Novice Teacher Educators Research Articles

Teacher educators’ expertise: what do novice teachers and teacher educators say?

Expertise of teachers has been the topic of many studies in the field of teacher education published in recent years. Less attention is, however, given to expertise of teacher educators; the focus of this study. The study examines the issue by discussing some of the literature on the subject, and by asking novice teachers and teacher educators about the characteristics of good teacher educators, the professional knowledge of teacher educators and the difference between the expertise of teacher educators and teachers. Findings indicate that even though there is much overlapping in the expertise of the two groups of professionals, there are also distinct differences of importance to the current discussion on standards and education for teacher educators.

Promoting Reflective Teaching Conversations: Framing and reframing the problem

This paper describes a series of attempts by a novice teacher educator to foster reflective talk among interns in a weekly seminar. Drawing on Dewey's dilemma of bridging the child's inclinations with the demands of the curriculum, the paper explores the challenge of connecting interns' needs with teacher educators' goals. The paper advocates the importance of reflection by teacher educators, recommends that teacher educators be explicit about the content and process for discussions about teaching and raises questions about structures, sequencing and selection of content to promote reflection among pre‐service teachers.

From Answers to Questions: A Beginning Teacher Learns to Teach for Social Justice: A teacher’s commitment to social justice challenges her to move from literature response as answers to literature response as inquiry

A novice teacher educator and a novice teacher describe their evolving understandings of teaching children’s literature with a social justice perspective. These understandings are based on an analysis of their curriculum planning and whole class literature discussions across two school years with third graders and fifth graders. The authors chart this evolution as moving from “answers to questions.” They describe a shift from thinking about children’s response to literature as seeking solutions to thinking about response as cultivating questions and inquiry topics.

Reconceptualizing the instruction of a teacher educator: reflective peer coaching in teacher education

This paper describes how a novice teacher educator, Kara, gained insights into her own teaching and her students' learning via peer reflective coaching with an experienced teacher educator, Elizabeth. Conversations within this collaboration were guided by data from Elizabeth's observations of Kara's teaching, Kara's reflective journal and student reflections. Peer reflective coaching enabled us to see Kara's teaching in new ways, all of which related to central principles in John Dewey's book, The Child and the Curriculum. Dewey's work provided three guiding concepts for Kara as she reconceptualized her instructional practices. A description of these guiding concepts and the resulting instructional modifications is followed by a discussion of the implications our experiences have for teacher educators interested in examining their instructional practices.

Learning to Teach Teachers in a Standards-based Program: When Experience isn't Enough

Increasingly, teacher preparation programs are creating and utilizing rigorous, performance-based standards to define characteristics of good teaching and evaluate teacher candidates. What has typically been missing in the call to raise teaching standards is a recognition that teacher educators are learners whose perceptions play a significant role in shaping how standards get used. In this article, a novice teacher educator describes the assumptions about standards which shaped her work with student teachers and the educative experiences which helped her to envision an alternative role for standards in learning to teach. Standards which are presented to prospective teachers as “vision statements” rather than as performance objectives make room for novices ideas about good teaching. Teacher educators should regard novices' conceptions as entry points into the broader public and professional discourse about standards.