Abstract
In one of our early editorials (Volume 63:1), we noted the tendency for many teacher education researchers to submit research that has broader teacher education implications to specialized content journals—journals that may or may not be read by teacher educators. We framed this as a choice faced by faculty who walk in two university worlds—for example, science education and teacher education—about their identities as researchers. Our question was whether we could benefit from encouraging content area education researchers to frame their work from a broader teacher education perspective and consider the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) as an outlet for their work. The theme for this issue is a direct consequence of the conversations we have had around this question.
Our framing of the theme was influenced by shifts in thinking over the past 25 years about how we view teacher expertise and the nature of knowledge for teacher education (see, for example, Shulman, 1986). As a result of embracing the notion of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) introduced by Shulman, teacher educators, who were previously more concerned with generic teaching knowledge, turned their attention to subject-specific pedagogical issues. This paradigm shift has resulted in powerful discoveries about teaching, learning, curriculum, and teacher education in a variety of disciplines. But the shift, combined with other factors such as the location of teacher education faculty positions in subject-area departments, definitions of teacher quality in terms of teachers’ content preparation, and national and state content-focused standards, has also fractured teacher education into many disciplinary areas. The result is that much of the innovative research in teacher education is reported in discipline-specific journals, and colleges of education have fewer teacher educators not associated with disciplinary areas. While subject-area specialization has been critical to establishing the specialized nature of teachers’ knowledge and expertise, it is also appropriate to consider the intended and unintended consequences of the intellectual silos created and their cost or contribution to developing a coherent knowledge base for teacher education. To stimulate the conversation, we proposed a theme issue that prompted researchers and readers to submit empirical and conceptual manuscripts that considered the following questions, among others: What general pedagogical knowledge or shared concepts could transcend the subject areas? How might teacher education research, theory, policy, and practice build on discipline-embedded inquiry in a way that impacts teacher education in a more general way? Is there research located within a specific discipline that has strong implications for policy makers, researchers, and practitioners of teacher education in general? What are the processes and outcomes associated with collaboration across disciplines in teacher education?
Highlights of Theme Articles
In the lead article for this issue, “Core Practices and Pedagogies of Teacher Education: A Call for a Common Language and Collective Activity,” Morva McDonald, Elhem Kazemi, and Sarah Kavenaugh propose a framework focusing on core practices that can stimulate the exchange of ideas as well as the development of a common language and set of identified pedagogies across different settings and content areas in teacher education. The framework builds on work like that of Lampert and her colleagues on core practices in mathematics featured in our previous issue (Lampert et al., 2013) and extends it to other content areas, including a description of what a core practice (eliciting student thinking) identified initially in mathematics might look like in social studies. The authors emphasize that the intent is not to generate a single set of practices to be adopted by the field as a whole but to encourage the development of a common understanding of core practice across content areas to be used in determination and elaboration of a pedagogy for teacher education.
The second theme article, “Examining Studies of Inquiry-Based Learning in Three Fields of Education: Sparking Generative Conversation,” by Levy, Thomas, Drago, and Cox presents studies of inquiry-based learning (IBL) in three different areas (science, social studies, and English Language Arts teacher education) to compare and contrast the processes, purposes, and perspectives of IBL across fields. The conceptualization of inquiry as means versus inquiry as ends in science, which has a longer history of IBL, provided an interesting point of comparison for the three studies. The authors note significant similarities as well as differences within and across fields and suggest possible areas of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
The final theme article, “Teachers in an Interdisciplinary Learning Community: Engaging, Integrating, and Strengthening K-12 Education,” describes the processes and outcomes for teachers of a year-long, collaborative partnership between secondary math and science teachers and university engineering mentors to enable teachers to acquire knowledge and skills to implement engineering projects in their secondary classrooms. Patricia Hardre and her colleagues used a mixed-method, multiple-data source approach to track perceptual and developmental change and learning during teachers’ on-site experience working with engineers and to determine the transfer of their learning to classrooms after the experience.
Overview of Nontheme Articles
In addition to the theme articles described previously, this issue features three notable articles on topics of interest to JTE readers: inservice professional development for curriculum implementation, teacher candidate performance assessment, and the development of socially just teachers in urban teacher education. Each article is described in more detail in the following paragraphs.
The study by Barry Fishman and his colleagues, “Comparing the Impact of Online and Face-to-Face Professional Development in the Context of Curriculum Implementation,” is an important contribution to the knowledge base on professional development for several reasons. The randomized study is a design not easily implemented in education, but one that is highly valued by educational researchers and policy makers. In addition to the strong design, the researchers incorporate classroom processes and student learning, in addition to teacher knowledge and beliefs, in their comparison of two professional development approaches for the same curriculum. The finding that online and face-to-face approaches show significant gains for teachers and students but that there is no significant difference between the conditions provides valuable implications for delivery of teacher professional development.
Gary Henry and his colleagues contribute to knowledge about teacher education in a different area—one that is currently under scrutiny in relation to accountability in teaching and teacher education. The study, “The Predictive Validity of Measures of Teacher Candidate Progress and Performance: Toward an Evidence-Based Approach to Teacher Preparation,” addresses the question of whether a broad range of typical measures of progress and performance in one preservice teacher preparation program (rated highly in relation to teacher impact on student achievement in the state) predicts the student achievement of teachers from the program. They found that the measures used to determine progress and performance, including coursework and grades, ratings of professional behaviors and dispositions, ratings of student teaching performance, Praxis I exam scores, and ratings of comprehensive portfolios of candidates’ work, measured only one construct rather than the multiple constructs they were designed to capture. Furthermore, neither the measures used to indicate progress nor their scores on standardized tests predicted classroom effectiveness based on value-added measures. The authors suggest the need for better measures of progress and preparation to enable programs to improve teacher preparation.
The last article, “Developing Socially Just Teachers: The Interaction of Experiences Before, During, and After Teacher Preparation in Beginning Urban Teachers,” by Jean Whipp, explores the factors that contribute to the way teachers define and enact socially just teaching in their 1st year in an urban setting. More specifically, Whipp investigated the individual and structural orientations of teachers toward reflection and teaching practice in relation to their experiences during their teacher preparation program and their induction year in an urban school. She concluded that rich, cross-cultural experiences; participation in programs with a common, shared emphasis on socially just practice and dispositions; and ongoing support during their 1st year combined to produce teachers with a more structural orientation toward socially just teaching.
The three theme articles in this issue identify opportunities and challenges for educators who are interested in how to study and learn from interdisciplinary interactions and collaboration. The nontheme articles expand topics that continue to be of interest to teacher educators, researchers, and policy makers. We hope that all the articles included in this issue expand your thinking and encourage extended discussion with your colleagues and students. The discussions provided by all the contributors to this issue provide a number of promising directions for further study and we encourage you to continue the conversations they have initiated by submitting manuscripts and commentaries on these topics and others of interest to the journal. We also look forward to receiving your ideas directed toward improvement of the JTE.