From Teacher to Teacher Educator: Experiences, expectations, and expatriation

Learning to become teacher educators: Testimonies of three PhD students in China

“…An important finding that has emanated from the existing research is that learning to become teacher educators, often characterized as a "rocky road" (Wood & Borg, 2010, p. 17), involves a wide range of challenges and tensions (Murray & Male, 2005). New teacher educators, who might be experienced school teachers transitioning into teacher education (Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006) or newly minted PhDs without formal school teaching experience (Wilson, 2006), usually need to take up a wide array of responsibilities in their work, such as providing clinical supervision during student teachers' teaching practicum, developing collaborative relationships with frontline teachers, and engaging in academic research and publishing (Robinson & McMillan, 2006;Murray, Swennen, & Shagrir, 2009). These responsibilities, which call for the acquisition of new knowledge and skills and involve strong intellectual and psychological engagement, can be quite challenging for teacher educators who just put their feet in the field of teacher education (Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006).…”

“…Over the past decade, the professional development of teacher educators has become an emerging subject of research and discussion, with particular attention paid to novice teacher educators' learning experiences (e.g., Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006;Murray & Male, 2005). An important finding that has emanated from the existing research is that learning to become teacher educators, often characterized as a "rocky road" (Wood & Borg, 2010, p. 17), involves a wide range of challenges and tensions (Murray & Male, 2005).…”

“…New teacher educators, who might be experienced school teachers transitioning into teacher education (Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006) or newly minted PhDs without formal school teaching experience (Wilson, 2006), usually need to take up a wide array of responsibilities in their work, such as providing clinical supervision during student teachers' teaching practicum, developing collaborative relationships with frontline teachers, and engaging in academic research and publishing (Robinson & McMillan, 2006;Murray, Swennen, & Shagrir, 2009). These responsibilities, which call for the acquisition of new knowledge and skills and involve strong intellectual and psychological engagement, can be quite challenging for teacher educators who just put their feet in the field of teacher education (Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006). In face of all these challenges, however, there is often a lack of professional support for new teacher educators (Yuan & Lee, 2014), as a result of which, they might be working under tremendous stress, with low self-efficacy, and even experiencing "identity crisis" in perceiving themselves as qualified teacher educators.…”

“…There is also a paucity of research on what professional support and guidance is present or absent in their learning, and whether and how they are prepared to meet the various challenges as future teacher educators. As Zeichner (2005) argues for "the special responsibility" of higher education institutions "in preparing the new generation of teacher educators" (p. 123), it is important to examine graduate students' initial learning experiences in teacher education, which could serve as a powerful force in shaping their professional practice over their careers as teacher educators (Dinkelman, Margolis, & Sikkenga, 2006). To this end, the present study seeks to investigate how three PhD students learned to become language teacher educators in a university in China in order to shed light on the complexities of their professional learning in teacher education as well as the possible opportunities and challenges involved.…”

Becoming a teacher educator – the motivational factors

“…The self-study method utilised in this project has previously been employed in teacher education research to make sense of the initial experiences of teacher educators (Dinkelman et al 2006). The self-study method employed also benefitted the participants, via engagement in a form of praxis, by facilitating the process of this significant career change and developing their understanding of TE.…”