Celina Dulude Lay, Eliza Pinnegar and Stefinee Pinnegar
In this chapter, we explore the ways in which media postpandemic responses communicate clearly the excessive entitlement reflected in the public discourse about teachers. During…
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In this chapter, we explore the ways in which media postpandemic responses communicate clearly the excessive entitlement reflected in the public discourse about teachers. During the pandemic, we noted many parent posts on social media lauding teachers. They expressed gratitude for the challenges teachers faced in teaching students on distance platforms and moving learning forward. Yet, we noted that the media reports following the pandemic were noticed a shift in the discourse following the pandemic. Thus, we became interested in exploring how teachers were represented in public discourse following the pandemic. Since the public discourse on teachers has consistently reflected a deficit orientation, given the praise of teachers during the pandemic, we wondered if this acknowledgment of teachers' sacrifice and service might shift the discourse after the pandemic to more positively represent teachers. To pursue this inquiry, we collected and analyzed narratives and examples from postpandemic media representations where teachers and teacher educators were represented as nonpersons. We also collected anecdotes and research and media reports to examine the ways in which teachers were represented. We identified three themes: lack of teachers' voices, the teacher shortage, and loss of learning. Our analysis identifies how teachers and teacher educators are positioned within society and the impact of treating teachers as nonpersons on teachers and the teaching profession. Such depictions fail to represent the vital role of teachers in the progress of society.
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In this chapter, the details of the design chosen to uncover teacher educator knowledge for this study are explained. By choosing Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices…
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In this chapter, the details of the design chosen to uncover teacher educator knowledge for this study are explained. By choosing Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP), this methodology positions researchers to examine their own practice and explore beliefs and moral and political values, thereby adding to the research conversation of teacher education, and also turn what we learn into improvement of practice. Self-study of practice is a methodology but without a proscribed set of methods. Rather, other methods of qualitative analysis are employed in self-study. A variety of qualitative methods such as dialogue, a critical friend, exemplars, and analytic narrative vignettes were selected and implemented in order to collect, organize, analyze, and present the data. Issues of positionality and ethics are also addressed. This chapter ends with a discussion about trustworthiness and rigor in relation to methodological approaches and strategies employed in qualitative research, especially highlighting the inherent vulnerable nature of self-study research, and the importance of protecting participants and researchers.
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Mary Lynn Hamilton and Stefinee Pinnegar
In this chapter, we present Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) as a research methodology that can be used pedagogically to explore the practices of…
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In this chapter, we present Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) as a research methodology that can be used pedagogically to explore the practices of teacher educators for their professional development. It can be seen as a pedagogic practice that enlists reflection to enable teacher educators to explore and explicate practice and make explicit what they know about teaching and teacher education in order to improve practice and contribute to larger conversations in research on teaching and teacher education. After providing a succinct interpretation of the origins of S-STEP work, we suggest that historical context, along with the understanding of the theoretical underpinnings, makes it viable as a research methodology and a potentially valuable pedagogy for teacher education research. S-STEP is an intimate research methodology (Hamilton, 1995) in which the person conducting the research is both the focus and the author of the research and provides an insider’s perspective into practice and experience.
We provide examples to demonstrate how others and we take up S-STEP as pedagogy for teacher educator professional development that allows us to grapple with what we know either explicitly or tacitly from and about our practice. International S-STEP research has the power to inform the professional development of teacher educators across these boundaries, because it attends carefully to the particular of the practice and context from which it emerged.
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This introductory chapter begins by outlining the background of this book: how the concept of excessive teacher entitlement took shape and was progressively enriched through my…
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This introductory chapter begins by outlining the background of this book: how the concept of excessive teacher entitlement took shape and was progressively enriched through my collaborative work with Cheryl J. Craig. Our ongoing informal dialogues gave rise to an invisible college where we co-created new meanings to deepen the understanding of professional inertia. We saw professional inertia as a manifestation of excessive teacher/faculty entitlement constantly adrift in a yin and yang relationship with their best-loved self. This insight came from challenging the narrow mainstream view of the notion of excessive entitlement as a purely volitional act of autonomous individuals which leads to blaming and pathologizing teachers/faculty. Instead, a Vygotskian cultural-historical perspective is proposed. This perspective facilitates a more complex historicized view of the phenomenon by directing attention to the historically and culturally mediated nature of excessive teacher/faculty entitlement and the means to alleviate it. The healing touch to excessive teacher/faculty entitlement repeatedly surfaces as humanizing pedagogy. This involves helping teachers/faculty develop empowered entitlement and work towards realizing their dreams, their best-loved self. Finally, this introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the 15 chapters that follow. They explore the notion of excessive teacher/faculty entitlement in diverse sociocultural contexts and examine promising approaches to address this problem from different theoretical and methodological angles. You are invited to join us in this rich journey of inquiry and transformation.
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The strands of teacher educator knowledge are explained using an analytic narrative vignette to represent data collected during the planning of an online course in the spring of…
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The strands of teacher educator knowledge are explained using an analytic narrative vignette to represent data collected during the planning of an online course in the spring of 2020. The Planning Vignette represents a meeting of two colleagues planning a course together while an undergraduate teaching assistant joins the meeting on Zoom. The Planning Vignette is analyzed systematically by highlighting the themes as they appeared and noting, when evident, how they interrelated with each other. In this way, I am able to show how the strands of teacher educator knowledge were evident from the beginning, in the process of course design. Following analysis is a summary of insights that emerged from examining my teacher educator knowledge during the planning stage. Each of the seven strands of teacher educator knowledge is discussed.
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Stefinee Pinnegar and Mary Lynn Hamilton
In this chapter, we examine conundrums of self-study of practice (S-SP) research that emerge from positioning this work in a space that calls for a critical rethinking of ontology…
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In this chapter, we examine conundrums of self-study of practice (S-SP) research that emerge from positioning this work in a space that calls for a critical rethinking of ontology and takes seriously the work of postmodernist philosophy. We explore aspects of self in relationship to the other – concerns, transformations, representations positioning, and growth – when ideas emerge in the midst of practice. We begin with an investigation of conundrums of Self in relationship to Other where both exist in continual process of BECOMING based in the work of Deleuze. We then consider the self within the research framework of S-SP methodology. As part of this examination, we consider key characteristics of this methodology in relationship to the self in practice that is the orientation to ontology and dialogue as the process of coming-to-know in this space. Next, we consider the conundrum of particularity and wholeness in the exploration of tacit and practical knowledge. We use works by Clandinin and others to probe the ways particularities and wholeness interact with tacit understandings that entangle and merge into embodied knowing. We also articulate the conundrum of the ethical for the Self and Other in S-SP Research and other forms of intimate scholarship.
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Stefinee Pinnegar and Mary Lynn Hamilton
Purpose – In this chapter, we examine the influence of the commonplace of sociality within narrative inquiry during the process of interpretation and meaning-making. Our project…
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Purpose – In this chapter, we examine the influence of the commonplace of sociality within narrative inquiry during the process of interpretation and meaning-making. Our project was multivisioned because we were interested in what we learned about the methodology of narrative inquiry within the context of a phenomenon for inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), which for this study was our identity as teacher educators (Bullough, 2005).
Approach – Using narrative inquiry, we interrogate our interpretive processes privileging the commonplace of sociality in examining stories of our identity as teacher educators from our own experience as teacher educators.
Findings – In our inquiry into interpretation from the orientation of the narrative commonplace of the social, four points of understanding emerged: (1) interpretation within the methodology of narrative inquiry is living and interpretation exists in the midst; (2) all three dimensions of the narrative inquiry space are always part of the process regardless of the commonplace under consideration; (3) if we look inward/outward in the process of interpretation, it always leads us back to the relational; and (4) when we deepen the analytic process, ethical issues, and therefore renewed grappling with our identity, emerge.
Research implications – Narrative inquiry at every phase – design, data collection, analysis, and representation – is a form of living and analysis and interpretation. As well, representation must allow space for the holistic and organic quality that this form of inquiry demands in the development and communication of ideas.
Value – The study points to the ways in which research on humans’ action and interaction returns to the relational and ethical even when that is not the focus of the research. Further, our response to narrative inquiry is not always analysis but often turns to story instead.