Findings on Black Women Educator Professional Experiences

By JTE Insider

Read the latest JTE Insider blog interview by the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) editorial team. This blog is available to the public, and AACTE members have free access to the articles in the JTE online archives—just log in with your AACTE profile.

This interview features insights from Melanie M. Acosta, author of the JTE article “The Paradox of Pedagogical Excellence Among Exemplary Black Women Educators.” The article is published in the Jan/Feb 2019 issue of the Journal of Teacher Education.

Q1. What motivated you to pursue this particular research topic?

I was compelled to study the professional experiences of exceptional Black women educators for many reasons. One of the most important reasons was related to my own positionality as a Black woman educator with a record of success in teaching. Another crucial reason I wanted to pursue research on Black women educator professional experiences was related to expanding and complicating the dialogue on diversifying the teaching force to focus on issues affecting Black teacher retention, which includes teachers’ positionalities and the treatment of Black women educators in schools.

JTE Insider Podcast Highlights Evidence-Based Teacher Preparation

By Katrina Norfleet

In a recent podcast interview for JTE Insider blog, author Dan Goldhaber from the University of Washington offers an overview of his article, Evidence-Based Teacher Preparation: Policy Context and What We Know, during a talk with Graduate Assistant Mary Neville. The article was published in the March/April 2019 issue of the Journal of Teacher Education.

Goldhaber shares that the article is intended to do two thing: Describe what is known about teacher education and what happens once a teacher candidate becomes an in-service teacher, and secondly, to make observations about some of the structures that might be needed for state teacher preparation programs to learn more about what constitutes effective teaching.