After three decades, many South Africans continue to experience the difficult and lingering effects of apartheid government measures, which enforced separate and unequal social, political, and educational opportunities. South Africans who were classified as 'non-white' experienced more violent and inhumane physical and emotional apartheid racial injustices. And, as a mathematics teacher educator in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, it is important that I consider pre-service teachers' memories of school mathematics to enhance their learning in their mathematics teacher education modules. I offer an arts-inspired self-study approach that I benefited from to come to terms with my own family's emotional distress caused by apartheid racial segregation that led to the ostracization of some family members. This adaptable, purposeful self-study may also be useful for primary mathematics pre-service teachers who had emotionally disturbing teaching and learning memories in South African mathematics classrooms and presents a way of improving my professional practice as a mathematics education teacher in the post-apartheid South African context. My research question is: 'What can I learn from my reflexive arts-inspired self-study of my apartheid life experiences to improve my mathematics pre-service teacher education practice in post-apartheid South Africa?'
Transitioning from a K-12 teacher to a teacher educator involves a significant transformation in professional identity, characterized by intellectual, pedagogical, and cultural challenges. This self-study explores the first author's journey as an international graduate student transitioning from teacher to mathematics teacher educator in the United States. In this study, I investigate how my identity developed through reflective experiences, challenges, and tensions during the transition from traditional to inquiry-based teaching environments. Drawing on a staged perspective of identity development and a framework emphasizing competence, performance, and recognition, the findings highlight the dynamic and ongoing nature of teacher educator identity formation. Findings suggest that professional identity development involves periods of advancement and hesitation, influenced by external recognition, social participation, and the ongoing negotiation of past and new identities. The implications highlight the necessity for targeted support, including induction programs, mentoring, and communities of practice to foster the growth of novice teacher educators, especially international students navigating dual transitions. This study emphasizes the importance of continuous reflection and adaptation in professional growth as a teacher educator.
We draw on collaborative self-study methodology to examine how we leverage our role as university supervisors to enhance cohesion between teacher candidates' experiences in their coursework and the roles they take on at their field placements in connection with our program's Equity and Justice Teaching Framework. Through investigating our roles as doctoral student university supervisors, we understand how teacher educators can serve to mediate learning across spaces through inviting mentor teachers in and navigating tensions. Our findings serve as an entry point for other teacher educators striving to build programmatic cohesion between university coursework and students' field placement experiences with attention paid to equity and justice. In the findings and discussion, we turn toward issues of accountability by recognizing how our coaching is embedded in contexts, in the navigation of expectations that we hold for ourselves as well as teacher candidates and mentor teachers, and ultimately, in understanding how these expectations originate from a value-determined stance. We suggest that collective reflective practices among university supervisors within teacher education programs can serve to strengthen the ability to mediate tensions when teaching for equity and justice between the many spaces supervisors inhabit.
