Search results

In this chapter, the relationship between self and community is addressed through inquiring into the impact of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) on the professional learning, teaching, and research of members specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The authors employ qualitative methods, primarily self-study and narrative inquiry, and use descriptive statistics derived from survey responses to support their claims. The work not only speaks to ISATT’s significant shaping effects but also to historical and contemporary challenges the organization faces as it moves toward the future.

This chapter restates the purpose of the three-volume series and discusses themes that reoccur in chapters and sections of Part B, which first appeared in chapters and sections of Part A of the series. While Part A of the three-book set focused on pedagogies of teacher selection, reflection, narrative ways of knowing, identity, and mentoring and mediation, Part B of the three-volume series centers on pedagogies of preservice teacher leadership, diversity, parents and family, social justice, and technology. Ideas having to do with traveling stories, the theory-practice split, and the praxical nature of pedagogies are taken up. To conclude, the model for traveling pedagogies, which was first proposed in Part A of the series, once again appears, with a few sub-themes added from International Teacher Education (Part B), which support the already identified framework in International Teacher Education (Part A).

This case study aims to examine the discourses of Early Children Education (ECE) curriculum and preservice teachers’ teaching practicum in Hong Kong to explore issues of developing preservice teachers as leaders for their future career. Adopting the qualitative case study methodology, semistructured interviews and documentation were mainly used for data collection to address the following research questions: (a) To what extent are preservice teachers in ECE in Hong Kong aware of the needs of leadership development for their future career? (b) To what extent are the preservice teachers in ECE in Hong Kong able to be developed as leaders in the process of teacher education? (c) What are factors influencing the leadership development of preservice teachers in preschools in Hong Kong? Documents such as program handbooks, field experience handbooks, and student participants’ teaching portfolios were collected for analysis. Both teacher educators and preservice teachers were invited for individual interviews to reflect on their experiences of supervising or participating in teaching practicum. The findings revealed that both teacher educators and preservice teachers were aware of the importance of developing preservice teachers as leaders. The teaching practicum provided various opportunities for preservice teachers to develop leadership skills. However, personality and learning experiences provided in the curriculum will also impact on leadership development. This study also informs policymakers, curriculum developers, and teacher educators about possible curriculum changes and potentials of developing preservice teachers as leaders for their future career.

This brief history of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) documents developments and trends during the decade 2013–2023. To situate recent ISATT history, we begin with an overview of the association's first 30 years (1983–2012). The dominant theme of those early years was developing ISATT as a recognized and influential professional organization connecting researchers on teaching and teacher education from a growing list of nations and regions of the world. During the most recent decade, there has been a concerted effort toward broad internationalization through biennial conferences and regional meetings, and a growing network of national representatives from across the world. Also, the ISATT journal, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, the journal, which began in 1995, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles written by more than 1000 authors and coauthors, contributing to a growing body of knowledge about teaching and teacher education in many cultures. In the last 20 years and especially in the past 10, the locations of ISATT meetings have become significantly more diverse, following a trend of greater internationalization compared with ISATT's European and North American beginnings. At the same time, the number of ISATT members remains stable and small thereby preserving a collegial and collaborative tone in our exchanges. In sum, ISATT's recent decade finds the association intellectually healthy, successful in managing the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, and enriched by the proliferation of multinational points of view and styles of research.

Beatrice Avalos, Ph.D., is associate researcher at the Centre for Advanced Research in Education, University of Chile. She has journal and book publications on teacher education, educational policy in developing countries and gender issues focussed particularly on Chile and Latin America. She has worked and taught in universities in Chile, Britain, Canada and Papua New Guinea, and carried out consultancy work in Bangladesh and several Latin American countries on issues related to school improvement, teacher professional development and teacher initial education.

This volume, From Teacher Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The Evolution of a Research Community, captures advances that have occurred in the thirty years that the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) organization has been in existence (1983–2013). ISATT occupies an important place in educational history. It is the international birthplace of the paradigm shift that occurred in the field of education in the 1980s as well as the organization that helped transition the study of teacher thinking to the study of teachers and teaching in all of its complexities. ISATT, which began with a handful of members, now has a membership that hails from 45 countries. ISATT’s near-global representation shows how the organization’s reach has expanded over three decades.