What is the future we want in teacher education? What are we preparing teachers for? What are the key questions we should be asking ourselves about the perennial problems that we face in teacher education? How do we need to push ourselves to reframe these problems in order to make better progress in preparing teachers? I will highlight the research pushing my own thinking about these questions and the improvement and transformation that we need.
In collaboration with other researchers, teachers, and school leaders, I study how strong professional learning communities develop in schools serving students from racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse communities. Central to this work is understanding the complex work of eliciting and responding to children’s mathematical thinking, building joyful classroom communities where children feel they are known and seen, and designing professional learning experiences so that teachers learn with and from their students. I collaborate with teachers and leaders to recognize and tackle inequities perpetuated both at a structural level through school policies and practices and in everyday interactions in the classroom. My research has included close study of classroom discourse and children’s disciplinary identities, pedagogies of teacher education, and teacher educator and leadership practice. I draw on equity and justice-oriented research on children’s mathematical thinking, classroom practice, and organizational learning.