Chapter 7: “I am More Intentional Now in my Teaching”: Growing as Teacher Educators Through a Self-Study Community of Practice

Teacher educators’ professional development largely depend on their proactively seeking opportunities to engage in communities of practice (CoP) with others who are also interested in improving knowledge, teaching, and learning in the same areas (Gallagher et al., 2011; Hadar & Brody, 2017; MacPhail et al., 2014; Tuval et al., 2011). Institutional support may not provide the mentoring needed to successfully navigate the larger scholarly community while simultaneously developing pedagogy for teaching at the university level and fulfilling requirements for engaging in varying levels of service (e.g., Butler et al., 2014; Hadar & Brody, 2017). This is perhaps especially true for faculty members in smaller regional institutions who may be the only faculty member in their subject or focus area; these faculty members may not have access to others for collaboration, professional development, or mentoring, which may influence their retention pre and post tenure. Hence, the CoP is an important space for teacher educators who are (re)constructing their identities as teacher educators, because they can receive unofficial mentoring, induction, and retention support from collaborations in this shared space (Butler et al., 2014; Hadar & Brody, 2017).