Abstract
Teaching teachers is a unique experience, rich in opportunities to make a difference but also rich in opportunities to contradict oneself by saying one thing and doing another. My teachers in school and university inadvertently taught me how to teach as I observed them. Then teaching experience and theories of education were added to the mix. Finally, as I began to teach teachers, I confronted the profound gap between my teaching experience and my students’ lack of experience as well as the gap between what a teacher is teaching and what students are actually learning.
In this chapter I revisit 37 years as a teacher educator to highlight the central position of learning from experience, not only in my personal learning but also in the professional learning of those learning to teach. Improvement of my teacher education practices has been driven by listening to those I teach, not only to understand how they struggle to reconcile theory with practice, but also to understand the actual effects of my own teaching. Productive new practices have emerged when listening to my students inspires new ways of thinking about how individuals learn to teach and the tensions and challenges they experience as they learn. By linking influential literature to major themes in the evolution of my teacher education pedagogy, these narratives of one teacher educator’s learning conclude with advice to teacher educators: listen to those learning to teach, and study carefully how you are teaching them.
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Acknowledgements
I must acknowledge the contributions of present and former colleagues and students who participated and assisted in various ways in my efforts to learn from experience. Although this list is incomplete, I wish to thank Andrea K. Martin, Shawn M. Bullock, Hugh Munby, John Loughran, Ian Mitchell, John Baird, Fred Korthagen, Stefinee Pinnegar, Sandy Schuck, Garry Hoban, Donna Code, Reni Barlow, Phyllis Johnston, Charlotte Spafford, Derek Featherstone, Dave Skeaff, Michael Prendergast, Steve Toffelmire, Lisa Vincent, Spencer Selhi, Joseph Posca, Mike Ianni, John Van Dyk, Michael Hrycenko, Suzin McPherson, Liam Brown, Rodrigo Fuentealba Jara, Peter Brodribb, Ryan Willock and Dan Harrison.
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Russell, T. (2016). Narratives of the Power of Experience in a Teacher Educator’s Development. In: Williams, J., Hayler, M. (eds) Professional Learning Through Transitions and Transformations. Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22029-1_2
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