Researching teacher education practices from within: Towards a pedagogy of teacher educators' professionalism

Abstract

This paper aims at sharing possibilities for pedagogizing the professionalism of teacher educators working from within institutional contexts and whose challenging experiences are less represented in the published literature. Professionalism of university-based teacher educators has attracted scholarly interest in the Global North country and cross-country contexts. Notions such as becoming and pedagogies of enactment are some of the useful concepts developed and mobilized to understand teacher educators' professionalism in such contexts. These constructs are employed in this study within the frameworks of the experiences of a teacher educator who does research in a less-represented teacher education community in Eritrea. This article is based on qualitative data sets generated from a self-study research on embedding reflective teaching practices among a group of experienced teachers during the implementation of a teacher education program. Data from a self-reflective journal entries, post-lesson debriefs, & focused discussions with groups of critical friends were employed while analyzing teaching milestones and turning points. These experiences included recognition of tensions in assuming roles while teaching reflection; developing forms of proactive collegiality; and ethical tensions as frames for developing professionalism. The concept of proactive collegiality is highlighted as a pedagogic possibility for strengthening professionalism in similar settings.