Collective Improvisation in a Teacher Education Community

As has been well illustrated in the other books in this series, the notion of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices has been taken up by teachers and teacher educators as they have searched for new ways of better understanding the complex work of teaching and learning. Self-study appears to be attractive to practitioners because a self-study approach to researching practice is largely driven by their questions, issues and concerns. Therefore, one immediate value of self-study is in the way it can inform and almost immediately influence practice. This book, edited by Linda Farr Darling, Gaalen Erickson, and Tony Clarke offers an in-depth investigation of the CITE program (A Community of Inquiry in Teacher Education) and is one of the few examples of that which might be described as an institutional self-study (Loughran, 2005). As such, the book illustrates the level of commitment and concern that these teacher educators have for their teacher education practices and forthe learning about teaching of their student teachers. They demonstrate that it is crucial to question the taken-for-granted and that in so doing, to be careful to seek to be appropriately responsive to disconfirming data.