Agency through Teacher Education

Reflection, Community, and Learning

Foreword by Annette Digby Edited by Ryan Flessner, Grant Miller, Julie Horwitz, Kami Patrizio

Publication date:

27 December 2012

Length of book:

212 pages

Publisher

R&L Education

Dimensions:

262x186mm
7x10"

ISBN-13: 9781610489171

Agency through Teacher Education: Reflection, Community, and Learning addresses the ways that agency functions for those involved in twenty-first-century teacher education. This book, commissioned by the Association of Teacher Educators, relies on the voices of teacher education candidates, in-service teachers, school leaders, and university-based educators to illustrate what agency looks like, sounds like, and feels like for people trying to act as agents of change. These examples take the form of narratives, theoretical explorations, formal research studies, and reflective essays. Agency through Teacher Education does not seek to establish one definition for agency, but rather to conceptualize it from three perspectives: reflective practice, community engagement/activism, and organizational learning. The book seeks to explore ways stakeholders in- and outside the classroom become agents of change, as well as the traditional and non-traditional roles played out in teacher education programs across the United States.

Forward—Annette Digby
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction— Kami M. Patrizio, Ryan Flessner, Grant R. Miller, & Julie R. Horwitz

SECTION I
Section I Introduction – Grant R. Miller & Christie McIntyre
Chapter 1 – Teacher Learners’ Oral History Projects: Exploring How Our Communities and Cultural Pasts Shape Us – Megan Blumenreich
Chapter 2 – Photovoice as a Critical Reflection Methodology – Julie R. Horwitz
Chapter 3 – Supporting Prospective Teachers’ Critical Reflection in Mathematics Teacher Education – Mathew D. Felton & Courtney Koestler
Chapter 4 – Teacher Leaders: African American Women Experiencing and Enacting Social Justice – Vonzell Agosto & Zorka Karanxha
Section I Commentary – Nancy Gallavan & Angela Webster-Smith

SECTION II
Section II Introduction – Ryan Flessner & Julie R. Horwitz
Chapter 5 – Understanding Community Voices as a Force in Teacher Education – Ryan Flessner & Paula A. Magee
Chapter 6 – Enhancing Educator Agency Through the Development of Boundary Spanning Competencies – Michael P. Evans
Chapter 7 – Knowledge of Community and Technology as Parallel Tools of Agency in Teacher Preparation – Rashmi Kumar, Christopher G. Pupik Dean, & Nancy Lee Rodenberg Bergey
Chapter 8 – Community Engagement as Catalyst for Critical Reflection and Agency Within a Professional Development School Clinical Program – Mary Klehr
Section II Commentary – Gregory Michie

SECTION III
Section III Introduction – Kami M. Patrizio
Chapter 9 – Building Administrator as Teacher Educator: Fostering Teacher Agency From Within the System – Laura McDermott
Chapter 10 – I Want to Test My Own Unique Ideas”: Tensions in the Teacher Candidate-Cooperating Teacher Relationship – Janet Johnson
Chapter 11 – Teacher Shared Leadership for Educating English Learning Students – Katie Brooks
Chapter 12 – Systemic Educational Change: Applying Social Network Theory to Lateral Learning Among Principals – Corrie Stone-Johnson & Kristin Kew

Section III Commentary – Jim Nolan
Chapter 13 – What We Learned about Agency in Teacher Education – Grant R. Miller, Ryan Flessner, Kami M. Patrizio, & Julie R. Horwitz

About the Authors
Index

What makes education in a democracy distinctive? Why is equity in our schools necessary and why are community connections vital? How can teacher-student relationships become more meaningful and powerful? Why is teacher agency and efficacy indispensable in effective classrooms? What constitutes good teaching?
These kinds of questions animate every page of this important collection, and they power the efforts of the group of smart and talented educators assembled here. Their collective ambition is to transcend the surface arguments about this or that reform agenda and to illuminate the complexity at the heart of education in and for democracy. In the process they show us how teachers can function in the system as it is—the system of valuing anything that can be quantified over everything that can’t—even as they plant seeds for a future that is more vital, more joyous, and more just.
In asking these first and fundamental questions of themselves, and then transparently and courageously thinking them through out loud as they discover fresh, dynamic answers, they not only advocate for the power of agency and reflective action in teaching, they show us how it’s done.