Ebook: Tensions In Teaching About Teaching: Understanding Practice as a Teacher Educator

This series in Teacher Education: Self-study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) has been created in order to offer clear and strong examples of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. It explicitly values the work of teachers and teacher educators and through the research of their practice, offers insights into new ways of encouraging educational change. The series is designed to complement the Inter- tional Handbook of Self-study of Teaching and Teacher Education practices (Loughran, Hamilton, LaBoskey, & Russell, 2004) and as such, helps to further define this important field of teaching and research. Self-study of teaching and teacher education practices has become an important ‘way in’to better understanding the complex world of teaching and learning about teaching. The questions, issues and concerns, of teacher educators in and of their own practice are dramatically different to those raised by observers of the field. Hence, self-study can be seen as an invitation to teacher educators to more meani- fully link research and practice in ways that matter for their pedagogy and, as a consequence, their students’learning about pedagogy.

This book captures both the excitement and the difficulties of self-study of teacher education practices, placing it at the forefront of approaches to practitioner inquiry. It offers a unique insight into the relationship between teaching about teaching and learning about teaching that emerged through a one-year self-study conducted by the author in her Biology Methods class.

The nature of the knowledge of teacher education practice that is developed from the study is conceptualised as a series of tensions that influence the learning of teacher educators about their practice. The book illustrates how the notion of tensions can act as an important means for both analysing practice and articulating the professional knowledge that comprises a pedagogy of teacher education.