Faculty: Lynnette B. Erickson

Past research has clearly indicated that teachers’ metaphors can serve as a framework that moves our understanding of teaching forward by making more explicit the intuitive knowledge teachers hold about themselves, their classrooms, and their practice. Making explicit how metaphors uncover the understandings that guide the practices of inservice teachers, individually and collectively, can provide insight into the assumptions they hold about teaching and teaching practice. The purpose of this study was to explore how inservice teachers’ self-constructed metaphors revealed their perceptions of their roles, obligations, and assumptions about teaching and learning and consider the implications of such exploration for teacher education and development. The four experienced teachers who participated in this study constructed personal teaching metaphors for which they provided an explanation. Analysis of the metaphors using positioning theory provided evidence that teaching metaphors capture the individual identity and specify the plotlines of teaching and the obligations, duties, and responsibilities of the teacher as well as the role of the teacher and others in the teacher’s practice. We found that each metaphor brought elements of identity and teaching practice together in unique and divergent ways. A subsequent cross-case analysis reveled common discourses of teaching: responsibility, nurturing and caring, and teacher and student learning. Both the individual and cross-case analysis suggest the potential value of metaphor work for informing teacher education and professional development to advise teachers, teacher educators, school leaders, and policy makers.

This self-study emerged within the context of a school-based professional development project that we, as teacher educators, initiated. We envisioned the Book in a Bag (BIB) project as a way to promote curriculum integration, and at the same time provide a venue for our research. In the course of the BIB project, tensions arose between our commitment to serve the teachers with whom we worked and our university-related obligation to attend to research productivity. The purpose of our self-study was to examine tensions we experienced as we sought to strike a balance between helping teachers while, at the same time, fulfilling expectations of our role as scholars. In this article, we recount events that unfolded during the course of the study. We explore the ways in which our obligations to serve teachers and schools while engaging in scholarship gave rise to unanticipated tensions. Self-study methodology served not only as a means for deepening our understanding of our own practice and ourselves as teacher educators in our current situation, but also with an eye to future relationships with teachers as we fulfill our roles as teacher educators.

This article examines the teacher preparation experiences of preservice teachers in six international contexts: China, Fiji, Kiribati, Mexico, Samoa, and Tonga. More specifically, it looks at the value-added components in an international teacher education program, with an emphasis on effective teaching and employability. Theoretically the study is based on Straus and Corbin’s (1998a) substantive grounded theory and Patton’s (1997) Theory of Action Framework. Verbal and non-verbal forms of feedback were identified as essential aspects of the international preservice training experience. Cultural diversity, teaching English as a second language, collaboration, and exposure to a different educational system were identified among several components as advantages to individuals who conduct their preservice teacher training in international settings.

The purpose of this study was to analyze a sample of classroom teachers? definitions of the term teacher educator and determine whether they considered themselves to be teacher educators. The extent that classroom teachers? definitions of a teacher educator were influenced by involvement in a university-public school partnership was also examined. Results indicated that a large majority of the study?s participants considered themselves to be teacher educators, but there were variations in how they defined this role. Analysis of the participants? definitions of the term teacher educator revealed two general categories: teacher of teachers and general educator. Results also indicated that a school?s consistent involvement in a partnership led to a higher percentage of teachers giving definitions that could be categorized under the teacher of teachers theme. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are presented, along with suggestions for future study.