Becoming in Five Dimensions

Moving from classroom teaching into teacher education is often treated institutionally as a natural next step – an extension of successful practice rather than a qualitatively different form of work. Yet scholarship shows that entering teacher education is less a straightforward promotion than a professional re-formation involving intellectual, affective, and identity-laden dislocation. This self-study examines teacher educator learning as developmental work rather than immediate performance. Drawing on Hammerness et al.’s framework of professional development – vision, understanding, practice, tools, and dispositions – we trace how emerging teacher educators learn in ways that cultivate adaptive expertise, or the capacity to act with fluency while also rethinking practice amid complexity and ethical tension. We report a collaborative self-study conducted within a doctoral seminar explicitly focused on learning to teach teachers. Across the semester, inquiry was treated not as a discrete assignment but as a stance, positioning developing teacher education practices as problematic, discussable, and worthy of systematic study. Findings illustrate how development across the five dimensions unfolded recursively and relationally, with uncertainty, disruption, and ethical responsibility operating not as detours from learning but as part of becoming a teacher educator when inquiry and community are treated as central.