Case 3: A Reflection on Scholarship in Teacher Education

The case I will share here offers some highlights from my professional engagement with the ATE Standard 3: Scholarship. This standard encourages teacher educators to “engage in inquiry and contribute to scholarship that expands the knowledge base related to teacher education.” At the outset, I should point out that though the terms research and scholarship are not synonymous, they are often used interchangeably, and I will do so here. Each of the indicators for standard 3 on scholarship (and research) begins with a verb, thereby emphasizing the active nature of the goal set by this standard for teacher educators. Research is an inherently active process and is believed to be a critically important aspect of the role of a teacher educator because it “has played a prominent role in discussions and debates, particularly in disputes about … what counts as educational scholarship and how evidence should be used to make the case for or against particular approaches” (Cochran-Smith & Demers, 2008, p. 1009).