Professional Development of Teacher Educators through a "Transitional Space": A Surprising Outcome of a Teacher Education Program.

Abstract

Introduction It is surprising that even though teacher educators are key agents in the transformation of the teaching profession and cope with a very complex professional context, there is limited empirical research focusing on them and investigating their profession and its development. Since there is no formal program for preparing teacher educators, the latter have to develop their own professional competencies, knowledge, and pedagogy while performing their role as teacher educators (Murray & Males, 2005; Murray, 2008). The challenges facing teacher educators to bridge the gap between theory and practice and to solve the problem of curricular fragmentation necessitate the creation of a more coherent program, the establishment of partnerships with schools, and the building of new educative spaces. In order to provide students with rich learning opportunities, and enhance their learning about teaching, teacher educators are required to serve as models and as change agents and to engage in an ongoing exploration of their practice, which in itself is a significant change (Loughran, Korthagen, & Russell, 2008; Clandinin, 2008; Koster, Dengerink, Korthagen, & Lunenberg, 2008). One of the ways of meeting these challenges is to establish communities of practice that support and foster collaboration in a collegial environment and serve as a means for transforming teacher education and ultimately improving schools significantly (Wenger, 1998; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Margolin, 2007a). However, the establishment and nurture of such communities entail an in-depth process that is not simple for either leaders or teacher educators, and certainly cannot happen in a meaningful way overnight (Prestine & Nelson, 2005; Margolin, 2007a). Thus, for such a change to occur, there is a need to create a transitional space between the old and the new that enables the innovation to become a more stable feature of the organization. Context of the Study The pre-service teacher training for early childhood, elementary school, special education, and junior high school in Israel takes place in teacher education colleges operating under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and the Council of Higher Education. Upon completion of the four year program, students receive a Bachelors of Education degree and state teacher certification. Our college is one of the four largest colleges in the country, with more than a thousand undergraduate students and three hundred full-time faculty. In traditional teacher preparation programs, the studies are divided into three main areas: education studies, disciplinary studies, and practicum with supervision. The candidates take courses for three years in their particular department and spend one day a week in practical work teaching at school, accompanied by a clinical supervisor from the college. In the fourth year, students work as part or full-time paid interns in schools while completing their advanced studies at the college one day a week. In spite of a well planned program, much of the integration of the pedagogical and disciplinary theories as well as the in school application had been left to the candidates. A project initiated at the college focused on shifting the curricula from the conventional stand-alone course format to one in which there is curricular integration that facilitates a meaningful connection between college-based courses and students' experience of the field. Four years before initiating the project described here, the head of the elementary school department with a team of four teacher educators from that department implemented changes in the teacher preparation program for elementary school teachers (Margolin, 2007a). The changes were established on three main principles: (1) integration of the curriculum, (2) partnerships with cooperating schools, and (3) action research as an integral part of the curriculum. Since we were operating within an ecological system, in which change in one element affects all other elements, the college management decided to instigate reform in all education programs in the college, so that they would be integrative, coherent, and responsive to the changing needs of the context in which we functioned. …