Chapter 2: Considering the World of the Teacher Educator: The Shaping of Critical Teacher Educators Through Informed Enactment and Reflection

The world of the teacher educator is a complex one. Preparing teachers to serve in Pre-K through 12th grade contexts is more than imparting the field’s wisdom upon them. It is also more than tossing new teachers into a classroom and then offering critique on their actions. Teaching has been long misunderstood by those who do not engage in it as a process-product event. Teachers teach something, students learn it (or do not), and the teacher repeats. Despite what this technical-rational perspective may imply, teaching is made up of an entire world of influences that reach into the past, the present, and the future (Schön, 2001). Teaching is a sociopolitical-historical act that demands teachers recognize that each of their decisions is marked by an influence upon the world (Nasir et al., 2016). Teachers both influence the world and are influenced by the world in return, their individual identities having been shaped by a lifetime of cultural influences and socialization processes (Zeichner & Gore, 1989). The curriculum that teachers teach is not a neutral manifestation of required knowledge for humanity, and the policies and procedures by which teachers’ schools operate exist because of their beliefs in and adherence to such policies and procedures (Zembylas & Chubbuck, 2015). Such characterization of teachers as intellectual, cultural actors is one that applies to the teacher educator as well (Freire, 1970; Giroux et al., 1988).