This book focuses on English teacher educators’ experiences concerning professionalization and teacher identity. The term professionalization, itself, can be problematized (Popkewitz, 1994), as it connotes adherence to realities to professional norms that are based within particular histories. Yet, teacher educators must confront how to mentor prospective teachers into the field and how changes to the field manifest changes to what it means to be a professional. In research about changes in English teacher education over the past twenty years, Pasternak, Caughlan, Hallman, Renzi and Rush (2017) presented five distinct foci of ELA programs that have evolved: 1) changes to field experiences within teacher education programs, 2) altered conceptions of teaching literature and literacy within the context of ELA, 3) increased adherence to standardization, 4) changing demographics of students in K-12 classrooms, and 5) increased expectations for use of technology within ELA. These foci impact how professionals in ELA are viewed both from inside and outside the profession and how they navigate these tensions in teacher education programs to define what it means to identify as an English teacher. Throughout the book, chapter authors articulate dilemmas that focus around professionalization and teacher identity, questioning what it means to be an English teacher today. While some chapters suggest methods for increased awareness of tensions within practice, other chapters approach professionalization and teacher identity by asking what the limits of methods classes and teacher education might be in preparing ELA teachers and supporting them to remain in the profession. Today’s political environment devalues teachers and teaching, a situation that has critics deriding the educational standards at institutes of higher education while concurrently lauding alternative programs that do not have to adhere to the same rigorous teacher certification requirements. English teacher educators are now being asked to design programs, soften requirements, and recruit and mentor teacher candidates to a profession that, in the past, certified more new English teachers than it could employ. The chapters in this book explore what it means to educate and be an English teacher educator under these conditions.

This much-needed text provides a coherent and strategic approach to teacher development Teacher Development for Language Teachers examines ten different approaches for facilitating professional development in language teaching: self-monitoring, support groups, journal writing, classroom observation, teaching portfolios, analysis of critical incidents, case analysis, peer coaching, team teaching, and action research. The introductory chapter provides a conceptual framework. All chapters contain practical examples and reflection questions to help readers apply the approach in their own teaching context.

Integrating Technology in English Language Arts Teacher Education investigates the technology practices teacher candidates in the US are being introduced to, how they are using these practices in classrooms, and how technology can be effectively integrated into English teacher education programs. By drawing upon findings from extensive longitudinal studies into teacher education programs in the US, this timely volume addresses critical themes relating to the integration of technology in education, including: • Teaching with technology • Technology for collaboration • Technology for individualized learning and assessment By analyzing the experiences of teacher educators and candidates, and offering detailed analysis of the content, practices, and skills being taught to pre-service English teachers, Pasternak examines the entities that drive or inhibit the adoption of technology into the secondary English language arts (ELA) curriculum. This volume will resonate with an international audience of post-graduate scholars and researchers interested in the fields of teacher education, English language arts, and the relationship between technology and classroom practice.

Teacher leadership remains at the forefront of conversations in teacher education, with discussions on recruitment, retention, and effectiveness. Teachers are at the core of schooling, and the roles they assume and types of leadership they engage in are multi-dimensional. Teacher leadership comes in many shapes and definitions. In this sense, both opportunities and challenges exist in teacher leadership. While national competencies continue to define dispositional and knowledge base for teacher leaders, there is still work to be done to define and add to the body of scholarship on this topic. Teacher leadership opportunities provide development for teachers as a key retention strategy; however, role ambiguity presents challenges in how to empower teachers for formal and informal roles of leadership while maintaining the teacher identity. Empowering Formal and Informal Leadership While Maintaining Teacher Identity provides a comprehensive look at the opportunities and challenges of teacher leadership, drawing on research and practice that add to the body of knowledge for teacher leadership, which is a niche in education that differs from educational administration. Highlighted topics within this book include models for teacher leadership, teacher education, types of leadership roles, the development and retention of teacher leaders, and leadership across different types of school districts. This book is ideally designed for inservice and preservice teachers, administrators, teacher educators, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in teacher leadership roles and the way in which teacher identity is maintained in relation to these other leadership positions.

Invested Stayers: How Teachers Thrive in Challenging Times features chapters co-authored by PK-12 teachers and postsecondary teacher educators from across the U.S. that reflect how they persist, remain, and thrive in the teaching profession. Premised on the idea that co-authors are colleagues and mentors to each other, this book conceptualizes contributors as invested stayers in the education profession. Chapters feature how particular catalysts, or landmark changes in education, have been productive sites for growth, agency, and even resistance across the arc of contributors’ professional lives. The book recognizes that teacher educators and teachers persist because of multiple and overlapping factors between our professional and personal lives, including the relationships we develop with each other as colleagues and mentors in our professional learning. In the public sphere, PK-12 educators increasingly face challenges that limit their ability to initiate their own professional learning. In this book, we considered what might occur if educators had space and time to write together and reflect on how they’ve persisted. These authors narrate themselves as invested stayers who invite personal and professional growth through inquiry, creativity, and innovation.

Winner of the ELATE Richard A. Meade Award 2018 Identifying key areas of teacher education that cross countries and disciplines, this book provides the first extensive research-based insight into how secondary English teachers are prepared at institutions of higher education in the United States of America (US) since the last major study in 1995. In the two decades since then, English teacher education programs have developed in contextually dependent ways that often have been driven by institutional, economic, social and political considerations. The authors provide an overview of their nationwide study of English teacher educators, which was conducted over a four-year period. They analyze the context under which teacher educators currently prepare pre-service English teachers in the US and support teacher educators in other countries to make comparisons to their own unique historical and cultural settings. The authors also offer a comprehensive evaluation of the content, practices and skills being taught to future teachers of English in university-based teacher preparation programs in the US. The book draws on evidence from a nationwide questionnaire, case studies of teacher educators in their respective programs, course syllabi and focus group interviews to focus on areas of instruction that resonate with teacher educators in countries where English is the dominant language of communication. These areas include: - field experiences - standards and assessment - teaching literacy to integrate reading and writing - working with English language learners to address cultural and linguistic diversity - new technologies in English education

The book includes topics on teaching English as a foreign language, language teacher education, instructed second language learning, and 21st century skills for English language taechers and learners.