Novice Teacher Educators' Lived Experience and the Illumination of Professional and Personal Vulnerability

• In Event: Roundtable Session 35
  In Roundtable Session: Lives of Teachers: Beliefs, Gender, Vulnerabilities

Abstract

While it is recognized that becoming a teacher is a turbulent process, becoming a teacher educator can, likewise, be an experience fraught with challenge, tension, and uncertainty. Much research on this topic is the product of teacher educators’ self-study. The current study adds to research on novice teacher educators’ vulnerability by adopting the methodological framework of hermeneutical phenomenology and by exploring the lived experiences of a small sample of novice teacher educators. This paper presents two anecdotes, both illustrative of how, for a novice teacher educator, professional and personal vulnerability may be experienced as intertwined phenomena.

Author

• Aaron Samuel Zimmerman, Michigan State University