An Analysis of the Professional Identity Development of University Teacher Educators in California

• In Event: International Perspectives on the Professional Development of Teacher Educators in Contemporary University Contexts

Abstract

Problem and Objectives
Teachers, teaching, and teacher preparation have received decades of research focus in the U.S, but studying the lives and professional development of teacher educators has been largely neglected in this country. To fill this critical gap, this paper reports on a qualitative study of contemporary California teacher educators.

• Who are California’s teacher educators?
• How did they come to enter teacher education?
• What are their educational philosophies and professional identity characteristics?
• How are they selected, trained, and supported in their work—especially within the current policy climate?

Four representative California university teacher education programs were selected and four teacher educators were chosen from each program. The teacher educators were interviewed twice and various program and policy documents were collected.

Sites:
1 Research University (private)
1 Research University (public)
Teaching University (public)
Alternative/online university (private)

Participants
2 Ladder Faculty and 2 Supervisors from each site (16 total)

Data
2 60 Minute semi-structured interviews with each participant
Program Documents
Published demographic and contextual data on teacher educators

Theoretical Frame and Findings
Theoretically, the study employed professional identity theory (Olsen 2008, 2011). This analytical frame highlights educators as both sociocultural products and active agents who rely on understandings of and for themselves in their work. A teacher educator’s professional identity is a complex mélange of influences and effects in which past and present macro- and micro-social histories, contexts, positionings, and professional training combine with the uniqueness of any individual to create a situated, ever-developing self that both guides—and results from—experience.
The study reported here used the collected data to build and analyze a conceptual model of teacher educator development. The paper discusses ways that a teacher educator’s initial reasons for entering K-12 teaching—and then exiting teaching to join teacher education—subsequently shaped his or her views of teaching and teacher learning. The analysis also focused on how the goal of “making a difference” in education not only fueled—but complicated—the teacher educators’ pathways, identities, and current practices. Additionally, we present various inter-relationships among a teacher educator’s prior work in education, her academic preparation, and the characteristics of her university workplace to account for the kind of teacher educator she becomes. Another finding focuses on contradictions between the world of K-12 schools and the world of the university: reward, resource, and status contradictions caused significant identity conflicts for these teacher educators, and carry severe repercussions for university teacher preparation. And, finally, the finding that most teacher educators in our sample were never formally trained as teacher educators holds important consequences for their professional identities and how these teacher educators may struggle to confront and improve the university teacher education programs in which they work.
The paper discusses these findings and presents concluding implications for teacher educator practice, policy, and research. Of particular importance is the paper’s closing recommendation to formalize ways that teacher educators in the U.S. are recruited, prepared, and supported.

Authors

• Brad Olsen, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Rebecca Buchanan, University of California - Santa Cruz