JTE Editorial Highlights: May/June 2016
Have you seen the JTE Insider blog managed by the Journal of Teacher Education editorial team? Check out the latest entry below.
In the editorial of the May/June 2016 issue of the Journal of Teacher Education, Carter Andrews, Bartell, and Richmond bring awareness to the recent teacher sick-outs in Detroit Public Schools as a way to illustrate the continued resistance to elements that serve to dehumanize the teaching profession. They write:
We are calling attention to the teacher sick-outs in Detroit and the factors leading up to them in these pages, because they represent one of the numerous examples throughout the country of educators’ resistance to the continued de-professionalization of teachers and teaching and the institutional and structural forms of dehumanization that teachers experience regularly. Furthermore, we believe teachers’ professional self-concept is negatively impacted by inequitable working conditions in many high-need schools and communities that are not present in schools that are resource-rich. (p. 170)
They go on to describe the significance of the papers in the May/June 2016 JTE issue to this current problem:
We believe that these papers, and others like them, challenge teacher educators and the larger field to consider strategies for professionalizing teachers and teaching as the profession faces a dual challenge. The challenge is that of meeting the needs of more diverse learners and doing so in increasingly complicated contexts that are often farther removed from the lived experiences of many, perhaps most, P-12 educators. (p. 170)
As a way to further consider the matter, they pose questions for teacher educators to consider:
1) What is the responsibility of teacher educators in helping preservice and inservice teachers embody and enact humanizing and just pedagogies and practices that speak to students’ lived experiences inside and outside schools?
2) How can teacher educators create sustained professional learning experiences for practicing teachers that allow them to engage in social justice–focused critical inquiry around a set of classroom challenges? How can action research within professional development be a medium by which this critical inquiry occurs?
3) How might reframing instructional coaching as instructional dialogue assist mentors in more effectively facilitating teacher critical reflection about practice?
4) How might self-concept measures provide an alternative assessment of preservice teachers’ professional knowledge and satisfaction?
The editors go on to provide insight in relation to each question as well as describe how the questions connect to the articles in the current issue of JTE. To read more about how the authors frame the above questions and describe the connections to the papers in the current issue, please refer to the editorial in the May/June 2016 issue of JTE.
Subscribe to e-mail updates from JTE Insider on the blog’s home page and follow JTE on Twitter at @JTEInsider. As a member benefit, AACTE members can access all JTE content online for free—just log in to your AACTE profile and click on the blue button on this page.
Tags: advocacy, JTE, media, research, social justice
