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In this chapter, we develop the “hall of mirrors” metaphor for practicum learning, introduced in Schön (1987) and expanded upon in MacKinnon (1989), as a heuristic for considering the ways in which we might claim that our practice has transformed through engaging with self-study methodology. First, we reconsider Schön's (1987) ideas about professional learning and their implications for our understanding of self-study, specifically, his claim that professional learning is unique in that a hall of mirrors is created “on the basis of parallelisms between practice and practicum” (p. 297). This parallelism is particularly relevant for teacher educators as we often aim to engage our students in the very practices we hope they will enact in schools. In so doing, we consider MacKinnon's cautions about over-simplifying any model of teacher education. Second, we use these ideas to each select excerpts from self-study work we have conducted in our careers to identify moments of transformed thinking about teacher education. Finally, we arrived at a new metaphor of a concave mirror for a retrospective look at the results of our self-study investigations. A concave mirror, unlike its planar counterpart, creates different orientations of images (right-side up vs. up-side down), depending on how far an object is away. We develop this final metaphor as a way of thinking about the differences inherent in treating self-study work at a distance, after some time has passed from the original moments when we were embedded in a hall-of-mirrors relationship with our students.

In this chapter, we outline an approach to structuring a collaborative self-study that supports the sharing of individual experiences in a way that enables collective analysis and personal reflection. We share examples of how this approach enabled eight Brazilian teacher-researchers to work collectively to investigate their own social justice pedagogies. To do so, we used a four-phase process. First, each coauthor identified and wrote about a critical incident from their teaching that they shared electronically. In the second phase, We used email to comment on each other’s written pieces. Email exchanges scaffolded reflection. In the third phase, each person analyzed the comments and presented them back to everyone at a group meeting. Finally, through discussion, the group identified the recurring themes that permeated the different critical situations. The chapter provides a methodological overview based on our empirical work about teaching themes which are entangled with socially just PETE (Physical Education Teacher Education). We have found that being a teacher-researcher has some commonalities related to criticality whether one is teaching in K-12 schools or higher education.

A deficit view of teachers' daily practices and the message that teachers do not know how to teach diverse groups of students and need support is common. Excessive entitlement in teacher education is a topic that has been brought to the surface in somewhat a new way and from a new perspective. By using the term to conceptualize and uncover the sources of oppression, it is possible to understand educators' experiences in new ways. The purpose of this excessive entitlement research in the self-study-autoethnography-memory vein was to gain an understanding of teacher entitlement related to demands and pressures placed on teachers and teacher educators by different personnel as classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse.

This chapter is contributed by InFo-TED, the International Forum for Teacher Educator Development. This newly established community brings together people from across the world to exchange research, policy, and practice related to teacher educators' professional learning and development. We define teacher educators broadly as those who are professionally involved and engaged in the initial and ongoing education of teachers. Our contention is that while there is general agreement about the important role played by teacher educators, their professional education is understudied and undersupported. Here, we elaborate the rationale for this initiative, delineate our conceptual framework, and provide examples of steps taken in Belgium, Ireland, and Norway to develop the professional identities and knowledge bases of those who educate and support teachers, and conclude with implications for a scholarly study agenda having to do with research, policy, and practice relating to teacher educators' professional development.

This chapter examines the professional background, trajectories, and learning of a broad group of teacher educators involved in initial teacher education. The work specifically identifies those who shape the practice of teaching. The authors who are members of the International Forum on Teacher Educator Development (InFo-TED) were key to the creation of InFo-TED, NA (North America), which has used Zoom technology to launch and spread its efforts. Its central purpose is to spur teacher educators and policymakers to embrace new ways to educate all children.

Decolonizing the curriculum is an important topic in education but what does it really mean to decolonize the curriculum? In this self-study, I reflected, with the help of a critical friend, on what decolonizing the curriculum could mean in the context of my biology education classroom using the Pedagogical Content Knowledge model by Davidowitz and Rollnick (2011) as the guiding framework. From these reflections, I came to the conclusion that decolonizing the curriculum is not about erasing the known facts and principles of science but rather, it is about contextualizing it by replacing the Eurocentric stories, texts, and examples among other things, with our own Afrocentric ones. Contextualizing our curriculum is, however, fraught with challenges which include underdeveloped indigenous languages available to be used as languages of instruction, lack of locally produced teaching and learning resources including textbooks, and lack of documented indigenous knowledge that curriculum implementers can use in their teaching in order to make it contextually relevant. In this chapter, I share insights from my reflections.

Teacher retention and continued teacher growth and development have long been critical global issues in education. The recent pandemic crisis and subsequent “great resignation” (Lodewick, 2022) have returned our attention to the need for positive and enriching educational landscapes that promote teacher collaborative reflection, knowledge, and growth in order to sustain teachers in the field. This chapter explores the ongoing teacher learning that has occurred within two knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b) in the United States. It begins with an overview of Craig's early work with teachers, during which her conceptualization of knowledge communities emerged. According to Craig, knowledge communities are safe, collaborative spaces that cohere around teachers' intra/inter-school dialogue and their storying/restorying (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996, 1998) of experiences. Additionally, knowledge communities (Craig, 1995b) begin with originating events, allow teachers' experiences (Dewey, 1938) to resonate with others in the group, feature reciprocity of members' mindful responses, and promote the development of shared ways of knowing. Equally important, knowledge communities evolve and change, fuel ongoing reflection in community, and bring moral horizons into view. Employing these knowledge community qualities as our lens, we examine the interactions of the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy. The Portfolio Group is a teacher/teacher educator/researcher group formed in 1998 during a US education reform era (Craig, Curtis et al., 2020). Its sister group, the Faculty Academy, is a cross-institutional, cross-discipline higher education group of teacher educators/researchers formed in 2002 (Craig, Turchi et al., 2020). Employing a parallel stories representation (Craig, 1999), exemplars (Mishler, 1990) from both groups show how teacher collaborative groups have the capacity to be safe spaces in which critical professional dialogue, reflective exchanges, and generous scholarship occur among members. Furthermore, they are nurturing spaces in which teachers can thrive and be their best-loved selves (Craig, 2013; Schwab, 1954/1978). These two groups exemplify the ways in which knowledge communities support teacher collaboration, promote ongoing teacher growth and development, and foster teacher sustainability.