Section archive - Teacher Educators

This study examines the factors women of color utilized as supports as part of their persistence in science majors. This article draws from a larger study of sixteen African-American, Hispanic, and African women who were navigating various undergraduate science majors at multiple colleges in the Northeast and Southeast United States. The findings illustrated that the participants viewed religion as a contributor to general support, stress relief, encouragement during difficult times, and intervention. The author concludes that the findings illustrate that one potential mechanism for broadening science participation may be through connections with students’ families, their cultural backgrounds, and even their religious views.

The purpose of this study is to disclose the types and content of dilemmas teacher educators in Turkey faced with as well as the strategies they used to cope with them. Additionally, the findings were compared with datasets from Israel and The Netherlands in order to make cross-cultural comparisons. The findings indicate that teacher educators are concerned with improving their pedagogy and professionalism in teaching for teaching, with a prime concern for being an initiator of learning. The comparison of the findings reveals that the theory–practice-related dilemmas are among the most prominent across contexts. Furthermore, the comparison's findings reveal that while Israeli and Dutch educators express a preference for the involvement of their students as a strategy to cope with their dilemmas, Turkish educators seem to be coping with them either on their own or by seeking advice from their colleagues.

The aim of the study was to ascertain what skills were reinforced or developed by local cooperating teachers via the process of supervising student-teachers in the Cayman Islands and Saint Kitts-Nevis. The participants were four cooperating teachers from University College of the Cayman Islands Teacher Education programme and four cooperating teachers from St Kitts-Nevis. The findings reveal that skills cooperating teachers developed or reinforced were categorised as essential teaching, mentoring, collaborating and strategic. The authors argue that teachers should be recognised for the dynamic role that they play in the education of the nation’s teachers. Therefore, there is the need to develop a policy to guide this initiative. Furthermore, this study suggests the need to provide opportunities to encourage cooperating teachers to engage reflectively with their teaching.

This article reports a collective self-study by seven teacher educators at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. As the authors individually engaged in self-studies of their personal teacher education practices, they also were participating in a group self-study of their collaboration to better understand the effects of their collaborative endeavor on them individually, as well as how their work together affected them collectively. Through the conversations and inevitable comparisons with known others that the authors make and encourage in studies conducted this way, they are encouraged to reflect on their own uniqueness as professional selves. At the same time, they are also reminded of the collective values that they share as a professional community.