In this research-based, reflective narrative, five educators across diverse educational contexts reflect on the influence of their lifeworlds on their experience and practice. As reflective practitioners, the authors demonstrate how they have applied lifeworld fractions to affect their educational practice with purposeful action. They discuss the…

In "The Pandemic Is a Portal," second-year teachers in a graduate-level education program share the extraordinary challenges of teaching during COVID-19, exploring the broader social and political forces that have shaped teacher experience during these trying times. In these reflections teachers grapple with imposed policies and…

As organizations seek to provide meaningful professional learning opportunities, research has emerged to support the development of learning cultures that move beyond isolated learning experiences. An essential component of professional learning is reflective practice which occur at both the individual (Schon, 1983) and collective (Day, 1993)…

The student teaching experience is one of the most impactful and formative experiences of any preservice teachers' career. Student teaching provides preservice teachers with the professional knowledge and skills needed to be successful teachers through concrete experiences, which formalize professional behaviors. This longitudinal linear mixed…

Purpose: The paper aims to illustrate some of the challenges and outcomes of teaching courses addressing the politics, culture, and history of the US in the Middle East. In doing so, it contextualises an application of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and describes its implementation. Methodology: A case study method is applied to qualitative records…

This counternarrative is an homage to the work of abolition in teacher education and a call to humanizing liberatory praxis as collective healing from racism and anti-Black hate. We, three critical teacher educators, interrogate our positionalities and the experiences within and beyond schooling that have shaped us. We recognize that our…

Low levels of academic success for primary grade students attending rural schools located in the southern region of the United States may be related to student resilience. Researchers have found that educators can support the development of students' resilience, which can result in improved academic success, but little is known about how teachers…

On three days in 2017-18 two university professor-researchers gathered with three high school teachers to talk about the experience of teaching social studies and about the insights, questions, and wonderments therefrom derived. The intent was to research the life and work of social studies teachers. The gatherings were funded by the Brandon…

Providing effective leadership and mentorship to students often requires an understanding of power systems and a focus on amplifying marginalized voices. The author, who identifies as a queer white woman, in her years as a graduate student, has found that attention to voice is essential, but also messy. As Donna M. Lanclos reminds,…

This inquiry had two primary aims; firstly to evaluate the feasibility of using autoethnography to gain an informed and more descriptive view of past teaching experiences and secondly to understand more about the experience of a teacher's professional development in order to become a more reflective practitioner. This paper presents a narrative…

In 1998 I had been teaching science for 13 years. I was a good teacher: I had the plaques and certificates to prove it. But often I felt like an impostor (which I have since learned is not unusual--70% of all people feel like a fake at one time or another). While my students could solve problems and ace tests, every June when I sat down to look at…

This ethnographic study explores teacher experiences with vocabulary instruction, specifically as it relates to oral language-use and literacy practices. Utilizing an integrated compilation of cognitive, socio-cultural and poststructural theory, this study looks at teacher perspectives in relation to their experiences with language and literacy…

This reflective essay, which is both autobiographical and historical in nature, is framed by answering the questions posed by the editors regarding my work: What values inform it, how I actually do it, and why do I do it? Quite simply, I am writing to encourage social change for all queer people, be it merely the little corner of my own social…

This article reports on a study of teachers who have engaged in systematic research about their practice. It describes the inquiries of two urban teachers into challenges and dilemmas common to many who work with diverse groups of students. The accounts presented reveal how teachers are able to construct new knowledge about teaching when they…

Approached as an epistemology, implementing a constructivist workshop approach to literacy can challenge the traditional paradigm of teacher-focused instruction and transform to one where students construct knowledge together and learn through active engagement in authentic reading and writing. This study illustrated how two third-grade teachers…