Australian Journal of Teacher Education
Article Title
Abstract
The working lives and identities of teacher educators remain an under-researched aspect of teacher education. This paper reports on a collaborative narrative inquiry by three early career teacher educators as they made the transition from classroom practice in schools, to teacher education in a university setting. The authors confronted technical understandings, or ‘official stories’ (Zukas & Malcolm, 2019) of what it means to prepare prospective teachers, derived from contemporary standards-based policies about teacher professionalism. The paper proposes the concept of ‘working the third space’ as a way of framing teacher educators’ efforts to draw upon classroom teaching experience while challenging reductive understandings of teachers’ work. We argue that understanding teacher education as a ‘third space’ practice speaks back to narrow discourses of teacher education that frames it as the unproblematic transfer of practice from experienced to novice practitioner.
Recommended Citation
Diamond, Fleur; Wescott, Stephanie; and Molloy, Kristen
(2021)
"Working the Third Space: Reformulating Practice in the Transition from Classroom Teacher to Teacher Educator,"
Australian Journal of Teacher Education: Vol. 46
:
Iss.
1
, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.202v46n1.3
Available at:
https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ajte/vol46/iss1/3