An International Research Handbook
As we began conceptualizing the Handbook, we knew the importance of speaking to more than local or national contexts as well as the importance of including a broad range of research from as many countries as possible. This international focus was both a matter regarding what to include, that is, a broad range of research from different national contexts, as well as one concerning the importance of reaching a broad international audience for the Handbook. This focus on including research from many international contexts and addressing researchers and policymakers from multiple countries would, we imagined, allow us to promote teacher education scholarship that is theoretically and practically relevant to national and international social contexts where teacher education takes place. We were aware of the great variability across countries in teacher education approaches, selectivity, curricular demands, state regulatory policies, and the role of research in teacher education (Tatto, 2015). We saw this diversity as a source of insight to find novel ways to address challenges of teacher education. However, our purposes were to seek greater coherence, but not uniformity, in research in teacher education. We did not wish to wash out the importance of attending to boundaries but to highlight the meeting of work at the boundaries as sources of insight. Further, we were searching for ways to discern or create âlarger intellectual patternsâ within research in teacher education that would allow dialogue across diversity. Without it, we saw, diversity would not be a strength, but, rather, might become a means of confusion (Grimmet & Chinnery, 2009).
As we began to imagine ways to include diversity, we drew on work already done. Clandinin, along with Hamilton (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010), questioned what it meant to think of research with an international perspective. Hamilton and Clandinin wondered âHow we might step out of national silos, single disciplines, and taken-for-granted understandings'. Working from a view of research in teaching and teacher education as ânot universally understood terms or activities', they acknowledged that contexts make a difference in research in teaching and teacher education, and they wondered how those unique contexts in different countries create differences. Offering considerations taken up as citizens of the world, they wondered, as do we, what tensions are opened up in research dialogues in teacher education when the dialogue is opened up to multiple international voices. Hamilton and Clandinin drew on cosmopolitanism, especially the work of Nussbaum (1998). Nussbaum suggests that
we see ourselves as KosmopolitĂȘs â world citizens or cosmopolitans. She [Nussbaum] suggests that taking a cosmopolitan view opens ways to see beyond traditionally bounded edges ⊠This view âdoes not privilege already formed communities. It seeks to defend emerging spaces for new cultural and social configurations reflective of the intensifying intermingling of people, ideas, and activities the world over. However, cosmopolitanism does not automatically privilege the latter (Hansen, 2008, p. 294).â Unlike globalization, which can be homogenizing, cosmopolitanism offers a âdistinct alternativeâ (Hansen, 2008, p. 307). (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010, 1227)
As Hamilton and Clandinin (2010) pointed out, âtaking a cosmopolitan stance comes in the âever-changing space between what a person and community are in the present moment and what they might become through a reflective response to new influence juxtaposed with an understanding of their traditions and rootsâ (Hansen, Burdick-Shepherd, Cammarano, & Obelleiro, 2009, p. 588)'. Adopting a cosmopolitan stance, Hamilton and Clandinin (2010) argued that, following Nussbaum (1998),
â⊠the task of world citizenship requires the would-be world citizen to become a sensitive and empathetic interpreterâ (p. 63), yet does not, and should not, ârequire that we suspend criticism toward other individuals and cultures ⊠The world citizen may be very critical of unjust actions or policies and of the character of people who promote themâ (p. 65) ⊠As citizens of this world we must have the âability to see [ourselves] as not simply a citizen of a local region ⊠[but as] inescapably internationalâ (Wisler, 2009, p. 132) ⊠Living as a citizen of the world, âspotlights the familiar fact that human beings can create not just ways to tolerate differences between them but also ways to learn from one another, however modest the resulting changes in their outlooks may be. It is a cosmopolitanism that does not take sides dogmatically and yet that does not stand apart from conflict, misunderstanding, and challengeâ (Hansen, 2010, p. 4) ⊠In this Hansen directs our attention outside of the familiar to the possible and encourages us to engage these places of conflict, misunderstanding and challenge with a spirit that calls us to consider the possibilities of otherwise. (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010, p. 1227)
Similar to what Hamilton and Clandinin were trying to open up as co-editors of the research journal Teaching and Teacher Education, we also saw our task in including international research as pressing âbeyond national borders, beyond disciplinary borders, beyond borders of institutions. Pressing beyond borders and boundaries, we want to press for more than the inclusion of citations but the inclusion of ideas and practices around the worldâ (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010, p. 1228). We shared their hope that by bringing together diverse authors from many locations and theoretical viewpoints, we could work toward creating âa community of scholars', where we can, as Dewey (1916) described, âassimilate, imaginatively, something of another's experience in order to tell [her/]him intelligently of one's own experienceâ (p. 6), one's own research. For us, Dewey's ideas speak to what is possible in research dialogues within a community of scholars. In a Deweyan spirit, we hoped that through creating a Handbook, we could create a space where researchers could share more deeply âin the experiences of others', and in so doing there would be âmore resourcesâ âfor dealing with our problems, and hence the more intelligent our collective problem solving will [hopefully] beâ (Biesta and Burbules, 2003, p. 70). The Handbook, we hoped, could begin processes of dialogue and knowing within a community of research in teacher education.
We also hoped that we could approach issues âwith a cosmopolitan perspective that opens rather than closes our understandings of issuesâ (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2010, p. 1228). We saw our task as an inclusive one, but one that fits well within the scholarship of integration, one that includes ideas and practices from around the world, one where new and often unheard voices join in the dialogue about research in teacher education.
A Research Focus
We also knew we wanted to keep our focus on research and to attend to the broad range of theoretical frames and methodologies within which research in teacher education was undertaken. We did not exclude or draw boundaries around particular methodologies or theoretical frameworks but, rather, were inclusive of the range of research undertaken in teacher education. We know our way around research methodologies that are commonly used in teacher education research. In some ways, we are âat easeâ in discussions around research in teacher education. We know, for example, of metaphors (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) such as âtheory drives practice', âthe gap between theory and practiceâ and âthe need for a bridge between theory and practiceâ that are used so often that they are frequently no longer questioned or unpacked for their entailments that shape research in teacher education. We realized the challenge of being wakeful enough to see the gaps and lacunae that surround us in the field of research in teacher education.
We are aware that research in teacher education is usually labelled as applied research, suggesting that knowledge is usually first âdiscoveredâ (often outside teacher education) and then âappliedâ in teacher education contexts. This can be seen as a boundary tension when fields related to research in teacher education come together. As we continued to work with the concept of attending to boundaries that meet in the field of research in teacher education, we began to attend more and more to tensions created as boundaries meet. One of our purposes is to focus on these tensions at the boundaries in ways that allow us to reconsider whether seeing teacher education research as applied research is appropriate.
There is another boundary at work here and that relates to the relationship between research in teacher education and the practice of teacher education. Teacher learning and teacher knowledge are often characterized as tacit, personally held, and oriented toward practice and developed on the basis of formal and informal educational experiences throughout a person's teaching career. Teacher education, supported by teacher education research, is linked with these complex learning processes. As we approached these adaptive perspectives of teacher learning, we began to draw attention to their contested relationship with teacher education research and teacher education practices.
We imagine ourselves at the intersection between the interests of research in teacher education and the interests of societies it aims to...
