Experience is fundamental in identity development. In research, concepts and issues around identity are shaped and confronted in moments of reflection. The act of reflection requires a backward attention to engender a present understanding and create future possibilities. Kim and Greene, and Young and Erickson capture this temporal aspect of…

Research exploring the process of becoming a teacher educator always reveals the difficult balancing act that developing an identity as a teacher educator involves and the articles in this issue do just that. The Rice and McNeil studies of teacher educator identity in this issue are very revealing; they were conducted from the perspective of…

When the authors consider the articles by Bullock and Ritter, and Clift through the lens of role theory, both show how identity is, in part, constrained by the definitions of the roles individuals are assigned or take up and is developed from a response to the perception of individuals by themselves as well as by others as they act within these…

Role theory is based in a conception of a social world wherein various roles are either available or made available and those participating in such worlds shape their identity according to the roles that are made available to them. In positioning theory, Haare and van Langenhove (1998) suggest that teachers are always in the process of…

The issue of how to produce high quality teachers is an ongoing concern for teacher educators worldwide. Research studies consistently conclude that despite the best efforts of teacher educators to provide programs that equip new teachers well for their work in schools, many new teachers find it difficult to enact what they have learned in…

Sandy Schuck's cross-sectional self-study (see EJ863273) examines her work as a teacher educator. She views herself as responsible for helping elementary school teachers to develop as teachers who will enact a reformed approach to mathematics. Schuck presents a wonderful tangle of findings and challenges, framings, and reframings. As a teacher…

In this commentary on the paper by the Bank Street Reading and Literacy Alumnae Group, Korthagen states that, while it provides an excellent example of how fruitful professional development can be when it is grounded in the needs and strengths of the people involved; regretfully, many traditional approaches to professional development are based on…

In their longitudinal study, Kosnik, Beck, Cleovoulou and Fletcher accompanied a group of 22 beginning teachers along the critical period of their first three years in the profession. While the overall tone of this inside-the-classroom-door-study is positive and even optimistic, the findings point to seven key areas where the authors concluded…

In an exploratory study of 12 teacher education programs representing various geographic regions and institutional types according to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, this author and a colleague (Goodwin & Oyler, 2008) learned from teacher educators across the country about the many constraints they work within, the lack…

In this commentary, the author focuses on both the learning he is seeing in the longitudinal studies described in this issue of "Studying Teacher Education," and the evidence of "educational influences in students' learning" that he believes could be enhanced in producing co-created living theories with teacher educators, students, and pupils as…

Through self-study I believe I can gain a better understanding of myself, of my students, and of the process of teacher education. Exploring the ways in which I respond in writing to pre-service teachers helps me to better understand my practice and the learning-to-teach experiences of pre-service teachers. This paper reports on my written…

This is the second of two self-studies of my efforts to prepare preservice teachers for the practical realities of the classroom while being respectful of their personal practical knowledge. I coined the term "relational teacher education" to convey my approach, which is informed by Rogers' "helping relationships" and Hollingsworth, Dybdahl, and…

This paper begins with a description of my work in a Canadian school of education, where I now realize that I was well insulated from the US context, where many are highly critical of teacher education. My recent move to Stanford University immediately immersed me in the highly controversial practices being imposed on schools and schools of…