearness and distance. This will be done in two steps: first, major surveys in research of mathematics teacher education are summarized; corresponding results from research of science teacher education are sketched
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