Editorial Free

Teacher educators across the world have long grappled with tensions at work, such as when government policy mandates conflict with their ethical principles as educators (Floden and Clark, 1988; Zeichner and Liston, 1990). Preferring to see such tensions as opportunities rather than barriers to success, they have critically, creatively and collaboratively engaged with these tensions, helping to develop curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices and policies in local and national teacher education contexts. These positive developments have brought rewards for pre-service teachers (PSTs) and graduate teachers in their journeys of learning to become teachers and in negotiating their transition into the teaching profession (Mayer et al., 2013). Teacher educators, too, are rewarded when they recognize they are making a valuable contribution to this process of learning and negotiation.

In the field of English teacher education recently, some of the most rewarding experiences have been within programs or projects that facilitate nuanced collaborative inquiry into the uncertainties and the situated nature of English teaching. Many of these programs/projects have been focused on innovative pedagogy related to the teaching practicum, such as the integration of inquiry-based research within the practicum. Some programs/projects have developed dialogic writing communities where teacher educators join with English teachers to advocate for pre-service teachers and the English teaching profession more widely (Parr and Bulfin, 2015; Whitney et al., 2014). While politicians and attention-seeking commentators typically denigrate current teacher education in mainstream news media, many of today’s early career English teachers are demonstrating their faith in their teacher education mentors and institutions through ongoing commitment to professional learning collaborations and/or school-university partnerships (Doecke et al., 2014; Heilbronn and Yandell, 2010).

Nevertheless, fundamental tensions within the field of English teacher education persist. As theory, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices continue to evolve and transform over time, familiar questions continue to drive professional debates and research. Many of these tensions are associated with “perennial” problems or dilemmas, and we welcome a forum like this special issue to engage with them afresh. Such tensions are newly energized and foregrounded, as the conditions for English teacher education are increasingly dominated by managerial, neoliberal policies that privilege economic perspectives on education over the everyday experiences of students, teachers and teacher educators.

Mindful of these tensions, we invited potential contributors to this special issue of English Teaching: Practice and Critique to consider questions such as:

We also encouraged contributors to respond to some “newer” questions that have emerged in recent years, questions which pre-service English teachers and English teacher educators must grapple with as they negotiate a way forward in new policy landscapes:

This special issue of English Teaching: Practice and Critique offers a rigorous look at particular ways in which teachers and teacher educators are engaging with the persistent tensions in and between the fields of English teaching and English teacher education. We believe that the articles in this special issue provide fresh new perspectives on these tensions. Each article explores in depth one or more challenges in pre-service English teacher preparation. Each draws attention both to specific tensions in a particular curriculum, policy and sociocultural context and to the broader issues that render those tensions persistent and/or unfinalizable. And each points to the promise of rewards for PSTs and teacher educators who are willing to critically engage with these tensions.

The special issue opens with an article (“Constructing English: pre-service ELA teachers navigating an unwieldy discipline”) co-authored by a team of teacher educators, Katie Macaluso, Jen VanDerHeide, Cori McKenzie and Michael Macaluso, who report on an innovative approach in their teacher education classrooms. In this approach, they scaffold their PSTs to critically engage with the “perennial” question of “What is English?” The study shows how the discipline of English can be seen as “a manifestation of unresolved historical contradictions”, and the authors caution that the “uncertainty and unfinalizability” of English as a discipline and a set of teaching and learning practices in schools can be masked by efforts to standardize curriculum and teaching practices. In dialogue with the teacher educator researchers, the PSTs interviewed for this study reflect on the ways in which their understandings of the discourses underpinning subject English help them to navigate the complexities of their learning and their evolving teaching practice.

In “Recognising spaces for dissensus in English teacher education”, Meghan Barnes analyses the language with which a small group of PSTs discuss the potentially discomforting topics of race and politics to better understand how they might negotiate their individual and group identities. Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogic theory and utilizing conversation analysis methods, Barnes teases out the complex ways in which these PSTs appeared to work toward consensus with their peers in selected conversation excerpts. She speculates about the implications for this in English teacher education programs and proceeds to advocate for teacher education programs that impress upon PSTs the value of tension and dissensus, rather than consensus, as they prepare to teach diverse populations of English students in schools.

US-based English teacher educator Samuel Tanner uses a range of critical and narratively inflected strategies, including autobiography, to explore how storytelling might facilitate a more ethical and robust approach to teacher evaluation. Tanner’s essay (“Storying the classroom: storytelling and teacher evaluation”) advocates for a “narrative model of teacher evaluation”; he is particularly concerned to promote dialogue about the benefits and challenges of this model. His piece can be seen as a response to Smagorinsky’s (2014) call for better systems of teacher evaluation, at a time when evaluation and assessment regimes in schools and in the teacher education sector are increasingly being constructed through what Tanner calls “partial, prescribed rubrics” that cannot account for the situated and nuanced nature of teaching practice.

The special issue concludes with companion pieces by US-based Michelle Knotts (“I feel like a hypocrite: a beginning teacher’s disconnect between beliefs and practice”) and UK-based Anne Turvey and Jeremy Lloyd (“From pre-service to early-career English teacher in the UK: negotiating powerful myths”). Each article is a form of research conversation between an early career English teacher and her/his teacher educator mentor, investigating the transition from initial teacher education into professional teaching in schools. The two teachers at the centre of both pieces come to the research conversation strongly affirming their experience of pre-service teacher education. However, they articulate significant discomfort when reflecting on the teaching they are doing day-to-day in their current school settings. Using different methodologies, the articles create an open-ended space for critical dialogue between the early career teacher and her/his mentor, enabling them to collaboratively inquire into and reflect upon possible explanations for the early career teachers’ discomfort. Both pieces raise disturbing questions about the impact of standards-based reforms and intrusive accountability regimes on early career English teachers’ practices and professional identities. Significantly, though, they also offer hope for the future as the early career teachers show evidence of building on their research dialogue with their teacher educator mentor to make meaningful changes to their classroom practices and/or their professional identity.

The tensions with which the English teacher educators and English teachers in these articles are grappling often focus on problems and uncertainty. Of course, a field of inquiry investigating English education professionals, their use of language, their practices and their constantly evolving identity should be suspicious of simple answers and promises of certainty. The articles in this special issue, rightly and delightfully, present a field of questions and robust dialogue. While we look with hope to solutions to the specific problems facing the pre-service preparation of English educators and teacher educators in their particular contexts, we also look with appreciation to the questions and the unfinalizable dialogue that we trust this special issue generates.