More Than Rolling With the Punches: Growing as a Teacher Educator

Abstract

In this chapter, the author describes her identity development and professional learning as a teacher educator over the last decade through self-study in teacher education for professional learning. Through personal experience with supervising student teachers, she recognizes that classrooms are ever-changing. Each year in teacher education she desires to have effective and relevant teaching. She reflects to determine if she merely acknowledged change and then taught the same content, methods and dispositions. In this sustained inquiry through self-study she examines how her teaching identity was transformed with a focus on being relevant and effective. First she identifies these changes in three areas: curriculum, pedagogy, and the student demographics of the classroom. Then through self-study she analyzes multiple sets of data to identify the practices that were most useful in her professional learning about these changes. She concludes with key practices that enabled her to grow as a teacher educator amid changes in teaching and classroom demographics.