Chapter 11: Facing Practice As Teacher Educators: A Self-Study of Program Graduates

As teacher educators, we have developed our practice through self-initiated communities of practice (Snow, Martin, & Dismuke, 2015) and sought venues and practices for studying teacher educator practice. However, much like other researchers have identified, we have noted the dearth of scholarly research focused specifically on teacher educators (Kosnik et al., 2011). Recognizing the need for becoming (Jenkins, 2008) along with the complex phenomenon of being a teacher educator (Cochran-Smith, 2012; Cochran-Smith et al., 2016), we as teacher educators also sought teacher educator professional development while we studied complexities of be(com)ing a teacher educator (Goodwin & Kosnick, 2013).

Therefore, in this chapter we examine the multiple roles we as teacher educators play. In particular, this chapter describes our inquiry sparked from an investigation geared toward continuous improvement of our teacher education programs. During a case study of program graduates, we recognized an opportunity for us to model the practice of examining student outcomes to improve teaching and learning. Through a collaborative self-study of our responses to program outcomes evidenced by new teachers (our program graduates) in their early years of teaching, we used our students’ performance to inform our own professional practice. The main purpose of this study was to improve our own teacher educator practice by engaging in systematic reflection on our experiences studying outcomes of professional practice (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2007; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009).