Learning to Think Like A Teacher Educator: Making The Substantive and Syntactic Structures of Teaching Explicit through Self-Study

Source: Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, Volume 15, Issue 2 (April 2009) , pages 291 – 304

The construction of a pedagogy of teacher education requires a sustained, systematic, and careful inquiry into one's own practice, predicated on the understanding that teaching is a discipline. This article begins by arguing that it is more appropriate to speak of a basis for knowing, rather than a knowledge base, for thinking about teaching and learning. Furthermore, the article also argues that self-study methodology is one way for a new teacher educator to develop his or her basis for knowing about teaching teachers. Excerpts from self-studies that the author has conducted during his first three years as a preservice teacher educator are described and interpreted with a view to examining the substantive and syntactic structures of the discipline of teaching and the influences of my prior experiences as a teacher candidate.
The article concludes with a set of personal understandings that the author has constructed as a new teacher educator.
Self-study methodology is offered as a way for teachers and teacher educators to make their knowledge about teaching and learning explicit by naming and analyzing both the substantive and syntactic structures of the discipline of teaching.