Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education

Cases of Learning and Leading

Cheryl J. Craig, Laura Turchi, Denise M. McDonald, Cheryl J. Craig, Laura Turchi, Denise M. McDonald

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030566739
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030566746
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book focuses on the impact of sustained and evolving collaborations, showcasing research and scholarship in a faculty group—consisting of 28 professors from five regional universities—meeting and supporting each other since 2002. Originally an innovation introduced by Cheryl J. Craig and funded by a reform movement, the Faculty Academy continues to flourish in the fourth largest city in America long after the reform initiative abandoned its charge. Contributors to this volume represent all stages of careers, include all races and genders, and write from a multiplicity of disciplinary stances (literacy, mathematics, science, social education, multiculturalism, English as a Second Language, accountability, etc.). In addition to fascinatingly diverse perspectives on teacher education, the authors also investigate issues related to career trajectories—including experiences of vulnerability. The volume illuminates how the Faculty Academy works as a dynamic academic and social bond:not only as a glue that binds members in community, but also in rigorous intellectual commitments that fuel their collective knowing and advance their careers while providing leadership, mentorship, and modelling in up-close and timely ways.

© The Author(s) 2020

C. J. Craig et al. (eds.)Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher EducationPalgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Educationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning and Leading

Laura Turchi¹ , Cheryl J. Craig² and Denise M. McDonald³

(1)

Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

(2)

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

(3)

University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA

Laura Turchi (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Denise M. McDonald

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Introduction

Overview Chapter

We enter this book-writing venture as members of the Faculty Academy, a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary group of teacher educators spanning post-doctoral, clinical, and tenure-track positions. Our group’s deep history enables us to comprehensively examine our learning and leading along the teaching and teacher education continuum as well as over the passage of time (2002–2020). In this volume, 26 Faculty Academy authors pay keen attention to the ways they lead in the broader landscape of teacher education while concurrently acknowledging how the Faculty Academy scaffolds their learning and leading, both as individuals and as members of a shared knowledge community (Craig, 1995, 2001, 2007).

This book, Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning and Leading, is purposely organized around three encompassing themes: (1) historical roots and reflections of the Faculty Academy, (2) finding a leadership stance in the academy, and (3) learning through practice and research. Each section—and the chapters within it—will now be introduced.

Historical Roots and Reflections of the Faculty Academy

Our co-edited book begins with five chapters addressing the origins of the Faculty Academy and its key features. The first two chapters (Chapters 2 and 3) chronicle the Faculty Academy’s roots to the present time. The next chapters (Chapters 4, 5) account for some of its key features: (1) the learning and leading yields of participation in the Faculty Academy (Chapter 4), and (2) a close-up view of mentoring within one institution and its interface with the Faculty Academy’s cross-institutional nature (Chapter 5).

Gayle Curtis, a member of both the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy, and Cheryl Craig, founder of both the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy, kick off Chapter 2 with the Faculty Academy: A new twist to an established concept of collaboration. They paint the Houston Annenberg Challenge school reform landscape and describe how the change effort birthed two groups 20 years ago: (1) the Portfolio Group (teacher research group) (1999), and (2) the Faculty Academy (professor group) (2002). Curtis and Craig underscore the fact that the two groups are some of the few identifiable legacies (together with the current single project Houston A+ Challenge organization), of the $60 million dollar investment in public school reform in Houston in the late 1990s to the early 2000s. The authors additionally compare the two groups’ structures and feature their productivity, illustrating how both are highly practical and equally robust in nature.

In Chapter 3, Carole Markello, who also is an original Faculty Academy member, takes up the question of how the Faculty Academy group has persisted and adapted to change over the continuum. In Reflecting on growth and change: The persistence of the Faculty Academy over the years (2002–2018), Markello draws attention to the power of the Faculty Academy concept and to the personalities and relationships that have enabled it to grow, develop, and sustain itself over the multiple years of its existence.

Denise McDonald, another original Faculty Academy member, together with a group of current members (Chestin Auzenne-Curl, Kent Divoll, Jean Kiekel, Janice Newsum, Omah Williams-Duncan) co-authored Chapter 4. Their collaborative writing captures the skills of learning and leading honed in the midst of their Faculty Academy experiences as well as some of the issues they personally and institutionally face. In their co-authored chapter, Involvement in the Faculty Academy research community yields unexpected skills: Stories of leading and learning, they allow their common insights to bubble to the surface. The reciprocal nature of mentor–mentee learning is additionally foregrounded, along with professional insights they have gleaned, and the learning they acquired, through the challenges and triumphs experienced in leadership roles in teaching and teacher education.

Chapter 5, The mentor–mentee faculty relationship: A case of reciprocal learning and leading, is co-authored by Sara Raven, Trina Davis, and Cheryl Craig, who are in the same department (Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture) at the same university (Texas A&M University). Their chapter illuminates how cross-content mentoring at the institutional level spills over to cross-content, cross-institutional mentorship at the Faculty Academy level. In their chapter, nascent connections are made with other scholars at partner Faculty Academy universities that prove to be very fruitful.

Finding a Leadership Stance in the Academy

This book’s second overarching theme, Finding a leadership stance in the academy, addresses emergent leadership and learning in our places of work. It contains six chapters authored by members holding post-doctoral, assistant professor, associate professor, and full professor positions at four of our different institutions.

The section begins with Chapter 6, Cinderella, fear and fellowship: An autobiographical narrative of being and becoming in an established research community, which is authored by Chestin Auzenne-Curl. The work captures the author’s transition from being a Ph.D. student at the University of Houston, Main Campus, to her Post-Doctoral Associate position at Texas A&M University and her concurrent membership in the Faculty Academy. Chestin Auzenne-Curl chronicles her ongoing struggle with the Impostor Syndrome and the tensions she experiences with fear, fellowship, and finding voice as a woman of color in new learning and leading landscapes.

Chapter 7, Musings on the sidelines: Leadership and learning during the tenure-track experience, is contributed by Bernardo E. Pohl, a Latinx male with a disability. The chapter shares Pohl’s successful Associate Professor journey in a dramatically shifting urban university landscape serving non-traditional students who mostly are of color. The rapid pace of change, coupled with the high needs of the student body, creates intensified expectations well beyond the norm, which Pohl tactfully describes. The Faculty Academy provides him with a personal, social and academic homeplace and a measure of stability amid his vacillating teaching and learning environments.

Xiao Han, a Post-Doctoral Associate, takes the notion of leadership to a whole new plane: the international community. In Chapter 8, Bridging the East and the West: Reflections on learning, leading and life, she presents her career trajectory as an immigrant through to her becoming an American citizen. She examines how she can connect her past experiences in China with her present experiences in the United States in order to create mutual understandings—reciprocal learning—between both countries and peoples. Like Bernardo Pohl, the Faculty Academy fuels and supports Xiao Han’s sense-making of complex embedded situations.

Denise McDonald discusses Longstanding Lessons of Propriety as a Leader in Chapter 9. In a manner resembling Xiao Han, she reaches back into her past experiences as a first-generation college graduate and as an enlisted Marine, to illuminate the myriad of management and leadership tasks she has taken on over time. McDonald also pinpoints defining moments, puzzling situations, and influential men...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning and Leading
• 2. Faculty Academy: A New Version of an Established Concept of Collaboration
• 3. Reflecting on Growth and Change: The Persistence of the Faculty Academy (2002–2020)
• 4. Involvement in a Professional Community Yields Unexpected Skills: Faculty Academy Members’ Stories of Leadership and Learning
• 5. The Mentor–Mentee Faculty Relationship: Cases of Reciprocal Learning and Leading
• 6. Fear, Fellowship, and Finding a Voice: An Autobiographical Narrative of Being and Becoming in an Established Research Community
• 7. Musings on the Sidelines: Leadership and Learning During the Tenure-Track Experience
• 8. Bridging the East and the West: Reflections on Learning, Leading, and Life
• 9. Longstanding Lessons of Propriety as a Leader
• 10. Introverts as Leaders: How Involvement in a Professional Learning Community Can Facilitate Development of Skills
• 11. Resiliency and Women: The Journey to Academic STEM Leadership
• 12. Leading from the Shadows: School Librarian Leadership
• 13. Learning Through Co-teaching as Critical Friends
• 14. Learning and Leading as Teacher Researchers
• 15. Learning and Leading as Collaborative Physics Education/Physics Partners: Building a Physics Teacher Education Program
• 16. teachHOUSTON Alumni: Agents of Change in Secondary STEM Education
• 17. Discovering Stories Data Might Be Telling: Collaborative Research as Leadership, and Lessons Learned in Promoting a Culture of Evidence
• 18. Sustaining Critical Practice in Contested Spaces: Teacher Educators Resist Narrowing Definitions of Curriculum
• 19. Generous Scholarship: A Counternarrative for the Region and the Academy
• 20. The Faculty Academy in Review: What, So What, Now What?
• Back Matter