Mathematics educator teacher stories

Teacher stories/autobiographies have been used by mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) to gain insight into prospective teachers’ (PTs) experience with mathematics, yet stories of MTEs’ motivation for and learning by engaging PTs in creating teacher stories is less understood. We fill this gap by narrating our experiences gaining insight into motivations for engaging PTs in creating teacher stories. Artifacts from our teaching practice, discussions of the work of Dewey and Rogers, and reflections were used to create themes that informed the plot line of each narrative. Findings focus on ways that teacher stories sustain PTs and MTEs by creating a living counter-narrative to the narrative of teacher evaluation MTEs and PTs live in the United States. We argue that MTEs’ motivations for collecting PTs’ teacher stories are informed by MTEs’ life experiences and the development of MTEs’ views of teaching and learning to teach.

Storytelling in Teacher Professional Development

Teacher voices hold weight for their colleagues. When teachers tell a story of a positive experience with technology (or other teaching tools or strategies), they are showing that it is possible. “Stories, particularly those that are concrete and readily identified with, are particularly powerful for transferring knowledge rich in tacit dimensions” (Swap, Leonard, Shields, & Abrams, 2001, p. 105). When teachers share their stories with each other, they create a reality based on concrete possibility. This article will focus on how we use teacher stories and conversations in professional development (PD) to create positive realities for teaching and learning.

Teachers Storying Themselves Into Teaching: Comics as an Emergent and Relational Form of Research

In this article, we explore two comics that were produced in a province-wide teacher mentorship initiative in British Columbia, Canada. Comics-based research, undertaken through a collaborative approach, underscores the potential for this kind of research to highlight teacher stories and methodologically engage in an artistic collaboration within a research team. We use this opportunity to discuss how the mentoring project brought to our awareness the importance of sharing teachers’ stories among peers, as teachers came together to study their professional practices.

The Power and Possibilities for Understanding Teaching in these Times with Ethnodramatic Inquiries into Teacher Stories: Two Reviews

The following is a review and commentary on two of Charles Vanover’s ethnodramatic performances of the ethnographic interviews of two teachers. At two sessions at two educational conferences, Charles staged verbatim excerpts from each interview to open conversations with teacher educators about the challenges faced by two teachers in Chicago Public Schools. With this review, I explain the structuring behind each performance and the ensuing conversations about teacher challenges and needs in these times. I illuminate how educators can use ethnodramatic inquiries into teacher stories to deepen their understandings of teacher education and to re-write narratives that scapegoat teachers as the problem.

Teacher Stories of Blame When Assigning a Failing Grade

Nurse educators are required to routinely evaluate students. While there is a plethora of information in the educational literature about how to write exams, develop rubrics, or evaluate clinical performance, there is a paucity of research related to teachers’ experiences of evaluation. Using a Heideggerian hermeneutical approach, this study sought to answer: (1) what are the experiences of nurse educators evaluating nursing students? and (2) what do these evaluative experiences mean to the nurse educator? Thirty nurse educators from 19 undergraduate programs were interviewed for this study. Implications for nurse educators are discussed.