Professional Self-Understanding as Expertise in Teaching about Teaching

Source: Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, Volume 15, Issue 2 (April 2009) , pages 305 – 318.
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

This article investigates an aspect of the knowledge of teaching required by teacher educators. It also explores how that knowledge might be developed if teaching (about teaching) is to be conceptualized as a distinct and important field in its own right - with its own forms of knowledge, ways of working and perspectives on the world.
The article focuses on self-understanding as a component of teacher educators' knowledge of practice. It also examines how the development of self-understanding can be conceived as a form of teacher educator expertise.

The paper concludes the author's view of professional self-understanding is that it:
- can be developed through self-study;
- requires particular teacher educator personal qualities (willingness to see practice as problematic, to take risks and expose vulnerability, etc.);
- opens up new possibilities to think and act differently within practice; and
- involves developing self-awareness through understanding experience.

Few studies have explicitly considered teacher educators' self-understanding as a form of professional knowledge; hence, this paper makes a contribution to explicating and documenting this aspect of teacher educators' practice.