Supporting collective enactments of instruction: A decomposition of the practice of an expert teacher educator

Abstract

Forms of practice-based teacher education, in which pre-service teachers engage in collective enactments of instruction, necessitate that pre-service teachers take risks and make their practice public. However, there is currently little work specifying teacher educator practices that establish a culture that supports collaborative learning and risk-taking. This study aims to understand what an expert teacher educator considers and does to establish a culture that supports pre-service teachers to take risks and make their practice public in a collaborative, practice-based teacher-learning context. I provide the field of teacher education with a framework for understanding how teacher educators can establish learning environments that support pre-service teachers to engage in collective enactments of instruction, and therefore make their practice public. In developing this framework, I decompose an expert teacher educator’s practice into teachable and learnable components and their associated moves. The findings from this study have implications both pragmatically – for teacher educators’ improvement of practice – and for research – in further analyses and decompositions of teacher educator practice.