Chapter 3: The Pattern Emerges: Novice Teacher Educators Learn From Complexity

Our goal in this chapter is to recognize, understand, and problematize our work as experienced and novice teacher educators. In our role as teacher educators, we are responsible for preparing university students to take their place in the workforce as competent and capable teachers. As members of a university faculty, we are obliged to serve on committees to support the work of our programs, department, college, and university. As teacher educators in a department with a doctoral program, we are also charged with supporting the development of those doctoral students. Finally, as teacher educators at a research university, we are expected to have a coherent and productive line of scholarly inquiry (Murray & Male, 2005). Those of us who are doctoral students and novice teacher educators are expected to assist, observe, and learn. This wide array of responsibilities can cause teacher educators (and future teacher educators) to “experience their daily work lives as a kind of patchwork of disparate and discontinuous activities” (Cochran-Smith, 2012, p. 100).