Supporting One Another as Beginning Teacher Educators: Forging An Online Community of Critical inquiry into Practice
Source: Studying Teacher Education, Vol. 8, No. 2, August 2012, 109–126
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)
The authors were beginning teacher educators, who were interested to explore their practice and new roles as teacher educators in new contexts.
Methods
The participants were four novice teacher educators working at different universities in the USA and Canada. They used online journaling and dialoguing combined with feedback from their students. They also wrote reflective journals to chronicle their struggles and successes over the course of an academic year. They also used an online community, which provided valued venue for their self-study.
Conclusion
The authors argue that dialog and collaborative reflection have transformed their practice in important and distinctive ways and changed the way they approach their work and how they interact with students.
The authors mention that they forged relationships, both personal and professional, through this collaborative effort.
Throughout these collaborative research efforts, the authors have seen many commonalities and have gained strength and wisdom from their commitment to one another and this project.
Their findings reveal that mentoring relationships must include four important factors: friendship, collaboration in research and career development, information about policies (e.g. tenure and promotion), and intellectual guidance.
The authors encourage other individuals and institutions to consider using comentoring among junior faculty. They argue that as they look back, they see themselves transformed into stronger teachers, researchers, and individuals as a result of this collective self-study of our practices as new teacher educators.