Why We Started

• Many doctoral students instantaneously become teacher educators (TEs) when they enroll in colleges of education (Berry, 2007; Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006).
• Teacher education is assumed to be a “self-evident activity” (Zeichner, 2005) and that  doctoral students’ prior experiences as K-12 teachers adequately prepare them for this new role.
• Colleges of education rarely provide novice teacher educators (NTEs) with institutional support or formal mentoring (Butler et al., 2011; Dinkelman, Margolis & Sikkenga, 2005).

BUT doctoral students, especially those who want to go on to be teacher educators, desperately want support, so they can improve their craft.

Significance

Research

• What is the impact on a community of practice on individual graduate teacher educators?
• What are the problems of practice that novice teacher educators encounter?
• What are the practices/pedagogies of teacher educator used in a teacher educator seminar?

Our ongoing research questions include:

Conference Presentations

• AACTE 2019 – What’s the Problem? Doctoral Students’ Challenges as Novice Teacher Educators
• AERA 2019 – “We’re All in This Together”: Doctoral Students’ Experience in a Seminar for Novice Teacher Educators

Graduate Teacher Educator Seminar

The purpose of this seminar is to provide support to doctoral students who are working as instructors of record/teaching assistants/university supervisors by addressing problems of practice and assisting the development of their pedagogies.  This seminar will draw on the teacher educator expertise by inviting faculty to present/model various pedagogies of teacher education. From these presentations/models, the developing TEs will refine their own pedagogy of teacher education as related to specific artifacts and strategies they develop for their courses. In addition, this seminar will provide a space for developing TEs to voice their problems of practice in order to collaboratively uncover possible solutions to alleviate these problems.  This will not only support these individual TEs, but could also improve the overall preparation of preservice teachers (PSTs).

Course Goals

Develop Research-Based Pedagogies of Teacher Education

Novice TE’s will be introduced to and be versed in foundational pedagogies of teacher education found in the literature. Novice TEs will develop and refine their understanding of the pedagogies by applying their knowledge to their particular TE context.

Respond to Problems of Practice

Just as TEs must support PSTs as they begin to enact their pedagogy, TEs likely need support as they enact their TE pedagogy. This course aims to respond to the particular needs of novice TEs by providing a space to address problems of practice collectively. Whenever possible, the members of this seminar will collectively seek expertise from both the literature and expertise among the faculty at UMD.

Engage in Cycles of Reflection

TEs will develop their ability to self-reflect and apply feedback to improve their practice as TEs.