Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning and Leading [1st ed.] 9783030566739, 9783030566746

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PALGRAVE STUDIES ON LEADERSHIP AND LEARNING IN TEACHER EDUCATION SERIES EDITORS: MARIA ASSUNÇÃO FLORES · THUWAYBA AL BARWANI

Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education Cases of Learning and Leading Edited by Cheryl J. Craig · Laura Turchi · Denise M. McDonald

Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education

Series Editors Maria Assunção Flores Institute of Education University of Minho Braga, Portugal Thuwayba Al Barwani College of Education Sultan Qaboos University Al Khod, Muscat, Oman

The series focuses on original and research informed writing related to teachers and leaders’ work as it addresses teacher education in the 21st century. The editors of this series adopt a more comprehensive definition of Teacher Education to include pre-service, induction and continuing professional development of the teacher. The contributions will deal with the challenges and opportunities of learning and leading in teacher education in a globalized era. It includes the dimensions of practice, policy, research and university school partnership. The distinctiveness of this book series lies in the comprehensive and interconnected ways in which learning and leading in teacher education are understood. In the face of global challenges and local contexts it is important to address leadership and learning in teacher education as it relates to different levels of education as well as opportunities for teacher candidates, teacher educators education leaders and other stakeholders to learn and develop. The book series draws upon a wide range of methodological approaches and epistemological stances and covers topics including teacher education, professionalism, leadership and teacher identity.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16190

Cheryl J. Craig · Laura Turchi · Denise M. McDonald Editors

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

Editors Cheryl J. Craig Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture Texas A&M University College Station, TX, USA

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

Denise M. McDonald Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Houston-Clear Lake Houston, TX, USA

ISSN 2524-7069 ISSN 2524-7077 (electronic) Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education ISBN 978-3-030-56673-9 ISBN 978-3-030-56674-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated to Michele Kahn–Cherished Faculty Academy colleague, friend, and inspiration.

Foreword: Generous Scholars Shaped Within a Responsive Community

This lovely book shows what the possibilities are for sustaining academics as they begin, and continue, to live their lives within universities. It does not simply tell but, through three sections and multiple chapters, the book offers diverse accounts of the experiences of 26 academic members over 18 years within a co-composed space that began at the University of Houston. The book is organized into three sections: the historical roots and reflections of the Faculty Academy; the importance of finding a leadership stance in the academy; and learning through practice and research. The authors join to tell a complex story of people growing into their work at universities, enriched by their experiences as members of the Faculty Academy. The book, and indeed the Faculty Academy, is threaded by themes of reciprocal learning, experiential learning, critical reflection, openness to difference, relational bonds, and authentic leadership. Some of the story fragments included in the chapters made me smile, a few made me laugh out loud, and many made me feel anger at the injustice of what was happening to various members of the Faculty Academy as their experiences resonated with my own or those of my colleagues. The authors allowed me to enter their stories in order to understand something of what was being lived. These are not, however, sentimental accounts but are deeply personal, and richly evidenced, accounts of each person’s becoming through the Faculty Academy. The stories are woven together with lists of co-authored papers and publications, with accounts of the harsh bumps against university policies and practices, and with each

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members’ continuing desire to forge a different kind of space within the university that nurtured and sustained them. Their first focus was not on outcomes, publications, grants, or presentations, although much is accomplished. Rather, the book shows how the members of the Faculty Academy focussed first on who they were in relation with each other and with the lives they were composing. Their focus was on an exploration into who they each are, and are becoming, without layers of judgment. I see how they work within a relational ethics (Clandinin, Caine, & Lessard, 2018) that helps them think about how they are changing, what they are silencing, what they are privileging. One of the wonderful things about this book is the ways that the Faculty Academy has shifted and changed over time as contexts shift, as new people join, and as new topics become relevant. The book, in its entirety, speaks to the changing parade of university knowledge landscapes (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995), at least in faculties of education in the United States. As lives are situated in context, I see the ways that the Faculty Academy is a responsive and response-full community. As I have written with my colleagues, Vera Caine and Sean Lessard, ‘Response’ is the root word of ‘responsibility’, deriving from the Latin responsum with its sense of ‘something offered in return’. And while responsibility turns our attention to moral duties and obligations to satisfactorily perform or complete a task, response reminds us that responsibility calls for something in return, something given in return for something offered. A metaphor of lingering draws our attention to something lasting over time, of being sustained over time, with a reluctance to leave. These interwoven metaphors help us understand the functions of response communities as places and people with whom we linger and with, and to whom, we owe response, a giving back of what we have been given but reshaped with new possibilities. (Caine, Lessard, & Clandinin, 2018, p. 280)

The very idea of the Faculty Academy, and the ways that the Academy members live, is a powerful rejection of much of what we have taken for granted in university life: competition, isolation, ownership of ideas. Within the Faculty Academy, the members did not live out these ideas but began from, and lived within, a standpoint that made their relationships with each other central. Being part of the Faculty Academy, told through stories of mentorship and relationships over time, allowed each person to be sustained as they honored their mutual responsibilities to who each

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person is and is becoming. There are stories of tensions, of hard bumps against institutional stories of efficiency and silence as issues of race and gender shaped the work of those within the Faculty Academy. Rather than turn these into barriers, the members worked together, as they lived with shared responsibilities to each other as people in the Academy, and to the work they were each doing, to turn these bumping places into living edges and places of inquiry. These bumping places were a call to live out their responsibilities to each other, and to their work, in ways that helped them see the possibilities of staying at the inquiry edges. When I read the book, I thought often about imagining otherwise, taking up questions that require us to understand “[i]magination [as] the capacity to think of things as if they could be otherwise” (Greene, 1988, p. 1). In these dark times marked by uncertainty, increasing inequities, and global unrest, imagination is critical in our work and in our lives. Where are the spaces where we are called to imagine otherwise as we face these necessarily troubling times? According to Greene (1995), “[s]ocial imagination is the capacity to invent visions of what should be and what might be in our deficit society, in the streets where we live and our schools. Social imagination not only suggests but also requires that one take action to repair or renew” (p. 5). Imagination lives within the experiences of those in the Faculty Academy. To have sustained such a project over so many years and to have stayed at the work of composing a counter story to what it means to live in a university is an act of social imagination, one brought to life in the chapters of this book. In one of the last chapters, Craig offers an idea of what she calls generous scholarship, part of her stories to live by, of who she is as a person and a scholar. The Faculty Academy is an instantiation of her life as a generous scholar/person. She offers this way of living to her colleagues who are part of the Faculty Academy. The book shows that others too are living their lives guided by this idea. In so doing, the book offers us the possibility of collaboration, relationality, generosity within research, professional development, identity development, and leadership.

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These possibilities are shaped by the strength of the individuals who count themselves part of the Faculty Academy. D. Jean Clandinin Professor Emerita University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

References Caine, V., Lessard, S., & Clandinin, D. J. (2018). Lingering departures: Reverberations through, and in, narrative inquiry response communities. In M. Hanne & A. A. Kaal (Eds.), Narrative and metaphor in education: Look both ways (Chapter 20, pp. 278–290). Abingdon, UK and New York, NY: Routledge. Clandinin, D. J., Caine, V., & Lessard, S. (2018). Relational ethics in narrative inquiry. London: Routledge. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1995). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. New York: Teachers College Press. Greene, M. (1988). The dialectic of freedom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Acknowledgments

Editors’ Note: Special thanks to Dr. Xiao Han for her formatting and editorial assistance in the preparation of this volume.

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Contents

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Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning and Leading Laura Turchi, Cheryl J. Craig, and Denise M. McDonald Introduction Overview Chapter Historical Roots and Reflections of the Faculty Academy Finding a Leadership Stance in the Academy Learning Through Practice and Research References Faculty Academy: A New Version of an Established Concept of Collaboration Gayle A. Curtis and Cheryl J. Craig Introduction Reform Trajectory Cheryl’s Entry to the Reform Effort Gayle’s Entry to the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy Portfolio Group Faculty Academy References

1 1 1 2 4 5 8

9 9 10 11 14 14 19 22

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Reflecting on Growth and Change: The Persistence of the Faculty Academy (2002–2020) Carrie Markello Introduction Stories of Growth and Change A Tale of Two Nuggets, Part One—A “Doing” and an “Undergoing” Narrative Inquiry and Reflection Faculty Academy’s Doings and Undergoings A Safe Place Flexibility—Willingness to Adapt to Member Needs and Welcome New Members Promoting Growth Through a Relational Leadership Style Empowering—Fostering Personal and Professional Growth Purposeful—Supporting Professional Development of Scholarship and Practice Ethical—The Doing of Caring Process-Oriented—Critical Feedback, Collaboration, and Reflection Constructive Critical Feedback Collaboration Reflection A Tale of Two Nuggets, Part Two—A “Doing” and an “Undergoing” References

4

Involvement in a Professional Community Yields Unexpected Skills: Faculty Academy Members’ Stories of Leadership and Learning Denise M. McDonald, Kent Divoll, Janice Moore Newsum, Omah M. Williams-Duncan, Chestin Auzenne-Curl, and Jean Kiekel Introduction Faculty Academy Background and History Literature Review Professional Community Collegiality and Acceptance Dialogue and Networking

25 25 27 27 29 30 30 32 33 35 35 37 38 38 39 39 41 43

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45 46 48 48 48 49

CONTENTS

Mentoring and Role Modeling Scholarly Identify Formation Budding Leadership Efficacy Stories of Empowered Leadership and Agency Denise Chestin Kent Jean Summary Statement Janice Omah Proliferating Possibilities Appendix A: Collaborative Conference Presentations (2003–2019) Appendix B: Collaborative Publications (2007–2020) Books Refereed Book Chapters Book Chapter Introductions/Summaries Journal Articles Non-refereed Conference Repository References 5

The Mentor–Mentee Faculty Relationship: Cases of Reciprocal Learning and Leading Sara Raven, Trina J. Davis, and Cheryl J. Craig Literature Review Mentoring Reciprocity Research Method Paired Stories of Mentoring/Being Mentored Experiences Sara’s and Cheryl’s Mentee–Mentor Stories of Experience Trina’s and Cheryl’s Mentee–Mentor Stories of Experiences Overarching Themes The Influence of Context The Primacy of Relationships The Variety of Content Learned Parting Words References

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50 50 51 52 52 56 58 60 63 63 66 68 69 72 72 72 75 76 76 77

83 84 84 85 86 86 86 88 90 90 91 92 93 93

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Fear, Fellowship, and Finding a Voice: An Autobiographical Narrative of Being and Becoming in an Established Research Community Chestin Auzenne-Curl Cinder and Ash: An Allegorical Recompense Narrative 1: A Seat at the Table Impostor Syndrome Philosophical Underpinnings and Methodology Narrative Inquiry Storying and Re-Storying as a Process Knowledge Community Shifting Identity Narrative 2: Checking the Mail Shifting Identity Negotiations of Space Narrative 3: First Author Negotiations of Space Setting a Place at the Table References

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Musings on the Sidelines: Leadership and Learning During the Tenure-Track Experience Bernardo Pohl Introduction The Literature: Emotional Tenure Track Emotional Process Emotional Cost Emotional Leadership Method: Learning Through Narrative Reduction of Error and Bias My Narrative of Becoming a Tenured Associate Professor The Accidental Teacher Losing the Precious The Experienced Novice Facing Academia Forced Leadership Act-1 The In-Between Year Forced Leadership Act-2 The Imposter as a Leader

97 97 99 100 100 101 102 102 103 104 105 106 108 109 110 111

113 113 114 114 115 116 117 119 120 120 122 123 124 125 126 127 128

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Recalibrated Leadership Parting Words: The Refuge References 8

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Bridging the East and the West: Reflections on Learning, Leading, and Life Xiao Han Bridging the East and the West: Reflections on Learning, Leading, and Life Journey to the United States Begins in the Downtown Women and Children’s Hospital Experience and Education Reciprocal Learning Narrative Accounts of My Experience Inquiry Teaching and Learning Story Narrative Inquiry Story Reflection Inquiry Teaching and Learning Tradition in China Research Method Tradition in China Final Comments References Longstanding Lessons of Propriety as a Leader Denise M. McDonald Introduction Literature Authentic Leadership Role Models and Leadership Values Summary Ethical Leadership and Procedural Justice Experiential Acquisition of Leadership Skills Gendered Leadership Skills Shadow Leader Narrative as Methodology Looking Back: Hesitations, Highlights, and Hindsight Looking Back Summary

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135 136 138 139 140 140 141 143 143 145 147 147 151 151 152 152 153 155 156 157 157 158 159 159 160 163

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Fast Forward: See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, Do no Evil? Fast Forward See no Evil Hear no Evil Speak no Evil Do no Evil Summary Discussion Concluding Comments References 10

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Introverts as Leaders: How Involvement in a Professional Learning Community Can Facilitate Development of Skills Jean Kiekel Introduction Leadership Leadership in the Academy Professional Learning Communities and Benefits for Introverts and Their Leadership Development Faculty Academy as Knowledge Community Research Methods My Story and Reflections From the Beginning University and Higher Education Academia Involvement in Professional Organizations Conclusion References Resiliency and Women: The Journey to Academic STEM Leadership Sandy White Watson Introduction Background of the Problem Challenges to Persistence and Success Resiliency Theory

163 163 164 165 167 169 170 171 172 174

179 179 179 180 182 183 184 185 185 187 189 192 194 194

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Methodology Derived from Resiliency Theory Interviews Participants Results Responses to Q1 Responses to Q2 Responses to Q3 Recognizing Resiliency Resources as a Theme in Resiliency Assets as a Theme in Resiliency Discussion Conclusion References 12

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Leading from the Shadows: School Librarian Leadership Janice Moore Newsum Introduction Characteristics and Qualities of Effective School Librarians Leadership Roles of School Librarians Leadership Responsibilities Instructional Partner Teacher Information Specialist Program Administrator Leader Unrecognized Leadership Student Academic Growth and School Librarian Leadership Change Agents Distributed Leadership Personal Reflections References Learning Through Co-teaching as Critical Friends Judith Quander, Jacqueline J. Sack, and Timothy A. Redl Introduction Theoretical Framework Methodology

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205 205 206 207 207 209 211 212 212 213 214 216 216

221 221 223 224 226 226 227 228 229 229 230 231 232 233 233 235 241 241 243 243

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Data Research Questions Researchers’ Shared Values Holding Back Reflective Teaching A Place to Talk Conclusions References

244 245 245 248 250 251 252 254

Learning and Leading as Teacher Researchers Jacqueline J. Sack and Irma Vazquez Research Method: Self-Study in the Narrative Inquiry Vein Jackie’s Story Irma’s Story Design Research Learning and Leading Irma Jackie Conclusion References

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Learning and Leading as Collaborative Physics Education/Physics Partners: Building a Physics Teacher Education Program Donna W. Stokes and Paige K. Evans Introduction Journey to Physics Education Researcher From High School Physics Teacher to Higher Education Teacher Preparation teachHOUSTON Program: STEM Teacher Preparation Physics Teacher Goals Building a Physics Teacher Preparation Program Degree Plans for Physics Majors and Minors with teachHOUSTON National Science Foundation Noyce Scholarship Program Physics by Inquiry Course Results of Collaboration Extending Collaborative Efforts Through Grants

257 258 261 263 266 267 267 268 269

271 271 272 274 274 275 276 277 278 278 280 280

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Conclusion References 16

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teachHOUSTON Alumni: Agents of Change in Secondary STEM Education Mariam Manuel, Paige K. Evans, and Leah McAlister-Shields Introduction From Preservice to Master Teacher: A Journey in Teacher Leadership Paving the Pathway for Teacher Leadership An Advisor’s Journey—Meeting Students Where They Are Teacher Leadership Teacher as Change Agents Teacher Leaders vs. Teacher Change Agents Connecting Alumni with Preservice Teachers Alumni Panel and Teacher Talks teachHOUSTON Alumni as Mentors Conference Opportunities Induction Support Rationale Conclusion References Discovering Stories Data Might Be Telling: Collaborative Research as Leadership, and Lessons Learned in Promoting a Culture of Evidence Jane McIntosh Cooper, Laura Turchi, and Margaret Kuczynski Introduction Context—Studying Student Teacher Performance Assessment Methods Analysis: Identifying Themes and Visualizing Data Sets Skills Taught and Skills Measured as Indicating the Integration of Coursework and Evaluation The Quest for Consistency and the Perception of Fair Measurement for All

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285 289 291 292 294 295 296 296 296 297 298 298 298 299 300

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305 307 310 311 311 314

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A Question of Context and Accounting for the Impact of Reform Looking for Evidence of Student Teacher Growth, and Finding It Further Evidence that the Expectation of Growth Influences Scoring on Performance Assessments Further Reflections on Growth and the Student Teaching Experience Discussion References 18

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Sustaining Critical Practice in Contested Spaces: Teacher Educators Resist Narrowing Definitions of Curriculum Jane McIntosh Cooper, Leslie M. Gauna, Christine E. Beaudry, and Gayle A. Curtis Context/Introduction Literature Critical Leaders Democratic Leaders Curricular Leaders Methods Discussion Identity Mastery Creativity Conclusion References Generous Scholarship: A Counternarrative for the Region and the Academy Cheryl J. Craig Introduction Research Niche Research Method Literature Betrayal Generous Scholarship

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327 329 329 331 332 332 333 334 338 343 346 347

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CONTENTS

Generosity in Action Final Statements References 20

The Faculty Academy in Review: What, So What, Now What? Denise M. McDonald, Cheryl J. Craig, and Laura Turchi Overview The What Progress Through Professional and Identity-Forming Actions of Learning to Lead Reciprocal Learning Experiential Learning Critical Reflection (on One’s Challenges and Effects of Self-Actions) Openness to Differing Perspectives So What Commitment to the Profession (and to Others) Now What? Unknown Future Conclusion References

Index

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359 362 362

367 367 368 370 370 371 372 373 373 381 381 382 383 385

Notes on Contributors

Chestin Auzenne-Curl, Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Lecturer at Texas A&M University in College Station teaches courses in qualitative research methodology, and works on project evaluations involving teacher preparation, and school/community partnerships for the improvement of literacy education through teacher education in urban and suburban American contexts. An NSF Future Faculty Fellowship recipient, and Teaching Fellow, Chestin has consistently worked on the preparation and retention of teachers in K12 and Higher Education. Her research interests include teacher education and retention, storied identity, and negotiation of space in context. Dr. Auzenne-Curl employs qualitative research methods with an inclination toward Narrative Inquiry (autobiographical and group), to explore topics of interest. Christine E. Beaudry, Ed.D., is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at Nevada State College. She teaches courses in social studies education, secondary pedagogy, and educational foundations. Her research interests include critical, constructivist, and relational approaches to education, teaching and learning in culturally and linguistically diverse contexts, and educational equity and justice. She is a founding executive member of the Nevada affiliate of the National Association of Bilingual Education. She has several years of teaching experience at both elementary and secondary levels in urban public schools.

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Jane McIntosh Cooper, Ed.D., is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at University of Houston. Coursework includes educational foundations, research methodology, and secondary pedagogy. Research and pedagogical interests include urban justice, relational practices, and collaborative inquiry. Through the application of postcolonial theory to educational policy practices, her research elucidates pragmatic effects of standardized practices in P-16 classrooms. Her practice focuses on helping novice teachers connect to all learners, through differentiating practices, unpacking biases and creating relationships. Recently, she has piloted collaborative Self-study research initiatives to improve practices in her program area. Cheryl J. Craig, Ph.D. is a Professor, the Houston Endowment Endowed Chair of Urban Education and the Chair of Technology and Teacher Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture at Texas A&M University. She is an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Fellow, an AERA Division B (Curriculum) Outstanding Lifetime Career awardee, and a recipient of the Michael Huberman Award for Contributions to Understanding the Lives of Teachers. She founded the Portfolio Group in 1998 and the Faculty Academy in 2002. Gayle A. Curtis, Ed.D. is a Program Director for Asian American Studies Center at University of Houston and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Texas A&M University. Her expertise includes administration/leadership, teacher development/collaboration, bilingual/science education, reflective practice, and school-community-university collaborations. She and her colleagues received the 2019 American Educational Research Association Narrative SIG Outstanding Publication Award. Current research focuses on STEM student recruitment and retention, teacher retention and attrition, and reflective practices. She recently coauthored an invited chapter in International Handbook on Self-study Research. Trina J. Davis, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Technology and Teacher Education at Texas A&M University. She teaches master’s and doctoral courses in technology/curriculum and instruction. Her research centers on teaching and learning in online and 3-D simulations/virtual environments, and creativity and technology integration in mathematics/STEAM learning. Davis is Past-President of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).

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Kent Divoll, Ed.D. is an Associate Professor at the University of Houston—Clear Lake. He teaches Curriculum and Instruction courses in undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs. His research interests include classroom management, relational pedagogy, teacher preparation, professional development, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He has served as the Chair, Vice Chair, and Program Chair for the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Classroom Management SIG. Paige K. Evans, Ed.D. is a Clinical Professor and the Associate Director for the teachHOUSTON program in the Department of Mathematics in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Houston where she prepares and teaches preservice STEM teachers. Her research focuses on preservice STEM teacher education. She is American Physical Society Physic Teacher Education Coalition Fellow and recently served as the president of the UTeach STEM Educators Association. Leslie M. Gauna, Ed.D. is an Assistant Professor of Bilingual/ESL Education and Cultural Studies in the department of Counseling, Special Education, and Diversity at the University of Houston—Clear Lake. She conducts qualitative research that has used narrative inquiry, Self-study of teacher education and an applied linguistics language program evaluation approach. She focuses on the preparation and retention of ESL/bilingual teacher candidates and novice teachers. She is the author of “In Between” English and Spanish Teaching: Stories of a Linguistically Diverse Student Becoming a Teacher (2016). Leslie M. Gauna has worked with migrant populations in urban schools on projects related to multicultural and bilingual education, violence prevention, gender equality, and community participation issues both in the United States. and in Argentina. Xiao Han, Ed.D. is a Post-Doctoral Associate Researcher at Texas A&M University. Her research interests include teacher knowledge and practice, educational reform, instructional technology, and online learning. Dr. Han uses qualitative research methods, such as narrative inquiry, to capture both Western and Eastern classroom phenomena. Jean Kiekel, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. She holds a degree in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis on Instructional Technology. She advises

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secondary education students, teaches courses in the Teacher Education program at both the graduate and undergraduate levels and directs the online M.Ed. in Instructional Technology. Her research interests include technology in the classroom, effectiveness of e-learning, classroom climate, and new teacher support. Margaret Kuczynski, M.A. holds American Statistical Association professional accreditation. At the University of Houston College of Education, as Coordinator of Institutional Effectiveness, Margaret provides data and analyses for institutional, state, and federal reporting. Her collaborative research includes a study of four-year broad-access Higher Education institutions to extend the Carnegie categorization system. Margaret has done volunteer statistical work with the Houston Arboretum characterizing invasive species and with Lamar City Independent School District evaluating their computer-adapted summer program. Mariam Manuel, Ph.D. is an Instructional Assistant Professor for the STEM teacher preparation program, teachHOUSTON at the University of Houston. Dr. Manuel teaches undergraduate and graduate coursework in STEM education. Her research interests include STEM teacher education, engineering design education, and culturally responsive pedagogy. Dr. Manuel serves on multiple NSF grants and actively presents at national conferences. Carrie Markello, Ed.D. is a retired Clinical Associate Professor-Art Education from the University of Houston-Main Campus who taught art education courses for undergraduates and graduate students in the College of Education. She currently teaches a museum education course for the Arts Leadership Program in the School of Art at the University of Houston. Her research interests include the professional identity development of preservice and beginning art educators and the teaching, community, and artistic practices of art educators. Leah McAlister-Shields, Ed.D. is a lecturer and faculty advisor for the teachHOUSTON Program in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Houston. She has served on several National Science Foundation grant-funded projects that support STEM college student success. Her research and teaching interests include college student sociocultural capital, matriculation and persistence of underrepresented STEM majors, and culturally responsive teaching in post-secondary settings.

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Denise M. McDonald, Ed.D. is a Professor and the Sandra Johnson/Barrios Technology Endowed Professor at the University of Houston—Clear Lake. She teaches Curriculum and Instruction courses in the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs. Her research interests include teacher education, scholarly identity formation, learner motivation, and reflective, relational, and exemplary pedagogy. She employs qualitative research methods, such as Self-study, Narrative Inquiry, and Critical Ethnography to explore topics of interest. Janice Moore Newsum, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston—Clear Lake in the Department of Literacy, Library and Learning Technologies. She teaches master’s courses in the School Library and Information Science Program. Her research and teaching interests include school librarian leadership and administration, advocacy, collection development, diversity in literature, and instructional technology applications. She utilizes sequential explanatory mixed-methods research to study school librarian leadership behavior in a natural environment. Bernardo Pohl, Ed.D. is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Houston-Downtown. He currently teaches critical issues in social studies and social studies methods. His research interests include teacher retention and attrition, social studies pedagogy, and ethical and moral issues in special education. Judith Quander, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD). She teaches mathematics courses at a variety of levels but specializes in mathematics content courses for preservice elementary and secondary teachers. Her research is on secondary mathematics teacher recruitment, preparation, and retention. She has used the self-study method as a way of studying her own practice and work in preparing and supporting preservice and induction year secondary mathematics teachers. Sara Raven, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of science education at Texas A&M University. She teaches science content and methods courses for preservice elementary and middle school teachers, as well as courses in the master’s and doctoral programs. Her research focuses on preschool and early elementary science teaching and learning. She is passionate about promoting equity in science. Dr. Raven employs qualitative research methods and has earned graduate certificates in both interdisciplinary qualitative inquiry and women’s studies.

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Timothy A. Redl, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Houston-Downtown (UHD). He teaches a variety of undergraduate math and statistics courses, as well as math concepts courses for preservice elementary school teachers. A faculty member in the Mathematics and Statistics Department at UHD since 2005, he shifted his research focus in 2010 from graph theory and combinatorial optimization to math education. He has been involved as a Co-PI in state and federally funded grants that have aided in the development of preservice high school teachers and in-service middle school teachers, and has served as a PI for grants designed to improve the success of UHD students placed into developmental math and/or English courses. Jacqueline J. Sack, Ed.D. is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Houston-Downtown. She teaches mathematics methods courses for preservice and in-service teachers at elementary, middle and secondary school levels. Her research interests focus on teaching mathematics through multiple representations, especially using learners’ self-drawn images to represent contextual problems to close the numeracy gaps so prevalent at all grade levels. Her qualitative methods include Narrative Inquiry, Self-study, and Design Research for her curriculum development work. Donna W. Stokes, Ph.D. is a Professor of Physics and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Affairs and Student Success in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at University of Houston. Her education-based research focuses on physics/STEM student success, and teacher education. She is American Physical Society Physic Teacher Education Coalition Fellow and recipient of an NSF Early Career Award, UH Excellence in Group Teaching Award, and Provost’s Faculty Advising Award. Laura Turchi, Ed.D. is a teacher educator specializing in English Language Arts. Her research centers on how secondary students experience Shakespeare plays: how digital tools expand, and how matters of race and identity inform their understanding. Before joining the faculty at the University of Houston, Dr. Turchi was Clinical Professor in the English Department at Arizona State University and Director of The Teaching Foundations Project. Irma Vazquez, M.Ed. teaches in a Primary Years International Baccalaureate program. Employing Understanding by Design principles, she develops transdisciplinary, inquiry-based units focusing on

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change, perspective, and reflection. Her students develop growth mindsets and become self-advocates as multilingual and multi-literate agents of change. She is the Grade 3–5 math lead teacher. Since 2005, she and Jacqueline Sack, employing qualitative research methods (Narrative Inquiry, Self-study, Design Research), have explored how third-grade students develop three-dimensional visualization and numeration skills. Sandy White Watson, Ed.D. is an Associate Professor of STEM Education and Co-Director of UHCLTeach at the University of Houston— Clear Lake. She teaches STEM Education and Curriculum and Instruction courses in undergraduate and doctoral programs. Her research interests include chemistry education, teacher education, and multiculturalism in STEM. Dr. Watson employs qualitative research methods, such as Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Narrative Inquiry, and Resiliency Theory to explore research interests. Omah M. Williams-Duncan, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston—Clear Lake teaches Curriculum and Instruction courses in undergraduate programs and a STEM course in master’s and doctoral programs. Her research interests include cross-cultural mentoring, STEM engagement, science literacy, and preservice elementary teacher science efficacy. She employs mixed methods and qualitative research methods to explore research interests impacting K-8 classrooms.

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4 Fig. 16.1 Fig. 17.1 Fig. 17.2 Fig. 17.3 Fig. 17.4 Fig. 17.5

‘Imagine’ Metaphor ‘Accept’ Metaphor Markello, C. G. (2019). ‘It is what it is’, 21 × 30 inches, acrylic and embroidery on canvas Representative graph of compensatory model of resilience (Marsh et al., 2009) Representative graph of risk-protective model of resilience (Marsh et al., 2009) Representative graph of protective-protective model of resilience (Marsh et al., 2009) Representative graph of challenge model of resilience (Marsh et al., 2009) Ethnicity of tH teacher vs. U.S. vs. Texas teachers Spring 2016 observation indicator mean scores by student teaching semester Student teaching I—Fall 2017—distribution of average observation scores by supervisor for lesson 2 of 2 All scores over several semesters for all student teachers Mean student teacher observation scores across 6 consecutive terms Following students over their time at COE: Spring 2017 for student teaching 1 and Fall 2017 for student teaching 2 (n = 95)

28 29 42 202 203 204 204 286 313 315 316 318

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 11.1

Table 15.1

Table 15.2 Table 15.3

Houston Annenberg Challenge (HAC) Campuses with which Cheryl Craig worked Comparison between the Faculty Academy and the Portfolio Group Percentage of degrees earned by women in postsecondary institutions in the United States (2015–2016) (National Science Board, 2020) Physics teacher education courses offered at the graduate level in the department of physics at the University of Houston Courses instituted as both a Physics and/or tH teacher certification course Graduation numbers for certified Physics teacher 2014–2019 by academic year

12 20

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CHAPTER 1

Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning and Leading Laura Turchi, Cheryl J. Craig, and Denise M. McDonald

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

L. Turchi (B) Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] C. J. Craig Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_1

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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

D. M. McDonald University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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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) coauthored 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.

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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 nontraditional 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

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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 mentors she met along the way. These shaping forces, coupled with her Faculty Academy experiences and relationships, have formed the lessons in learning and leading she has harvested over time, place, and position. Introverts as leaders in learning and leading situations is the topic that Jean Kiekel explores in Chapter 10. She tackles two pertinent research queries in her discussion: How do self-described introverts become leaders? What are the character traits exhibited by introverts that propel them into leadership positions without them realizing that they have now become leaders? Kiekel wraps up her chapter by reflecting on how Faculty Academy leadership has sustained her in leadership roles through providing models and mentors who tend to be more extroverted than her. In Chapter 11, Sandra Watson takes a female leadership stance in Betwixt and between: Women in leadership positions in academia. As a STEM educator, Watson feels drawn to in-between spaces and intersectionalities experienced by women in academic leadership. She urges women in leadership—mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts—to bring their voices into mainstream discussions. This will ensure that females will no longer be the “other” they have had a tendency to be in the past. Chapter 12, Leading from the shadows: School librarian leadership, is authored by Janice Newsum. Newsum places her full attention on the leadership of librarians that often goes unseen and unheard on school campuses, despite impact studies that underscore their importance. She champions distributed leadership structures that would allow librarians to learn and lead in tandem and to ultimately become leaders among leaders, as is the case with the Faculty Academy model of which she is a part.

Learning Through Practice and Research In this third section of Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning and Leading, we focus on learning through practice and research. In this series of chapters, several projects in which Faculty Academy members learn and lead are detailed. Chapters involving collaborative research projects, mathematics and physics teacher education initiatives and reforms, and a developing leadership stance in the academy are shared, as well as how the Faculty

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Academy membership simultaneously influences the projects and their participants. In Chapter 13, a mathematics partnership undertaken between the mathematics department and mathematics educators in the University of Houston-Downtown context is presented. Authored by Judith Quander, Jackie Sack, and Tim Redl, Mathematics content/mathematics education partnership: A case of leading through learning, explores the ways that a National Science Foundation scholarship expanded the partnership capacity of the mathematics and teacher education departments and faculties who work together at their urban university and allowed them to aid mostly underserved students of color. Chapter 14 introduces readers to a different kind of partnership: a school–university partnership between Jackie Sack (university math education professor) and Irma Vazquez (3rd grade math teacher at an English/Spanish dual language school). Their chapter, Learning and leading as teacher researchers, tells of a twelve-year mathematics education partnership involving an after-school program. Readers learn that not only do faculty members learn while leading: so too do the Grade 3 students participating in the after-school project. Numeracy gaps have been closed for the mostly children of color who participate. Also, the youth have exceeded grade-level expectations through the extra push that their special after-school program offers. We move from Chapter 14 and a school-based university partnership to Chapter 15, which tells of another collaborative project whose subject area is secondary physics education. In Learning and leading as collaborative physics education/physics partners: Building a physics teacher education program, Donna Stokes, a physics professor, and Paige Evans, a physics education clinical professor, worked to build a secondary teacher education program on a barren landscape that had not produced a single physics teacher in over a decade. The work informs us that currently two to three physics teachers are produced annually by the University of Houston Main Campus, thanks in part to multiple National Science Foundation grants that Evans and Stokes have been awarded. Chapter 16 shares the results thus far of the teachHOUSTON program that Paige Evans, Donna Stokes and others created from scratch as an offshoot of the UTeach program initiated at the University of Texas, Austin. Co-authored by Miriam Manuel, Paige Evans, and Leah McAlister-Shields, teachHOUSTON alumni: Agents of change in secondary STEM education, instantiates the STEM teacher education

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program’s success, which includes 260 graduates and a 90% retention rate over the first three years of teaching. The major takeaway point of this chapter is how the prospective secondary STEM teachers are prepared to be experts of subject matter as well as agents of change, mirroring Schwab’s (1954/1978) description of ‘the Practical’ and illustrating and underpinning the nature of our interdisciplinary Faculty Academy as well. Chapter 17 takes up the question of what constitutes a quality teacher education program. In Discovering stories data might be telling: Collaborative research as leadership, and lessons learned in promoting a culture of evidence, Jane Cooper, Laura Turchi, and Margaret Kuczynski examine what leadership can learn about preservice teachers. The authors’ faculty roles as practitioners (Cooper), as researchers (Turchi), and as statisticians (Kuczynski) in this collaborative examination play well off of one another in the writing of this chapter. Readers will be keen to learn what they distilled from their qualitative and quantitative analyses of student teacher performance assessment data and their productive collaboration, informed by their Faculty Academy experiences. Sustaining critical practices in contested spaces: Teacher educators resisting the narrowing of curriculum is the title of Chapter 18, coauthored by the Las Chicas Críticas (The Critical Girls) plus one, with Jane Cooper, Christine Beaudry, and Leslie Gauna being the Las Chicas Críticas and Gayle Curtis being their Critical Friend. The authors collaboratively investigate the ways that members of the Faculty Academy learn through research investigations about how their unique educational values might be better enacted in practice. Their scholarship shows how the process of collaboration and ongoing dialogue strengthens their resiliency in their particular commitments to pedagogy, research, and values. In Chapter 19, Cheryl Craig discusses Generous scholarship: A counternarrative for the region and the academy, an unspoken mindset that initially spurred her to create the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy. In this chapter, she emphasizes the significant gains associated with living, learning, and leading in a generous way that recognizes relationships with others as “I – Thou,” not “I – It” (Buber, 1970). At the same time, the underbelly of the hierarchical, male-dominated, entrepreneurial research-driven, power-consumed academy is identified as something with which we must learn to grapple. Despite bumping against the dominant, potentially cruel story of the academy as inevitable, the generous scholar plotline has a longer and more satisfying staying power,

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because it is more apt to create a kinder, gentler academy and a kinder, gentler world. Chapter 20 ends our book, Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning and Leading, by examining learning and leading and the Faculty Academy way of being. In The Faculty Academy in review: What, So what, Now what? Denise McDonald, Cheryl Craig, and Laura Turchi distill what was learned from the experiences in the cumulative chapters contributed by members of The Faculty Academy. Powerful statements culled from each work fittingly sum up this book’s message and convey its high points. Many of these messages continue to be revealed to us, as we reflect backward on our scholarship with our eyes expectantly cast on a future unknown to us, one certain to be filled with more stories of leadership and learning.

References Buber, M. (1970). I and thou (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Touchstone. Craig, C. (1995). Knowledge communities: A way of making sense of how beginning teachers come to know. Curriculum Inquiry, 25(2), 151–172. Craig, C. (2001). The relationships between and among teachers’ narrative knowledge, communities of knowing, and school reform: A case of “the monkey’s paw”. Curriculum Inquiry, 31(3), 303–331. Craig, C. (2007). Illuminating qualities of knowledge communities in a portfoliomaking context. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 13(6), 617–636. Craig, C., Curtis, G. A., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. T., & Pérez, M. M. (2020). Knowledge communities in teacher education: Sustaining collaborative work. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Schwab, J. J. (1954/1978). Eros and education: A discussion of one aspect of discussion. In I. Westbury & N. Wilkof (Eds.), Science, curriculum and liberal education: Selected essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER 2

Faculty Academy: A New Version of an Established Concept of Collaboration Gayle A. Curtis and Cheryl J. Craig

Introduction Before the Faculty Academy began in 2002, the Portfolio Group preceded it with an evolution that reached back to 1998. Both groups—one of teacher researchers (Portfolio Group), the other of faculty researchers (Faculty Academy)—began under the auspices of the Houston Annenberg Challenge (HAC), which later became known as the Houston A+ Challenge (HA+C). Although the HA+C continues to exist as a single project, neither the Faculty Academy nor the Portfolio Group continue to be associated with, or receive support from, the offshoot of their parent organization. In one sense, the self-directing, self-supporting nature of the groups is a testimony to their institutionalization in the local region. In quite another sense, what has occurred is an indictment of school reformers who rapidly switch from one change agenda to the next, not sticking with any project long enough to assess, disseminate, and

G. A. Curtis (B) · C. J. Craig Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_2

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compound its impact. This “reforming again, again, and again” (Cuban, 1990) syndrome explains why the history of education in the United States is littered with graveyards full of school change efforts. All the while, the nation continues to desperately search for an all-encompassing elixir to address pernicious problems arising from “poverty, inequity, hunger, violence, addiction, overwork, absentee parents, homelessness and child safety”—to name but a few (Craig, 2020).

Reform Trajectory The National Annenberg Challenge was the brainchild of newspaper magnate, Walter Annenberg who with his spouse, Leonore Annenberg, donated $500 million to the reform of public education in the United States. The couple’s gift, the largest philanthropic contribution in the country’s history to date, was meant for three distinct purposes: (1) to help the nation’s troubled inner-city schools, (2) to assist isolated rural schools, and (3) to make the arts a vital part of every child’s education (Annenberg Institute, 2002). Local and state proposals that reflected the three categories were submitted to the national organization for potential funding. Because Houston was—and is—the fourth largest metropolis in the United States (and soon will overtake Chicago to be the third!), it received an award that was to be directed to its urban schools. In 1997, Houston received $20 million from the National Annenberg Reform, which was matched locally by $40 million. Money was distributed to 11 lead campuses in 1998 and eventually to 88 schools by the end of the 5-year cycle (1997–2001). In 2002, the Houston Annenberg Challenge, as one of the national organization’s most successful sites, received an additional $30 million to continue its school reform efforts for five more years. After that, the HAC became the HA+C and continued its existence with selective local funding. Three imperatives fueled the Houston Annenberg Challenge’s theory of action (Argyris & Schön, 1974; Schön & McDonald, 1998): (1) teacher learning—transforming teacher professional development, (2) school isolation—breaking down barriers to communication and collaboration between schools and districts, and (3) size—creating small personalized learning environments geared toward improving learning for each student. The Portfolio Group of teacher researchers, an innovation introduced by Cheryl Craig, was supported by the first round of funding (1997–2001); whereas the Faculty Academy,

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the professor research group, received funding in the second round (2002–2008). In the latter case, the HA+C—Dr. Louise Deretchin in particular—was desirous of adopting a higher education initiative that could walk hand-in-hand with the ongoing reforms underway in Houston’s urban schools. Cheryl Craig took up the task of creating the Faculty Academy, a group composed of professors that more closely paralleled the Portfolio Group work as time went on. Both the Faculty Academy and the Portfolio Group particularly addressed two of HAC’s/HA+C’s central imperatives: teacher learning and school/university isolation.

Cheryl’s Entry to the Reform Effort When Cheryl Craig first moved to Houston from Canada, she was hired by Rice University. While it was not stated at the time, it became clear that she was selected because of her experience conducting school-based research projects in Canada with Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992, 1995; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). This preparation fit beautifully with the Houston Annenberg Challenge reform work. Cheryl soon met Brianna Larson, the principal of T. P. Yaeger Middle School, and began conducting research on that campus (Craig, 2001, 2012, 2020). Not long after that, she assisted T. P. Yaeger with writing its HAC funding proposal. She also worked closely with the principal of Cochrane Academy, a magnet school for mathematics, sciences and the arts. Soon, Cheryl was selected as the formative researcher (what the HAC called a planning and evaluation consultant) at five Greater Houston schools—with Brianna Larson connecting Cheryl with her principal counterpart at Heights Community Learning Center (EC-Grade 6) in one school district, and Cochrane Academy’s principal advocating for Cheryl with the leaders of Hardy Academy, a Grade 6–8 campus, and Eagle High School, a leading secondary campus, in a second school district. In the end, Cheryl researched six school contexts—five where she was chosen by the school faculties themselves and the sixth campus, Destiny High School, an alternative high school in a third school district, which was assigned to her for one year by the HAC’s formal evaluator. In Table 2.1, we outline the HAC/HA+C campuses with which Cheryl was involved. According to Cheryl and other original Portfolio Group members who were in attendance, the reform movement got off to a rocky start. The first group meeting was held two days after school ended for the

School district 1

T. P. Yaeger Middle School • Located in one of America’s wealthiest communities • 2/3 gifted and talented program; 1/3 regular program • Attended by 1500 students; some being the richest and poorest youth in America Heights Community Learning Center • Located near the city’s urban core • Transitioning neighborhood • Offered an elementary dual language/two-way immersion (Spanish/English) program to both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking children

Schools ↓ Cochrane Academy • Located in a historical African American community that was one of the last federal court orders to be settled for “failure to desegregate properly” • Grade 4–5 magnet school for mathematics, science and the fine arts • Electronic lottery determined student enrollment of 400 students Hardy Academy • Located in a historical African American community that was one of the last federal court orders to be settled for “failure to desegregate properly” • Grade 6–8 magnet school for mathematics, science, and the fine arts • Electronic lottery determined student enrollment of 500 students Eagle High School • Originally a prosperous White golf course community separated from Cochrane Academy and Hardy Academy by a drainage ditch • Populated at the time by 3500 students with the majority being African American students and increasingly becoming Latinx American and Latinx immigrant students

School district 2

Destiny High School • Located in a wealthy community annexed to the city of Houston • Small, experimental, less-is-more campus • Designed to meet the needs of 120 students not adjusting well to the district’s traditional comprehensive high school settings

School district 3

Houston Annenberg Challenge (HAC) Campuses with which Cheryl Craig worked

School districts→

Table 2.1

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summer. Hence, instead of finishing off the academic year as administrators or launching summer vacations as teachers, all were required to attend a retreat where they were tasked with writing new funding proposals, having already been accepted as lead campuses by virtue of their proposals already submitted. Clearly, the HAC organization was trying to get the campuses to conform to a single template that would make the external evaluation team’s job easier. This did not sit well with the school teams. Contrary to expectations, the five campuses did not write new funding proposals at the retreat. Instead, they bonded as group members. Together, they established shared understandings, with the greatest of these being their joint need to be heard. As it turned out, the leader of the reform movement was fired shortly after the retreat. Months of silence ensued. During this hiatus, Cheryl and others in her intermediary position were called to a meeting and urged to take up the void. The leadership and faculty from the five schools with which Cheryl interacted grabbed the opportunity to find an alternative means to account for their reform efforts, one that would serve as a counternarrative to the high stakes accountability master narrative (No Child Left Behind Act [NCLB], 2002) that had begun in Texas and was now sweeping the nation and increasingly narrowing what students and teacher could know, do, and be in schools. Eagle High School’s principal, Fred Richards, particularly stressed that school change meant “evaluation would be done differently.” Brianna Larson, Yaeger’s principal, agreed with him that something other than “the same old tired approach to evaluation” was needed. It was abundantly evident that all of the principals were disenchanted with how the school reformers were emulating the technocratic behaviors of district bureaucrats with whom they regularly dealt (Craig, 2001). In this season of discontent, an expressed need for a different approach to evaluation arose, one which would stay close to practice so that Houston’s reform effort would not attract the kind of negative press that the Annenberg Challenge efforts underway in Chicago and Los Angeles had received. Because Schön’s (1983, 1991, 1995) reflective practitioner and theory of action research was widely esteemed, Lyons’ notion of portfolios, which likewise pulled on Dewey’s philosophy, held great appeal. For Lyons (1998), portfolios were: …the dynamic process of teachers documenting the evidence of their work and growth, gathered and authored by them through careful reflection,

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shared with colleagues and students, and presented for public discussion and debate about their conceptions in good teaching. (p. ix)

Also, Lee Shulman (1998), then-President of the Carnegie Foundation, fully endorsed portfolio work undertaken by school faculties, stating that “what is declared worth documenting, worth reflecting on, what is deemed to be portfolio-worthy, is a theoretical act” (p. 24). Cheryl also personally favored the approach because it was a close cousin to the reflective practice and professional knowledge landscape studies she had undertaken in Canada. It also fit with how she wanted to interact with the five school faculties. From the beginning, she had said she: … would only agree to work with the schools who selected her if they would, in turn, agree to work collaboratively to document their own work and their collective work. She did not want to mediate rivalries between and among the schools and the personalities of teachers… Nor did she want people or schools competing for her attention. She wanted everyone to focus full attention on improving schooling for urban youth, a shared enterprise that broke down school and district human differences. (Gray, 2008, p. 17)

Against this backdrop, through both chance and choice, portfolios— most specifically, school portfolios (Craig, 2003a, 2003b, 2007)—became the vehicle through which the faculty on the five campuses would make sense of their school reform endeavors and communicate their learning to others interested in their school change efforts. Within the context of this work, the Portfolio Group emerged as a distinct entity and the name for some teacher researchers who have sustained their knowledge community interactions for over two decades.

Gayle’s Entry to the Portfolio Group and the Faculty Academy Portfolio Group Gayle Curtis’ entry to the Portfolio Group coincided with her 1999 move as reform coordinator to Heights Community Learning Center, one of the initial eleven Houston area schools named an “Annenberg Beacon School” and awarded substantial Houston Annenberg Challenge (HAC) grant funding to support school change already in progress. When Gayle

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joined Heights, the inner-city elementary school had been “the object of major reform efforts since 1996 when it was selected by a private university, a major corporate foundation, and the local school district to restructure its Transitional Bilingual Program into a (K-5) Dual Language Immersion Program” (Torres-Karna & De Kanter, 2005, p. 1168). By 1999 the dual language/two-way immersion program had expanded from kindergarten to third grade, reaching to fifth grade over the following two years. As a former bilingual (Spanish/English) teacher, Gayle was particularly eager to work in a school with an additive bilingual program, where native Spanish speakers and native English speakers learn alongside one another in classrooms, all developing their first language while cultivating a second. While the dual language program was at the center of Heights’ change initiatives, others of the campus’ reform efforts equally appealed to Gayle, including the hands-on science center, parent programs, and community partnerships, all of which aligned with her professional background and experience. As reform coordinator, Gayle’s new role involved planning, developing, facilitating and/or supervising the various activities associated with Heights’ HAC funded grant, which included facilitating the school’s annual portfolio creation for formative evaluation purposes. Seeking more information about the school portfolio-making process, Gayle reached out to Cheryl who invited her to attend a Portfolio Group end-of-year meeting where teachers and reform coordinators would be putting the finishing touches on their annual school portfolios. Although Gayle was the only representative of Heights in attendance, the meeting made a lasting impression on her that helped to shape her future involvement in the Portfolio Group. As she remembers, Attending that first meeting in June 1999, I had many questions as to what the school portfolio work entailed and how the Portfolio Group related to that work. Cheryl warmly greeted me, introduced me to the Portfolio Group members from the four schools, and then let me wander, observe, and ask questions.

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As she walked around the room, Gayle observed, Each of the schools had commandeered a table, upon which were piled their individual school portfolios at varying stages of completion. There were also mounds of different documents—student art samples, professional development descriptions, school activity summaries, etc.—yet to be added to the portfolios. Stopping at each table to peruse the materials and ask questions, I was struck by the creativity, individuality, and organization of each school portfolio. Although I was not familiar with the particular reform efforts at schools, the different highlighted school activities—teacher professional development, literacy development, visual arts/literacy integration—gave me some idea as to the various reform initiatives. Perhaps most of all, I was impressed by the members’ openness in responding to my many questions and by the seriousness with which everyone was going about the work. It seemed clear to me that they considered their school portfolios to be important work. I left the meeting confident that this was a group with which I would enjoy interacting, even though I still did not fully understand the Portfolio Group’s purpose and function.

Gayle’s lingering questions about the Portfolio Group were soon answered as she joined the monthly meetings when school commenced in the fall and she learned the group’s origin story. Established in 1998, the Portfolio Group was (and is) the instantiation of Cheryl’s knowledge communities (1992, 1995) concept developed during her doctoral studies while working alongside Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly in their groundbreaking professional knowledge landscape investigations (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995, 1996) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. As described in Cheryl’s scholarship (Craig, 2007), knowledge communities: • • • • • • • • •

begin with originating events; enable teachers’ intra/inter-school dialogue; allow teachers’ experiences to resonate with one another; evolve and change; cohere around teachers’ storying/restorying of experience; fuel ongoing reflection in community; develop shared ways of knowing; feature reciprocity of members’ responses; and bring moral horizons into view (pp. 621–622).

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Cheryl’s initial aim with the Portfolio Group was to provide a safe space in which teachers could share their experiences of school reform, learn from one another, and together construct knowledge as they worked alongside each other developing their school portfolios. Reflecting on this point, Gayle shared, Given Cheryl’s experience with a previous group of teachers who transformed into a knowledge community, one can only imagine that Cheryl’s hope for the Portfolio Group was the same…that over time we (the Portfolio Group) would also form a knowledge community. That is exactly what happened—not by design but organically through our ongoing interactions.

The Portfolio Group brought together teachers and reform coordinators from five of the Beacon schools—T. P. Yaeger Middle School, Heights Community Learning Center, Cochrane Academy, Hardy Academy, and Eagle High School (see Table 2.1)—for whom Cheryl was the formative researcher. Scattered across the city in urban and suburban areas, each of the schools was intensively engaged in school reform work around its particular campus initiatives—teacher self-selected professional development, literacy, art and literacy integration, dual language/twoway immersion. Numbering up to eighteen individuals between 1998 and 2002 (the initial grant period), the Portfolio Group represented two different area school districts, three different school levels (elementary, middle school, high school), and many different subject areas (e.g., visual arts, English language arts, mathematics, social studies, and all subjects in the case of elementary teachers). Collectively, this diverse group came together around the common interests of improving student learning through school reform and employing school portfolios to demonstrate those efforts. The early years of the Portfolio Group, according to Gayle, were focused on learning about and engaging in school portfolio-making. During this period, Cheryl facilitated the monthly afternoon meetings in which members examined the portfolio-related literature (e.g., Lyons 1998) and explored narrative ways of knowing (e.g., Lyons & LaBoskey, 2002), as they collaboratively learned how to show their campus reform work through portfolios. In addition to grant-related purposes, the portfolios became reflective tools for each campus and a method of sharing their reform efforts with the larger community. Portfolio Group meetings

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were also a time when members shared their teacher and school stories, engaged in reflection, and received mindful feedback. As Gayle recalls, “The shared stories resonated across the group because we all experienced similar stories of school change in our own contexts. The restorying of experiences promoted trust within the group, which—intertwined with the co-construction of knowledge—transformed us into a knowledge community of teacher researchers.” For Gayle and other members, the Portfolio Group became a generative space characterized by dialogue, reflection, feedback, shared ways of knowing, and knowledge growth. Soon the group of teacher researchers began sharing their school reform stories and portfolio-making expertise through a local lecture series, as well as at national and international conferences. These included two presentations at the Portfolios and Teacher Learning and Professional Education Conference sponsored by Nona Lyons (Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts and Cork College, Cork, Ireland) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference (Seattle, Washington). Working together on such projects helped to nurture and shape the Portfolio Group’s identity both as a knowledge community and as a collaborative teacher researcher group. Some years into the grant, the cooperative and shared leadership nature of the group was further illustrated when Michaelann Kelley, one of the founding Portfolio Group members from Eagle High School, took up the role of meeting facilitator. In recent years, Gayle has stepped into this role, organizing meetings and facilitating the group’s forward movement. Throughout, Cheryl has retained her role as colleague, mentor, and leading education and research expert. “Cheryl’s participation in the Portfolio Group has been invaluable,” according to Gayle. “She has opened up countless opportunities for our continued growth. She has generously shared her expertise while simultaneously encouraging us to share our knowledge and expertise— which was particularly vital to the group’s professional growth in the early years.” The end of Annenberg grant funding in 2001 could have easily signaled the end of the Portfolio Group, however, over half of the group (including Gayle and Cheryl) decided to continue the Portfolio Group collaboration—a collaboration which continues today, twenty-two years after its founding. No longer associated with grant funding, the group moved its monthly meetings from schools to afternoon sessions in coffee shops or around members’ dining tables and evening dinners at local restaurants. Whether over snacks or meals, the table came to represent a grounding metaphor for the Portfolio Group’s coming together to share

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stories of practice, reflect, receive feedback from critical friends, learn from one another, and develop collaborative projects. While meetings moved from location to location, the Portfolio Group’s membership also shifted over the years as some members retired, moved away, or took on positions that required more of their time and energy. Still other members have at times temporarily stepped aside for personal or professional reasons and later returned. The Portfolio Group has come to think of its membership as fluid, having both core members with sustained participation and satellite members (Gray, 2008) who remain connected with the group but whose active participation is intermittent. From 1998 to 2001, school portfolio work was the primary gathering point for the Portfolio Group’s collaborative efforts. Moving forward to present day, according to Gayle, the group has engaged in a variety of endeavors from conducting teacher research to writing traveling journals, and from initiating narrative inquiries to facilitating a longitudinal group self-study. Related projects over the years created numerous opportunities for conference presentations and publications. Since 2002, the Portfolio Group has given 12 national and international presentations on topics that include portfolios, school reform, knowledge communities, reflective practice, and sustaining collaborations. Similar topics are reflected in the Portfolio Group’s 14 publications in scholarly journals, books, and education-related handbooks. Its most recent publication, Knowledge communities in teacher education: Sustaining collaborative work (Craig et al., 2020), explores the group’s twenty-two year collaboration. For Gayle and the other Portfolio Group members, the extensive productivity of this teacher researcher group is rooted in strong relationships, shared experiences, and continuous professional knowledge growth—all characteristics which contribute to the Portfolio Group’s longevity. Faculty Academy Having illustrated Gayle’s entry to and journey with the Portfolio Group, we now turn to her entry to the Faculty Academy whose own history closely mirrors that of the Portfolio Group (see Table 2.2). The Faculty Academy was founded by Cheryl in 2002 with the purpose of promoting teacher/professor learning and breaking down barriers of isolation between schools and universities, key imperatives in the Annenberg Challenge. Supported by an HA+C grant, the group brought together eight university-based faculty with eight community schoolbased teachers who met bi-monthly to discuss current issues in schooling and particular challenges confronting Greater Houston’s urban schools.

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Table 2.2 Comparison between the Faculty Academy and the Portfolio Group Faculty Academy Meetings then/now

Number of members then/now Leadership Sample presentation

Sample publication

Most noteworthy publication

Two mornings per month/one morning per month

Portfolio Group

One afternoon per month/one evening per month 8 + 8 community members/28 18 members/6 core members (one deceased) members +5 satellite members Cheryl Craig/shared leadership Cheryl Craig/shared leadership Curtis, G., Martindell, T., McDonald, D. (2018). Kelley, M., Reid, D., Challenges in effective Perez, M., & Craig, C. mentoring and retention of (2018). Jumping the novice teachers. American Educational Research Meeting, dragon’s gate. Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Castle New York, NY (with B. Pohl, Conference. Herstmonceux K. Divoll, P. Evans, C. Castle, East Sussex, Auzenne-Curl, G. Curtis, X. England Han et al.) Curtis, G., Reid, D., McDonald, D., Craig, C., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. Markello, C., & Kahn, M. (2016). Our academic sandbox: T., & Craig, C. (2013). Braided lives: Multiple Scholarly identities shaped by play, tantrums, building castles ways of knowing, flowing and rebuffing backyard bullies. in and out of knowledge communities. Studying Qualitative Report, 21(6), Teacher Education, 9(2), 1145–1163 175–186 McDonald, D. (Ed.). (2018). Kelley, M., Gray, P., Reid, Facing challenges and D., & Craig, C. (2010). complexities in retention of Within K-12 schools for novice teachers. Charlotte, NC: school reform: What does Information Age Publishing it take? In N. Lyons (Ed.), Handbook of reflection and reflective practice: Mapping a way of knowing for professional reflective inquiry (pp. 273–298). New York, NY: Springer Publishing (arguably the only international handbook chapter authored by teachers)

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Faculty Academy members represented different area universities as well as differing content area concentrations. Similarly, school-based members came from varied school levels (elementary, middle school, high school) and taught a variety of school subjects. Holding the bi-monthly meetings at area schools provided Faculty Academy members with insights into particular urban school contexts. Meeting discussions not only illuminated the teaching/learning challenges encountered in urban schools, they also created opportunities for university-based members to receive school-based feedback on their work. As university-based members took what they had learned back to their institutions, the knowledge gleaned served to inform university teacher education programs how to meet the current needs of urban students, teachers, and schools. While Gayle was not involved directly with the Faculty Academy in its early days, through her relationship with Cheryl she closely followed the group’s journey—one which seemed to parallel that of the Portfolio Group. When the grant funding came to an end in 2009, the Faculty Academy university-based members chose to continue the group because it had become a space in which members could re-story their experiences and learn from one another. The group of professors/researchers recognized the potential for professional growth when cross-institutional dialogue and interactions occur. Around this same time, Cheryl’s shared leadership approach was evidenced in her stepping back from facilitating meetings, but she retained an active role in guiding and supporting the group of professor researchers. Denise McDonald then stepped into organize meetings and group projects, greatly supporting the Faculty Academy’s development for many years as well. No longer connected to grant funding or bound to an externallydriven purpose, the Faculty Academy shifted its focus to supporting one another in the lived experiences in the academy and engaging in collaborative learning and research. Gayle joined the group in 2012, shortly after she moved from K-12 schooling to a university setting. She found that the Faculty Academy had taken on the characteristics of a knowledge community as members shared their stories of life in the academy, brought dilemmas to the table for discussion, and received reflective feedback. In discussions around typical topics such as the annual review, senior faculty provide insights into the process, which is particularly important as junior faculty come up for promotion and tenure. Notably, membership in the Faculty Academy more than doubled as members brought their colleagues to the group from universities across the city and the region. Another important aspect of the Faculty Academy’s activities are the cross-institutional, cross-specialization mentoring and collaboration

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that occurs, often originating in planned meeting exchanges and then organically extending to other areas. Examples of collaboration are grant proposal writing, joint research projects, and guest lectures at one another’s institutions. Other Faculty Academy collaborations include numerous conference presentations (American Educational Research Association, Association of Teacher Educators, Consortium of State Organizations for Texas Teacher Educators), coauthored journal articles, and two edited chapter books. For Gayle and the other members, the Faculty Academy continues to provide a reflective space of professional growth and collegial interaction. While both the Faculty Academy and Portfolio Group have long outlived their original purposes, they have organically transformed themselves into long-standing knowledge communities of professor researchers and teacher researchers, respectively. Although each group has been shaped and reshaped over the years, they stand as a testament to the importance of the early Annenberg Challenge work, carrying it forward through continued teacher/professor learning, a relentless focus on underserved students attending public schools and the reduction of isolation through collaboration.

References Annenberg Institute. (2002). The Annenberg Challenge: Lessons and reflections on public school reform. https://www.annenberginstitute.org/publications/ annenberg-challenge-lessons-and-reflections-public-school-reform. Argyris, C., & Schön, D. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey Bass. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1992). Teacher as curriculum maker. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 363–401). Sage: American Educational Research Association. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1995). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. New York: Teachers College Press. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1996). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes: Teacher stories—Stories of teachers—School stories—Stories of schools. Educational Researcher, 25(3), 24–30. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. Craig, C. (2001). The relationships between and among teacher’s narrative knowledge, communities of knowing, and top-down school reform: A case of “the monkey’s paw”. Curriculum Inquiry, 31(3), 303–331.

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Craig, C. (2003a). What teachers come to know through school portfolio development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 19(8), 815–827. Craig, C. (2003b). School portfolio development: A teacher knowledge approach. Journal of Teacher Education, 54(2), 122–134. Craig, C. (2007). Illuminating qualities of knowledge communities in a portfoliomaking context. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 13(6), 617–636. Craig, C. (2012). Tension in teacher development and community: Variations on a school reform theme. Teachers’ College Record, 114(2), 1–28. Craig, C. (2020). Data is [G]od: The influence of cumulative policy reforms on teachers’ knowledge in an urban middle school in the United States. Teaching and Teacher Education, 93: 103027. Craig, C., Curtis, G. A., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. T., & Pérez, M. M. (2020). Knowledge communities in teacher education: Sustaining collaborative work. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Cuban, L. (1990). Reforming again, again, and again. Educational Researcher, 19(1), 3–13. Curtis, G., Reid, D., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. T., & Craig, C. (2013). Braided lives: Multiple ways of knowing, flowing in and out of knowledge communities. Studying Teacher Education, 9(2), 175–186. Gray, P. (2008). Narrative ways of knowing: Using portfolios to illuminate teacher learning from a knowledge community perspective (Unpublished Dissertation). Houston, TX: University of Houston. Lyons, N. (1998). Preface. In With portfolio in hand: Validating the new teacher professionalism. New York: Teachers College Press. Lyons, N., & LaBoskey, V. (2002). Narrative knowing in teaching: Advancing the knowledge of teaching. New York: Teachers College Press. McDonald, D. (Ed.). (2018). Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. McDonald, D., Craig, C., Markello, C., & Kahn, M. (2016). Our academic sandbox: Scholarly identities shaped by play, tantrums, building castles and rebuffing backyard bullies. Qualitative Report, 21(6), 1145–1163. No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, P.L. 107-110, 20 U.S.C. § 6319 (2002). Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Schön, D. (Ed.). (1991). The reflective turn: Case studies in and on educational practice. New York: Basic Books. Schön, D. (1995). The new scholarship requires a new epistemology. Change, 27 (6), 26–34. Schön, D., & McDonald, J. (1998). Doing what you mean to do in school reform. Providence, RI: Brown University.

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Shulman, L. (1998). Teacher portfolios: A theoretical act. In N. Lyons (Ed.), With portfolio in hand: Validating the new teacher professionalism. New York: Teachers College Press. Torres-Karna, H., & De Kanter, E. T. (2005). Language revitalization in an inner-city Latino community. In J. Cohen, K. T. McAlister, K. Rolstad, & J. MacSwan (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism (pp. 1167–1176). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.

CHAPTER 3

Reflecting on Growth and Change: The Persistence of the Faculty Academy (2002–2020) Carrie Markello

Introduction As an original member of Faculty Academy, I reflect on activities and transformations of the group over time. In describing my journey, from joining as a community partner in 2002, then becoming a graduate student (2003–2006), continuing as a non-tenure track professor (2006– 2017), and finally, as a retired faculty member, I weave my experiences of growth and change as a part of the larger collective story: the remarkable adaptability and longevity of Faculty Academy. As with any group, shifts in personal interests, schedules, and moves to new locations caused membership to vary over time. However, a group of core members remained constant throughout its nearly 20-year history. The Faculty Academy originated in 2002 as a response to an education reform movement funded by the Houston Annenberg Challenge.

C. Markello (B) University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_3

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The original intent was to foster and nurture new and existing relationships among community partners and higher education faculty was an effort to bring theory and practice closer together (Benavente-McEnery et al., 2009). I began my journey as a community partner after accepting an invitation to participate as a museum school outreach coordinator with one of the original university faculty members. When the Faculty Academy began as a collaborative group, I was the only community partner with the ability to meet during the day, when the bi-monthly higher education meetings were held. My flexibility allowed for greater access to my higher education colleagues and exposed me to new possibilities and opportunities to do new things in the academic world of teacher educator scholars. My participation and partnership also opened doors for me: I enrolled as a graduate student in 2003 and was supported through my graduate career by the Faculty Academy. I earned my doctorate, and I continued my membership as a non-tenure track faculty member. As a member for almost two decades, I experienced changing roles from community partner to doctoral student to faculty member. Although now retired from my faculty position, my long-term relationship with Faculty Academy continues. I value the ongoing opportunities to participate as a contributor and a beneficiary of the growth and change provided by the community of the Faculty Academy members. My Faculty Academy membership throughout my changing roles provided me with rich opportunities for personal, professional, and scholarly transformation. Through the years, I experienced the group’s adaptive responses to the evolving members’ needs, such as adjusting schedules, locations for meetings, and group goals. I witnessed how the founding members’ relational leadership style, an approach focused on making change and benefitting members (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 1998), nurtured strong professional relationships and development. I share these stories of growth and change to highlight the flexibility and persistence of Faculty Academy members to do things, consistently encouraging collaborative initiatives and experiences impacting me and other members. In other words, the Faculty Academy “doing” (Dewey, 1934/1980) gave way to significant “undergoing” (Dewey, 1934/1980) that contributed to members’ professional growth and provided for ongoing sustainable support for its members. Although my journey could be told in a linear manner, I resist the restrictions of a historical timeline in order to focus on the dominant themes that emerged which are the components of Faculty Academy’s

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growth-fostering practices. These themes became the forces driving the group’s doings and undergoings and metaphorically nurtured rhizomatic growth. The term rhizome refers to the type of subterranean system of multidirectional growth found in plants such as bamboo, irises, and ginger. The rhizome “…grows between, and among other things ” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987/2002, p. 19) allowing transitions, variation, and possibility for development (p. 25). With “multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987/2002, p. 21), rhizomatic growth is an appropriate metaphor for the Faculty Academy (BenaventeMcEnery et al., 2009). Unlike some academic settings where titles and status form a hierarchical and limiting system ultimately repressing growth, my experiences as a member of the Faculty Academy were thus rhizomatic. In our fertile environment, the Faculty Academy helped me, and other members, realize that our particular doings interconnected with our undergoings, created prime opportunities for growth and change.

Stories of Growth and Change A Tale of Two Nuggets, Part One—A “Doing” and an “Undergoing” Two small lumps of metal sit on my desk, each with a word engraved on it. These nuggets came from a simple activity orchestrated by a Faculty Academy member many years ago. Drawing from a bag of metal nuggets carved with potentially inspirational words helped me and my Faculty Academy colleagues find words and ways to encourage us in our academic work. The words I randomly chose have become useful metaphors for my personal growth and change and for the growth and change I witnessed in Faculty Academy members throughout the almost two decades of my membership. My first draw gave me a sense of satisfaction as I read the word Imagine inscribed. As an artist and art educator, I believed and embraced Imagine as the perfect inspiration. After all, imagination was a core aspect of my work as an artmaker and a fundamental component of teaching art. Both artmaking and teaching required the willingness to consider what might be in order to provoke viewing and thinking in new ways. In other words, an artist/teacher puts imagination into practice. Imagination becomes the vehicle, transporting us to new places and understandings. To imagine is one of the key functions of art. I was delighted that my tangible piece of

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inspiration fit so well with my aspirations and the experience of being a Faculty Academy member (Fig. 3.1). Imagine also describes the Faculty Academy’s strength as a generator of creative collaborative work. One important example of my creative, imaginative contribution was the inclusion of a video component for our 2008 American Association for Teaching and Curriculum presentation entitled, The euphony and cacophony of community: Varied voices, shared songs, composing collegiality through discourse. The presentation focused on our collaborative efforts. Complementing the oral presentation, the video included images of Faculty Academy members working together in a visual interpretation of Jack Johnson’s, Constellations (Fig. 3.2). At a later meeting, we drew words for inspiration again. This gave members who had missed a previous meeting a chance to participate and some members like me, the chance to draw another word for further inspiration. On my second draw, I grabbed a nugget inscribed with Accept. My heart sank. Ironically, I could not imagine how this word would contribute to motivating me in my work as an artist/teacher or provide motivation for any other members. Only with time, and in the rhizomatic environment of the Faculty Academy, would I learn how the word Accept could and would be an important positive influence and motivator.

Fig. 3.1 ‘Imagine’ Metaphor

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Fig. 3.2 ‘Accept’ Metaphor

Narrative Inquiry and Reflection A three-dimensional form (like a nugget) is a concrete, tangible object. It provides an elegant metaphor of the three-dimensional narrative inquiry space (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) that captures the actions and reflections of people at particular times and places. As I reflect, I am rebuilding my personal and social experiences in regard to particular places and times as a Faculty Academy member. The Faculty Academy functioned both as a support for professional and emotional well-being and as a place for developing strategies for professional doings such as writing, presenting, and publishing. My narrative inquiry reveals my stories and those of my colleagues and our relationships as members of a group of higher educators trying to make sense of our professional world. Narrative inquiry gives voice to meanings derived from livedexperiences and provides “a way to understand experience” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 21). Through the use of language, and self-reflection, humans make sense of their experiences in the world (Polkinghorne, 1988). My story constructs a metaphorical three-dimensional narrative space (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) based on Dewey’s ideas about “interaction,” “continuity,” and “situation” (Dewey, 1938/1997). Clandinin and Connelly (2000) interpret Dewey’s terms as follows: Interaction

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as the personal and social; continuity as past, present, and future; and situation as place.

Faculty Academy’s Doings and Undergoings “A tale of two nuggets” is an example of a shared experience of doing that is remembered by me and some other members partly because of the physical nature of the activity. In some settings, drawing word stones from a bag would be considered contrived and potentially meaningless. In the Faculty Academy’s context of fostering rhizomatic growth, this doing genuinely inspired members. Many of us still have these tangible reminders of our shared experience on our desks. These words reflect on this concrete doing and also offer insight into my personal as well as Faculty Academy’s development. In examining my professional development, I realized that the experience of drawing the random nuggets impacted me on a personal level because this action was more than just a doing. Instead, there was also an interaction and an undergoing. When there is an interaction between the doing and undergoing, it becomes “an experience” (Dewey, 1934/1980). The nuggets provided a tangible reminder of the comfort that touch stones can offer. Words such as Inspiration, Imagine, Peace, Balance, and Accept function as touchable, real reminders to help us in our work as we move forward in our lives and academic careers. A Safe Place For me, the engraved words not only remained a concrete symbol for the Faculty Academy: they also remind me of the multifaceted group’s creation of a safe place for me and other members to develop professionally. By supporting both group and individual work, Faculty Academy members’ professional learning and confidence grew, resulting in a group camaraderie, cohesiveness, and professional growth. Unlike other academic settings, the Faculty Academy was more than a social club or a tightly managed and guarded professional environment. The Faculty Academy became a safe place because our meetings provided a sense of freedom from the dangers that lurked in some of our academic settings. Outside of the Faculty Academy, our experiences were too often fraught with harsh judgment, lack of recognition for our contributions, gendering, and unrealistic expectations. The professional or official

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support mechanisms that members needed in their academic positions were inconsistent or nonexistent. In response, the group focused on mentoring and doing things together. The group enabled both social interaction and scholarly professional development with a genuine sense of caring for our development. There were many Faculty Academy doing experiences with a specific academic focus possibly resulting in even more perceptible positive influences (or undergoings ) for group members. Some of these experiences included the use of Critical Friends protocol (Critical Friends: A Process Built on Reflection, n.d.), joint writing and research projects, and conference presentations. These and more served to nurture caring relationships. Such experiences promoted the freedom for growth without “fear and anxiety” (Noddings, 1984/2003, p. 72) and ultimately allowed each of us more ability to be ourselves in a safe setting. The Faculty Academy created a safe space by honoring members’ thoughts and words. For example, conversations were respected and (to the best of my knowledge) were not shared outside of the group without permission. Admittedly, early on I was overwhelmed by the depths of some members’ despair and the acute bluntness of some discussions about difficult professional scenarios. Consequently, I worried that it was too much to hear, especially early on when I was not even sure what the world of academia was all about. However, I quickly saw the respect that members had for each other as they listened carefully and thoughtfully responded, especially when sensitive topics were discussed. In spite of my reservations, I remember thinking that it was a good thing to understand the whole picture, including the positives and the negatives. Because the Faculty Academy values and respects members’ honest conversations, it is a safe space for honesty that is accessible to members. In my view, the real work of collaboration, reflection, and meaning-making happened because of the creation of a safe space. Those unfamiliar with the academic world may not understand how faculty meetings, workshops, and retreats are typically driven by contrived elements, hidden agendas, and discontinuity. These are not safe spaces. Fortunately, in contrast, Faculty Academy gatherings were a breath of fresh air, an “experience” (Dewey, 1934/1980). As I reflect, we were not just “doing” or talking about doing, but we were “undergoing” (Dewey, 1934/1980) change, transforming as educators, collaborators, and leaders. Transformations occurred because we were doing things together in mutually beneficial ways. These experiences helped develop

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abilities required to survive in academia, such as writing, presenting, and leading. The group offered an “experiential continuum” or a “continuity” (Dewey, 1938/1997) of opportunities for interactions to occur between our doings and undergoings. Together we found ways to support our individual and collaborative work, work that fostered and continues to foster interactions between our doings and undergoings that contribute to the continuity and longevity of this dynamic group. In my years as a Faculty Academy member, I had many opportunities for rich and rewarding experiences. Again, these experiences were unlike typical professional development, such as faculty retreats or workshops in other academic settings: these focused on doing a contrived activity like promoting general collegiality or planning a hypothetical project that might never be discussed again. Unfortunately, although these activities might bring professionals together, the focus was more on the “doing” than the “undergoing” (Dewey, 1934/1980). Fortunately, Faculty Academy fostered interactions for more transformational outcomes. Reflecting on Faculty Academy doings, there are two critical aspects fostering its ability to facilitate both doings and undergoings: one is its flexibility and willingness to adapt and change to better serve its members as needed, and the second is its relational leadership style to better care for and create a collaborative, nurturing environment among its members. Flexibility—Willingness to Adapt to Member Needs and Welcome New Members Early in the group’s history, the Faculty Academy recognized other priorities beyond the original initiative to develop and maintain higher education and community partner relationships. The Faculty Academy was willing to expand and adapt to member needs. For instance, the group’s initial majority of primarily female un-tenured professors from multiple universities was in need of support in order to survive their tenure-seeking and clinical positions. The more senior group leaders knew the importance of supporting new and vulnerable faculty, and they made the critical changes that would better ensure the sustenance of the group members. The leadership acknowledged the need to adjust to one’s environment and also to “readjust activity to meet new conditions” (Dewey, 1916/1944, p. 52).

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Similarly, the group later adjusted the direction of some of its collaborative endeavors by expanding to address relevant topics in education, such as the national focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) and potentially finding greater funding opportunities through STEM grants. By adapting to meet the needs of members and by responding to conditions of the times, the Faculty Academy maintained a long and healthy existence. Promoting Growth Through a Relational Leadership Style I experienced and observed leadership doings that enabled many voices and actions to develop and prosper. Group doings directly contributed to our collective professional growth. “Inclusive,” “empowering,” “purposeful,” “ethical,” and “process-oriented” (Komives et al., 1998/2013, pp. 98–99) are appropriate descriptors for Faculty Academy’s relational leadership. In such a leadership style, leader knowledge and self-awareness of beliefs or “being” (Komives et al., 1998/2013) function as drivers for actual doings. Leader “knowing,” “being,” and “doing” (Komives et al., 1998/2013) form the framework to effectively employ the relational leadership components of inclusivity, empowerment, purpose, ethics, and process-orientation (Komives et al., 1998/2013). The five relational leadership components can be briefly described as follows: 1. Inclusive: acceptance of multiple viewpoints, valuing all people and their differences through listening and building relationships through discourse. 2. Empowering: recognizing that all people have valuable contributions to make. Contributions are encouraged, shared, and affirmed, potentially building individual and team leadership. 3. Purposeful: belief in the ability to make a difference and a commitment to collaborate in creative and meaningful ways. 4. Ethical: acting in morally responsible ways that value all people by demonstrating trust and responsible behaviors in ways that will benefit others. 5. Process-oriented: the overall functioning of the group in terms of its ability to continue as a group and achieve group goals through collaboration, reflection, and shared feedback.

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Each of the model’s five components are overlapping and function in terms of leaders: (1) knowing what is needed to achieve goals and manage yourself and others, (2) Being or possessing understanding of one’s own beliefs, values, and goals and the potential effect that one’s actions may have on others, and (3) Doing what is needed for relational leadership by combining knowing and being into action (Komives et al., 1998). The following narratives describe Faculty Academy’s doings in terms of the relational leadership style, facilitating interactions for undergoings of professional growth. Inclusive—Embracing All Members As an artist/teacher, I often felt like an outlier in my community work, graduate work, and later as a non-tenure track faculty member. My personal perception in my particular environment was fueled by the assumption of too many that art education is an extra, an unnecessary component of education. Consequently, art education is undervalued or not valued at all. Throughout my career, I was often confronted and disheartened with instances where other subject areas were considered to have greater substance or importance (Eisner, 1995; Markello, 2019; Mims & Lankford, 1995). However, even though Faculty Academy was composed of primarily tenure track members working in a variety of teacher education fields other than art (curriculum studies, science, math, social studies, leadership, and literacy), during my participation as a graduate student and later as the only non-tenure track art education faculty member, I always felt welcomed. When I was a graduate student feeling like I might not be worthy of membership, I questioned how I might be a true contributor of the group. But as I wrote in an earlier collaborative Faculty Academy book chapter, I experienced a …sense of camaraderie with both the new and old members. As we collaborated to prepare both collective and individual presentations and writings, I discovered…that my views were respected. I did have something to offer. This realization led to a transformation. Thanks in part to the encouraging members of the Faculty Academy, I was emerging as a scholar. (Benavente-McEnery et al., 2009, pp. 356–357)1

1 In the Faculty Academy’s genuine collaborative style, the nine authors were listed alphabetically rather than in terms of academic status, apart from Cheryl Craig who graciously chose to be listed last.

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I came to understand that the important core value was to nurture members’ growth to find their own particular professional development path (Benavente-McEnery et al., 2009). The Faculty Academy leadership fundamentally understood that each of our differences added to the richness of the group and were fundamentally valued. The opportunity to listen and talk to each other about what was important to us in an inclusive, safe environment hastened doings to become the undergoings of positive growth experiences.

Empowering---Fostering Personal and Professional Growth Faculty Academy meetings provided opportunities for members to share their latest work and/or concerns, demonstrating the collective belief that all members have something worth contributing. Some meetings were specifically focused on a member’s desire to get feedback on a specific research idea or article in progress. In these cases, members volunteered to share in advance their work for other members to review and provide feedback either/or in writing and/or face-to-face during the subsequent meeting. In this collaborative doing, the members received honest feedback using a relaxed version of the Critical Friends (Critical Friends: A Process Build on Reflection, n.d.) method. “Warm” or positive responses and “cool” or suggestions for improvement were offered by members. For example, when Joy was the only educational leadership Faculty Academy member, the group encouraged and helped her gain confidence, and through productive group feedback she was able to develop her thoughts and writing to further her scholarship (Benavente-McEnery et al., 2009). Feedback sessions strengthened members’ confidence to modify and complete work, building their self-esteem and enabling authentic professional development. Purposeful—Supporting Professional Development of Scholarship and Practice Another way the Faculty Academy provided professional support for members was through bringing in scholars who were models of success. Although at the time I was unsure of how the arrangements were made, it was an example of the generosity of the group to foster networking and its commitment to scholarly endeavors. Sponsored (I later learned) by

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combining the Houston Annenberg Challenge funds and funds generated through the school or Faculty Academy leadership, the notable guests included Ernie Stringer, Bill Ayers, Nona Lyons, Geneva Gay, Andy Hargreaves, and Tom Barone. In most cases, the distinguished visitors spoke in a public forum and also exclusively to our group. The opportunities for the group to interact during private sessions with renowned scholars allowed for in-depth and personalized discussions. This additional time and more intimate interaction supported group learning and development. For me as a developing scholar, these conversations with educational researchers were outstanding opportunities to better understand more seasoned scholars’ ideas and ways of working to not just survive academia, but also provide strategies to thrive. I will never forget Geneva Gay’s small group discussion on the need and importance for culturally responsive teaching in order to improve student achievement (as in her works, such as Gay, 2010) and her explanation of how she carefully protected her writing time as a part of her work schedule as a professor and researcher. She shared about needing to safeguard her writing time to assure that she could flourish in her position. I also remember Andy Hargreaves presenting his ideas on “teaching in the knowledge society.” He believed that schools that supported learning for students also supported learning for teachers. He also suggested that “teaching for the knowledge economy fosters and thrives on: creativity, flexibility, problem-solving, ingenuity, collective intelligence, professional trust, risk-taking, and continuous improvement” (Hargreaves, 2003, p. 29). As I reflect on Hargreaves, I distinctly remember his description of power structures in schools, noting that classes perceived to have less value were relegated to basements and outbuildings farther away from the school center. Hearing this statement struck a familiar chord with me where the art classroom is often in an outbuilding, in the basement, or in a remote wing of the school. Overall, Hargreaves’ descriptors for the knowledge society are remarkably similar to the relational leadership style components demonstrated by Faculty Academy. Not all speakers had the same impact on me; however, I learned from the speakers’ broad variety of professional experience. I particularly gained from meeting and talking with a speaker in small groups. These opportunities provided invaluable meaning-making experiences for scholarly development.

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Ethical—The Doing of Caring Faculty Academy meetings always include a doing of caring, a ritual of professional and personal sharing at the beginning of each meeting. A member might share a current project, a conference acceptance, or notification of a publication. The sharing might also be more personal addressing a struggle with a particular project, or a collegial difficulty or concern, or the joy associated with announcing the birth of a child or grandchild. This personalized beginning encouraged caring, the “…act with special regard for the particular person in a concrete situation” (Noddings, 1984/2003, p. 24). Noddings suggested that there is a “…time and space for seeing and feeling” (p. 26) suspending “rationalobjective thinking” (p. 27) when there is a need for “subjective thinking and reflection” (p. 27). She warned that if there is no time for reflection, procedures become overly important and a loss of purpose occurs (Noddings, 1984/2003). On the basis of the group’s encouragement to develop personal connections, a new faculty member from another university and I decided that we should help each other with our writing. In this case, a mutual reciprocal caring developed, despite my being “only” a graduate student. We would meet at a coffee shop, read each other’s work, offer advice, and encourage each other. I quickly realized that my colleague was not just a new faculty member, but someone who was bursting with raw intellectual talent, and I was humbled by it. In other settings, I would have been so intimidated by her brilliance that I would have shied away from the relationship. In the past, I had experienced situations of feeling inferior because my so-called collaborator appeared to have a greater need to be viewed as superior rather than to be a true collaborator. My guess is that in this case, my Faculty Academy writing partner already had a kind and generous spirit that enabled the space for our mutually beneficial relationship to develop. She never once was condescending to me. She lived what she believed. She was not just a crusader for social justice on paper: she also lived her commitment to promote equity in all situations. My collaborative colleague welcomed my comments and suggestions as eagerly as I hers. In this case, my colleague and I developed a reciprocal caring relationship, in spite of my initial fear that I was not worthy of her company. The experience yielded a new understanding for me, building my confidence and willingness to trust. Our collaboration exemplifies the rhizomatic relationships nurtured by the Faculty Academy.

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As another example, early in my higher education teaching career, I was thrilled to be teaching art education classes, but I soon realized that teaching about teaching was more difficult than I envisioned. In this situation, I was cared-for by a colleague, a Faculty Academy member from another university, who agreed to spend a day with me, sharing her teaching strategies, student motivators, and specific lesson ideas. I was overwhelmed by her generosity. Once again, I experienced a caring that made a lasting impression. “The cared-for is free to be more fully himself in the caring relation” (Noddings, 1984/2003, p. 73). In both cases, I learned from my colleagues’ ethical caring interactions and am immensely grateful for them. These caring experiences helped me in my journey of becoming a scholar and promoted growth and change in my understanding of genuine ethical interaction and its power to transform.

Process-Oriented---Critical Feedback, Collaboration, and Reflection The process-oriented work of Faculty Academy has been key to the group’s functioning. The group used three main strategies: constructive critical feedback, collaboration, and reflection. These intentional strategies reinforced its collaborative leadership and supported a cornerstone of the relational leadership style. Constructive Critical Feedback The earlier noted use of Critical Friends protocol (Critical Friends: A Process Built on Reflection, n.d.) is an example of Faculty Academy’s belief in a process-oriented setting. The protocol enabled members to get useful feedback for their writing that was meaningful and helpful in ways to provide constructive ideas for revision. Unfortunately, in some settings, feedback can be mean-spirited and does little to help the writer make constructive improvements and goes a long way in damaging selfesteem and limiting productivity. Although the Critical Friends method was new to me when I first joined the group, it reminded me of my experiences of well-managed art critiques. My notes from an early reflection reveal the many un-tenured professors and graduate students in the group who were helped by the critical safe space that Faculty Academy provided. These thoughts still hold today.

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Critically addressing issues related to creating and improving the translation of ideas into communicative works, Faculty Academy functions as an important unique space…This ‘space’ is similar to the art critique, a place also designated as a learning environment, but in this case for artists to gain insight into their artwork and the work of their colleagues as well as to develop strategies for successful and genuine communication of these ideas. (Personal reflection, 2004)

The Faculty Academy’s use of Critical Friends protocol created an environment where listening, learning, and the development of trust enabled strategies for professional development. Critical Friends protocol strengthened the group’s ability to take on professional challenges and enable growth. Collaboration Through the years, collaboration among members was encouraged and fostered, threading its way throughout most of the group’s doings. The collaborative projects took the form of group presentations, research, and writing projects. I may have understood the positive concept of collaboration, but these projects helped me fully understand the depths of its power in relation to our development of scholarship and practice. For example, as a graduate student, I was invited to participate in a group presentation at a conference. At the time, I was not confident in my abilities or scholarship and hesitated to participate. However, with the encouragement of a colleague, I did. After the presentation, there was a new sense of camaraderie that I had not felt before. I began to understand how our collaborative efforts contributed to our development in a meaningful way. Not only were we developing our individual scholarship and practice, we were also creating a sense of community that further encouraged us to accomplish group goals. Reflection Some projects undertaken by the Faculty Academy did not result in a presentation or a publication and yet these non-public outcomes led to new directions and positive personal impact. For instance, based on the notions that “…reflection is defined as a deep consciousness engaged in how one thinks about and approaches a life work” (Lyons, 2010, p.

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vi) and that reflection can lead to understanding of situations in new ways (Schön, 1983), the Faculty Academy supported and continues to support reflective practice to foster personal and collective professional development. For example, we developed a traveling collaborative reflective journal process to develop our ideas on educational topics of our choice. This doing underscored the group’s belief in collaboration and reflection as important practices for developing knowledge related to our practice. Even though these could not be recognized as a valued scholarly product in our academic settings, the experience still held worth as a tangible record of our group reflection on issues that intersected our professional lives. As with many of the Faculty Academy collaborative efforts, as we began the traveling journals, I found myself challenged by this particular activity, as I explained in this personal reflection: Journaling is something I aspire to do, but somehow I always find excuses for not following through with my plan to write consistently. My excuses range from: ‘That journal is too big to carry’ to ‘I don’t have time to rehash everything I’m thinking or doing. I’ll remember’ or even ‘I don’t like the way the paper feels. Maybe I should get a new journal.’ Consequently, I have numerous personal journals and sketchbooks of all sizes and shapes filled with random content. My lame excuses for my irregular journaling may be a cover for deeper issues, such as a fear to develop my ideas more fully or a fear that my writings will fall into the wrong hands. (Personal reflection, 2010)

When my Faculty Academy colleagues suggested we participate in the collaborative traveling journals, I was excited about the possibilities. The safe environment provided by the Faculty Academy allowed me room and support to overcome some of my journaling fears. The collaborative component and encouragement would help me be more consistent with the practice of journaling. I was on board and ready for the journey. The journaling process was facilitated as a manageable system for sharing reflections on multiple themes. We began by selecting a journal and theme. We would write, share our thoughts, and then pass our initial journal on to another member. Once we had passed off a journal, then we would receive another to reflect on the theme initiated by another member. Over time, journaling topics included excellence, barriers, challenges, politics in education, teaching reflections, student relationships, and identity. Identity was explored in multiple ways as it related to gender, scholarliness, sexual orientation, and identification with heroes.

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From my perspective, the journaling provided interesting and enlightening perspectives on multiple relevant themes related to our practices in teacher education. However, this journaling collaboration also revealed how our vulnerabilities, even in a safe place, can result in conflict or strife. I remember one incident when a member felt slighted because of a written comment: She felt unfairly judged and brought it up at a meeting. A discussion revealed that this was a misunderstanding: the comment was unrelated to the particular member’s writings. The Faculty Academy provided a secure place to address and fix the problem. If it were not so, the member would have never brought up the issue at the meeting and would not have known the true intention of the remark. The processes and strategies used by the Faculty Academy provide evidence for the group’s commitment to a relational leadership style. This process-oriented group relied on feedback, collaboration, and reflection conducted in a safe environment. This type of leadership helped members move toward individual goals and the group move toward collaborative ones.

A Tale of Two Nuggets, Part Two---A “Doing” and an “Undergoing” Over the years, I have come to better understand how Accept can be a word of inspiration. As I recall my disappointment upon drawing the word Accept in contrast to my delight in drawing Imagine, I realize I struggled with how Accept could be meaningful to me as a word of inspiration for my professional development. The word seemed like a barrier, hardly an inspiration. My resistance plagued me with questions: How could accepting things as they are be a good thing? How could accepting difficult things be inspirational? If imagining requires the ability to think beyond what is, how could accepting what is be useful or make things better? Slowly, in my years of interactions with the Faculty Academy and my reflections on the doings and undergoings that I experienced and observed, I have come to realize Imagine must be in a relationship with Accept in order to be a fruitful inspiration. I know that my best creative work becomes realized only when I acknowledge the limits of the situation. Participating in critical feedback sessions with colleagues gave me the sense that this is also true for my Faculty Academy colleagues

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as well. My reflective thinking led me to understand that “Thinking is the accurate and deliberate instituting of connections between what is done and its consequences” (Dewey, 1916/1944, p. 151) and accepting that growth and transformation do not occur without the interaction of doing and undergoing (Dewey, 1916/1944). I now realize that imagining without navigating the realities and constraints of a situation cannot lead to productive solutions and growth. This necessarily means that I must accept what is, deal with it, accept the challenge, and hopefully come up with a creative solution. I now understand that accepting is not a barrier when linked with imagining. Constructive imagining interacting with the acceptance of the limits and constraints of reality becomes a powerful problem-solving tool. When Imagine is linked with Accept, flexible thinking, finding and solving problems, and learning happen (Fig. 3.3). Last year, because I am an artist/teacher, I completed a mixed media painting suggesting that I am coming to terms with the concept of

Fig. 3.3 Markello, C. G. (2019). ‘It is what it is’, 21 × 30 inches, acrylic and embroidery on canvas

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accept. The phrase, “It is what it is” embroidered on a painted representation of a pillow is a visual exploration of the words, Imagine and Accept. My painting recognizes the power of words as a poetic link to our experiences, bringing us closer to understanding who we are. “So that in words, or perhaps better, in spite of the words, we find ‘memories’ that paradoxically we never thought of or felt before” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 23). My “Tale of Two Nuggets” proposes that the potential power of dreaming/imagining becomes more potent by literally sleeping on “It is what it is.” My visual, poetic proposal of literally connecting dreaming/imagining with “It is what it is” furthered my understanding. I now better accept the constraints in a situation as they present themselves in our everyday lives as things that must be managed. “In other words, the ‘things’ of the world are meaningfully experienced and on that basis these ‘things’ are then approached and dealt with” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 14). As a member of the Faculty Academy, I experienced opportunities to address professional identity and insecurity through encouragement and creative activity; together, we were doing and undergoing. Through the flexible, adaptable nature of the group, along with the relational leadership style, our doings and undergoings were ways to promote and make change, contributing to my own and the group’s strength, resilience, and persistence through the years of its existence. As I close my reflection on my interactions with Faculty Academy members, I am grateful for the flexible and effective model of relational leadership of the Faculty Academy that provided the many opportunities for collaborative scholarly projects and personal professional development. As a truly exemplary example of excellence for personal and collective professional development, Faculty Academy’s doings and undergoings were and continue to be imagined and acted upon in accordance with accepting the realities of any given situation.

References Benavente-McEnery, L., Bickham, B., Boske, C., Foster, A., Markello, C., McCormack, S., … Craig, C. J. (2009). The Faculty Academy: A place for grounding and growth. In C. J. Craig & L. F. Deretchin (Eds.), Teacher learning in small-group settings: Teacher education yearbook XVII (pp. 343–367). Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield Education.

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Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Critical Friends: A Process Built on Reflection. (n.d.). https://depts.washington. edu/ccph/pdf_files/CriticalFriends.pdf. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987/2002). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dewey, J. (1916/1944). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: The Free Press. Dewey, J. (1934/1980). Art as experience. New York: Perigee Books. Dewey, J. (1938/1997). Experience and education. Touchstone Books. Eisner, E.W. (1995). Why are the arts marginalized in our schools: One more time. In On common ground, partnerships and the arts (No. 5). YaleNew Haven Teachers Institute. http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/pubs/A18/ eisner.html. Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the knowledge society: Education in the age of insecurity. New York: Teachers College Press. Komives, S., Lucas, N., & McMahon, T. (1998/2013). Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uh/reader.action? docID=1192821&ppg=27. Lyons, N. (2010). Handbook of reflection and reflective inquiry: Mapping a way of knowing for professional reflective inquiry. New York: Teacher College Press. Markello, C. (2019). Becoming an art teacher: Prismatic experiences of three new visual art teachers. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 157–183). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Mims, S. K., & Lankford, E. L. (1995). Time, money, and the new art education: A nationwide investigation. Studies in Art Education, 36(2), 84–95. Noddings, N. (1984/2003). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press. Polkinghorne, D. D. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press. Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books. Van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany: The State University of New York Press.

CHAPTER 4

Involvement in a Professional Community Yields Unexpected Skills: Faculty Academy Members’ Stories of Leadership and Learning Denise M. McDonald, Kent Divoll, Janice Moore Newsum, Omah M. Williams-Duncan, Chestin Auzenne-Curl, and Jean Kiekel

Introduction This chapter captures how participation in Faculty Academy activities (2002–present) roused and supported members’ nascent and emergent leadership competencies in their respective institutional assignments,

D. M. McDonald (B) University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. Divoll · J. M. Newsum · O. M. Williams-Duncan University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. M. Newsum e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_4

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roles, and responsibilities. Each story is a narrative reflection of individual experiences, which highlights episodes of leadership encounters. These narratives illustrate professional insights acquired, agency augmented, and learning gained through hardships and triumphs in leadership roles and how involvement with the Faculty Academy scaffolded and guided members’ learning to lead.

Faculty Academy Background and History The Faculty Academy began in 2002 with support from A+ Challenge funds received by Dr. Cheryl Craig who submitted the group’s request for the funding proposal. As the visionary founding member, Cheryl established a professional community of academics seeking excellence in their practice, research, and writing through collaborative efforts and collegial support. Over the years, Faculty Academy members, who mostly have been untenured, female teacher educators (i.e., university and public-school field partners) serving in various academic roles and positions at the University of Houston, Main Campus; University of Houston-Clear Lake; University of Houston, Downtown; University of St. Thomas; Texas A&M University, and Sam Houston State University. Members’ expertise varied across content areas and research methodologies. Notably, diverse perspectives and experiences of participants primed a synergistic effect and generated our productivity as a collected group. Throughout the years, members have met regularly to discuss challenges as academics and productively acted on shared professional writing and research goals in teacher education. Participation not only enhanced our scholarly skills, but also our ability to adapt to unfamiliar performative expectations of academic institutions (Fuller et al., 2005).

O. M. Williams-Duncan e-mail: [email protected] C. Auzenne-Curl Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA J. Kiekel University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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Since 2002, Faculty Academy members have conducted 26 presentations at the following educational conferences: American Educational Research Association (AERA), AERA Special Interest Group Invisible College, Critical Questions in Education, Association of Teacher Educators, and American Association for Teaching and Curriculum (see Appendix A). Our publication activities are nearly as fruitful and we have produced multiple individual publications resulting from Faculty Academy involvement. Collaboratively, we have published book chapters, book introductions, book summaries, and journal articles (see Appendix B). Our collaborative research presentations and publications cover themes central to our shared professional goals and research interests are summarized as follows: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Mentoring pre-service teachers Teacher retention Teacher attrition System oppression Politics in academia Program quality Scholarly identity Academic empowerment Journaling/writing Collaboration Collegial support Professional learning communities Gender issues Challenges in higher education Reflective practice Critical pedagogy Leadership (the conceptual focus of this book).

Members’ professional productivity through Faculty Academy exchanges energized ongoing collaboration and catalyzed our agency as academics. Unexpectedly, we found that our leadership skills also developed through stories shared and collegial support graciously supplied by members. Leadership proficiency was a surprising boon to Faculty Academy participation. Our stories provide evidence of learning to lead in academic settings, which at times were hostile environments for

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neophytes or those lacking authority within hierarchical higher education systems. As a supportive professional community, Faculty Academy offered members sustenance for exploring career passions, connection with other educators, validation as practitioners and researchers, personal encouragement, and when needed, professional patronage as promising academic leaders.

Literature Review Professional Community The Faculty Academy operates as a genuine professional learning and research community focused on collaboration, critical reflection, inclusivity, learning, improving practice, and ensuring progress toward collective academic goals. As a professional social network and community (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger et al., 2002), we engaged in critical dialogic exchanges and shared experiential stories. The Faculty Academy provides a supportive learning backdrop and processes for members to acquire explicit as well as informal, tacit knowledge about academia and the methods and manners necessary for constructing self in scholarly settings (Brown & Duguid, 2001; Eraut, 2004; Oh et al., 2004). Through Faculty Academy participation, professional interactions, and social networking, we are provided with support and purpose in our academic lives and fertile ground for learning (McAdams, 1985). Socially and professionally, we created our scholarly identities (Trede et al., 2012) and found opportunities to learn from and with each other. Our learning is shaped by trusting interactions, recognition of and respect for all participants as co-learners, the integrity of mutual engagement in collaborative work, and commitment of shared responsibility to one another and our research goals. Additionally, as educators, we are lifelong learners who stay current with promising practices and research. Lastly, through Faculty Academy participation, our collaborations and networking allow us to fill in potential gaps in our learning (Gutierez & Kim, 2018). Collegiality and Acceptance The Faculty Academy can be described as a special version of a Faculty Learning Community (Cox, 2013), although membership runs across multiple institutions rather than just one university. Regardless, this

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model is noted for significantly supporting early-career scholars and academics, which yields a multitude of benefits provided through collegiality and acceptance (Cox, 2013). As a group, we have informal norms of open sharing and embracing divergent views to issues. These values and concerted actions anchor our commitment to mutual aspirations, but also generate our own unique ways of knowing about academia through experiential stories swapped, dissected, and reconstructed (Kolb, 1984). Faculty Academy participation generates a trusting, safe space in a knowledge community that exists within a larger unknown and sometimes antagonistic environment of our respective academic institutions (Craig, 1995); thus, collegiality and unquestioned acceptance as members are inherently important to our individual and collective development as academics. Additionally, acceptance and recognition within our knowledge community provide efficacy that transfers to one’s actions and agency in our workplaces (Mezirow & Taylor, 2011). Dialogue and Networking Conversations with colleagues are important for individuals constructing meaning from their experiences (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978). Through dialogue and sharing of experiential stories in a community of knowing, participants experience critical reflection and examination of issues in response to their practices (Kolb, 1984; Stoll, 2010). Stories shared and listened to with trusted group members are social acts that produce meaningful connections and personal validation (de Janasz & Sullivan, 2004). Being involved in a group such as Faculty Academy adds an element of trust, which allows members to be open and honest about their experiences and receive critical feedback that will help produce growth in skills and abilities. Without trust, the group could not develop cohesion because open communication would not occur (Hands et al., 2015; Moore, 2018). Additionally, in the telling, our shared stories are ripe for nurturing change and empowerment. Lastly, the Faculty Academy network of members, which brings a dearth of human capital to the table, has collectively generated social capital as a unit of productivity within our field (Coleman, 1988; Oh et al., 2004).

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Mentoring and Role Modeling Academia is historically devoid of support for new members. In fact, mentoring initiatives are just recently being viewed and implemented as prudent for sustaining faculty development and retention (Beane-Katner, 2014; Collins et al., 2009; Yun et al., 2016). There may be systemic assumptions that individuals with terminal degrees are equipped to navigate new terrain in higher education, such as acquiring the ability to lead. There are other mammoth incoming expectations of academics that take priority in a new faculty member’s instincts to survive in the daunting environment of academia. Faculty must know how to teach their content, how to analyze for teaching effectiveness, how to conduct research, how to network and find research collaborators and field partners, how to balance demands for service activities, how to carve out time for writing, how (when, or if) to ask critical questions about issues, and how to plainly say ‘no’ to requests outside the parameters of their responsibilities (Foote & Solem, 2009). University systems usually have self-designed templates where new entries must quickly assess and figure out how to fit in; most notably challenging for women entering the field (Gibson, 2006). In some cases, the university and departmental culture may be openly threatening to non-tenured novices because they are unaware of the perceptions and needs of the novice faculty (Banasik & Dean, 2016). Additionally, not all institutions have effective mentors in place or there is difficulty identifying potential qualified and able mentors who have the time, desire, wisdom, and insight to mentor and serve as role models for neophytes (Angelique et al., 2002; Ortlief et al., 2010). Fortunately, Faculty Academy membership provides informal mentors and role models to assist with these challenges. Scholarly Identify Formation Learning in the academic profession is often informal through social and experiential processes of interactions and vicarious observations (Eraut, 2004). Often the learning is rich, but equally frequent for novices is the feeling of identity challenges, such as lack of resources, last-minute scheduling, little opportunity for curriculum input, and nominal professional development opportunities (Banasik & Dean, 2016), resulting in faulty agency, isolation, or worse, alienation. Understanding Ivory Tower expectations and pre-set norms is daunting as this knowledge is crucial for

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acquiring scholarly identity within university environments (Trede et al., 2012). Tentative or skittish newbies find challenges in entering academic circles where their entrance is dependent upon others’ views of the capital that these novices can contribute to the collective. Newcomers must become aware of what is valued, of whether the capital they bring to the setting fits within those values, of the possible limitations or mismatches of capital, as well as of the resistance they may face from others within the existing system. Through Faculty Academy exchanges, members make meaning of their scholarly roles and responsibilities; and thereby, are better able to reorient their ‘self’ as an academic and adapt to institutional demands (Jawitz, 2009; Kogan, 2000). Community plays a central function in supporting individual explorations and development of self. Our identities are shaped and arise through the process of social interactions with peers within social environments and organizations. In the community there is the relational interdependency of what we do as a group, the meaning we ascribe to our actions, and the resulting learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Additionally, membership in Faculty Academy has impacted our ways of knowing and ways of being within our respective academic institutions and development as scholars. Faculty Academy participation forged a sense of belonging and commitment to a professional knowledge community that directly impacted our academic identities as researchers and practitioners. Within this non-judgmental community of knowing, our scholarship has flourished and participation has been identity-forming through social interactions and membership in an academic community. Budding Leadership Efficacy Our Faculty Academy community grew; and, as we continued to share experiential stories of academia (Elliott & Stead, 2008), an exponential marvel occurred. We realized our stories highlighted increasing successes in our work, especially regarding new leadership assignments. More significantly, many of our achievements could be connected to Faculty Academy in some way (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2005). We were learning from each other and the transformative process optimized our individual and collective potentials. Time was needed for this discovery. Previous stories expressed challenges, making mistakes, correcting errors, and moving forward, while more recent stories were encouraging. We were maturing, gaining confidence, efficacy, and agency. Transformation

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of one’s thinking takes time. Becoming empowered as a leader takes even longer (Dinh et al., 2014; Gmelch & Buller, 2015).

Stories of Empowered Leadership and Agency We now share our storied experiences of leadership-forming events through a narrative autobiographical process (Baumeister & Newman, 1994; Bruner, 1991, 2003; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; McAdams & McLean, 2013; Nash, 2004; Pasupathi et al., 2007). Narrative storytelling meaningfully enhances and validates individual and collective learning and identity formation through both telling and listening processes in sharing experiences (Clark, 2010; McAdams & Guo, 2015). Our stories, as psychosocial constructions based on our respective institutional cultures in which we are situated (McAdams, 1993), help us make sense of, give meaning to, and critically examine our learning to lead in academia and the milieu influences that provisioned or thwarted our development. As members of the Faculty Academy, we acknowledge that the social networking, collegiality, and support spurred through ongoing meetings and open dialogue influenced many challenging episodes in our academic experiences. Surprisingly, many of us have benefited from adversities within academia, but credit the sociocultural support of Faculty Academy membership in providing the safety net to develop adaptation skills in moving forward as academic leaders. Admittedly, the stories shared involve biased reconstructions of our past experiences and are selective renderings of what we subjectively perceive to be impactful events that transpired or situational actions taken. However, telling our stories offers a reflective and integrative process for understanding ourselves as leaders in academia. The following stories depict how Faculty Academy participation impacted members’ aptitude for leadership and the learning experienced when in positions to lead. Denise Currently a full professor, my history with Faculty Academy (FA) began as an Assistant Professor in 2002. Throughout the years, professional meetings with FA colleagues inspired discussions of challenges experienced in higher education, such as allotting time for writing, publishing, conducting research, and most importantly from novices’ perspectives, acquiring promotion and tenure. From the start, our shared professional

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anxieties sparked scholarly initiatives to address the very concerns that consumed us as academics. What emerged quickly and consistently were that the FA meetings and activities reinforced and supported my developing identity as an academic. Additionally, Cheryl Craig served as an informal mentor, role model, and inspiration for my budding academic career. Everything I have learned from her, I have tried to emulate in my own practice. So, events of the following story were inspired by Cheryl Craig (explained in more detail later). I was recently on a committee that appeared planted with biased individuals to slant the committee’s action outcomes in a predetermined direction. This is not an uncommon experience in academia, but dealing effectively with unequitable actions by others can be quite disconcerting, especially when the committee is comprised of senior faculty who are used to getting their way and have operated for years within a faulty system built upon unequal power structures. Unfortunately, involvement in a politically charged situation is additionally troublesome when one hopes to ensure fairness in committee processes, but faces significant challenges from masterful spin doctors who undermine due diligence procedures in order to acquire self-serving privileges or suppress others. A significant political divide was the case regarding this committee’s charge. I understand that every committee member believes they know what is best, or what are appropriate actions to take. Unfortunately, those who are immersed in ladder-climbing efforts will conduct unethical actions, generating tactics to gain or retain power within a system or keep ‘perceived’ threatening individuals under control. There were two such ‘planted’ individuals on the committee. A red flag was raised during committee discussion. Three members (myself included) openly shared high ratings on data presented (on a scale of 1–6, ratings were: 5, 6, & 6). The two ‘planted’ individuals had both shared during discussion a rating of ‘3’ but based on data provided, could not sufficiently argue their ratings. Discussion ensued that went nowhere toward a compromise. Subsequently, one of the ‘planted’ individuals requested anonymous voting. I challenged that anonymity because it curtailed discussion for the ‘why’ of particular ratings. The other ‘planted’ individual happened to be the committee chair and stated that as chair, their decision would be to conduct anonymous voting since at least one member was not comfortable with the open forum for determining the final rating. This seemed highly unusual (and suspect) since we had already shared our ratings and reasoning during discussion. The chair added that after the anonymous voting, the

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rating ‘average’ i.e., the mean, would be determined (not the median, which would have been ‘5’ or mode, which would have yielded two numbers of 3 and 6). The rating ‘average’ would be calculated by a non-committee member (a secretary) and that rating would be used in the report. Shades of deviousness were planned through this shadowy voting process in that these two members could now provide lower, unjustified ratings to skew the final ‘average’ without being called out by other committee members. From the committee’s previous discussion, the average would have yielded 4.6 but was returned as 3.4, which was significantly lower than imagined. In fact, this rating was not passable (per the committee’s charge in determining ratings). In an effort to offset the other committee members’ positive ratings, apparently the two ‘planted’ individuals changed their original ‘3’ rating and voted ‘0’ (which could never be justified in discussion based on the data provided). This was an underhanded political move! After this meeting, I conferred with the two other committee members who freely shared their positive ratings during discussion and felt no need for anonymity in the process. They voted exactly as what they shared in discussion and also felt that something was awry, but they were going to let it go and sign off on the rating report. I could not be complicit with this action. So, I privately spoke with the chair and explained that based on the data and in all good conscience, I could not agree to sign off on the committee decision to use the averaged rating that was significantly lower than what I viewed as a fair assessment. The chair said that the Dean wanted a committee consensus, so would I compromise? (of course, this was a bullying tactic in referencing a higher authority’s preference). Seeing where this outcome was going, I felt compelled to write a ‘Hail Mary’ minority letter to express my views that differed from committee members’ manipulated consensus. Written in earnest with key factors and points noted as well as provision of solid arguments based on data, the minority letter was submitted. It was a ‘stand-alone’ among the committee’s and administrators’ letters up the chain of leadership command. Several years ago, I would not have possessed the confidence to take this route of action, going against consensus to argue for righteous actions (or rather, what I was blindly trained to accept as ‘consensus’). I had been so beaten down over time and was still bearing battle scars from systematic and systemic indoctrination. However, in this instance, I headed back into the fracas with conviction to lead with virtue. This time, what could be given up for lost, as someone else’s impossible battle, was one

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that shared the same injustices I faced previously. This time, I could see beyond what the powers-to-be methodically hid from scrutiny. Additionally, this time I was experientially better prepared to tackle wrongdoings of discrimination, as I had grown from my own accumulated losses. Although many individuals have influenced my development as an academic leader, I had firsthand observations of a stellar professional who successfully fought many a foe. Cheryl Craig, as an ongoing inspiration and mentor in seeking space and place in academia, significantly influenced my leadership efficacy. During one FA meeting several years ago, she shared how against committee odds, she advocated for a junior colleague. She explained how well-placed arguments shifted the committee’s negative stance to one that ended up supporting this faculty member. She stood her ground based on principle and was victorious (i.e., for the novice peer’s promotion). Her story struck me as courageous action of justice where voicing solid arguments can reverse biases and predetermined verdicts. I vicariously learned through Cheryl’s inspirational stories that one’s integrity as a leader could turn-the-table toward legitimate and rightful actions. I have learned, and hope to exude, several acquired leadership values: Give of yourself honestly. Step up with conviction. Say your words and act on them. Question injustices and power imbalances. Deliberately cross hazardous boundaries (as this act strengthens one’s validity as a genuine leader). These deeds exponentially increase and yield positive results of justice. If not at first, at other points as fair measures accrue. In the case described above, the ultimate decision aligned with my minority letter. I felt vindicated, but more importantly, fairness resulted. Summary Statement With agency, through thoughts and actions, one sheds the cloak of passivity and complicity. Denise reached a pivotal point for enacting her leadership values. She questioned authorities regarding policy and procedures. Without adequate explanation from the powers-to-be regarding their decisions that violated processes, she resisted and took a stance contrary to the tacit consensus expected by committee group norms. Her individual sensemaking of the situation placed her outside the organizational group and challenged their previously unquestioned norms. Ultimately, Denise’s leadership actions were authentic, redemptive, and efficacious (Avolio & Gardner, 2005; McAdams, 2006).

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Chestin I remain in a state of professional wondering—wandering, too. As I approach the end of a three-year postdoctoral fellowship, I still question my place in the world of the academy. There are layers to the Impostor Syndrome with which I struggle. There are pressures and expectations that I have forced upon myself, and there are those which have seeped in from the communities that intersect in me. I am an unsteady root of voice and contribution when I know there is power in both. I entered Faculty Academy during year one of my Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and I planned access to discourse during the first few meetings. These meetings were full of familiar individuals and I related to nearly all of them in a colloquial ‘six degrees of separation.’ The members of the Faculty Academy group had previously been my professors, graduate and doctoral advisers, research subjects, and there was a more experienced postdoc already there. So, I was going to be quiet. I felt that being vocal as a baby doc would be disruptive. These were people who had graded my work, guided me, reviewed my conference proposals and I could not reconcile an internal balance until I had seeped in as a specter to observe. I was denied this. There were many who would pull me in as I attempted to step back. There were invitations to edit, to comment, to share—even in the beginning. I was not allowed to sit in the shadows because, as was made evident in meeting one, this was a place of active learning and vulnerability. There was truth, acceptance and growth at the table, and there was Dr. Kahn. She was one of two members of Faculty Academy who was a professor of mine during the very first semester of my graduate journey. It was in her class, Multicultural Education, that I first began to reflect deeply on intersectionality and the need to share of Self as a text. I remember writing a narrative for the course final and I bared much in it. It was an informal leap into narrative methodology, which was not offered at my institution at that time. She encouraged storying in that course, and I remembered her evenness and authenticity. It was part of scholarly work. In Faculty Academy, Kahn remembered me and she remembered the piece that I wrote. It was enough, in a strange way. I had written something that had an impact on someone at a time when I had not a clue of what I was doing or where I might be going. The parts of the essay that she could recall were a trigger for release. I know that she does not know that. She was searching her memory aloud in front of a familiar face. That is all,

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and it was enough. I sat next to her at the first lunch meeting. I sat across from my doctoral advisor (Cheryl Craig) and my graduate advisor (Denise McDonald) as they facilitated a review of an unpublished piece. The three faces were important. They were faces representative of a kind of female leadership that embraces, empowers, and energizes. Dr. Kahn encouraged me to speak with Dr. McDonald who would become my graduate advisor. Dr. McDonald’s brilliance was always apparent and matched her humility. The latter met each of us, her students, where we were and encouraged us to identify our strengths in the service of our own students. Every class session with Denise McDonald was a well-executed demonstration of the art and science of teaching. I still have the course syllabi and handouts from her classes—of course, I took more than one. The same is true of Cheryl Craig. Denise, already a giant in my eyes, made mention of the name with such admiration and praise that I knew I would want to meet her one day. Denise insisted that I needed not just to meet Cheryl Craig, but to pursue a doctorate under her advisement. I fought that notion for years because I held doubts about my ability to complete a PhD as a young wife and mother, but eventually landed in that exact spot. As I earlier stated, Dr. Craig was the one who empowered me and invited me to attend. My doctoral journey under her tutelage would yield international publications, presentations, and partnerships. Like Kahn and McDonald, Craig was interested in the stories of her students. Very quickly, I found that she was an eminent scholar and a leader in the field of Narrative Inquiry. I share these things here because each of these women helped shape my vision for leadership and mentorship. I try to always listen to story rather than author it for my students and colleagues. I try to couple what I hear in those stories with care and understand. I know that to leave a lasting impact, I must model by using my gifts to support cultivation of the gifts of others. Always wondering if what I might contribute is worth sharing, I still have periods of crippling doubt. They do not linger as much as they used to, but I am actively working to eradicate the virus of Impostor Syndrome. I have been honored with awards, scholarships, and fellowships, but I still wander about in professional liminality. I would find a knowledge community at the table that day and it was a community that normalized the wondering, the wandering and the successes and struggles of the journey. Faculty Academy became a home for me. In just a year, I would publish, present, and propose a book with various members. In

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year 2, we lost Dr. Kahn to cancer, but her gift of sharing echoes along the way. She shared at an important time and called upon me to do the same. She opened channels that led me to this place. So, I, too, will share. No matter when or where. No matter how small a kind remark, it is worth sharing. Wherever my work might reach, I hope it triggers a release. I hope it frees a seat at the table. Summary Statement Chestin’s wonderings and wanderings are familiar to newly entering scholars as a baffling fugue state. There is an identity upheaval resulting in incessant questioning, perceptions of a loss of direction, and self-doubts. This phenomenon was identified by Clance and Imes (1978) and labeled the Impostor Syndrome; common to women, especially high achieving individuals such as those in academia. However, Chestin eloquently articulates how narrative processes (McAdams, 2001; McLean et al., 2007) and relational bonds as well as social group support as a community (Billett, 2008; Cox, 2013; Craig, 1995) buffer qualms and build efficacy in her identity formation as an academic (Hammack, 2008). Scholarly connections have influenced Chestin’s intention to replicate inclusive actions which recognize and honor others who may experience their own hesitancy at the academic table. She now is leading the way for others. Kent I started Faculty Academy in 2008 as a wide-eyed new faculty member. I was invited into Faculty Academy by Dr. Denise McDonald. This invitation changed my view of myself as a faculty member and as a leader. My first semester in academia was a piece of cake. Our university gives new faculty a course release their first semester and since I was not serving on any committees, faculty life was easy. The Faculty Academy helped me understand that this was not the norm and that life would become extremely busy soon. As the semesters passed, the Faculty Academy not only helped me navigate the world of academia, but it also changed me as a leader. Listening to the stories of fellow members describe their frustrations with the system, colleagues, and leaders in their institution, I began to see myself shape the leader that I wanted to be. My leadership was shaped by faculty academy in three ways: (a) by Denise’s influence, (b) by Cheryl Craig’s influence, and (c) from the stories and conversations with other members. Denise and Cheryl are an

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inspiration to future leaders, and they have had a major impact on me as a leader. Denise is a momma bird at my institution, who helps her flock understand what they need to do to be successful. She helped me navigate the cliques within the academic world and set me up to successfully earn tenure and promotion. Not only would she provide advice, but she also encouraged publications, wrote with me, and helped me get proposals accepted. Her influence changed the way that I perceive my role as a faculty member. When we get new members at our institution, I make it a habit to check in on them and encourage them with their writing. Denise’s influence made me want to pass on the same treatment that I received. In doing so, junior faculty started seeing me as a leader and would come to me for advice with any issues that they faced. Cheryl influenced my development as a leader through her stories about the politics of academia and with all that she does in her academic life. I was surprised that someone as well renowned as she would still struggle for recognition and deal with messes. Denise and Cheryl together, because of their leadership roles inside and outside their universities, motivated me to take chances and be more of a leader. As a result, I have assumed roles as a reviewer for an accrediting body, taken on numerous leadership roles within my college and university, and became an officer for over six years for an American Education Association SIG. As a result of the stories of Denise, Cheryl, and the rest of the members of faculty academy, I learned the plotlines of the type of leader that I want to be. The following are two examples of concepts that I learned about leadership. One of the most important things that I learned from the stories is to be wary of faculty cliques. As a result, I have friends and colleagues, but I make an effort to not be associated with any one clique. One of my first experiences with these cliques was at a department meeting, when one clique opposed an idea that clearly would have benefited the college and the group in opposition only opposed the idea because the presenter was not part of that clique. At the time, I did not understand why people would put personal feelings over what is best for everyone. However, the stories from Faculty Academy helped me understand that in some programs, this is the norm and that people within such cliques are out to gain and maintain power. Such knowledge has allowed me to be friendly with everyone and exist within all cliques, yet not be associated with any one of them. From the stories, I learned that if a leader is seen to operate within a clique, then those outside the clique will feel marginalized even if the leader does not favor the clique when the leader

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is in power. Moreover, it is difficult for the leader to separate his/her feelings about the clique when decision making. For me, this means that I purposely do not take on leadership roles involving controversy. Other stories from the Faculty Academy reinforced the idea that, as a leader, you are not going to please everyone, but everyone needs to be heard. In my leadership roles, I like to listen to all the sides of a story before making a decision. I encourage everyone to be heard and, if possible, seek a compromise. If a compromise cannot be reached, I try to explain the reasons behind it and why we need to go in a different direction. Finally, the stories from Faculty Academy taught me about favoritism and the perception of favoritism. A good leader cannot have favorites and someone who wants to be a leader cannot be seen as giving benefits to his/her favorites. Overall, the Faculty Academy has improved my understanding of learning and leadership through the sharing of stories and face-to-face interactions with members. Summary Statement Kent expresses the impact that informal mentors (Bland et al., 2009; Collins et al., 2009), role modeling (Kogan, 2000), and stories shared by Faculty Academy members about academic life (McLean et al., 2007; Shamir & Eilam, 2005) made on his development as a leader. He experienced positive transformations in learning to lead through membership interactions (Cox, 2013; Mezirow & Taylor, 2011) and vicarious observations how others enact their leadership values and traits within systems imbued in power group dominating actions (Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Trowler & Knight, 2000). His hope to rise as a leader by demonstrating unbiased listening skills devoid of cliquish inclinations has been observed by new-entry faculty who seek him out as an advisor within the institutional climate (Greene et al., 2008) and has established his generosity in passing on insight and support to others (Sorcinelli & Yun, 2007). Jean My involvement with Faculty Academy began when I was a non-tenured faculty at the University of Houston in 2010. I was invited to join the group by another non-tenured faculty member with whom I worked closely. Up to that point, as a non-tenured faculty member, I was led to believe by those with tenure and higher rank that my opinions and ideas really had no merit, which made it difficult to develop an identity

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as a faculty member. Perhaps it was my shy nature that contributed to this, but after joining the Faculty Academy, sharing in the experiences of others, I knew that life could be different in another position. Thanks to their support, I was able to find a full-time, tenure-track (now tenured) position. When I left the University of Houston to take the position, I was given a lot of encouragement by Faculty Academy members, and Cheryl Craig invited me to continue to participate as a member, which has only helped me to grow further. I grew up a very shy child. I spent a lot of time reading and being alone. I was often bullied, which made being alone preferable to socializing. This set of circumstances only cemented my introverted nature. When I started attending public school in 9th grade, I found myself drawn to people who were much more outgoing and extroverted than I was. Even today I am attracted to people who possess the qualities I often wish I had. Even though I was smart, graduating just four students from the top 10% of my class, my shy nature kept me from thinking I could really be successful at university. I went to vocational school and learned to be a medical transcriptionist. When I married, my spouse attended university and was studying electrical engineering. He convinced me that I could be successful taking classes and working toward a degree. So, I embarked upon my bachelor’s degree on a part-time basis. When he graduated, I told him I was content to not finish my degree, but after moving to the western part of the state—3 hours from the university—I realized that I really wanted to finish what I had started. For the next two years, I drove—first three hours each way for one year, then 1.5 hours each way to complete my degree. I then went on for my master’s degree in Business Administration. I wanted to be a medical practice manager. As I was completing my master’s degree, my spouse was transferred to Houston and all prospective employers looked at my background as a medical transcriptionist without looking at my degrees and I never was even provided the chance to even prove that I could do the job. In 1994, I was given my first opportunity to teach. It was teaching medical transcription to blind and visually impaired adults. During that time, my spouse lost his job and when he found a new one, it was in another state, so we moved. Over the next year, he was dissatisfied with that position and he found a position back in the oil and gas industry and we moved back to Houston. My former employer did not wish to rehire me, so I took classes toward teacher certification and began teaching high school.

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After five years of teaching high school, when my spouse found employment in another state, we moved to be closer to family. Because I did not have a teacher certification in that state and there was no reciprocity, and because it was a very expensive process to become certified, I decided it was time to embark upon a degree I never thought I would ever have—a Ph.D.—in education. Most of my classmates were much more extroverted so I found this to be a very enjoyable and supportive experience. I am still in touch with at least one member and sometimes catch up with others in the cohort through her. However, once I graduated and my degree was conferred, my introverted tendencies once again took hold. I once told someone that I keep waiting for them to come and tell me that they made a mistake and I hadn’t finished all my requirements for the degree so they were going to take it back. My first faculty position was at a University in Arkansas. I moved there, alone. My spouse and children stayed where they were while my spouse looked for work in the same state without much luck. Since most of the oil and gas industry is in Houston, and I still had a valid Texas teaching certification, we decided that we would return to Houston, and if I could not secure a faculty position at a university that I would go back to teaching high school. I found a non-tenure track position at a major university. The one problem is that nearly all of the other non-tenure track faculty at this institution were former graduates from that university. As such, they were often treated as graduate students rather than the colleagues that they were. I was put into that group because I was a non-tenure-track faculty member. I continued to do research and get published. When I was evaluated, I was always told that it was great that I was doing research, but I was not necessarily hired for that and to keep up the great job teaching. Being an introvert, this attitude eroded the little self-confidence I had. I did not know that others felt the same way until I was invited to join the Faculty Academy. Being a member of the Faculty Academy again put me into a social situation with many more extroverted peers. The work we did together gave me confidence to continue proposing presentations and doing research. When I was searching for a tenure-track position, this group gave me encouragement to spread my wings. When I found my current position, I was invited to continue to be part of Faculty Academy, which had extended beyond one university system. The Faculty Academy has helped me develop some of the extrovert tendencies that make for successful

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leadership. My Faculty Academy colleagues have supported and encouraged me so that I have taken on more responsibility and become much more visible on my campus. As an introvert, being visible and having others recognize you and your contributions is often uncomfortable, but I am learning to accept it and grow into it. Because today’s society values the qualities of the extrovert more than the introvert, it can cause difficulty for the introvert to function and meet their strengths. This is why Faculty Academy has been such a beneficial learning and leading organization for me. They allow me to voice my ideas and frustrations and give support where it is needed so I do not get frustrated. Because of my involvement in Faculty Academy, I found the courage to apply for the position I have now—a tenure-track (now tenured) position at a small, Catholic, liberal arts university. Summary Statement To become a full member of her institutional community, Jean had to establish an academic identity within the system that aligned with set institutional goals (Lave & Wenger, 1991). This challenge was augmented by her introversion and perseverating self-doubts as an academic (Alvesson, 2010). Jean found comfort through supportive social surrogates in the Faculty Academy where members unreservedly welcomed her as a participant and acknowledged her contributions to the group (Cox, 2013). Inclusion in the safe sociocultural space of this learning community enhanced her efficacy as an academic and leader (Oh et al., 2004; Trowler & Knight, 2000). Jean has transformed from a shy individual to a more dynamic and engaged colleague and credits participation in the Faculty Academy in building her confidence and scholarly identity (Wenger, 1998a). Janice Swimming has never been an activity of choice for me. I insisted that my children learn to swim beginning with ‘water babies’ classes and continuing with participation in competitive swimming throughout their elementary and secondary years. My adult children were incredulous when they recently learned I cannot swim. They always thought I could. Despite my lack of swimming aptitude, in my imagination, I see myself as able to survive if ever I found myself in a flooded Houston street or even

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on a sinking ship in the middle of the ocean. I carried this same distorted truth of my capabilities into my transition from a school librarian leader to an academic in higher education. School librarians are a close-knit community characterized by sharing, mentoring, empowerment, and collaborative leadership. As I moved through my librarian preparation program, I was fortunate to be mentored by two seasoned librarians who encouraged involvement with professional librarian organizations at local, state, and national levels. Each of them championed my efforts to establish myself as a school librarian leader. I entered the profession as an elementary librarian and quickly found a comfortable space for personal and professional growth. In just five short years, I was selected as the Houston Independent School District (HISD) Librarian of the Year. I was hired as the librarian at a highly recognized high school in HISD, served as the president of the Houston Association of School Librarians (HASL), and was elected chair of the Texas Library Association (TLA) Black Caucus Round Table. I was elected chair or co-chair of various TLA committees and won statewide election to the TLA Executive Board as a Representative at Large, serving a 3-year term on behalf of school librarians. I quickly rose in the ranks of the HISD Library Services Department to Library Supervisor and eventually to the position of Department Manager of the nearly 300 HISD school libraries. Having spent nearly two decades as a successful school librarian leader, it was more than disconcerting to realize that higher education was not a replica of the school librarian community. I entered academia with great expectations of collegial acceptance and respect for the years of practical experience and leadership skills I brought with me. To my dismay, it was more than evident that I was not prepared to exert my learned leadership skills in academia. Despite years in higher education as a student (undergraduate and graduate), I was humbled by the lack of knowledge I had about academia and frustrated by the seemingly insurmountable learning curve. Juggling teaching, service, and research produced constant anxiety for me. My anxiety increased and the resultant paralyzing fear that I was sinking fast in totally unfamiliar waters was fast becoming my daily reality. I thought of myself as adept at navigating through organizational politics, but the politics of academia left me baffled. Tenure and promotion guidelines confused me. Finding solid leadership footing was nearly impossible. Regret was building. There was no one with whom to share questions of my own competence (or lack thereof) and no in-depth relationship seemed on the horizon. A bit

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of research indicated that my feelings are almost universal among newly appointed academics and these feelings have a name: Impostor Syndrome. Just as I was about to conclude that I was on the verge of being exposed as an impostor and wholly unworthy of my tenure-track position, a lifeline was unexpectedly thrown into my sea of self-doubt. My first thoughts when I received the email invitation to join the Faculty Academy was to decline; with so much to learn and do, who had time for another meeting? I noticed that the invitation had come from a faculty member with a stellar reputation as a mentor to junior faculty (Cheryl Craig). Never having written my own evaluation and with no clue as to how to begin, I was deeply appreciative that Dr. Denise McDonald had graciously and generously shared her Annual Review Report with me and others. In monthly faculty meetings her comments indicated her commitment to fairness and equity. Included in the email was the name of a colleague who came to UHCL at the same time as I did. Upon further contemplation, I decided to at least give it a try. Participation, I reasoned, certainly could not hurt and potentially would be helpful. That fateful decision led to a truly safe space to confess my shortcomings, to answer honestly about my lack of publications without judgment, and to securely share undeveloped ideas. Faculty Academy members are genuine colleagues that I both admire and respect. My year-and-a-half association with the Faculty Academy has allowed me to bask in the warmth and familiarity the members express toward one another. While the mentorship of the Academy is not formalized, it is exceptional in that each member brings a unique history and perspective to the group. Authentic and forthright discussions about gender equity and the impact of racial identification on leadership development and engagement are easily and comfortably conducted. Some of the stories told in the monthly meetings mirror my own lived experiences, but many others do not. I am relaxed and calm in the realization that the trials of a person of color within the Academy are understood and valued. As I listen and participate with the Academy, offers of assistance and support surround me. The opportunity to participate in this collaborative project sparked ideas for further writing that I can do. Questions about the professoriate are readily answered and explained without judgment. My leadership as a professor is being guided into a clear focus. While waves of new and unfamiliar expectations continue to break over my head, the Faculty Academy is the lifeline that keeps me afloat.

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Summary Statement Janice expresses angst, concern, feelings of isolation, and a fear of drowning common to new-entry faculty attempting to navigate the muddy waters of academia (Thompson, 2016). This emotion suffocates one’s professional efficacy and identity, especially when irrational selfcritiques doggy-paddle to the surface (Clark et al., 2014; Hutchins, 2015; Vergauwe et al., 2015). Novice faculty often flounder in the unchartered, rough seas of higher education; especially when no life vest is visible or within grasp. It is as if the ‘sink or swim’ struggle is deliberately created as a rite of passage to the new land (where a beacon from the Ivory Tower may be barely viewable from a distance). Fortunately, Janice experienced a response to her SOS distress signal that alerted a life boat for rescue. Faculty Academy collegiality extended a reassuring arm to pull her from the waves of self-doubt and a shark-infested milieu (Cox, 2013). With supportive others, role models, and mentors in the Faculty Academy (Kogan, 2000), Janice can now dive in with confidence and learn to swim with the big (and little) fish (Jawitz, 2007). She has a crew with which to sail into the sunset. Omah I earned my doctorate from a large research 1 university located in a college town in southeast Texas. The graduate program was rigorous, and I attributed my success to seeking out, joining, and implementing practices from specific support groups. For example, I became a founding graduate-camp orientation leader to understand the university’s culture and traditions. I earned a graduate teaching associate certification to learn how to teach large collegiate classes. Finally, I worked as a POWERwriting consultant after attending their writing studios and joining the university library’s dissertation writing group—I wanted to improve my comfort with writing and publishing to be successful in my classes and academic career. Remarkably, these groups helped me to practice the needed skills to be successful in graduate school. They also afforded me the opportunity to observe the successful and debilitating practices of junior and senior faculty members in and outside of my department. I knew I was embarking on the right path when I learned that the research on successful first-generation college students revealed that they aligned themselves with successful groups and implemented their practices to build social and professional capital.

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Earning my doctoral degree as a mid-career professional was enlightening. After quitting my job to accelerate my progress, I had to balance being a graduate student with also being a graduate research and teaching assistant. While I am appreciative of the professional opportunities I experienced, I developed what Claude Steele calls the Impostor Syndrome, like Chestin Auzenne-Curl describes. My mother has master’s and undergraduate degrees, while my father went to college for a semester. Neither of them understood my mounting anxiety as the dissertation and my eventual defense loomed. Sure, they were (and are) incredibly proud; yet, they do not understand what it means to be ‘a member of the ivory tower.’ The words bear a huge responsibility that is also intertwined with the weight of being an African American, a woman, a stepmother, a teacher, an elementary teacher educator, and an only child. It feels like the responsibility of all my personal and professional taglines, compounded by the new weight of earning my job through promotion and tenure, bears on my shoulders like cinder blocks in a Roman arena. I feel like a proverbial Joan of Arc, daringly fighting against the internal and external gauntlet of the ivory tower. Upon graduation from my university, I was offered and accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at a small teaching university in southeast Houston. I began in August 2015 and was elated about living out a professional goal of being a professor. In October 2016, I was invited by Dr. Denise McDonald to attend a Faculty Academy meeting. Attending my first meeting was like returning to scaffolds I had built for myself while pursuing my doctorate degree. Participating gave me a sign of relief—I knew I was among a group of people that were at various stages of success in their higher education career. I felt I was being introduced to new beacons of light that could help me navigate my own dark path. I was no longer alone. Unbeknownst to Dr. McDonald, her invitation and the collegiality I experienced sparked the memory of what I needed to recreate for myself in order to be successful. I started a POWER Writing meet-up group in January 2016 in Southwest Houston. My meet-up group called Houston Early Career Faculty Meet-up, began January 2017. The group meets most Sunday afternoons from 2:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m. at a coffee shop and provides a judgment-free zone for quiet writing. Membership is open to graduate students and early-career faculty working on academic projects. Currently, there are 8 members and we conduct research in a variety of areas. Our group has produced 1 dissertation, one successful proposal defense, and 5 journal

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articles. Much like the Faculty Academy, we are a very diverse group of professionals in various stages of our higher education journey. Unlike the Faculty Academy, we do not publish together—our research interests are too diverse. Joining the Faculty Academy has allowed me to participate in the somewhat difficult task of writing and publishing with colleagues. As the adage states, ‘Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.’ The Faculty Academy has ‘taught me to fish’ by indirectly demonstrating how to leverage academic group settings for the purposes of completing writing projects. I have recently co-authored two manuscripts with Faculty Academy colleagues. I am awaiting acceptance for one manuscript and moving through the publication protocols for the second accepted manuscript. These experiences have now provided context for how I can facilitate the publishing of work with graduate students; I no longer find myself only drawing direction from my personal experiences as a graduate student. While I am a year away from tenure, I am hopeful and grateful that I have artifacts to present in my tenure packet. I have asked Faculty Academy members for ideas about the placement of a manuscript, editing help, and co-authored with a few of them. In every instance, I have learned great skills, resulting in my first co-authored manuscript submission with a current graduate student. Summary Statement Omah, as a budding academic leader, has evolved from a new-entry novice to an engaged, crucial participant taking initiative in establishing her own self-defined scholarly space with the Houston Early Career Faculty writing group. She has become agentive in creating her own community of practice (Archer, 2008; Wenger, 1998a, 1998b). As Omah shared, Faculty Academy, as a learning and research community, taught her as a first-generation academic, how to fish (Cox, 2013) and she has internally deconstructed restraints imposed by the Impostor Syndrome (Steele, 2011). Now, after her transformative journey, she is leading the way and passing collaborative writing skills on to other academics (Mezirow & Taylor, 2011).

Proliferating Possibilities Our stories of learning to lead reveal initial trepidations that ultimately resulted in agency and autonomous actions of confidence. As developing

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leaders in academia, we share issues of self-doubt, a sense of isolation, and uncertainty in organizational environments, which pose a performative ethos within ambiguous standards, rigorous expectations, and a multitude of lofty, at times unrealistic, institutional goals (with little to no real guidance or support). We experience constraining pulls from our personal desire to be professionally authentic against the organizational demands of erroneous accountability. We also struggle with what we perceive as unnecessary conflicts or contradictions experienced in our institutional settings rooted in power imbalances. Through Faculty Academy participation (as an identity-forming resource of support) and sharing our stories of struggle and success, we have learned to strategize, adapt, create meaning, and craft identities as constructive contributing members to our respective universities as well as each other; thereby, ensuring our ability to function productively and authentically (Archer, 2008). Ongoing social exchanges and dialogue, collegial support, and collaborative actions (ranging from pragmatic to imaginative) will continue as we, as Faculty Academy members, continue to progress through proliferating possibilities of who we are and where we aspire to go as academic leaders.

Appendix A: Collaborative Conference Presentations (2003–2019) McDonald, D. M., Crawford, C., Watson, S., Shulsky, D., Baker, S., & WilliamsDuncan. (2019, October). Leadership lessons learned: The liminal space between limitations and victory laps. Issues and ideas session presented at the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum, Birmingham, AL. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Kahn, M., Markello, C., Pohl, R., Han, X., Sack, J., Kiekel, J., Beaudry, C., Gauna, L., Divoll, K., Ribeiro, A., Turchi, L., Stapp, K., Quander, J., Evans, P., & Li, J. (2018, April). Challenges in effective mentoring and retention of novice teachers. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Carman, C., & Crawford, C. (2017, April). Seeking liberty within an oppressive system through satire. Poster presented at the American Educational Research Association, San Antonio, TX. McDonald, D. M., Raven, S., Crawford, C., Kiekel, J., & Divoll, K. (2017, April). Academia being “Trump”ed by corporatized organizational models. Session presented for the Invisible College, San Antonio, TX.

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McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Han, X., Ross, V., & Divoll, K. (2016, April). Exploring global perspectives of teacher attrition. Session conducted at the Invisible College, Baltimore, MD. Kiekel, J., & McDonald, D. M. (2016, March). Mentoring induction year teachers: Are we doing a good job? Presentation at the Critical Questions in Education Conference, San Antonio, TX. Craig, C., McDonald, D. M., Kiekel, J. Turchi, L., & Han, X. (2015, April). Examining informal and formal support systems of novice teachers’ transitional first two years of experience. Presentation conducted at the Invisible College, Chicago, IL. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Thomas, D., & Divoll, K. (2013, April). Utilizing “super hero” skills to ensure academic program quality. Session presented at the Invisible College, San Francisco, CA. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Kahn, M., Markello, C., Garcia, M., Smith, D., & Kiekel, J. (2012, April). Exploring scholarly identity development in our academic sandbox: Building castles and rebuffing backyard bullies. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Kahn, M., McEnery, L., Divoll, K., Smith, D., & Shulsky, D. (2012, February). Establishing scholarly identity in our academic sandbox: Drawing lines in the sand. Presentation at the Association of Teacher Educators, San Antonio, TX. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Smith, D., Garcia, M., Shulsky, D., BenaventeMcEnery, L., & Divoll, K. (2011, October). Exploring our academic sandbox: Scholarly identities developed through play, tantrums, building castles, and rebuffing backyard bullies. Presentation at the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum, Denver, CO. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Kahn, M., & Markello, C. (2011, April). Academic sandbox: Growing into our scholarly identities through play, tantrums, building castles, and rebuffing backyard bullies. Presentation at the Invisible College, New Orleans, LA. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Browning, S., Divoll, K., Kahn, M., Kirk, E., McCormack, S., McEnery, L., Ortloff, D., & Smith, D. (2010, May). Travelling journals as collaborative sharing to support introspection, retrospection, perception, observation, relationships, and direction of academic journeys. Presentation at the Invisible College, Denver, CO. McCormack, S., McDonald, D. M., Browning, S., Shulsky, D., & Thomas, D. (2009, April). Supporting teacher scholarship through professional learning community. Presentation at the Invisible College, San Diego, CA. Craig, C., McDonald, D. M., & Browning, S. (2009, April). Gender in the academy. Presentation at the Invisible College, San Diego, CA.

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Craig, C., McDonald, D. M., & Foster, A. (2009, February). Faculty Academy: A place for grounding and growth. Invited Symposium presentation of the Association of Teacher Educators Yearbook Book Chapter, conducted at the Association of Teacher Educators conference, Dallas, TX. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Foster, A., Markello, C., McCormack, S., Mullins, H., Divoll, K., Bickham, B., & Witschonke, C. (2008, October). The euphony and cacophony of community: Varied voices, shared songs, composing collegiality through discourse. Symposium presentation at the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum, Austin, TX. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., McCormack, S., & Markello, C. (2008, March). Getting rooted in academia and blossoming as scholars. Presentation conducted at the Invisible College, New York, NY. Craig, C., & McDonald, D. M. (2007, April). Renaissance in teacher education. Presentation conducted at the Invisible College, Chicago, IL. Craig, C., McDonald, D. M., & Ganesh, T. (2006, April). Epistemology and collaborative inquiry: Defensible decisions? warrantable conclusions? Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA. Craig, C., McDonald, D. M., Foster, A., Ganesh, A., Ganesh, T., Kahn, M., Markello, C., McCormack, S., Mullins, H., Phillips, J., & Williams-Smith, D. (2006, April). When public good and organizational imperatives meet: Faculty academy members’ reflections of struggle and growth. Research Symposium conducted at the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA. Craig, C., McDonald, D. M., Foster, A., Markello, C., McCormack, S., & Mullins, H. (2005, October). The faculty academy: Enhancing scholarship, developing community. Paper presented at the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum Conference, Austin, TX. Craig, C., McDonald, D. M., Decman, J., Foster, A., Schorzman, E., Phillips, J., Rubin, L., Williams-Smith, D., McKay, S., Pierson, M., Clandinin, J., Murphy, M., Pearce, M., Steeves, P., Desrochers, C., Caine, V., Burchell, H., & Dyson, J. (2004, April). Reflective spaces: Creating opportunity for professional growth through individual and collective inquiry (University of Houston System group paper—Table searching: A place of anticipation and hope). International Symposium presentation at the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA. Craig, C., Burchell, H., Dyson, J., McDonald, D. M., Decman, J. M., & Schorzman, E. (2003, October). Creating reflective spaces: Narrative accounts of professional learning in higher education. Paper presented at the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum Conference, Baltimore, MD.

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McDonald, D. M., Decman, J. M., & Montgomery, J. (2003, April). Developing graduate inquiry: Supporting metamorphosis of professional identity. Presentation conducted at the Invisible College, Chicago, IL. Craig, C., Burchell, H., Dyson, J., Clandinin, J., McDonald, D. M., Decman, J., Foster, A., Diamond, J., & Schorzman, E. (2003, April). Creating reflective spaces: Professional learning in higher education. Research Symposium conducted at the Invisible College, Chicago, IL.

Appendix B: Collaborative Publications (2007–2020) Books Craig, C. J., Turchi, L., & McDonald, D. M. (Eds.) (2020). Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan (This book). McDonald, D. M. (Ed.). (2018). Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

Refereed Book Chapters Auzenne-Curl, C. (2020). Fear, fellowship and finding a voice: An autobiographical narrative of being and becoming in an established research community. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, crossinstitutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Cooper, J. M., Gauna, L. M., Beaudry, C. E., & Curtis, G. A. (2020). Sustaining critical practices in contested spaces: Teacher educators resist narrowing definitions of curriculum. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Cooper, J. M., Turchi, L., & Kucznski, M. T. (2020). Discovering stories data might be telling: Collaborative research as leadership, and lessons learned in promoting a culture of evidence. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Craig, C. J. (2020). Generous scholarship: A counternarrative for the region and the academy. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Crossdisciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Curtis, G. A., & Craig, C. J. (2020). Faculty Academy: A new version of an established concept of collaboration. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald

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(Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Han, X. (2020). Bridging the East and the West: Reflections on learning, leading, and life. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Kiekel, J. (accepted). Introverts as leaders: How involvement in a professional learning community can facilitate development of skills. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Manuel, M., Evans, P., & McAlister-Shields, L. (2020). teachHOUSTON alumni: Agents of change in secondary STEM education. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Markello, C. (2020). Reflecting on growth and change: The persistence of the Faculty Academy over the years (2002–2020). In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. McDonald, D. M. (2020). Longstanding lessons of propriety as a leader. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. McDonald, D. M., Divoll, K., Newsum, J., Williams-Duncan, O., Auzenne-Curl, C., & Kiekel, J. (2020). Involvement in a professional community yields unexpected skills: Faculty academy members’ stories of leadership and learning. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, crossinstitutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Newsum, J. (2020). Leading from the shadows: School librarian leadership. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Pohl, B. E. (2020). Musings on the sidelines: Leadership and learning during the tenure-track experience. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Quander, J., Sack, J., & Redl, T. (2020). Learning through co-teaching as critical friends. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary,

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cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Raven, S., Davis, T., & Craig, C. J. (2020). The mentor-mentee faculty relationship: Cases of reciprocal learning and leading. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Sack, J., & Vasquez, I. (2020). Learning and leading as teacher researchers. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Stokes, D., & Evans, P. (2020). Learning and leading as collaborative physics education/physics partners: Building a physics teacher education program. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, crossinstitutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Watson, S. (2020). Resiliency and women: The journey to academic STEM leadership. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Beaudry, C., & Gauna, L. (2018). When qualifications are not enough: A Latina Spanish bilingual teacher’s decision to leave. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 257–278). Information Age Publishing. Craig, C. J., Evans, P., Li, J., & Stokes, D. (2018). The Gordian Knot of teacher induction: When context trumps teacher preparation and the desire to teach. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 185–204). Information Age Publishing. Divoll, K., Gauna, L., & Ribeiro, A. (2018). Career changers’ experiences as neophyte middle school ESL teachers. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 83–140). Information Age Publishing. Han, X. (2018). Integrating technology in the classroom: Is it happening? In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 237–256). Information Age Publishing. Kahn, M. (2018). Walking with fish, swimming with cats: Novice teachers and equity. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 3–22). Information Age Publishing. Kiekel, J. (2018). Jekyll and Hyde: One teacher-two schools. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 63–82). Information Age Publishing.

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Markello, C. (2018). Becoming an art teacher: Prismatic experiences of three beginning visual art teachers. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 157–184). Information Age Publishing. McDonald, D. M. (2018). “I feel like Edith Piaf:” A novice teacher’s expression of sorrow and hope. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 23–62). Information Age Publishing. Pohl, B. (2018). Experiences from the field: Voices of novice special education teachers during their induction years. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 223–236). Information Age Publishing. Sack, J., & Quander, J. (2018). Care as an approach for supporting induction years secondary mathematics teachers. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 23–62). Information Age Publishing. Turchi, L., & Nance, K. (2018). Supporting new English language arts teachers as nascent professionals: What enables and impedes their instructional designs and their intentions to help secondary students succeed with the curriculum and required assessments. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 205–222). Information Age Publishing. Benevente-McEnery, L., Bickham, B., Boske, C. A., Foster, A., Kahn, M., Markello, C., McCormack, S., McDonald, D. M., Mullins, H. C., Pedrana, A., Phillips, J. C., Poimbeauf, R., Witschonke, C., & Craig, C. (2008). The faculty academy: A place for grounding and growth. In L. Deretchin & C. Craig (Eds.), Teacher education yearbook XVII (pp. 343–366). Rowman & Littlefield Education.

Book Chapter Introductions/Summaries McDonald, D. M., Craig, C. J., & Turchi, L. (2020). The Faculty Academy in review: What, so what, now what? In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. Turchi, L., Craig, C. J., & McDonald, D. M. (2020). Overview. In C. Craig, L. Turchi, & D. McDonald (Eds.), Cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional collaboration in teacher education: Cases of learning and leading (pp. 1–8). Palgrave Macmillan. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., & Curtis, G. (2018). Situating teacher induction in the urban teaching context: A journey through new terrain as novice teachers share stories of finding their way. In D. M. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges

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and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 1–2). Information Age Publishing. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., & Curtis, G. (2018). A big picture view of teacher induction experiences across the disciplines: Helping policy makers see the forest through the trees. In D. M. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers (pp. 277–280). Information Age Publishing. McCormack, S., McDonald, D. M., Ganesh, T., & Foster, A. (2007). Impact and consequences of accountability systems: Overview and framework. In L. Deretchin & C. Craig (Eds.), International research on the impact of accountability systems: Teacher education yearbook XV (pp. 47–51). Rowman & Littlefield Education. McCormack, S., McDonald, D. M., Ganesh, T., & Foster, A. (2007). Impact and consequences of accountability systems: Summary and implications. In L. Deretchin & C. Craig (Eds.), International research on the impact of accountability systems: Teacher education yearbook XV (pp. 129–131). Rowman & Littlefield Education.

Journal Articles International/National McDonald, D. M., Carman, C., Crawford, C., & Craig, C. (accepted with revisions). Seeking liberty within an oppressive system through satire. Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Markello, C., & Kahn, M. (2016). Our academic sandbox: Scholarly identities shaped through play, tantrums, building castles, and rebuffing backyard bullies. The Qualitative Report, 21(7), 1145–1163. McDonald, D. M., & Kahn, M. (2014). “So, you think you can teach?”— Reflection processes that support novice teachers’ field experience readiness. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 18(2), 1–34.

Non-refereed Conference Repository International/National McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Kahn, M., Markello, C., Pohl, R., Han, X., Sack, J., Kiekel, J., Beaudry, C., Gauna, L., Divoll, K., Ribeiro, A., Turchi, L., Stapp, K., Quander, J., Evans, P., & Li, J. (2018). Challenges in effective mentoring and retention of novice teachers. American Educational Research Association Paper Repository.

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McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Carman, C., & Crawford, C. (2017). Seeking liberty within an oppressive system through satire. American Educational Research Association Paper Repository. McDonald, D. M., Craig, C., Kahn, M., Markello, C., Garcia, M., Smith, D., & Kiekel, J. (2012). Exploring scholarly identity development in our academic sandbox: Building castles and rebuffing backyard bullies. Am American Educational Research Association Paper Repository.

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CHAPTER 5

The Mentor–Mentee Faculty Relationship: Cases of Reciprocal Learning and Leading Sara Raven, Trina J. Davis, and Cheryl J. Craig

This chapter focuses on the mentor–mentee experience and how learning and leading on one university campus spilled over to the Faculty Academy where many new academic relationships were spawned, some proving to be productive in the first year of association. Sara Raven (Author 1), an assistant professor, was assigned Cheryl Craig (Author 3) as her mentor. Trina Davis (Author 2), an associate professor, chose Cheryl Craig (Author 3) to mentor her. These given and chosen mentoring arrangements were expected to unravel within the context of Texas A&M

S. Raven (B) · T. J. Davis · C. J. Craig Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. J. Davis e-mail: [email protected] C. J. Craig e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_5

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University. However, because Cheryl Craig had launched the Faculty Academy, a consortium of teacher education researchers from six regional universities in 2002 (University of Houston, University of Houston— Clear Lake, University of Houston Downtown, University of St. Thomas, Texas A&M University, and Sam Houston State University), she invited her mentees to join the regional faculty group alongside her in addition to mutually interacting in their shared university context. Craig also introduced the idea of reciprocal learning to the mix, which meant that she as a mentor and Sara and Trina individually as mentees would not only learn about each other and from each other, but also with each other (Zhu, 2018, italics in original). Before we introduce our paired “stories of experience” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990), we offer a short literature review that introduces our key concepts. From there, we present our coupled mentee–mentor stories followed by overarching themes that distinguish all four narratives. To end, we show how our burgeoning mentor interactions scaffolded other productive relationships within the Faculty Academy.

Literature Review Mentoring Mentoring is a ubiquitous phrase that plays a prominent role in nearly every educational paradigm. It is of particular importance to program implementation and is often erroneously thought to be synonymous with induction (Long et al., 2012). The word, mentor (advisor), first appeared in the The Odyssey. Traditionally, it has been associated with an older and presumably wiser colleague advising a younger peer or student about career development (Sorcinelli & Yun, 2007). However, this largely agreed upon definition has been disputed. Fifteen different definitions of mentorship entered education’s bloodstream by 1991. That number increased to over 50 definitions by 2007 (Crisp & Cruz, 2009). Needless to say, definitions concerning what mentoring means in 2020 have continued to expand. Two existing literature reviews were particularly helpful for this relational research project: one by Irby (2013), and the other by OrlandBarak (2014). Irby reviewed 500 articles on mentoring and extracted 34 pieces of scholarship relating to developmental relationships in mentoring.

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The idea of developmental relationships spoke to us because of our given and chosen mentor–mentee interactions. For Irby (2013), developmental relationships in mentoring [in] a mentor/mentee dyad (italics in original) is recognized as an evolutionary process via a recursive stream of progressive consciousness and action that builds support, trust, confidence, risk-taking, and visible positive transformation through dialog[ue] (includes negotiation, listening, reflecting, challenging, planning). (p. 333)

As introduced earlier, the second literature review that appealed to us is that of Orland-Barak (2014). Her review involved mentoring articles published in the Teaching and Teacher Education journal. The accumulated works led her to define mentoring as “the mediation of professional learning.” In Orland-Barak’s view, mediation occurs between “persons and content in value-laden contexts of practice,” which, in her view, is often “messy” (p. 180). Irby’s definition pays laser sharp attention to dyadic relationships, our original configuration before the Faculty Academy affiliation evolved. She spotlights strengths reinforced in unfolding interactions. Meanwhile, Orland-Barak’s definition places more empasis on the mentor more than the mentee. However, what grabbed our attention about her review was how she took the influence of educational milieus and their value-laden natures into account. We now segue to our discussion of reciprocity. Reciprocity Reciprocity scaffolds relationships between mentors and mentees. As Ursula LeGuin (2016) put it, “relationship among all things [are] complex and reciprocal — always at least two-way, back-andforth. It seems that nothing is single in this universe, and nothing goes one way” (https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/10/ursulak-le-guin-late-in-the-day-science-poetry/). Hence, human interactions are complex because exchanges happen between us and others and ourselves/others and the professional knowledge landscapes in which we live and work. What transpires is neither unidimensional nor is it devoid of subtleties and tensions (Berry, 2007). Reciprocity, despite appearing “deceptively simple,” is inordinately complicated (Connelly & Xu, 2019; Xu & Connelly, 2017). The seedbed for the very existence of humanity,

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wrote Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963) in his Letters from Birmingham Jail, relies on an “inescapable web of mutuality” (p. 87). When working optimally, “a mutuality [can be created] in which two [or more] people evoke the potentials in each other” (Palmer, 2018, p. 31) and “hear…one another into speech” (Nelly Morton cited in Palmer, 2018, p. 34).

Research Method The topic of mentoring lends itself to qualitative research methods. While we do not subscribe to the same qualitative research approach (Sara employs interdisciplinary qualitative inquiry, Trina employs qualitative inquiry and mixed-methods designs, Cheryl uses narrative inquiry), we do have one thing in common: joint appreciation for story and its ability to carry our messages through. Story is central to all research methods— even those of a quantitative nature. When reported, quantitative research studies, like qualitative research and mixed-methods research designs, also have plots; they additionally have beginnings, middles, and ends that fit the barebones definition of story. Because we as human beings are homo narrans (story-telling persons), we are able “to weave coherence, meaning and beauty in the spaces between [our]selves and the social world through story” (Penwarden, 2019, p. 249). Our stories work as “mirrors, mentors, guide dogs…They helped free [us] from hubris, and thus, tunnel vision…” (Lamott, 2018, p. 98). They are “like flashlights… [that] shine a light in one place—and then [we] describe it the best [we] can…” (Lamott, 2018, p. 95).

Paired Stories of Mentoring/Being Mentored Experiences We now spotlight two sets of paired stories of experience where Sara and Cheryl and Trina and Cheryl, respectively, share what each has learned with the other. These narratives were written independent of each other. Sara’s and Cheryl’s Mentee–Mentor Stories of Experience Sara (Mentee) As I walked into the new faculty orientation at Texas A&M University (TAMU), feeling overwhelmed and intimidated, I was excited to see one

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of only a few faces I could recognize: Cheryl Craig. A new professor at TAMU herself, Cheryl was the type of professor I wanted to be. She was productive (publishing numerous publications and submitting several grant applications every year), caring, and supportive, especially with graduate students and junior faculty members. While Cheryl was assigned rather than chosen to be my mentor, I felt fortunate to be paired with her. I had recently transitioned from a less research-intensive university and knew that the road to tenure would be arduous. Ultimately, in this process, academics are judged on their work and merits, but I struggled with self-confidence and knew that Cheryl’s guidance and support would be invaluable. Over the next year, Cheryl was instrumental in pushing my work forward. With her endorsement, I applied for two internal grants, both of which were awarded. This was my first time as Principal Investigator on a funded project and, over the course of the grants, I worked with over 150 pre-service elementary and middle school teachers, 30 undergraduate STEM majors, and at least 250 elementary-age children and their parents. A manuscript detailing the results of the CREST (Community Research and Engagement in STEM) project is currently being authored. In addition, Cheryl continued to involve me in external grant submissions and invited me to join the Faculty Academy, a group of academics working to support one another in ways that I had rarely witnessed. It was clear to me that those who had worked with Cheryl in the past had nothing but compliments and positive stories to tell. In being part of the Faculty Academy, and working alongside Cheryl, I have gained self-confidence, knowledge, and practice navigating the inner-workings of academia at a top-tier research institution, and professional connections and opportunities to collaborate that would have otherwise taken many years for me to develop on my own. Having Cheryl as my mentor has shown me that asking for help is not a weakness and that working collaboratively is a strength. Cheryl (Mentor) The first year I arrived at Texas A&M University was also Sara’s first year of employment. Our department chair, who was the faculty’s third new faculty member. assigned me as Sara’s mentor. Although I was a senior professor, an endowed chair, and one of less than a handful of female full professors in both my past and present institution, I did not have knowledge of my new department or college. Neither did Sara. Our offices were

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on the same floor, so we would frequently confer with one another about “things” we were learning in situ in our new higher education milieu. What I did know from experience was that Sara needed to show early progress because the tenure clock moves swiftly. Sara was aware of this as well. I encouraged her to complete any papers she had in progress. I also urged her to apply for the department’s and college’s grant programs. Both of her proposals were awarded. The initiative, which Sara called CREST, combined community engagement and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). I lent Sara my research assistants until she identified and prepared her own. The CREST project brought innovative science experiments to a needy rural school district. I still remember the first time I participated in CREST. Even the school district superintendent showed up to see the highly successful endeavor! What made the program such a hit was how Sara had readied her undergraduate students to conduct/manage the experiments, alongside the school children. The photos of what transpired still remain on my cell phone. While I include doctoral students in all of my field-based research studies, I had never imagined the role that undergraduate students could assume—and learn from—in a rural education context. Sara clearly modeled this for me. I began to see how my research with graduate students could walk hand in hand with her research with undergraduate students. Whenever the CREST project is discussed on campus, I always remember how my learning became instantiated and fortified through Sara’s preparation of the preservice teachers she taught, along with the experiments she chose, which deeply engaged and inspired the rural elementary school children, their parents, and teachers—and even the school district superintendent. Trina’s and Cheryl’s Mentee–Mentor Stories of Experiences Trina (Mentee) As I reflect on my mentoring experiences in the academy, I have made a few observations. There are some aspects of mentoring that perhaps can be taught, but I dare say some important traits are perhaps innate. My first observation is that mutual trust is something that developed early in Cheryl’s and my mentoring relationship. My second observation is that not everyone is well-suited to be a “natural” mentor, much like teaching comes to some of us more naturally. This is not to suggest that some individuals cannot grow into effective mentoring roles, but I do position that when mutual “trust” exists then both the mentee and mentor

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can experience more substantive engagement earlier in their interaction. This was the case with Cheryl and me. Cheryl’s generosity of time and support, and a certain simpatico that was experienced early in our engagement, provided the footing for a trusting mentor relationship. Cheryl also reached out to both Sara and me early on to see if we would like to join the Faculty Academy. An example of her generosity was her willingness to provide support whenever it was needed, often requiring late night call-backs. Supports ranged from writing a recommendation letter for an award or a support letter for my sabbatical to being available for just-in-time brainstorming and problem-solving. For example, I sought Cheryl out when I needed to think through complex issues, sometimes involving navigation and negotiation with colleagues or more challenging students. This kind of support could have only happened within a space of mutual trust, as some of the matters we discussed were sensitive. What I appreciated most about our discourse, was that we primarily focused on problem-solving and coming up with workable solutions, rather than simply focusing on difficult actors in the situations. These discussions provided a sounding board, but went beyond that—they were empowering, and they emphasized the value of our individual and collective agency. Other illustrative examples of our engagement were collaborations on grant projects. Cheryl had the unique ability to make everyone feel valued within collaborative contexts. For example, she would invite me and others to join her on interdisciplinary teams with the goal of developing funding proposals. I recall a successful school visit that we had to Wharton Academy, where we discussed an upcoming grant project. We met with a dynamic principal, Jennifer Day. Cheryl valued my expertise in educational technology, mathematics, and integrated STEAM learning, and invited me to join as a Co-Principal Investigator. It was an extremely productive meeting and helped to plant the seeds for future partnerships. Cheryl (Mentor) In my third year at Texas A&M University, a mentoring program was established in our department for mid-career scholars seeking promotion to full professor. I was honored to have Trina Davis (second author) choose me as her mentor. Trina and I—unlike Sara and I—are in the same program area. Like Sara, Trina already knew she needed to increase her publication record and her grants-making. Whenever possible, I included Trina on grant proposals as well as on other projects that

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could hold future possibilities for her such as the Faculty Academy. As a female in academia, I know—through deeply etched experience—about the gendered nature of the academy. However, my work as urban chair alongside Trina has awakened me to the added challenges that women of color face. Trina clearly recognizes that she needs “to hit the ball out of the ballpark” (her expression) where her promotion to full professor is concerned. She is convinced—and I am inclined to agree with her— that any middle-of-the-road votes could become negative ones. I say this because the teacher induction program I have led in a predominantly African-American community these past two years has had more detractors than any of my other projects. Hence, from mentoring Trina, I have learned to be more cautious and to not take things at face-value in my new milieu, because other agendas possibly can be lurking beneath the surface. Case in point was Trina’s recent reluctance to drive to a social event in a county where one of the most disturbing race-related incidents in the nation had happened. As a white woman, I did not share the same concern about my driving safety in that county. However, when four police cars swarmed around me in a distance of less than three miles (and I was only traveling 45 mph), my note to self was this: listen more to Trina—her cautions are not unfounded.

Overarching Themes Three themes bubbled to the surface in our exploration of mentoring within our home university setting that expanded to the Faculty Academy milieu. They are: (1) the influence of context, (2) the primacy of relationships, and (3) the varied content we came to know in our reciprocal mentor–mentee relationships. The Influence of Context In our mentor–mentee relationship, our shared employment at Texas A&M University formed the backdrop for our personal professional growth as well as a source from which some of our lived challenges stemmed. The pressure to produce research studies disseminated in the Scopus and Web of Science search engines is tangible and known well by all three of us. It is especially felt by beginning (Sara) and mid-level (Trina) scholars, but also is not foreign to full professors (Cheryl) because they, too, can be submitted to post-tenure reviews for lack of productivity.

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Hence, our positions at an institution that is the top 10 for receiving National Science Foundation grants (Sara-science, Trina-technology) and in about the top 20 where teacher education nationally is concerned (Sara, Trina, Cheryl), weighs heavily on us in often unspoken ways. Our mutual relationships on our home campus, together with our Faculty Academy participation, allows us to discuss our “secret stories” (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995) publicly. Instead of pouring all of our efforts into our grants and publications (outside of our assigned teaching and service) and isolating ourselves in our professional settings, we have used our contextualized mentor–mentee interactions, along with our Faculty Academy associations, to cultivate deeper affiliations and partnerships with each other. We concurrently have used those associations to spread our reach beyond TAMU and the Faculty Academy (i.e., Wharton Academy, as Trina pointed out) and more richly fulfilled our university’s research, teaching, and service missions. This is especially important for our institution because it is a land-grant university with the explicit purpose to advance the education of youth all over Texas—not just in our local community. The Primacy of Relationships The three of us could not mentor or be mentored without cultivating trusting relationships where what is shared is understood from the other person’s perspective. This is strikingly evident in all of our narratives. Trina reflected a great deal on the essentiality of mutual trust in mentoring relationships (Irby, 2013). Sara spoke of coming from a less research-intensive setting, revealing her added vulnerability as a beginning professor. Cheryl immediately nudged her into applying for department and college grants, giving her two back-to-back experiences of being a Principal Investigator. Trina shared her reservations about attending a social event due to her having to drive through a county with a contested reputation where race relations are concerned. Cheryl immediately laid her recent experience as a white woman leading a project in a primarily African-American school and the challenges she faced alongside Trina’s narrative. Neither individual has shared her concerns with others in their workplace to date. However, each knew that the other understood her point of view and could be trusted not to divulge these secret stories in public settings. Each allowed the other to live counter stories to the ones given them by the academy.

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What is most striking about our experiences of our mentor–mentee relationships is that many of our interactions—if not, all of them— unavoidably involved emotions. This is not out-of-the-ordinary, given teaching and learning are personal and emotional as well as cognitive and rational (Hollingsworth, Dybdayl, & Minarik, 1993). What is interesting is that institutions seek to advance faculty member’s cognitive and rational capacities, but sometimes negate the fundamental importance of the personal and emotional in scaffolding the cognitive and the rational. Sara, for example, acknowledged both her need to develop confidence as well as the added confidence she gained through relationship and participation. Trina similarly named her experiences as a black woman and how she must over-perform to merely be accepted in the academy. Cheryl likewise admitted that a recent project has caused her more consternation than all her other research and practical endeavors to date. The Variety of Content Learned Sara wanted to learn how to acquire and manage a grant and to publish its findings. This was entirely different from Trina who was further along in her career and had already been a Co-Principal Investigator and then Managing Investigator of a nearly $3 million NSF grant after the Principal Investigator moved elsewhere. While Sara’s needs appeared to be more rational and cognitive, her underlying concern was lack of confidence and feelings of vulnerability. As for Trina, she was pouring her efforts into snagging another major award, which was affecting her readiness for advancement in the promotion and tenure process. However, underneath it all, Trina was a woman in the academy, like Sara and Cheryl, which put all of them at a disadvantage from the get-go. However, Trina had an added vulnerability: She was a woman of color in the mid-southern United States where the history of race relations has left a deep imprint that is unavoidably playing out generations later. As for Cheryl, she was born and raised in Canada, which made her an outsider despite her dual citizenship. While she exhibits all the markings of a successful scholar, her academic upbringing undeniably makes her “different.” For all of us, we learned codified knowledge in our interactions both at our home campus and in the Faculty Academy. By this, we mean abstract knowledge disembodied from persons. However, more important, we would venture to say, were the “ephemeral, passionate, shadowy and significant” matters (Connelly & Clandinin, 2004, p. 42) we attended to in the mentoring

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context that qualitatively affected our professional and personal lives. These matters, however, were never the same within or across ourselves as human beings. This leads us to assert that there can never be a stable mentoring “curriculum” because of shifting personal, professional, and contextual circumstances.

Parting Words To end this chapter, we would like to focus our attention more fully on the Faculty Academy and what has transpired for each of us in that interinstitutional context. Through the Faculty Academy, Sara has connected with an assistant STEM professor (Omah Williams-Duncan) from another regional university (University of Houston-Clear Lake) with whom she has coauthored and co-presented. The successes of this peer association are adding to Sara’s productivity and building her confidence as well. Through the Faculty Academy and a recently submitted NSF grant proposal (Craig, PI), Trina has found new partners and a research site that will support her proposal to take a sabbatical leave before submitting her application for promotion to full professor. A member of the Faculty Academy, in addition to Cheryl, wrote letters recommending Trina’s wise plan. As for Cheryl, she, along with editor-in-chief Denise McDonald, shepherded the Faculty Academy through publishing a book on urban teacher attrition (McDonald, 2018) and is now, with Laura Turchi and Denise McDonald, completing this book project on teacher learning and leadership. She is also encouraging members to disseminate their shared knowledge at an international conference in Italy. Cheryl is furthermore in search of new projects that will grow the Faculty Academy and strengthen the relationships and scholarship of Sara, Trina, and herself in addition to other Faculty Academy members from other participating universities. In this way, embedded, reciprocal mentorship unfolds, affecting more professors, teachers, and students and cultivating new knowledge communities (Craig, 2007; Curtis, Reid, Kelley, Martindell, & Craig, 2013) in the academy and within the context of our personal lives.

References Berry, A. (2007). Tensions in teaching about teaching: Understanding practice as a teacher educator. Springer.

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Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1995). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. Teachers College Press. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2004). Canadian teacher education in transition. In Y. C. Cheng, K. W. Chow & M. C. Magdalena Mok (Eds.), Reform of teacher education in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium: Trends and challenges (pp. 35–43). Kluwer Academic Publisher. Connelly, F. M., & Xu, S. (2019). Reciprocal learning in the partnership project: From knowing to doing in comparative research models. Teachers and Teaching, 25(6), 627–646. Craig, C. (2007). Illuminating qualities of knowledge communities in a portfoliomaking context. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 13(6), 617–636. Crisp, G., & Cruz, I. (2009). Mentoring college students: A critical review of the literature between 1990 and 2007. Research in Higher Education, 50(6), 525–545. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29782942. Curtis, G., Reid, D., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. T., & Craig, C. J. (2013). Braided lives: Multiple ways of knowing, flowing in and out of knowledge communities. Studying Teacher Education, 9(2), 175–186. Hollingsworth, S., Dybdayl, M., & Minarik, L. T. (1993). “By chart and chance and passion”: The importance of relational knowing in learning to teach. Curriculum Theory, 2(1), 5–35. Irby, B. (2013). Editor’s overview: Defining developmental relationships in mentoring for mentor/mentee dyads, for mentors, and for mentoring programs. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 21(4), 333–337. King, Jr., M. L. (1963). Why we can’t wait. Letter from Birmingham Jail. https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf. Lamott, A. (2018). Almost everything: Notes on hope. Riverhead Books. LeGuin, U. (2016). Deep in admiration. In Late in the afternoon: Poems 2010– 2014. PM Press. https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/10/ursula-k-leguin-late-in-the-day-science-poetry/. Long, J. S., McKenzie-Robblee, S., Schaefer, L., Steeves, P., Wnuk, S., Pinnegar, E., et al. (2012). Literature review on induction and mentoring related to early career teacher attrition and retention. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 20(1), 17–26. McDonald, D. M. (Ed.). (2018). Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers. Information Age Publishing. Orland-Barak, L. (2014). Mediation in mentoring: A synthesis of studies. Teaching and Teacher Education, 44, 180–188. Palmer, P. (2018). On the brink of everything: Grace, gravity and getting old. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

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Penwarden, S. (2019). Weaving threads into a basket: Facilitating counsellor identity creation through metaphor and narrative. In M. Hann & A. Kaal (Eds.), Narrative and metaphor in education: Look both ways (pp. 249–262). Routledge. Sorcinelli, M. D. & Yun, J. (2007, November/December). From mentor to mentoring networks: Mentoring in the new academy. Change, 58–61. Xu, S., & Connelly, F. M. (2017). Reciprocal learning between Canada and China in teacher education and school education: Partnership studies of practice in cultural context. Frontiers of Education in China, 12(2), 135–150. Zhu, S. (2018). Reciprocal learning partnerships between elementary mathematics teachers: A partnership between Canada and China (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Toronto.

CHAPTER 6

Fear, Fellowship, and Finding a Voice: An Autobiographical Narrative of Being and Becoming in an Established Research Community Chestin Auzenne-Curl

Cinder and Ash: An Allegorical Recompense As the mother of two young daughters, I think often of fairy tales. I could liken the overall emergence of being and becoming as a researcher to the story arc of the classic fairy tale Cinderella: Alone in fear, embraced in fellowship with resourced friends, she was freed to express a voice— though cloaked in armor not her own. It is a pattern for me, too. Every entrance to every role I play has found me first in seclusion, slowly affording the community insight, and finally freed to be and share myself. In most versions of her story, we find that our isolated Cinderella was once loved and greatly appreciated until tragedy struck. It is a Self referenced, but unseen by the reader. She loses her loving mother, then her

C. Auzenne-Curl (B) Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_6

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doting father. Existing as charge of a stepmother who, en trope, plays a key part in the deconstruction of one image of an enchanted Ella, and the development of broken “cinder-covered” Ella, she is full of doubt where there was once confidence and full of wondering where there was once wonder. My interpretation of lived Impostor Syndrome finds the secret Self in liminality as the mind, in dangerously split off narration, and plays the role of lost parents and stepmother, polyphonic and dissonant. After having graduated with my Ph.D., I felt that my lack of “true research” experience covered me in cinder; lack of language covered me in ash, and the logical determinant of my inadequacy was there. Let it be noted that no one but me had accused me of lacking in capacity. If I could not, after having earned the terminal degree, fluently understand the depth of conversation in my colleague’s presentations, I must have slipped by in error. Some of the other baby docs that I encountered seemed to have published quite a bit more than I had. Did this mean that they were more capable than I was? The stepmother voice said yes. The stepmother voice spoke loudly and often. The parents’ voice only whispered: You are good enough. You are in the midst of your experiential path. You can publish more when you allow yourself the freedom to write more. You are your only limitation. For the individual whose intellect is split off from the self as a whole, it is the case that the world cannot be trusted, perhaps the body, as the source of dangerous feeling, cannot be trusted either. After all, the body in such a scenario is, in effect, part of the world that includes everything other than the intellect. And speaking involves both mind and body. (Granger, 2004, p. 84)

I began to story my secret Self in cinder and ash. The secret? In this case, the high propensity for success. None of the accolades that I had earned mattered in my construction of postdoctoral scholar. I had released the concept of my earning the degree and the associated recognitions. I questioned how much had been given to me. Was I leaning on my mentors too much for support? Were my ideas innovative or out of context? Did I get the award for potential or propensity? Existing in this space was much more a function of the thought to survive rather than thrive, and it is common in documentation regarding the Impostor phenomenon among new members of high achieving cultures and what Slank (2019) referred to as “cultures of genius.”

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As a Cinderella scholar, I felt in the midst of strong peers, yet apart from them and apart from my Self. In detailing journal excerpts “A Seat at the Table,” “Checking the Mail,” and “First Author” below, I find myself confronted with a specific fear, peer(s) who intervene with fairy godmother-like gifts, and a forged pathway to actualizing the importance of my voice in contributing to shifting the balance and accessibility of space in the academy. It is not over. Even here I wonder how much vulnerability to share. The shoe drops. At what point does the sharing of a story of doubt negate the perception of others to see one as a viable peer? The difference is, in struggling to complete the chapter, my hope grew in the ability to reach others who need to read it and endure. If any who is considering leaving the field due to the self-harm of doubts can sustain by finding some common thread of my narrative, and align their feelings and experiences with the broader community, then perhaps they will move closer to embracing their inherent belonging. I have no fear in sharing these reflections of my truth. The purpose is not theoretical acceptance, but practical authenticity. May it be a precursor to performance that aids the persistent whisper in silencing the intermittent shout when the shoe fits.

Narrative 1: A Seat at the Table …I loved the restaurant. I had been there many times before with my family, but today felt different. I was there for a meeting with “peers” and I was hyper-aware of every step, every piece of décor, and everything was richer. It was because the experience I anticipated was going to be richer. I wasn’t there for a literal meal this time; I was there for a spiritual one. It was my first time there as a “baby doc” and I am still in the crosshairs of where I’ll go and what I’ll do. Instead of finding the room, I just decided to send a text to my former adviser, one I hope to soon call my supervisor. I didn’t want anyone to ask me questions about who I am and what I will do with my career next. I didn’t want anyone to ask me anything at all, actually. I just wasn’t ready to enter alone. (From Journals, Spring 2017)

This excerpt above, taken from my research journal, is a fine-grained snapshot of the insecurity that I faced as an early career researcher. All things and all places that were once familiar to me became foreign in the painted lens of my degree. It has not been an easy transition for me because of me. I painted the lens of expectation with self-doubt, and fear

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of failure. I painted my peers with quotation marks because I viewed them as more worthy of the title “Academic” than was I. I anticipated my experiences at the literal and metaphorical table to be richer because I felt that, in the wake of my new position, I would hear and see things that were previously withheld from me as a doctoral student. I would be privy to a dispensary of academic magic and some secret tricks of the trade. Because of this, I feared that I would say or ask something that would reveal my inadequacy. I just was not ready to enter alone. That may be the core of my journey. What I would find, however, among the very group that I joined on that spring afternoon, is that “alone” would have to be my choice. I found an air of open and translucent vulnerability there. The established members saw me as I could not yet see myself. That was often the only magic needed.

Impostor Syndrome I have found that fellowship best tempers the feelings of inadequacy that are amplified in the self-isolating actions of Cinderella doc. As I moved backward from the group, I lacked a community to critique or affirm my professional performance or socioemotional arc. In this isolation, shouts of the stepmother voice are amplified. In 1978, Clance and Imes introduced the concept of Impostor Syndrome to light and since then the phenomena has been broadly studied across groups in frameworks that include correlational outcomes and critical deconstruction. Characterized by self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy, Impostor Syndrome can be an eater of dreams and lead to a professional implosion if not addressed. Here within, it is reflected upon as a factor which prevented acting in an image of Best Loved Self by creating a path for me to story myself into identities of Selves which were alternatively unwelcomed representations of who I hoped to be. Each influenced by socially interactive tensions of expectations offered from or encountered in the field.

Philosophical Underpinnings and Methodology It is this actualization of a multiplicity of “Selves” that brought me here in a space of ponderance with a desire to reflect upon the continuity of identity shaping. Dewey’s (1938) philosophical approach to viewing experience and meaning-making brought me to Faculty Academy as a

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landscape on which to explore the temporal, situational, and interactive implications of Impostor Syndrome on my consciousness. Dewey believed social consciousness to be a process “continually shaping the individual’s powers, saturating his consciousness and forming his habits” (1938). The habits I formed early were not typical for me. They were habits of doubt and uncertainty, and the views and expectations that I held in my own intellectual setting (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) conflicted with what others seemed to praise or request of me. Narrative Inquiry The call for contributions to this volume prompted me to think narratively upon the encapsulated period of my postdoc and to consider the implications of my involvement here along plotlines of fear, fellowship, and finding a voice. Connelly and Clandinin (1990), Clandinin and Connelly (2000), and Clandinin (2013) recognized narrative as both methodology and phenomenon to be studied in a three-dimensional space of inquiry inspired by Dewey’s foundation. Through considerations of time, place, and interaction upon the researcher’s encountering story in study and development of storied experiences, narrative is both grounds for study and a method of communication for study. Along with Dewey’s work, Schön’s (1983) influence on the field of inquiry, especially where knowing and reflecting in practice are concerned, contributes to the nature of this chapter as a reflection on identity in action. I wrote previously on the cycle of being and becoming as a beginning teacher (Auzenne-Curl, 2017) and reflected upon the “undercurrent” that carries us toward a concept of Best Loved Self (Craig 2013, 2017; Schwab, 1954/1978). In that work, I used this cycle to ponder my journey of sustaining as a Beginning Teacher. I am an early career researcher now and for the first time, I confronted a distorted image of a Best Loved Self. The undercurrent was, and still is, made more tumultuous by the loud and clear voice that begs focus on surviving over thriving. Thriving I was used to, and as I came to the realization that exiting the doctoral program was much more disruptive to my evolving image of Self than was entering the field as a beginning teacher, I wanted to go back in time and figure out how to drive my narrative back to a place of thriving.

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Storying and Re-Storying as a Process I revisited my journals in hope of regaining the image of Self I once held. I hoped to cultivate it once more. I read and re-read them. I first reflected upon the cynicism or optimism present in tone, and next regarding the professional interactions and spaces that were present when my ability to thrive seemed strongest. These questions and reflections became driving factors in accessing my fading former Self (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Xu & Connelly, 2010). Serial interpretation (Schwab, 1954/1978) of these commonplaces affirmed for me that Faculty Academy was the prime landscape for study here. As a collective of individual academicians, it was a found knowledge community for me, and therefore a factor in sustaining in the field as well as recapturing the fading identity. Knowledge Community As a postdoctoral research associate, I had a built-in community of practice in my institution. However, my ability to collaborate with the individuals there was limited. I had a difficult time finding a way to integrate: I think that part of the difficulty here is that I am a virtual correspondent. It is such a privilege and peril, though. I am not a student anymore and I live 2 hours away. I still feel a little out of sorts in the meetings with the research team. Everyone is nice. I just don’t understand exactly how I fit in. My project is different, it’s near me and none of them are. I just kind of drop in. I’m not a part of their cohort, but I am a part of their team. (Journals, Fall 2017)

I would drive in for two and a half hours to attend meetings, or I would video call in, but the cohort of doctoral and master’s students was so close, relationally, that I would shut down and think on my own experience as a member of a doctoral cohort. I felt alone in the midst of them. It was even difficult to engage others in the project on which I served as lead because of the distance from the university to the project base. I would drive out in two and a half hours of ponderance. Was I to be a leader in the community due to my position of postdoc? If so, the charge was one of grand calling. While I found myself wandering in and out of feelings of belonging in the research cohort, I found Faculty Academy equal parts inspiration and anxiety.

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Today I couldn’t help but feel relieved to hear a member say that she was ‘not one of the many who had their writing ready for the meeting.’ Not just because I am also not ready, but because it means people don’t have it all together all the time. I already know this but it helps when someone else reminds me. I wanted to yell ‘Thank heavens it isn’t just me struggling.’ Instead I just turned my attention to (My mentor) when she told me about how she prioritizes time for writing every day, I felt inspired, but still a little overwhelmed because my personal life isn’t really there yet. I try, but my first priority is my kids. The middle ground here? It works for her in the morning. It works for me at about 2:30 am. So the idea of chunking time is good, though my current chunk of time isn’t ideal. (Journals, Fall 2017)

I was anxious to share, but very receptive while in Faculty Academy and it was, to me, grounds for continued learning. Craig’s (1995a) study of knowledge communities as communities of professional practice illuminated the Faculty Academy’s established membership as key factors in my learning about the scholarship of teaching. They engaged me in the formal process of writing for publication and prompted my interest in coauthoring by being transparent with their own personal and professional struggles. It has definitely accomplished the criteria of being a group with a shared passion who are open and active in pursuit of learning and interacting for a deeper level of scholarly productivity (Cox, 2013; Craig & Huber, 2007). I always viewed their shared stories as texts from which to learn or shape my work. Shifting Identity Even within a knowledge community of acceptance, the stories that we share are selective. The tensions of a social landscape that is shifting shapes not only the stories that we choose to share (Clandinin, Downey, & Huber, 2009) but the stories that shape our Selves. As I moved from student of Dr. So-and-so who scored rated my research under a title that I did not have, to a peer who was asked to do the same for Dr. So-and-so, I had to honor the past power of the title but move forward and identify myself as a worthy and equally qualified source of feedback. This was made difficult under the social construct of a higher education hierarchy of worth by title and tenure. This was a new and tension filled plotline for me.

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That which we choose to story, we share as part of our identity. It seems a natural emergence from Donald Winnicott’s (1971) work in describing the secret self and the nature of relational identity construction. The selectivity of the narratives that we choose to share in passing is relative to our comfort in context. We are both true self and false self in layers (Granger, 2004; Hauptmann, 2019). While inquirers (Clandinin, 2013; Craig, 1995b) explore this multiplicity in category of the narrative shared, Winnicott delved deeper into studying the reason for the selective shared in a psychoanalytic frame. Collette Granger (2004) recounts this in a study of identity construction in an object relations theoretical frame, “which privileges relationships between the self and others …in the creation and ongoing recreation of personal identity” (p. 79). For me, this idea of telling stories in a two-fold purpose was a striking semblance of Impostor Syndrome. Some stories we share to allow others in, some stories we share, or withhold, to keep people out. When one questions the nature of the Self that is being protected, the singular notion of a secret self becomes disruptive in the pursuit of functioning as Best Love Self (Craig, 1995b). This was Impostor Syndrome’s greatest victory over me. Who was the Self that I was protecting? In certain spaces, I was strong and a facilitator of active discourse. I was a consultant in the world of the practical. I worked hands- and minds- on to guide the work. In other spaces, I was insecure and lacked the language of theoretical discourse. I was often the only person who looked like me in the room. The microaggressions present a significant challenge in finding a voice that is representative of the culture, and simultaneously avoids the exclusion pending the offender’s confirmation of stereotypical behavior. Not to appease the offender, but to protect the seat at the table where changes are born. The balancing of those selves is a consistent process that I had deemed necessary to promote educative experiences for those who were ignorant of their offenses. Existing in spaces where you are both teacher and learner is exhausting.

Narrative 2: Checking the Mail Today was a good day. I sat in on my first defense as a doc, and it was the defense of my sister-friend. I’m glad that I got to share that with her and her family. That was her moment. It’s funny because she is always the one who has been more concerned with the perception of self as scholar

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in the past. She has encounters with professors and non-black students that leave her feeling that her blackness is not only on display, but that the underlying frame for the conversations are that it is her blackness that has been graciously accepted in an area where it should not be. We talk about this a lot. She has called my blackness exceptional. My blackness is the palatable kind. My posture, my articulation and my carriage. The elements of otherness threaded by my Latinx, Indigenous, and Mulatto tree branches. To her, I was acceptable because I was exceptional. But today was different. On her day, that assertion was made null as I walked in the mailroom to check for my teaching assignment and to check the mail. I don’t think I will forget it soon, but I’ll recount the basics here. There was an older white man in the mailroom who, without solicitation, offered to help me – letting me know where I had found myself. I graciously thanked him and let him know what I was seeking. He corrected me. First assuming I was a TA, next telling me that I would need to speak to someone about the undergraduate course schedule because ‘You have to have a doctorate to teach graduate courses here.’ I had already told him that I was a post-doc research fellow and that I would be teaching a graduate course. But he had reached cognitive dissonance. Perhaps he thought I was an anti-normative member of ‘his’ academy. He assumed that I must have been confused. I mean, that’s what POST doc means, right? Did he think I did not know what my degree was? After I said PhD, he restated EdD… I told him that I didn’t need his help but appreciated his attempt. Mostly, I was glad that my sister-friend was gone, because she didn’t need to see that on her day. I was in many ways her “respectability” hope. But this personified good ole boy in action had reinforced what I always knew and countered her argument with. There is one black. For some people it cloaks my everything else – from pedigree to degree. We are both there and there is no escaping the micro-aggressive ignorance that permeates the Ivory Tower of higher ed. There are layers of exclusion and only weep holes of inclusion. (Journals, Fall 2019)

Shifting Identity I walked in the mailroom without restriction. I was proud of myself and proud of my friend. She said that I had inspired her to pursue and complete the degree. Her mother thanked me for encouraging the journey. I walked in that mailroom ready to inspire someone else. I left the same way. Identity formation, as previously concluded in the work of Winnicott is ongoing and relational, and while I understand

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that this may appear to be a discrepant event in recounting a disappointing experience with a colleague, it only reiterated the importance of my presence and voice. Not for him, but for me this time. It did not leave me with the impression that I was responsible for providing him with a new schema for Female PhDs of Color. In fact, I could not fathom that he was open enough to accept that concept. From the tone and nature of his doubt in my capability to ascertain my own credentials and place in context, and my dismissal of him as helpful to assisting me, he was ill-prepared to accept the truth before him. But my presence was disruptive to what I perceived as his norm. The norm was a deficiency of women of color in my age group who had earned PhDs. As Motha and Vargas explain (2018), while there are indisputable statistics on women of color attaining high numbers of terminal degrees, entry into the world of higher education remains disproportionate, and as the rankings increase the disproportionality becomes even more apparent. There are fewer women of color holding high ranking positions of tenure and in light of this, publishing becomes a primary focus, often at the expense of connecting with colleagues. “Our stories do not map onto the central narratives of the academy, and … our first instinct is to keep our stories to ourselves, following the rules and making no waves” (Motha & Vargas, 2018, p. 504). A wave, though, was important to me and I countered the instinct to hold the moment close by sharing a bit of the story on social media. My fellow Faculty Academy members read it there and there was a light ripple of response. None posted under the story online, rather, they sent commentary directly to me and this was important. It was empowering to me to be seen. I was seen by people I had convinced myself could not see certain parts of me. It was the second affirmation of the day that whispered to me that I was on the right track, and had a network of— could I yet call them peers?—who understood the microaggressions and the impact that it could have held on my work. Negotiations of Space The storied identity seems to travel by osmosis this way in liminal spaces. The concentration of who we are floats about to provide atmospheric balance by a splitting-off of intellect through which we find ourselves in “the continuous process of negotiating and renegotiating identities” (Huber, Murphy, Nelson, & Young, 2014). Our feelings of doubt and exhaustion are relieved by the enactment of a more mechanical and logical

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assessment of place. The assessment made tells us which stories are safe to tell. We ask ourselves questions such as: Are there people with whom I might share my stories of triumph? Of vulnerability? What is the balance of power and experience in the room? Our answers to these questions affect the construction of cultural plotlines (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), which guide our sharing of storied identity (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Jawitz, 2007, 2009). My blackness, my presence as a millennial, my cultural otherness, my experiential and personal practical knowledge from recent work in the field, were recurrent points of reflection for me in this small group. I knew what the man in the mailroom knew. I was a compilation of unfamiliar essence to the old culture of academia. Therefore, the stories that I allowed into protect that Self were often filtered to allow the parts that most easily assimilated into accessibility or mobility. I was looking for ways that my work fit in, but because my work is me, and because I was the Self I was protecting, assimilation was impossible and not at all desired. It is likely why I shared that story on social media first. I would not have shared it first encircle with any audience comprised of a majority of members of the academy who were older and whiter than I. I would be risking exclusion. The restriction that I placed on myself is an indicator of a defense barrier. I have had several white advocates in my lifetime. However, in a few instances, when race became an issue for me, or for other people of color, I heard some of the same white advocates say “it’s not about race” or that the person who felt targeted or attacked was “acting like a victim” or making everything about race and “excluding themselves” from the group. The most damaging response was “I don’t see color.” The voices echo for me during times when I face a barrier according to race. They carry some degree of experiential and spiritual weight. How can someone advocate for me if they do not fully see me? How can they not trust my experience? Since I do respect their points of view, I begin to question myself. So it was a protective measure to not initially share, in a group that I had just joined. In sharing first on social media, the responses from fellow academicians of color was direct and immediate. They posted under the story for all to see. I did not judge my white colleagues for responding one-on-one. I noted the responses; however, delivered as a slow construction of an acculturated countenance that could eventually trickle into socio-transformative academy resistance to this behavior. All things in time. I do see that I have an impact on the flow. If a post could spark a trickle, then I had to share more and more often. I had to share

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with the members of the Faculty Academy, too. Conversations about race do not get easier, but the topic still needs to be normalized. That cannot happen if experiences remain protected in isolation. I wondered if these white colleagues felt like Impostors, too. As residents of the Ivory Tower that so frequently called for equity in practice, what was it like to hear of destruction of that premise from within, by “your own?”

Narrative 3: First Author Today was one of the days you sweat through. I completed the proposal. As usual I have no clue whether or not the reviewers will accept it. I have chosen a field and am predisposed to a methodology where the standard is creativity. That is always great until the creativity becomes who you are and thus the critiques are a critique of you. Writing makes me vulnerable. Co-authoring is even more painful. I don’t really know how to do that yet. This time I wrote most of the proposal and was glad that Dr. Craig said: “You are the first author. You have done most of this work.” Now, I must also acknowledge that my immediate response to this was ‘I wonder if it is so bad that she does not want her name listed first?’ I concluded that this was not the case because: (a) it is a blind review process, (b) she isn’t that person, (c) if she were ‘that person’ she would just have said I could submit it alone. At any rate, prior to submission I consulted with a third coauthor who I can always depend on for a thorough review. She is amazing with details while my gift is usually in conceptualization. We are a good team, I think. I sent it to her for review and her immediate feedback was that my supervisor was to be listed as first author. This is the second time I have had this feedback from her. I question what to do when the supervisor has stated that I should list myself first. ‘She probably didn’t understand what you were asking, and it is just the typical listing order. List her first because she is the PI on the related grant.’ ‘Do you, then, go next for seniority?’ I genuinely want to get it right. ‘No. You go next because of the work you’ve done. I should be listed last.’ I am mentally exhausted and spiritually drained because every time I publish, I feel that the words are inked in blood and that I have given birth. So, I follow the cue and decide that the important thing is to send it forward and move on to the next project. (Journals, Spring 2019)

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Negotiations of Space Increasing examinations of the professional identity in flux (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004; Craig, 1995b) shed light to the individuals who seek to further explore and present personal practical knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999) as a key factor in growth and development. In the journal excerpt above, I find myself conflicted by a perceived relational inadequacy to my coauthor who has decades more experience. Though my supervisor’s experience exceeds that of the two of us combined—and times over—in this space, my coauthor was the one who had more personal practical experience in publishing and in technical work that led to publishing. I placed value on that and in the exhaustion of “giving birth” to the proposal, felt most secure in submitting the proposal as suggested. The proposal was accepted and upon realization of the order of names presented, my supervisor re-ordered them to make mine first on the list. She also noted this during the presentation of the work at a national conference. I did not understand the implications of this when I submitted the proposal, but when my supervisor reaffirmed her intention after submission, it became part of my story to live by (Huber et al., 2014; Schaefer & Clandinin, 2019). My propensity for work was increased in relational fellowship with my supervisor’s respect to the quality of and lead taken with the proposal. As a person who I respected and who I view as perpetual mentor, the gesture created a sense of renewed motivation for refinement and perfection of that piece and the pieces left to be published. The answer to the question of who I was at the moment I submitted the proposal was “junior researcher and acting contributor.” The answer after having my supervisor take effort to recognize the work in light of my lead was “project lead and scholar.” I recognized that this was a strong gesture of my readiness to own the work and step out of the cinders I was hiding beneath. The relational negotiation shifted for me. I do realize that I accepted that view under the encouraging gesture of my supervisor. She did not grant me permission to be that scholar. As a friend and colleague, she made the gesture which encouraged me to actualize a place that I had already claimed.

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Setting a Place at the Table There is no happily ever after. My story is not done. There is no Prince Charming, but the publishers and panels who accept work move forward the journey. Each acceptance seems to be an indicator that my voice is valid in the field. But perhaps more important than that is the host of resourced friends that in our fellowship provide insights to the field and into the Selves I may not see and paths that I need not forge. Even the fairy godmothers who cloak me in the light of the Ivory Tower know that my gifts will remain outside of the heteronormative ball. The goal after all, was never the ball. It was to receive an invitation that would transform the kingdom forever. That is never done in isolation. It is accomplished through putting in the work at the table. A fairy godmother friend reminded me of that while foreshadowing the course: Listen to me, Chestin. She said. You question your intelligence as a factor to be weighed against the measure of the Ivory Tower. The residents of which are often so far removed from actions in the field that they don’t have a foot in reality anymore anyway. It becomes a challenge. I’m not saying that theory isn’t important. It is, but as it is related to practice. Your gift is working with people on both sides of the fence to create order from chaos and to get people who normally wouldn’t converse to build together. You have a perpetual foot in both worlds. So when you write, you want it to speak to both, as it should. I do. When I start thinking about things, I just get entrenched in whether it means something to either, both or neither. You do. Because your heart is in the change factor and you know that isn’t always the Ivory Tower. The people reviewing your work in blind submission, who are they? Their power only in worlds that they create and that is why they protect it fiercely. Things become contrived and needlessly complex to meet their expectations of academic standards. Don’t hesitate to publish what is in your heart because they may be limited in scope and unable to embrace your gifts. When I said you bring order to chaos, sometimes it’s the Ivory Tower that protects it and capitalizes by writing on it, without action. In the field we wait for connections and action. You may not ever be ‘they.’ You may be the new voice we need. So go finish your work. Stop changing the structure and let it live. Your roadblock is not in conceptualization, it is in perception. You have to change your perception of your work. I like having friends who are smarter than me. (Laughter by both)

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That is not the truth. We are each smarter in different ways. That’s why we need each other in the crazy world of education. We get through together. Now get to your chapter because we have much more to do. I don’t know how it ends anymore. I do. She said. With a period. (Transcribed Phone Conversation, Spring 2020)

References Auzenne-Curl, C. (2017). Sing it over: Meditations on “best-loved self” and sustaining in secondary English language arts. Crossroads of the classroom (pp. 99–118). Emerald Publishing Limited. Beijaard, D., Meijer, P., & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(2), 107–128. Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. (1978). The Impostor phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247. Clandinin, D. J. (2013). Engaging in narrative inquiry. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Wiley & Sons. Clandinin, D. J., Downey, C. A., & Huber, J. (2009). Attending to changing landscapes: Shaping the interwoven identities of teachers and teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 37 (2), 141–154. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1999). Shaping a professional identity: Stories of educational practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Cox, M. D. (2013). The impact of communities of practice in support of earlycareer academics. International Journal for Academic Development, 18, 18–33. Craig, C. (1995a) Knowledge communities: a way of making sense of how beginning teachers come to know. Curriculum Inquiry, 25(2), 151−172. Craig, C. (1995b). Dilemmas in crossing the boundaries on the professional knowledge landscape. In D. J. Clandinin & F. M. Connelly (Eds), Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes (pp. 16–24). New York: Teachers College Press. Craig, C. J. (2013). Teacher education and the best-loved self. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 33(3), 261–272. Craig, C. J. (2017). Sustaining teachers: Attending to the best-loved self in teacher education and beyond. Quality of Teacher Education and Learning New Frontiers of Educational Research, 193–205.

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Craig, C., & Huber, J. (2007). Relational reverberations. Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York, NY: Basic Books. Granger, C. A. (2004). Silence in second language learning: A psychoanalytic reading. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hauptmann, B. (2019). Donald Winnicott and John Bowlby: personal and professional perspectives. New York: Routledge. Huber, J., Li, Y., Murphy, S., Nelson, C., & Young, M. (2014). Shifting stories to live by: Teacher education as a curriculum of narrative inquiry identity explorations. Reflective Practice, 15(2), 176–189. Information Age Publishing, Inc. (2010). Selected writings of John Dewey. In A. J. Milson, C. H. Bohan, P. L. Glanzer & J. W. Null (Eds.). American educational thought: Essays from 1640–1940 (2nd ed., pp. 361–395). Information Age Publishing. Jawitz, J. (2007). New academics negotiating communities of practice: Learning to swim with the big fish. Teaching in Higher Education, 12(2), 185–197. Jawitz, J. (2009). Academic identities and communities of practice in a professional discipline. Teaching in Higher Education, 14(3), 241–251. Motha, S., & Varghese, M. (2018). Rewriting dominant narratives of the academy: Women faculty of color and identity management. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 21(4), 503–517. Schaefer, L., & Clandinin, D. J. (2019). Sustaining teachers’ stories to live by: Implications for teacher education. Teachers and Teaching Theory and Practice, 25(1), 54–68. Schwab, J. J. (1954/1978). Eros and education: A discussion of one aspect of discussion. In I. Westbury & N. Wilkof (Eds.), Science, curriculum and liberal education: Selected essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schön, D. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books. Slank, S. (2019). Rethinking the imposter phenomenon. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 22, 205–218. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality: D.W. Winnicott. UK: Tavistock. Xu, S., & Connelly, M. (2010). Narrative inquiry for school-based research. Narrative Inquiry, 20(2), 349–370.

CHAPTER 7

Musings on the Sidelines: Leadership and Learning During the Tenure-Track Experience Bernardo Pohl

Introduction The tenure-track phase is a pivotal and transformative moment in the life of a university academic. It is a period of incredible learning, exploration, and discovery. It is also a period of undeniable anguish, despair, and desperation. Buried beneath all of these emotions lies the responsibility to fulfill the three main pillars of the tenure-track process: teaching, scholarship, and service. To effectively survive this phase, one must display an inconceivable amount of resilience to impossible situations that can often test a person’s core character. Part of the tenure-track process is the development of leadership as a key skill in the survival of this journey— an ingredient that will become essential at times when the mere survival of the department and its programs are at stake and under threat. In

B. Pohl (B) University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_7

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this chapter, I discuss my experience of learning and leading during my tenure-track years. This is the narrative of my personal moments of great successes, utter hopelessness, immense joy, and incredible turbulence during my time as an assistant professor at a university and department that offer great opportunities for challenges and spiritual growth like no other. Yet, this is my life as an assistant professor at a teaching (Tier 3) university that places an incredible amount of expectation on the tenure-track faculty. This life often includes leadership roles, service appointments, and scholarship productivity typically expected of senior and tenured faculty at other universities’ expectations and requirements that at times exceed the ones found at research (Tier 1) universities.

The Literature: Emotional Tenure Track Conversation During Lunch (Circa-Spring 2014) Me: Hey…I got to tell you something. Mike (not his real name): What? Me: I just got elected to Faculty Senate Mike: What?! Bernardo…You are just in your second year as a tenure-track. You’re joking, right? Me: No, I am not…I just got elected. I was encouraged to run by a senior faculty, and I did. And, I got elected. Mike: This is insane. Your university is crazy. You would not be allowed to come anywhere near the Senate as a junior faculty at my university. What’s your teaching load? Me: 4 Fall; 3 spring. Mike: That’s insane! You guys are weird when it comes to tenure track. Really weird. My teaching load is 2−2.

Emotional Process The conversation above happened at lunch during my second semester as a junior (tenure-track) faculty member with a friend who works at another university campus. The funny thing is that I was hired at a teaching university and Mike (not his real name) was hired at a Tier 1 (research-intensive) university. By my second semester, I had already published two chapters and an article. Two drafts were already out for review. I was also serving in four department committees, two university committees, holding the presidency of a local chapter of a national

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teaching organization, and the entire faculty was asked to serve in a growth plan initiative for the department due to low enrollment. This does not include exploratory committee work for a possible doctoral program in Educational Leadership, a job search committee, and another exploratory committee to pursue national accreditation for the department. By my second semester, I was ready to run away and call my former principal at the high school where I used to work. The tenure-track years are not easy. Many studies have been conducted regarding the experience of new faculty in academia (Greene et al., 2008; Hambright & Diamantes, 2004; Perry, Dean, & Hilton, 2019). Consistently, new professors (untenured and recently tenured) in these studies narrate that they endured an unbalanced life, they did not encounter a place with a sense of collegiality, and they felt at the mercy of a vague, unstructured process without an established set of guidelines. Greene et al. (2008) summarized the findings of several longitudinal studies regarding the experience of earning tenure (Olsen, 1993; Sorcinelli, 2002). According to Greene et al. (2008), the summary of these studies about junior faculty indicates confusion about the process without specific guidance. The faculty members in these studies often reported a lonely and even hostile working environment. These studies also indicate feelings of being overworked and a loss of personal time for family and leisure. Furthermore, these studies tend to highlight that untenured faculty suffer high levels of stress, diminishing satisfaction with the profession as time passes, and frictions about extrinsic work factors such as yearly evaluations, merit raise, course loads, and working conditions (Greene et al., 2008). Emotional Cost Many studies have been conducted regarding the nature and struggles of earning tenure, including African American males in non-HBU’s institutions (Warde, 2009), mentoring (Hambright & Diamantes, 2004), late entry in the profession (Welsh & Schaffer, 2014), and untenured female faculty in academia (Fries-Britt & Kelly, 2005), to name a few. However, studies that emphasize the narrative about the emotional experience of the tenure-track period are very rare (Cole, McGowan, & Zerquera, 2017; Tilley-Lubbs, 2014; Vanderlaan, 2010). The emotional cost of earning tenure track is best captured by TilleyLubbs (2014). In this study, the experience is associated with emotions of

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regret, loss, guilt, and remorse. When I first read this article, I wondered what made a person regard her tenure-track experience as loss and regret—describing it as “a dark cloud of negativity over my head” (TilleyLubbs, 2014, p. 55). I was intrigued to find out what makes a recently tenured professor want to write about earning tenure as the event that will finally allow a person to “reclaim my life” and make up for what was lost (Tilley-Lubbs, 2014, p. 53). Yet, it speaks volumes to me. It is a frustrating process with more lows than highs (Tilley-Lubbs, 2014), a voyage into the unknown without clear guidance (Cole et al., 2017), and a sensation of always feeling that nothing is ever enough (Warde, 2009). Academics will describe their tenure-track experience and emotions in different ways. My feelings and emotions about the tenure process align best with those expressed by Vanderlaan (2010) in the article On the tenure track, a marriage made in Hell. Academia is the thing that I always pursued; higher education is the place where I always wanted to be. It is a sort of marriage between an institution of higher learning and you, which you always sought. However, in this marriage, there were unequal sets of unfair expectations (Vanderlaan, 2010). I was expected to publish without the benefits of support, such as teaching assistants or course reductions. In my case I missed the $4000 start-up fund for new hires, which was implemented a year after I was hired, and, according to my Chair, not subject to retroactive consideration. Also implemented a year after I was hired as a course load of 3 Fall:3 Spring course load during the first year of hire. I was not given that benefit, and I was expected to teach a full teaching load (4 Fall:3 Spring) beginning in my first year (Vanderlaan, 2010). And finally, I was expected to do service, fulfilling the roles that a great number of tenured faculty often tend to avoid (Vanderlaan, 2010). In my case, during my first year, I served on a total of five department committees, two university committees, and one committee for my university system. Again, it was after my first year that the decision was made for new hires to only serve on two department committees during the first year. Vanderlaan (2010) describes the tenure-track experience as performing the role of the “good wife”—a relationship that would be considered abusive by any other standard (p. B20). Emotional Leadership Many theories of leadership exist as described by McDonald (2020) in this book. As such, leadership can be defined as transformation, contingent, or

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authentic (see McDonald (2020)) Although there are many studies that explore leadership and narrative in education such as school principalship, classrooms, and libraries (Arar, 2017; Mardis, 2013; Netolicky, 2019), studies about narratives of leadership in academia are far-and-in-between (Arnold, Crawford, & Khalifa, 2016; Jaffe, 2017). Even rarer is to find narrative studies about the emotions of leadership in academia (Sinclair, 2004). Sinclair’s (2004) narrative about leadership in academia is a powerful statement about the emotions at play. It is a clash of the theoretical, rationalized nature of what leadership emanates from the books, teaching, and practice, against the struggles of power, dominance, and submission lived in the academic world. The accepted notion of leadership is the result of a fabricated “motif” of ideas developed by “marginal elites” to advance a position of prestige, authority, and privilege (Sinclair, 2004, p. 17). My narrative does not seek to pursue that route. In this chapter, leadership is explored as an emotional endeavor—a visionary journey that seeks to use positions of leadership as an agent for challenging structural barriers for the benefit of the larger community. As such, this piece becomes a narrative of exploring and resisting the hegemonic nature of established managerial leadership for genuine efforts of leadership as a process of personal 1growth and change (Sinclair, 2004).

Method: Learning Through Narrative For this chapter, I use Connelly and Clandinin’s narrative inquiry method to explore my experience during the tenure-track years (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992). The process involves constructing and reconstructing lived experiences in order to share personal stories (Sharma, 2015). This research approach is used broadly across many disciplines such as psychology (Bruner, 1985), religion (Crites, 1971), history (Carr, 1986), and disability studies (Gabel, 2002; Valentine, 2007). In education, narrative has been used extensively as an accepted form of research (Gabel, Cohen, Kotel, & Pearson, 2013). As such, narrative inquiry has been used to understand the teacher as a curriculum maker (Ross, 2005), teachers’ stories (DeMik, 2008), and the researchers’ lived stories (Craig, 2003). Narrative inquiry is a fluid way to investigate and study the lived stories behind human experiences and actions. As Bruner (1991) explained:

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[W]e organize our experience and our memory of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative—stories, excuses, myths, reasons for doing and not doing, and so on. Narrative is a conventional form, transmitted culturally and constrained by each individual’s level of mastery and by his conglomerate of prosthetic devices, colleagues, and mentors. (p. 4)

For some scholars, narrative is an essential method for organizing personal knowledge and social experiences (Bruner, 1985; Dewey, 1897). Other scholars see narrative as the basic human characteristic of “a storytelling animal” (Craig, 2006, p. 263), making “a dialogic interaction both with our surrounding world and with ourselves” (Moen, 2006, p. 2). Narrative inquiry builds upon the legacy of John Dewey (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Jerome Bruner asked the question: “Why do any of us talk about ourselves?” (Bruner, 1990, p. 88). According to Bruner, Dewey saw language as the means we humans use to interpret our thoughts and make clear our views about the world in which we live. For Dewey (1938), language was very important in formulating “substantial meaning” in the field of inquiry. The concept of looking at language as an agency for shaping our thoughts about the world and as a tool for making substantial meaning has serious implications for narrative inquiry. According to Dewey, “man is naturally a being that lives in association with others in communities possessing language, and therefore enjoying a transmitted culture” (Dewey, 1938, p. 19). Narrative inquiry, therefore, becomes the agency to transmit culture, the views of the world, and the way we make meaning of our lives. However, the legacy of Dewey in narrative inquiry is more than simply proposing language as the means to express our values and thoughts about the world. According to Dewey (1916), education is an interactive process where education and life collide to project our human experiences: “When we reflect upon an experience instead of just having it, we inevitably distinguish between our attitude and the objects toward which we sustain the attitude” (p. 166). For Dewey (1938), inquiry was synonymous with a reflexive process. We cannot help but be reflexive and ponder about our actions. As Dewey put it, inquiry enters “into every area of life and into every aspect of every area” (Dewey, 1938, p. 102). As such, inquiry, therefore, becomes the intimate act of looking at the different affairs of life, and how those affairs of life play into our existence. At the core, Dewey (1938) asserted that we learn from experience. Therefore, as a narrative, inquiry is not just a mode of analyzing and

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deconstructing our actions. The essence of inquiry is to reflect upon what we have learned from experience and how that has transformed and changed us. According to Dewey (1938), all learning comes from “personal experience.” and …such learning is a genuine form of education (p. 25). The experiential aspect of learning has significant consequences. As we learn from experience, we are forced to move inward and outward, backward and forward in our lives. We encounter and reflect upon the things we enjoy, the things we suffer, and the things that ultimately make us grow (Craig, 2006). It is important to note that for Dewey (1916, 1938), learning, inquiry, and experience were intimately linked. By reflecting on the things upon which we act and the things which act upon us, humans move about their lives by “their own intelligence and ideas” (Dewey, 1908, p. 16). Reduction of Error and Bias In qualitative research, establishing validity, reliability, and trustworthiness is important but it can be difficult. Situations can become blurred and subject to personal interpretation when we discuss self-narrative and autobiographical accounts. To that extent, it is impossible to completely eliminate biases and errors from this type of research (Snelgrove & Havitz, 2010). However, steps can be taken that can increase the reliable nature of qualitative autobiographical studies. One of the most important aspects is to set defined guidelines under which the memories and past stories are recalled. In this case, Snelgrove and Havitz (2010) suggest that it is the meaning behind the account that should take precedent in autobiographical work. It is the learned experience behind the narrative account that should be take center stage. Elicitation of memories that can occur through several avenues, such as letters, notes, artifacts, pictures, and other artifacts, are only tools—prompts—that are part of the cognitive appeal of re-telling a story (Snelgrove & Havitz, 2010). In this case, it is important that reliability and validity be established as an attitude, not the accuracy of every detail of a recalled account. For example, one can verify if similarly accepted and properly published studies about a topic (e.g., sexuality, immigration, schooling) have yielded similar results (Snelgrove & Havitz, 2010). Another critical aspect of qualitative narratives is to establish valid criteria

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under which the study was conducted, such as historical continuity. Critically speaking, narrative accounts, then, are measured against the kind of experiences that are elicited through the person’s voice. However, most important, is to see what kind of models and patterns a particular study sets for the future, and whether or not these representations coincide with what was been previously explored and analyzed in the past (Heikkinen, Huttunen, & Syrjälä, 2007). Qualitative studies and narratives are about validating the message and the voice. In this study, therefore, I employ the concept of message validation through message elaboration (Shen & Seung, 2018). Message elaboration can be defined as the extent to which we can find external trustworthiness in our own narratives. According to Shen and Seung (2018), this can be accomplished by measuring to what extent the reader finds himself or herself participating with the main characters in the story. At what point does the narrator’s story become the reader’s story (Irvine, 2000)? In the end, self-narrative becomes validated if the message and stories become consistent throughout time, when the message finds commonality with previous accounts and the story meets the expectation of the self as a fully explored exercise (Irvine, 2000; Shen & Seung, 2018).

My Narrative of Becoming a Tenured Associate Professor In a narrative, storytelling is a fundamental and important component of the analytical process. In order to contextualize my experiences, I present several vignettes that explore my leadership. Embedded within these themes, I introduce the reader to my experiences in what molded me into a leader in several episodes in my life. The Accidental Teacher I never sought to be a teacher. No, I do not have the story of how half of my family were teachers so I decided to become one. Yes, my grandfather was a college professor, and my dad did teach math part-time at a high school when he was an undergrad—back in the days when the only thing you needed to be a teacher was a clean record, a driver’s license and some college hours; however, their stories did not resonate with me. I was dead set on becoming an architect and a drafter. Since I can remember, I sat

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next to my dad and grandfather at my small desk and emulated them as they did drafting drawings all day. By the time I was in high school, I had my own professional, industrial-style drafting table and so many drafting instruments that would make anyone in any architecture or engineering firm jealous. By the time I was a senior, I had my own copy of Autocad™ 2.0. When I started taking drafting classes during my junior year in high school, I corrected Mr. Nichols, a rookie out of college, on how to correctly measure the scales and dimensions. One day, I irritated him so much, when I pointed out that he was telling us the wrong measurements, that he sent me to the office. When another parent in the office, who happened to be an engineer, heard my story, he went into my Assistant Principal’s office and told him that I was right. Drafting was my passion; architecture was my dream. Even though I do not have stories of teachers in my family, education was such an important factor in our lives, especially to my Mom. She was thrown out of the house at the age of nine, so my resiliency started with her. From an early age, she had to fend for herself and live on her own. She grew up with a family that owned a hotel, and she worked in that hotel since her early teens. By the time she was in her twenties, she was the front desk manager and director of room services. Her life made her different. She developed a no-nonsense, pull-no-punches attitude. With her, there was no room for crying or being weak. One had to swallow it and take it. And perhaps, also, this was why my disability was never a factor when I was young. I was pushed to do whatever the activity was. No excuses. “No” was not an answer. In her early twenties, she met my Dad. Their story can best be described as the Argentinean version of the West Side Story had Maria and Tony been able to properly marry and have children. From my paternal grandfather’s perspective, my mom was the darkie from the Patagonian planes of Santa Cruz. She was not a German girl from the capital, and, therefore, the German heritage would be lost. From my maternal grandmother’s view, my Dad was one of the boys from the big city. He epitomized one of the oil drillers who ventured outside the camp in search of adventure with a local girl. He was not a local boy. For my paternal grandmother, Mom quickly became the daughter she never had. Finally, a girl arrived in a household full of boys. Grandma adored my Mom. For Mom, Grandma quickly became the mother and confidante she longed for so many years. In the end, Mom fell in love with a family where everyone, except for Grandma, went to college and had a degree. Her

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mind was set. Education was not up for discussion for her children. We were having one and becoming professionals. Losing the Precious The loss of getting robbed, of losing something precious, is all too familiar with me. I remember the day clearly. It was the last day of school and my very last day as a high school teacher. After the day was over, I did what I often did after work when I needed a decompressor. I went to my favorite coffee shop located at my alma mater’s campus. It was my getaway; my place away from everyone and everything. The coffee shop is located inside the campus hotel. I loved to sit by the window, work on my laptop, drink coffee, and eat cheesecake while watching the students and the cars pass by on University-Main. At some point, panic and utter sadness overwhelmed me. I got up suddenly, almost jumping out of my seat. I literally slammed my laptop shut, and shoved it in my backpack. I threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table; cheesecake and coffee untouched. I ran out of the coffee shop desperate, not knowing where to go. I started to walk like a fast-paced maniac without direction. By the time I reached the park in front of the dorms, I started to cry uncontrollably, sobbing like a lost child in a department store, not knowing what to do or which way to go. How can I explain it to anyone? Could I run to my doctoral chair’s office? I saw his car in the parking lot on my way to the coffee shop; his office was literally two buildings away. I did not want to bother him or anyone else. I just felt that nobody would understand. It was my last day as a high school teacher at the beginning of June 2013, and my emotions had been building up for days, if not weeks. It all exploded that afternoon in the coffee shop. Summer has started. Earlier that day, I said goodbye to everyone and walked away from the place that I worked since I was a substitute as an undergrad in the mid1990s. No more Spring Valley High for me. I would not help Terry, the school trainer anymore with the water during football. I would not be forcibly hiding my laugh as he screamed to the players to line up and get ready with his Sergeant’s voice developed from his days in the Marine Corps. I would no longer be eating lunch with Coach Stevens and Mr. Heckler, and hear their gossip-filled stories from the early days when the school opened in 1976. I would no longer be doing lunch duty with Joe, Marlon, and Sarah, and talk about our experiences of enduring graduate school while teaching full-time. I would not be doing lesson planning

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with my team after school, while jamming to Dave Matthews or Counting Crows, making Ms. Solis angry. I often believed that Joe and Sarah played the music loud on purpose just to irritate her. I would no longer be stopping to eat chicken fried steak with the teachers at Sam’s Corner on our way to football or basketball duty on Friday evenings. The emotions of knowing that I left the place I loved overwhelmed me. I felt lost. In front of me, the big unknown—a new job as a tenure-track faculty. I did not know what to do. Something was gone forever and taken away from me. I was on the eve of entering the “alien world of academia” (Tilley-Lubbs, 2014, p. 54). The Experienced Novice I was experienced. By the time that I accepted my new job as an assistant professor, I had an established career that provided some advantages for my work as a tenure-track faculty member. I had 11 years of a successful teaching career in public education. I was also an adjunct professor at two local universities, allowing me to establish important campus networks. In addition to my job experiences, I kept myself active with my academic research, having recently published an offshoot of my doctoral dissertation as a book and having finished recently two scholarly articles, while keeping a healthy dose of presentations at different educational conferences. Yet, the accounts of my first year allude to my status as a new faculty member at a university; I was still naïve to the demands and expectations of earning tenure. Enduring the rigors and achieving tenure was not going to be easy. Even more, I quickly realized that, often, the grass always seems greener on the other side (Welsh & Schaffer, 2014). To my credit, however, I was willing to set aside my fears of the unknown and be firm about my convictions in my new career. To my former colleagues, family, and friends, the perception was that I was moving up. In reality, I was truly entering the unknown with a lot of second thoughts and doubts by taking a salary cut and risking my established professional career in an effort to reach a greater status, or, at least, find a renewed sense of satisfaction about what I was doing. However, as Welsh and Schaffer (2014) pointed out, confronting fears and embracing risks of a new path is not easy, especially for a disabled professional.

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Facing Academia I never considered myself a stellar student or professional. In school, I always trailed my siblings when it came to grades. They were the AllStars with the honors and the pedigree. They earned the awards at the end of the school years. And they were admitted to the four-year colleges without any difficulty. In my early days, I did not care. I was the clown of the class, who was having fun. Later, as I matured, I felt like a failure, and this feeling did not sit well with me. Although I started to work hard and make good grades, the damage was done. While my brother graduated with honors and ranked, I graduated with the pack. College was a little different, but not too much different. My undergraduate years were average. I made good grades but nothing out of the ordinary. We can safely say that graduate school was where I excelled. I earned my master’s degree with an almost perfect GPA, and I earned my Doctorate with a 4.0. I was always praised for writing and my research. And by the time I graduated, I already signed a contract to publish my dissertation as a book. However, none of these accomplishments prepared me for the experience of academia and tenure. Teaching was definitely what I enjoyed the most, and what I still enjoy. Since I was an adjunct while I was a high school teacher, teaching at the college level was freedom. I finally had the time to teach what I wanted and how I wanted. I finally had the time to show my students what I wanted them to learn. Finally, I was teaching with a purpose, and I loved it. The first few months were marked by idyllic moments. I was the new member, the fresh face, and the enthusiastic new kid on the block. I was saying “yes” to everything with the biggest smile and the greatest amount of energy. Good things were happening all around. However, the good vibes were about to end after the second semester. The realities of academia and I collided face-to-face. First, it was university politics. Our enrollment was low and unacceptable to upper administration. We were placed on an academic growth plan. We met every Monday religiously and without excuses. Absences had to be valid and well documented. In the meetings, tensions flared and emotions were raw. It was the first time that I encountered university politics in all its virtue and glory, and it was not pleasant. Yes, I had my fair share of tempers flaring during my years as a high school teacher. However, there is a big difference between kids exploding in anger in the hallways,

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the gym, or the classroom, and getting yelled at collectively at a faculty meeting by the Provost himself. Forced Leadership Act-1 I remember the day really well. It was my first summer after the academic year ended. I decided to treat myself for surviving my first year in academia with a weekend at the San Antonio Riverwalk. On my last day at the Riverwalk, I decided to eat lunch at my favorite Taqueria, do some lazy walking in front of the Alamo, and head back home in the early afternoon. On my way to the Melcher Hotel, my cell phone rang. The news took me by surprise; my world dropped. My social studies partner had resigned. He was returning to his hometown and leaving the department for a job at another university. The shock of learning about his departure overwhelmed me. In my mind, I was thinking: “What now?” After all, he was the leader, and he saw himself that way. He was the one making curricular decisions. He attended the meetings. And he was the one chairing the committees. I was the new kid in the block following his lead. So, truly, what now? All that, however, changed with that phone call. Suddenly, I was the only social studies faculty member in my department. I was the person to go to for a question. I was “it” when it came to social studies. It took me several weeks to process and reconcile that fact. For 11 years, I was accustomed to dealing with a Dean of Directors, curriculum coaches, department heads, and team leaders who made the decisions for us, and their words were not to be challenged. For 11 years, as a teacher, I dealt with administrators who thought teachers were glorified clerks. We were the minions following their top-down instructions. Suddenly, an entire teacher preparation program at a university was relying on my expertise in social studies. The curricular “buck,” when it comes to social studies methods, stopped with me, literally. I was the person deciding the book we were going to adopt, recommending who to hire as an adjunct, and determining which social studies classes were going to be offered at what time. And the mere thought of all of this responsibility was mind-boggling to me.

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The In-Between Year For me, I consider my second year my in-between year. It was a relatively calm period where I just served, taught, and published. After the shock of learning the departure of my colleague, things settled down. I actually assumed the role of the lead social studies faculty member with a significant amount of composure, and confronted the task of making some of the important decisions for the very first time in my life. I had to select books to be adopted for all the sessions. I was in charge of determining the class schedule and submitting it to my chair. I needed to find new adjuncts for all the sessions we needed to cover. I had to develop the master syllabus template for all the social studies sections. With that charge, however, the doubts came. Was I doing the right thing? Did I adopt the right book, recommend the right adjunct, or develop the correct syllabus? These were the fears that I had. Nevertheless, I dealt with these insecurities silently and on my own. With the passing of time, however, things started to resemble some sense of normality. I took charge of the social studies program and made the decisions that needed to be made. I started to feel comfortable about my new role. There were moments when I felt frustrated, especially with the increase in responsibilities. In particular, the departure of my partner meant that there was a vacancy in the Faculty Senate. I was immediately encouraged to put my name forward and run for the Senate. I was elected as a Senator for my department and represented my colleagues proudly. At that particular moment, I did not make much of the situation. I was a junior faculty member in my second year, and I was eager to prove that I had the right stuff. For the most part, the meetings were boring and nothing out of the ordinary. Discussions evolved around policies and procedures with the usual rambling from senior faculty members nitpicking a word or a sentence in the middle of a policy document and spending an insane amount of time discussing whether it was necessary or not to have this or remove that. In the end, my tenure in the Faculty Senate came and went without too much commotion. I was asked, however, to serve on a sub-committee to develop an academic policy for the university’s online classes. For many years, we just adopted and borrowed the policy from the flagship, Tier-1 university in our system. Our Provost wanted our university to have its own academic policy for the online classes. In this sub-committee, I was in charge of editing and proofreading the final draft. In the end, the second year came and went.

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Forced Leadership Act-2 Third year is always a pivotal moment. This is the time when you realize that the clock is indeed ticking and the countdown is real. This is when you realize that you are three years away from one of the most important episodes in your life and career. This is the year when everything shifts into high gear, and, for me, things went from fourth to seventh gear in an instant. For the second time, a key faculty member left the department. This person was the Director of Graduate Studies and Alternative Teacher Certification. The position became vacant and my Department Chair asked me to assume the role. According to him, this leadership position would benefit me when I went up for tenure. Despite my fears and uncertainty, I accepted the challenge. Becoming the Director of Graduate studies was my biggest career challenge. For an entire year and a half, I had to rebuild the program from the ground up. Upon taking the role, my Department Chair and I started to discover some troubling facts. Students were accepted without any admissions procedure. Degree plans were not followed and students were taking any classes they pleased. An undergraduate student was “accepted” into the Alternative Certification program. Teachers from a school district were encouraged to enroll in the graduate program to seek a degree that did not exist and were not approved. A student was 1allowed to take an undergraduate senior-level math class and use it as a substitution for the capstone project. The egregious discoveries went on and on. Once I became the Director, I immediately assembled a committee for Graduate Studies for my department. I did not care that it was the beginning of summer and faculty members were leaving for vacation. I called for a meeting and explained the urgency of the situation. Fortunately, everyone agreed that some immediate work needed to be done. We decided to tackle the most urgent task, which was to make sure all the students were enrolled in the right courses. Then, we decided to revise the graduate program policies and update the program’s handbook. Lastly, we decided to develop a course rotation and design new degree plans. In the end, it took us a solid two years to develop a program that had some kind of structure that students follow in their degree plans. To become the Director of Graduate Studies was a challenge that I wanted. However, I did not know that it would test my limits at times. It was not easy to deal with the frustration of students who suddenly found out that they could not graduate because the courses they took did not

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match the university’s auditing system. It was also not easy to be thrown into writing the annual report for the graduate program only two months after becoming the Director of the program. In the end, the challenges were many, and it tested my will at times; however, it helped build my character to confront the challenges in the new environment. The Imposter as a Leader My experience and successes from the past were discounted. I questioned my abilities on a daily basis, wondering how long it would take before others discovered my insecurities and my weaknesses. Despite spending the great portion of my adult life building my career and always starting from square one every few years, I did not see myself as the success story that others saw me as. On the contrary, I always felt like I was the one getting behind and other faculty members were always the ones going places. They were publishing in top journals, teaching the fun and exciting courses, becoming the star faculty with the spotlight shining on them, and getting the attention of the Chair and Dean for important things and exciting stuff. Despite my position as the Graduate Director, I felt as if I was just cleaning the house and picking the broken administrative pieces off the floor. The experience of being thrown into the leadership roles did not come alone. It came with a great sense of personal distrust and even failure. At this point, it felt that I was just doing the busy work that nobody else wanted to do and saying “yes” when others had the luxury to say “no.” I did not feel that I had that luxury. In addition, I was coping with all the fears and devastations that happen during the tenure years. Manuscript rejections became judgments on my personal character, reflecting signs of my perceived weakness instead of mere technical deficiencies of my work (Welsh & Schaffer, 2014). Experiences like this became internalized, and soon, I started seeing myself as a failure and believing that I was getting good annual evaluations and pre-tenure reviews due to some kind of dumb luck. The danger of believing and internalizing such distortions of one’s image can have devastating consequences. Sooner or later, one starts to see oneself as the “imposter” (Welsh & Schaffer, 2014, p. 5). And that happened to me. I started to see myself as the imposter—the one who lacked “the skills” and “abilities” among my peers (Welsh & Schaffer,

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2014, p. 5). Over time, these feelings became paralyzing but I learned to hide them well, or redirect them as bursts of anger. Recalibrated Leadership At some point, you realize that your position as an imposter can have devastating consequences and there is a need to “recalibrate” your internal position (Welsh & Schaffer, 2014, p. 6). For many, this started by seeking opportunities that allowed me to grow and see myself differently, not as the failure who could never catch up with everyone else. This recalibration happened naturally for me without consciously noticing. The first opportunity happened spontaneously during a staff meeting to discuss some procedure related to teacher certification due to new state’s regulations. I will not go into the intrinsic details of the new regulations. However, it was the fact that, suddenly, the Director of Teacher Certification and I were talking to each other about requirements as if we were speaking in a foreign language, which surprised me. At that moment, I realized that I was the only faculty member around the table who knew the new state’s certification regulations in detail, not the generic information that my other faculty colleagues knew. Moments like this made me visualize my position as the Director of Graduate Studies for my department from a new and refreshed perspective. I decided to seek more leadership opportunities; such as, becoming the Chair for the university’s Graduate Council. I also took on the co-editorship of a national academic journal and became one of the Co-Principal Investigators and curriculum developer for a million-dollar grant. I organized the visit of Mary Cowhey, author of Black Ants and Buddhists, to my university. Despite these activities being time consuming, they gave me a renewed sense of purpose for my work. In addition, I became good friends with a new junior faculty member. He started a year later than I did but we became close. We started to share our fears, doubts, and anxieties. We were surprised that we both shared some common feelings. The sense of knowing that I was not alone in feeling what I felt gave some relief. We both decided to take some steps to mediate this quandary, such as attending more university events and having writing time away from campus.

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Parting Words: The Refuge Without a doubt, the tenure-track years for me were the most difficult and hardest years of my life. They were not hard because of the pressure to publish, teach, and serve. They were difficult because they tested my character (Welsh & Schaffer, 2014). I always thought I became an accidental teacher. I could not find a job as an architect and part-time substitute teaching led to full-time teaching. In the same sense, I became an accidental leader during my tenure-track years. Two resignations by two faculty members prompted me to fill the voids left by their departures, taking on challenges that I never thought I would. However, this was my life and there was nowhere else I could go. Sooner or later, finding a refuge became vital for my well-being and sanity. Despite the frustrations, the tenure-track years were also filled with satisfying moments that allowed me to endure what otherwise would be impossible situations. These moments became my refuge-spaces that allowed me to be me, cherishing who I was. To that extent, belonging to the Faculty Academy, a multi-campus research cohort to which I was invited to be a part allowed me to do that. For one, it was the space where I could be free and express myself. The fact that I work at a teaching institution meant that the pressure to publish and present is not that strong, allowing me to indeed pursue the research agenda that I wanted. I also had a place to vent my frustration, allowing me to avoid becoming a ticking time bomb. I did not have the pressure of presenting at certain venues and publishing at specific journals. I only had to show that I was pursuing a sustained research agenda and that I was meeting expectations. As time passed, writing and presenting in the venues that I liked allowed me to experience a certain amount of freedom that some of my other friends did not have. This kept me sane, invigorated, and energized. It also allowed me to pursue a more personal research agenda—one that was based on narrative and the pursuit of the human spirit. That did not change. I will always think of what would have happened if I became an architect and never a teacher. I will always be puzzled by the thinking what if I never became a teacher and professor, allowing me to research and write about my personal experiences. Would I have explored what it means to be disabled in such a profound way as I did when I wrote my doctoral dissertation? Would I have advocated for the disabled and marginalized like I have done? Would I have encouraged a new generation of student

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teachers to pursue their very best in their careers and life? I will never know these answers. However, pursuing a career in teaching is a choice that I will never regret. I will always think about that. I still remember the day that I sat in the principal’s office and told him that I had an offer to work at a university. He was excited and kept talking about the opportunity as if I was having a promotion. I had a different feeling; this was hardly a promotion for me. I shared my feelings with him. I was about to leave the place where I loved to work and the people whom I cherished to be with day in and day out. However, he told me that career changes are about taking leaps of faith. It is something that you have to do if you want to move forward. When I left his office and returned to my classroom, I logged into the district’s employee system and submitted my resignation. That day, I began my own leap of faith.

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Craig, C. J. (2006). Why is dissemination so difficult? The nature of teacher knowledge and the spread of curriculum reform. American Educational Research Journal, 43, 257–293. Crites, S. (1971). The narrative quality of experience. Journal of the American Academy of Religion American Academy of Religion, 39, 291–311. DeMik, S. A. (2008). Experiencing attrition of special education teachers through narrative inquiry. High School Journal, 92(1), 22–32. Dewey, J. (1897). My Pedagogical Creed. The School Journal, 54, 77–80. Dewey, J. (1908). The practical character of reality. In J. McDermott (Ed.) (1981). The philosophy of John Dewey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to philosophy of education. Free Press. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Macmillan Company. Fries-Britt, S., & Kelly, B. T. (2005). Retaining each other: Narratives of two African American women in the academy. The Urban Review, 37 (3), 221–242. Gabel, S. (2002). Some conceptual problems with critical pedagogy. Curriculum Inquiry, 32, 177–201. Gabel, S. L., Cohen, C. J., Kotel, K., & Pearson, H. (2013). Intellectual disability and space: Critical narratives of exclusion. Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities, 51(1), 74–80. Greene, H. C., O’Connor, K. A., Good, A. J., Ledford, C. C., Peel, B. B., & Zhang, G. (2008). Building a support system toward tenure: Challenges and needs of tenure-track faculty in colleges of education. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 16(4), 429–447. Hambright, W. G., & Diamantes, T. (2004). An analysis of the experiences of a first-year tenure-track faculty member. Education, 124(3), 436–438. Heikkinen, H. T., Huttunen, R., & Syrjälä, L. (2007). Action research as narrative: Five principles for validation. Educational Action Research, 15(1), 5–19. Irvine, L. (2000). “Even better than the real thing”: Narratives of the self in codependency. Qualitative Sociology, 23(1), 9–28. Jaffe, A. (2017). Differentiated eliteness: Socialization for academic leadership. Social Semiotics, 27 (3), 370–381. Mardis, M. A. (2013). Transfer, lead, look inward: Further study of preservice school librarians’ development. Journal of Education for Library & Information Science, 54(1), 37–54. McDonald, D. M. (in press). If I only had a brain: Scholarly identity at oddz in the world of academia. In B. Pohl & C. White (Eds.), Social education voices: A pedagogy for change. Information Age Publishing. Moen, T. (2006). Reflections on the narrative research approach. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5, 1–11.

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Netolicky, D. M. (2019). Redefining leadership in schools: The Cheshire Cat as unconventional metaphor. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 51(2), 149–164. Olsen, D. (1993). Work satisfaction and stress in the first and third year of academic appointment. The Journal of Higher Education, 64(4), 453–471. Perry, A. L., Dean, S. R., & Hilton, A. A. (2019). New faculty transitions and obstacles: An auto-ethnographic exploration. Journal of the Professoriate, 10(1), 43–72. Ross, V. (2005). Pointing the way: Possible avenues for development in the field of mathematics education. Curriculum Inquiry, 35, 235–246. Sharma, S. (2015). Action research: A pedagogic tool to prepare reflective practitioners. International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences: Annual Review, 10, 51–61. Shen, L., & Seung, S.-Y. (2018). On measures of message elaboration in narrative communication. Communication Quarterly, 66(1), 79–95. Sinclair, A. (2004). Journey around leadership. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 25(1), 7–19. Snelgrove, R., & Havitz, M. E. (2010). Looking back in time: The pitfalls and potential of retrospective methods in leisure studies. Leisure Sciences, 32(4), 337–351. Sorcinelli, M. D. (2002). New conceptions of scholarship for a new generation of faculty members. New Directions for Teaching & Learning, 2002(90), 41–48. Tilley-Lubbs, G. A. (2014). The Inquisition/torture of the tenure track. Creative Approaches to Research, 7 (2), 51–70. Valentine, J. (2007). How can we transgress in the field of disabilities in urban education? In S. R. Steinberg & J. L. Kincheloe (Eds.), 19 urban questions: Teaching in the city (pp. 127–142). New York: Peter Lang. Vanderlaan, K. (2010). On the tenure track, a marriage made in hell. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 56(33), B20. Warde, B. (2009). The road to tenure: Narratives of African American male tenured professors. Journal of African American Studies, 13(4), 494–508. Welsh, K., & Schaffer, C. (2014). Embarking on the tenure journey at age 50. Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 81(1), 26–31.

CHAPTER 8

Bridging the East and the West: Reflections on Learning, Leading, and Life Xiao Han

Bridging the East and the West: Reflections on Learning, Leading, and Life Recently, I visited Chinese schools and universities in addition to working with university professors, schoolteachers, and students. In moving back and forth on the educational landscapes between the United States and China, I developed some new perspectives on shared concerns. When I pondered what to write in this chapter, the first thing that came to my mind was to document my thoughts and ideas about shared topics of international concern. Second, as a Faculty Academy (FA) member who observed its activities as a graduate student and then joined its communities of knowing (Craig, 1995a, 1995b), I am hopeful that my reflections capture the leadership roles scholars in academic exchanges between different contexts can take. Furthermore, when I reviewed my American-based experiences, the story of “inquiry” immediately came

X. Han (B) Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_8

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to mind. “Inquiry” is something that accompanied my life and learning experiences throughout my developmental trajectory. The process of inquiry traces to John Dewey (1938) who advocated for experiential learning. In 2019, China celebrated the 100th anniversary of Dewey’s visit to that country. Many Chinese scholars published journal articles to commemorate and appreciate Dewey’s contributions to China’s educational freedom and democratization and his influence and impact on his Chinese students. From April 1919 to July 1921, Dewey, who was over 60 years of age, gave more than 200 lectures during his 26-month stay in China, which equates to almost a lecture every three days. One of his three most famous Chinese students, Tao Xingzhi, the influential Chinese educator and thinker, even changed his name to Xingzhi (行 知in Mandarin means “to act before knowing”), to align with Dewey’s theory of experience and knowledge. Because of my participation in the Faculty Academy, I have been afforded this opportunity to show respect for Dewey as an international thought leader and to use his theories and practices to understand my and others’ journeys in the academy. To begin this inquiry into inquiry, I tell about my life in China before coming to the United States and meeting my fellow members of the Faculty Academy.

Journey to the United States Begins in the Downtown Women and Children’s Hospital I was born in the second year of China’s Cultural Revolution in Chengdu, the capital city of the largest and most populous province in southwestern China. Chengdu is the home-city of Chinese Pandas, which are national treasures. China had descended into chaos and Red Guards were turning on each other and fighting in the streets. According to my father, I was born in the downtown Women and Children’s Hospital on a quiet evening when sporadic gunshots could be heard down the street. At that time, my father was the Director of the Office of Revolution Committee of the City’s Education Bureau; my mother was the only female secretary living in a people’s commune in a suburb. The commune would not transfer her to the city government due to the “revolution’s needs.” Hence, separating my parents was considered necessary. I lived with my mother, attending a rural primary school until I was in Grade 4. I received hardly any early childhood education during an era when China’s education system was dismantled and devalued while labor was

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appreciated. Teachers were labeled “stinking Number Nine” and sent to the countryside to be reeducated by the peasants. Fortunately, I had several quality teachers who graduated from formal colleges before the Revolution, and who were sent to the school I attended. The four years I spent in the countryside were the happiest times in my life. Half of each school day, I pulled grass and fed hares in my labor class. My mother was very hard working, often sacrificing her personal time to visit poor peasants and middle-class farmers sometimes until midnight. In this circumstance, I was a child with nobody “in control.” Compared to children in the city, I was lucky to have vast open fields as my kindergarten playground. I climbed trees, caught fish in rivers, built fortresses in the sand, swam in big ponds, and fought with boys without adult care and supervision. Some poor peasants would give us fresh vegetables and meat to eat because my mother had cared for them. At a time of scarcity of food, my sisters and I had better nutrition than most children in China’s cities. Eventually, my father became the principal of a middle and high school closer to where we lived, thanks to the “caring for spousal relationships” policy that brought separated family members back together again. When China opened its doors to the outside world, intellectuals were once again valued. I personally escaped the fate of being sent to the countryside to be reeducated by peasants. The College Entrance Exam system was restored. The exam, which was difficult to pass, was considered “a bridge made of a single wood,” “a dragon gate,” “heaven,” and students who passed it were described as “military groups crossing the bridge,” “fishes jumping over the dragon gate” (Craig, 2019), “prides of heaven,” and so forth. My two sisters and I successfully completed the exams and entered key universities one after another. This was amazing because college acceptance rates at that time was only 5% compared to the current 80% acceptance rate (Higher Education Learning Network, 2019). Also, girls were less educated in that particular epoch of Chinese history. After the Cultural Revolution, China was in dire need of college faculty. I was offered a job to teach English as a Second Language at a worldrenowned medical university, West China University of Medical Sciences, which has now merged with Sichuan University, the campus from which I graduated. West China University was founded by the USA, the UK, and Canada in 1910. Working there, I was young (20 years of age), arrogant and ambitious, feeling proud to be considered an “engineer of the human soul.” As a teacher, I believed I shouldered the responsibility to

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transmit knowledge to students. Once an experienced colleague came to sit in my classroom. After a while, she cautioned me not to walk around the classroom too much; she claimed the movement made the students and her dizzy. Teaching was interesting because there was always something new in the classroom where curriculum stories are lived alongside students (Connelly and Clandinin, 2006). However, the tension was always there between teachers’ desired ways of teaching and the required National Curriculum Guidelines. The conflicts created difficulty in changing the system and necessitated a move away from learning that was geared toward students’ interests. Every teacher taught a mundane curriculum. We repeated the same lectures and covered the same practice tests day-after-day, month-after-month, year-after-year. Then an opportunity came my way when an alumnus from my father’s school, a faculty member at George Mason University (GMU) in the United States, recommended that I study Instructional Technology, a new program even in the United States at that time. Thus, I emigrated to the United States without knowing what I was going to study. I thought maybe I could learn something about how to use the new language lab at my university that had been donated by a Hong Kong philanthropist. This was how my journey began. Before telling and retelling, living and reliving my stories (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) in the United States, I present two concepts that sit in the background of this work: one is the relationship between experience and education; and the other is reciprocal learning.

Experience and Education When Dewey argued that life is experience and that education likewise is experience (1938), he noted that each experience takes up new learning from the experience that came before it, informing it in educative or noneducative ways. For example, when I transitioned from an informal school of nature in the countryside in my childhood to a formal school in the city with structures and physical walls, I became timid and silent. I had trouble dealing with my classmates because I was shy and felt ignorant; yet, there was a paradox to my character and learning. Because I had lived in a rural area, I was expected to be slow and to experience difficulties with learning. However, I quickly caught up. Thinking back, I do not doubt that my ability to understand content knowledge easier than

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others was attributable to a gift that nature endowed on me. Also, the experiential knowledge I learned when I lived in the countryside was a major contributing factor. The experience from rural to urban, from student to teacher, from China to the United States, and back to China from the United States over time, has endowed me with personal and social “stories to live by” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999) that link the past and future. My present stories depend on my previous stories and together my present and past stories create new knowledge to inform my future experiences and prepare me for even other experiences on the distant horizon. In Dewey’s (1916) words, “when we experience something, we act upon it” and “undergo the consequences” (p. 163). Over time, experience cumulatively shapes how we live, how we learn and ultimately who we are. My stories and experiences in China and the United States are continuous and interconnected and have greatly contributed to my education and growth and to my learning and leading as a teacher and a researcher.

Reciprocal Learning In addition to being individuals, human beings are social, always involved in relationships and located in environments. Therefore, the quality of experience, in addition to being personal and temporal, is also social and nurtured in communities. People learn from each other. The essence of learning is reciprocal, as Mary Catherine Bateson (2011) asserted, when she wrote “each side has something to teach and something to learn.” “Each learns from the other—and no one leaves unchanged.” Confucius in his teachings similarly stated, “In a party of three people, there must be one from whom I can learn. I will select his strengths to learn and use his shortcomings as a reference for my self-correction (in mandarin 三人 行, 必有我师焉 择其善者而从之, 其不善者而改之). This thought reflects ancient wisdom that is widely disseminated. What is valuable is the spirit of learning from others with an open mind, but even more so is the fact that we not only need to learn from others’ merits, but also from others’ shortcomings. These profound philosophical thoughts underscore the idea that no one will leave a learning partnership unchanged. I, as an international student and scholar traveling across different cultures and traditions, have benefited from mutual knowledge and reciprocal learning perhaps more than others. Switching between different worlds, and different people, cultures, education, and traditions has expanded my

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horizons of learning and helped me to more acutely understand both differences and similarities, with some of what I have come to know being painful. Now I share my experiential stories. I feature “two inquiries” that have influenced and changed my views on teaching and learning and research methods.

Narrative Accounts of My Experience Inquiry Teaching and Learning Story In the first year of my doctoral study at GMU, my adviser received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant investigating 4th grade science teachers and student inquiry teaching and learning, and the technologies they used to support it (Bannan-Ritland, 2002). Every week I went to two 4th grade science classrooms to do field work. The first science class I observed was about fiction co-taught by a teacher and a substitute teacher. At the beginning of the class, the teacher gathered the children around her on the carpet, explaining the steps for conducting a scientific experiment and told the children they needed to do science experiments just like scientists by recording their results of different levels of friction on different surfaces. Then, the teacher distributed tools. The students were actively engaged in the activity. After a while, a boy came up to the two teachers to show a can of beans he brought to the class to share his findings about specific gravity. The teacher nodded and said, “Interesting, this is very interesting!” I looked at the teacher and waited for her further comments. However, the teacher said nothing more. Was the boy’s understanding correct? What does she herself think about the phenomenon? The boy obviously was proud to show-off as he continued his explanation to the teacher. Coming back from the school, I wrote down my thoughts: How lucky these students are to have big, hardcover colorful textbooks with vivid pictures and illustrations and extracurricular books on the shelves around the classroom! And they also have many real tools to do experiments to learn abstract concepts! And they crouched on carpets. We sat in rows of tables and chairs. We didn’t have science class in elementary school due to the lack of teachers and resources. In middle school, my classmates took turns to use the only science laboratory on campus to do physics, chemistry and biology experiments. We didn’t have sufficient

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real-life tools. Once when doing experiments on oxygen’s burning point, I hid under the table because I was afraid the bottle would explode. It was traumatic and I have hated chemistry ever since.

I continued to write: Why didn’t the teacher tell the boy that his ideas about gravity were correct or not? Why didn’t the teacher comment on the boy’s understanding? Maybe she wants the boy to explore more himself? Or to protect the boy’s curiosity?

Because I studied instructional technology, I had the opportunity to observe a team of computer science graduate students who were designing, developing, and implementing the advanced and popular technology—Virtual Reality (VR) and how the environment worked to assist high school student’s inquiry learning and understanding of abstract scientific concepts (Salzman, Dede, Loftin, & Chen, 1999) in a second NSF-funded project at GMU. Later at the University of Houston (UH), I helped a team evaluating a TeachHOUSTON’s grant program, another innovative NSF project but this time around preparing an increasing number of qualified secondary Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) teachers for Texas and elsewhere in the nation (Craig, Evans, Bott, Stokes, & Abrol, 2017). A Physics by Inquiry course was enacted by my fellow Faculty Academy member, Paige Evans, to engage preservice high school STEM teachers in interactive, inquiry-based teaching pedagogies for physics. That is when my doubts about the 4th-grade science teacher I observed years ago became confirmed. A teacher should facilitate inquiry learning instead of simply nodding. At this point, I learned that the theoretical roots of inquiry are attributable to Dewey and Schwab. Dewey believed learning is deeply rooted in experiences and advocated for an experimental approach to teaching. Joseph Schwab agreed that students learn scientific concepts through inquiry and championed that science should be taught as inquiry. Narrative Inquiry Story My life, study, and work have seemed to be interconnected with inquiry. Before coming to the United States, I only experienced teaching basic

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college English courses, with no knowledge of scientific research and understanding of research methods. When I started my doctoral study at GMU, we were supposed to take Educational Research Methods that introduced the two main types of methods: quantitative and qualitative, and then continue them separately. But my advisor urgently needed to use qualitative methods to do the research project awarded by the NSF grant, so she asked me to skip Educational Research and hence, I took Qualitative Research at the same time as I entered the schools to observe and interview teachers and write field notes. Fortunately, the qualitative research methods course was taught by Dr. Joseph Maxwell, the well-known professor from Harvard University, and author of Qualitative Research Design: An Interactive Approach (1996). According to my advisor, she purposely directed me to Maxwell’s classroom. She said, “Maxwell’s class is so good that I sat in his classroom all summer during my pregnancy.” At that time, I had just arrived to the United States and everything was fresh and different. Maxwell, in his 60s, was a kind and easygoing person. He often wore casual sports clothes and carried a backpack on campus. He was so different from the Chinese professors I had when I was a student in China. In fact, Maxwell and his spouse adopted two Chinese girls from Chongqing, China, and once asked me to translate the letters he wrote to the girls’ biological parents. Professor Maxwell, with his profound knowledge of qualitative research methods, left a deep impression on me. Our textbook consisted of his numerous articles. My mind became filled with unfamiliar terms like “in-depth interviews,” “focus group,” “verification,” “generalization,” etc. My classmates joked that Joseph Maxwell’s hobby was to write long articles to test our reading abilities. Later I transferred to the University of Houston. One day, a Korean classmate told me that, in order to make up for the weakness of qualitative research methods in the College of Education, Dr. Cheryl Craig, an expert who would teach a research method called Narrative Inquiry, had been hired in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. When I heard the word, “narrative,” my thoughts reached back to my picturesque childhood where I ran wild in the vast countryside. My classmate emphasized that Dr. Craig was a student of Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin, the founders of the narrative inquiry method, and I assured him, “then you are going to be under the careful cultivation of the true master of masters.” At the time, I only resonated with the word narrative and knew nothing about how inquiry worked. As a research method,

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it surmised it could not be as simple as storytelling. When we first saw Dr. Craig, we talked about how beautiful, elegant, and approachable she was, and we discussed her warm smile. To us, her style was narrative. She exuded the old Chinese saying—“the style is the [wo]man (sic) (or like author, like book).” More recently, my Chinese friends commented that Dr. Craig’s smile opens up like a flower every time they meet her. I was very impressed with my first narrative inquiry class. Dr. Craig, who later became my advisor, talked about curriculum being life and that life also being curriculum. She furthermore asked each of us to chronicle stories from our own life, and then to pick out a few events that have greatly impacted us. I have personally benefited from this approach. I have paid special attention to discovering meaning and changes in people’s stories. As I have followed Dr. Craig’s research over the years, I have managed to fully complete my personal narrative turn (Lyons, 2007; Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007). As with this chapter, narrative inquiry allows me to review and reflect on past experiences and to better understand them as my life moves in the direction of an unknown future. Thus far, I have told stories of my experiences with inquiry as I have lived, studied, and worked in China and the United States. I now turn the focus of attention to my experiences in both Chinese and American contexts to further reflect on my experiences and better understand their meanings.

Reflection Inquiry Teaching and Learning Tradition in China In the turbulent years when I was growing up, I was lucky to have unique experiences as a child and later the opportunity and conditions to benefit from these experiences. Both Dewey and Schwab believe knowledge is developed through exploration. Opportunities to experience and the conditions to do so need to be created for students. In my childhood, I went to school in the morning and played in the afternoon. I gained first-hand experience. When I was in middle school, the teachers did not create conditions and methods for us to explore. However, they boiled eggs in the morning to give us nutritious breakfasts in order to be better prepared for the College Entrance Exam. This kind of teacher does not exist in China now, as the country’s economy has grown and become more powerful. However, as my teachers talked about abstract

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phenomena and concepts, I could use the lived childhood experiences I held in my body and mind to make sense of abstract ideas. I guess this was much more difficult for my peers who lived in apartments in cities because they had no childhood inquiry experiences to rely on. In recent years, I have observed China’s primary and middle schools again. Forty years had passed, and schools, teachers, and students have undergone tremendous changes. I saw beautiful campuses, advanced multimedia equipment, and rich extracurricular activities that I could never have imagined when I was a student. Since opening up, China has been deeply committed to education reform with clear objectives: to educate students in up-to-date ways, to return classrooms to students (Ye, 2002), to mobilize the enthusiasm and initiative of students, and to cultivate their creative thinking. However, as I came from American classrooms and entered Chinese classrooms, I noticed some obvious differences. Comparatively, Chinese students are more obedient and classroom discipline is better, but Chinese teachers and students still seem to lack initiative, flexibility, openness, and democratic ways. There are institutional reasons, as well as traditional cultural reasons, why this is so. Dewey’s pragmatism had a huge impact in China, but it did not fully take root in China. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, China’s education system was modeled on the education system of the former Soviet Union. Pragmatism, students’ learning from practice, and being inspired and guided by scientific truths, no longer existed. These progressive ideas were replaced by reliance on textbook knowledge, paying attention to the accumulation of knowledge, and cultivating students’ respect for knowledge and hierarchical authority. American education pays more attention to cultivating students’ practical abilities to use knowledge and students’ skeptical attitudes toward knowledge and authority. Through critical reflection, students expand, and create knowledge. But even in the United States, despite the emphasis on inquiry teaching and learning in science education, research has shown that the majority of teachers still fail to incorporate inquiry teaching methods in their teaching (Salish I Research Collaborative, 1997). The teacher I observed years ago was a prime example. China’s College Entrance Examination system was established in 1952, and discontinued when the Cultural Revolution began. After opening up, the examination system was restored, which had a positive effect

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on modernizing the country. However, as time progressed, the negative impact of exam-oriented education became more and more obvious. Now, China’s basic education reform has been revitalized with the explicit purpose of freeing students and teachers from the traditional education model. However, this approach is a counter story (Lindemann Nelson, 1995). The national College Entrance Examination is still China’s dominant education narrative. In addition, thoughts inherited from the traditional Chinese Imperial Examination system are still deeply ingrained in the culture. Even more so, Chinese children have grown up under the tutelage of parents and teachers since childhood, and hence, are more docile and obedient, which arguably limits their imaginations. Dewey’s theory of learning through experience was popular in China at the beginning of the twentieth century and is not anything new even today. Dewey highly respected Confucius’s theory of learning. For example, they both advocated teaching according to students’ aptitudes (in mandarin 因材 施教), but Dewey actually did not like people calling him Confucius in the United States because he opposed Confucius’s concept of hierarchy and moral preaching. All in all, China’s current system and traditional concepts presented huge obstacles to the exploration and enactment of inquiry teaching and learning methods. Research Method Tradition in China When I accompanied Dr. Craig as she gave keynote speeches in Beijing and Shanghai, there were often graduate students majoring in teacher education who asked me: “Sister Xiao, what exactly is narrative inquiry? Is narrative inquiry better than other methods? Why don’t you choose case study?” I told them that, based on my personal experience and opinion, there is no good or bad research method. Each method has its reason and strengths, and ultimately different approaches can achieve the same purpose. For a study, the most important thing is whether there is a clear set of research questions behind the design, whether the method used is suitable for answering the research questions, whether the research has considered previous research results, whether there are reliable facts and evidence, and whether there are appropriate references. It is important that the research process be clearly described and left open to academic scrutiny. The more a researcher meets these principles, the better it is. Second, narrative inquiry is dynamic, fluid (Schwab, 1960), and relational. As an empirical research method, it studies human experience and

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changes. Hence, it is used to enter the lives of schools, teachers, and students and to elicit one’s own and others’ “stories of experience” and “narratives of inquiry” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). With more and more international exchanges and China’s desire to publish articles in highly ranked international journals, questions about writing techniques and research methods became revealed in Chinese research articles. Chinese empirical research papers consist of less than 15% of the total number of published research papers, and most of that 15% involve subjective speculation and imagination (Tian, 2008). It is clear that China’s educational research relies almost exclusively on the traditional Chinese way of argumentation. Furthermore, Chinese researchers publish almost exclusively in Mandarin. Their a cademic journal articles rarely reference the international literature. Against this backdrop, “it is not surprising to see increasing disappointment and severe criticism by many even within China” (Yang, 2005, p. 76). Influential Chinese educators (i.e., Ye, Chen, & Cui, 1989) clearly state that conducting empirical research is an important step in making educational research scientific in China. Decades have passed and the situation has not changed much. In fact, some grassroots research methods are being used and improved upon in China. For example, the “close to the ground, indepth involvement” (in Mandarin贴地式深度介入), an approach adopted by the New Basic Education reform project founded by Ye Lan, is very similar to the narrative inquiry and reflective practice methods championed by Westerners (Bu & Han, 2019; Li, 2019). However, due to the lack of communication and the existence of “invisible walls”—inaccessible resources—China does not know that these methods have been used creatively and matured abroad. This demonstrates that the communication between China and the international academic community is lacking. In the meantime, many scholars insist that Chinese educational research must take the path of localization, because each nation has its own long history, culture, and traditions. However, there is a lack of a critical indigenous perspective even in mainland China. One hundred years ago Dewey believed China should go its own way while incorporating Western thought. His own principle in understanding Chinese culture has always been to think in Chinese (Dewey, 2012, pp. 190−198). Most important of all, the academic community must conduct a critical review of Chinese and Western cultures based on reflective thinking and fuse the most promising attributes of the two cultures to create a new approach

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in each country, one that is uniquely shaped by the problems and needs of today.

Final Comments In this chapter, I have reviewed my study, life, and work experiences in China, and featured two lived stories of inquiry. Next, I compared the meanings and inspiration for each narrative as understood within the context of China and the United States. Generally, exchanges between Chinese and American scholars are rare. Educational researchers, like scientists, need to ask critical questions and challenge national knowledge developments and theories through constructive dialogue with peers (Yuan, 2017) like those of us belonging to the Faculty Academy routinely do. The localization of Chinese educational research requires profound insights and understandings from both the Chinese and Western cultural traditions. Reflecting backward on this work, there is one idea that I want to especially reinforce: reciprocal learning (Connelly & Xu, 2019; Craig & Lee, 2019). Reciprocal learning and leading has been central to my knowing, doing and being and to Faculty Academy members’ knowing, doings and beings. I have benefited greatly from this mutuality and association. Moving forward, I especially want to be a thought leader who contributes to reciprocal communications between the West (i.e., United States) and the East (i.e. China). My international, intercultural life journey has uniquely prepared me as a Faculty Academy member for this task.

References Bannan-Ritland, B. (2002). Literacy access online: The development of an online support environment for literacy facilitators working with children with disabilities. Tech Trends, 45(2), 17–22. Bateson, M. C. (2011). Composing a further life: The age of active wisdom. New York: Vintage Books. Bu, Y., & Han, X. (2019). Promoting the development of backbone teachers through University-School Collaborative Research: The case of New Basic Education (NBE) reform in China. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 25(2), 200–219. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14.

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Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (Eds.). (1999). Shaping a professional identity: Stories of educational practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J. Green, G. Camilli, & P. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in educational research (pp. 477–489). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Connelly, F. M., & Xu, S. (2019). Reciprocal learning in the partnership project: From knowing to doing in comparative research models. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 25(6), 627–646. Craig, C. (1995a). Knowledge communities: A way of making sense of how beginning teachers come to know in their professional knowledge contexts. Curriculum inquiry, 25(2), 151–175. Craig, C. (1995b). Safe places in the professional knowledge landscape: Knowledge communities. In D. J. Clandinin & F. M. Connelly (Eds.), Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes (pp. 137–141). New York: Teachers College Press. Craig, C. (2019). Fish jumps over the dragon gate: An eastern image of a western scholar’s career trajectory. Research Papers in Education. https://doi.org/10. 1080/02671522.2019.1633556. Craig, C., Evans, P. Bott, S., Stokes, D., & Abrol. (2017). Attracting, preparing and retaining teachers in high needs areas: A science as inquiry model of teacher education. In M. A. Peters, B. Cowie & I. Menter (Eds.), A companion to research in teacher education (p. 470). New York, NY: Springer Publication. Craig, C., & Lee, J. C.-K. (2019). Reciprocity, partnerships and learning. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 25(6), 623–626. Dewey, J. (1916). Education and democracy. New York: Macmillan Press. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Collier Books. Dewey, J. (2012). Collected works of Dewey (1899–1924), Vol. 13. (X. Zhao, Trans). Shanghai: East China Normal University Publishing. Higher Education Learning Network. (2019). How difficult it is to pass College Entrance Examination in China? http://www.gkoline.com/z/18298.html on March 20, 2020. Li, Z. (2019). Collaborative research approaches between universities and schools: The case of New Basic Education (NBE) in China. Educational Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2019.1587593. Lindemann Nelson, H. (1995). Resistance and insubordination. Hypatia, 10(2), 23–40.

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Lyons, N. (2007). Narrative inquiry: What possible future influence on policy and practice. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 600–631). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pinnegar, S., & Daynes, J. G. (2007). Locating narrative inquiry historically: Thematics in the turn to narrative. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 3–34). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Salish I Research Collaborative. (1997). Secondary science and mathematics teacher preparation programs: Influences on new teachers and their students; Instrument package and user’s guide. Science Education Center, University of Iowa. Salzman, M. C., Dede, C., Loftin, R. B., & Chen. J. (1999). A model for understanding how virtual reality aids complex conceptual learning. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 8(3), 293–316. Schwab, J. (1960). What do scientists do? Behavioral Science, 5(1), 1–27. Tian, H. (2008). Comparative analysis of Chinese and US educational research methods (in Chinese). China Higher Education Research, 4, 28–31. Yang, R. (2005). Internationalisation, indigenisation, and educational research in China. Australian Journal of Education, 49(1), 66–68. Ye, L. (2002). Reconstructing the concepts of classroom teaching process (in Chinese). Education Research, 10(273), 25–30. Ye, L., Chen, G., & Cui, B. (1989). Move toward scientific goals—the evolution of educational research methods in recent ten years (in Chinese). Journal of Chinese Society of Education, 3, 2–6. Yuan, Z. (2017). Empirical research is necessary for scientific education (in Chinese). Journal of East China Normal University.

CHAPTER 9

Longstanding Lessons of Propriety as a Leader Denise M. McDonald

Introduction Authentic and productive leadership requires a capacity to deal with situational complexities as well as an aptitude for harmonizing conflicts among unique personalities. An effective leader must also possess navigational skills in making sound and fair decisions for all within their fold. Acquiring this propensity for propriety as a facilitative leader involves learning through the struggles and mistakes that invariably occur. In this chapter, I discuss my life cycle as a leader in various roles and with numerous management responsibilities. Highlighted are narrative reflections of defining moments, which occurred during challenging experiences of puzzling situations, facing vices, destabilizing failures, and unanticipated successes. Additionally, I gained insight through direct and vicarious observations of inept leaders as well as exemplary mentors who inspired and shaped my lessons in learning how to lead as a faculty and Faculty Academy member.

D. M. McDonald (B) University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_9

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Literature Authentic Leadership Myriad theories of leadership exist such as shared leadership, transformational leadership, contingency theory, leader-member exchange, teamcentric leadership, functional leadership, and more recently authentic leadership (Avolio Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans, & May, 2004; Dinh et al., 2014). Although many of these theories inform and align with my practice, the authentic leadership theory most closely parallels how I have evolved and matured as a leader. Additionally, authentic leadership theory presents a close connection with ethical and moral leadership constructs; therefore, it is most instrumental to specific discussion of issues experienced on my leadership journey. According to Avolio et al. (2004), authentic leaders possess self-awareness where their core values, beliefs, perspectives, and ideologies align with their leadership actions and are transparently evident to others in which they interact. Some common quality traits authentic leaders possess and generate include trust, integrity, connection (i.e., followers identify with leaders), optimism, genuineness, interpersonal aptitude, and hope; therefore, the affective aspect of leadership, including emotional intelligence, appears to be key in how authentic leaders lead (Gardner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005; Klenke, 2007; May, Chan, Hodges, & Avolio, 2003). Interestingly, if authentic leaders assume responsibility to be true to their values and personal convictions, risks will be taken, such as actions or decisions extending outside the bounds of social norms; thus, the process of developing as an authentic leader can be painfully challenging (Wong, 2010). Authentic leadership IS a learning process based on experiential episodes which shape rich, in-depth knowledge formation and impact existing assumptions through ongoing reflections, observations, active implementation, testing of skills, and experimentation (Kolb, 1984; Kolb & Kolb, 2005). This chapter capitalizes on my life stories as an authentic leader (Erikson, 1994; McAdams, 1993, 2001), where early leadership challenges provided experiences for acquiring self-awareness and selfdevelopment, and meaningful reflections which shaped how I currently view myself and operate through a facilitative and relational style (Cooper, Scandura, & Schriesheim, 2005; Mahsud, Yukl, & Prussia, 2010). Telling stories helps me unpack and historically examine my leadership experiences and make sense of how I have evolved over the years regarding my

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facilitative measures and relational strengths in leading others (Archer, 2008; Shamir & Eilam, 2005). Role Models and Leadership Values I have had the good fortune of knowing several exemplary role models of authentic leadership in work experiences as a former soldier, teacher, and currently as an academic in higher education. Each exemplar of leadership demonstrated values which I hope to exude in my own leadership positions. Those values include recognition, inclusivity, fairness, and provision of supportive opportunities for others. Five of those leaders are briefly commended below on how their mentoring behaviors and leadership values influenced my own leadership style as I strive for success as a relational and facilitative leader, mentor, advisor, and colleague (Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Ehrich, Harris, Klenowski, Smeed, & Spina, 2015). Recognition When serving in the military, recognition for excellence was sparse, especially for females who were often marginalized as outsiders. One officer I served took concerted effort to make sure that my work was recognized not only within the unit to which I was assigned, but more broadly by the entire base population, through two recommendations for awards. The actual awards, although significant, were less impactful on my efficacy as a leader than the realization that someone higher up spotted my talents and wanted to make sure others knew as well. Identity is formed through social recognition (Marcia, 2002), and praise-worthy credit in this case argued for my acceptance within a male-dominated society. Recognition, against the odds, was an empowering, identity-forming experience. Real leaders publicly acknowledge skills of their troops; thereby, modelling respect, rousing confidence, and ensuring fidelity. Inclusivity When teaching elementary school, I was on a team of five very different educators who possessed a variety of teaching styles, personalities, and dispositions, as well as unique managerial approaches with children. Our dissimilarities could have generated polarizing stances in many situations, but our team leader operated with an even-handed, respectful approach toward everyone. Because of the team leader’s inclusive approach for discussion and decision-making, we were all valued contributors in

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constructing curriculum. We operated as a solid, complementary team strengthened by our individual gifts. Inclusivity was this team leader’s approach to collaborative efforts, where teamwork felt effortless and our harmonious endeavors were always successful (Vaccaro & Camba-Kelsay, 2018). Although I had no leadership opportunities as a teacher to test this collegial approach, as a neophyte academic my Program Coordinator and later Department Chair operated with an identical approach and reinforced my valuing of inclusion as a collective force for optimizing efforts. Fairness As a tenure-track faculty member in academia, another exceptional and distinctive role model was an administrator in my college who unfailingly filtered problems to deflect issues that could potentially problematize faculty productivity; thus, their preventive actions optimized faculty effectiveness and promoted positive collegial interactions. Unceasingly, this role model demonstrated fairness in their ethically sound decisions and decision-making processes (Hassan, Mahsud, Yukl, & Prussia, 2013). Fairness was observed and most evident through their practice of listening to faculty and gaining a big picture view of situations (Xu, Loi, & Ngo, 2016). Everyone appreciated this administrator’s transparency (Avolio et al., 2004) and prudent decisions, even when individual faculty members had opposing views on specific circumstances, as trust in this leader’s judgment, ethics, and integrity was undisputed (Bouckenooghe, Zafar, & Raja, 2015; Cropanzano, Byrne, Bobocel, & Rupp, 2001; Simons, 2002). Supportive Opportunities Another role model in academia was an informal source of influence, in that they never had authority over me in an institutional setting (as we were at different universities). Rather, this individual served as an inspirational mentor who took me under their research wings and invited me to come fly with them. Many professional opportunities that resonated with who I wanted to be as an academic were offered through interactions with this renown scholar. But, the mentoring experience with this exemplar was not a ride-on-the-coattails type of scenario. My work contributions were expected to be rigorous and complementary to group efforts of which we, jointly, were dedicated to accomplishing. Most importantly, this encouraging role model exhibited unconditional support to those who listened to and willingly accepted guidance from their shared wisdom

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and accumulated experience in academia. This trusted mentor invested in others’ talents and skills as social capital (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2005; Carter, DeChurch, & Braun, 2015), developed a collegial ethos which I embraced; and most especially, supported novices who often felt thrown to the wolves in do-or-die settings (Hall, Blass, Ferris, & Massengale, 2004; Kouzes & Posner, 2017; Oh, Chung, M.-H., & Labianca, 2004). Their selflessness and professional generosity inspired many others (not just me) and continue to result in agentive results for those who accept professional opportunities offered (Balkundi, Kilduff, & Harrison, 2011). Summary My observations of and interactions with consummate role models of leadership resonated with and reinforced values I hope to emulate as a leader. Those values include efforts to: recognize and applaud others’ strengths; ensure inclusivity of all; employ fairness; generate opportunities for others to learn and provide support in those efforts (especially for novices). Infused within these core values are other related tenets of leadership, which include problem-solving acuity, transparency, trustworthiness, and altruism. I also value strategic risk-taking and although that skill was observed in some of my select mentors, I mostly developed that on my own, through trial and error, during episodes of resisting set expectations of conformity to established institutional norms (Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008). Lastly, the leaders I admire most are quality-seekers, not power seekers (See McDonald, 2016, 2020, in press). Status and power are discrete constructs (See Blader & Chen, 2012), and although some leaders possess both, those that operate through recognized and established status (i.e., prestige and respect of others) are generally quality-seekers; whereas, those that invoke established power (i.e., position of control over others) are power seekers (Magee & Galinsky, 2008). I identify with quality-seekers as authentic leaders, have thrived under their tutelage, and strive to emulate their just actions. Conversely, those leaders I have experienced as power-seekers repeatedly suppressed or thwarted my most creative endeavors and initiatives or stole my ideas as their own. Intentions of both types of leaders are implicitly understood; therefore, I welcome and embrace directives from quality seekers and resist or push back those from power seekers. Consequently, when in leadership positions, I aspire for quality seeking actions that support others in their professional endeavors.

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Ethical Leadership and Procedural Justice Authentic leadership involves ethical actions and insurance that procedural justice occurs. Leaders must invoke equivalent treatment and reasonable actions for everyone. Unfortunately, these measures are often tested by complex situations in established organizational environments. Ethical, fair, just behaviors by leaders inspire others to act in similar fashions, provide examples to follow, generate support, and create an environment for progressive change to occur (Brown, Trevino, & Harrison, 2005; Cropanzano et al., 2001; Simons, 2002). However, the complexity of idiosyncratic personalities and established organizational norms that advantage some over others, often defy and challenge authentic leaders’ good intentions. For example, bullying of peers, both covert and publicly aggressive forms, run rampant across professional institutions. How a leader negotiates dicey conflicts can be taxing and problematic, as all parties believe they are “in the right” or their views are factual and correct. Bullying Authentic leaders in organizations are often plagued with addressing power seekers’ unprofessional conduct of bullying others through social exclusion, ostracism, episodic shaming, harassment, imposed stigmatization, ungrounded insults, smear campaigns, silencing of communication, slanderous gossip, deliberate public undermining, incivility, interpersonal conflicts, attempted subjugation, intent to harm reputation, systematic mistreatment, escalated or embellished conflicts, psychological aggression, squashing differing stances or enactments of social norms, marginalization of initiatives and ideas, and other forms of rejection are common phenomena in the workplace. (McDonald, 2020, p. 214)

Bullying and mobbing behaviors prevail in top-down, authoritarian, punitive environments that highlight targeted members’ deficits; and conversely, where ingroup members receive recognition, even for faux strengths (Baumeister & Dewall, 2005; Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf, & Cooper, 2011; Glasø, Nielsen, & Einarsen, 2009). To ensure procedural justice for everyone, authentic leaders must deal with these types of ongoing challenges through acquired insight and awareness, application of interpersonal skills with others, marshalling of controversies, flexibility in problem solving, implementation of fairness based on facts, and most

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importantly, demonstration of a backbone when advocating for marginalized individuals (Caponecchia & Wyatt, 2012; Lipinski & Crothers, 2014; Nielsen & Einarsen, 2018).

Experiential Acquisition of Leadership Skills Leadership skills require time and experience to observe and develop effective traits in guiding others (Kolb & Kolb, 2005). However, the working environment in which one leads often imparts a template for expected leadership approaches, which shapes how leadership experiences are processed and internalized. If the template does not fit an individual’s style, one can adapt, adopt, or reject. I rejected an authoritarian, micromanager style in all my leadership roles, although I was significantly impacted by how I operated within dictatorial, commanding systems and would adapt when necessary for positive outcomes. Generally, viewed as an outsider to standardized leadership approaches, I learned to work around existing systems (more on this later). I favored a democratic approach for leading others, which involved placing trust in colleagues’ choices and decisions to make and take appropriate actions. I found myself at my “best” when I was helping or assisting others be at their “best” in optimizing their potential. Gendered Leadership Skills My learning to lead involved socialization processes and experiential episodes of challenges in multiple distinct environments. In the military, there was a clearly male-gendered leadership style dominated by directives and orders: as a female subordinate, those directives and orders often manifested as veiled manipulation and bullying. As a female marine in various leadership roles, I was given “crap” assignments that no one wanted, as they were frequently set up to fail (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). Additionally, as a 5’2,” 20-year-old female Sergeant, I was often trivialized, rarely taken seriously, and always underestimated within this unequal power relations military milieu (Vial, Napier, & Brescoll, 2016). My stature, age, and gender in the United States Marine Corps did not demonstrate masculine values (of the strong and physically elite), especially in the mid-1970s. However, my discipline, a core value in the military, was evident in all assignments and fit the ideals of expected solider actions. Ultimately, this discipline trait expedited promotions

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despite the misfit of my perceived physical fragility. Additionally, the facilitative and relational approaches which I employed were commonly viewed as weak and ill-aligned with military purposes as well as the expected authoritarian and intimidation style that dominated a male approach to leadership. Surprisingly, similar parallel gendered leadership styles and masculine hegemony were evident and experienced in publicschool settings as well as academia (See Søndergaard, 2005; van den Brink & Stobbe, 2009; Wyn, Acker, & Richards, 2000). I believe this military experience prepared me for the male gendered, masculinized culture of academia when I entered higher education (Blackmore & Sachs, 2007; Eveline, 2005). From my experiences, both the Marine Corps and academia present gendered expectations of leadership where competitiveness better served leaders over collaboration and support, as hierarchy was always honored and forceful male posturing rewarded (Thomas & Davies, 2002). However, in all my leadership positions and experiences (i.e., successes as well as failures and all in between), I stayed true to my values as I honed facilitative management and relational skills (Acker, 2012), applied my own style to various situations, and tested the effectiveness of logical inductive processes in problem solving, advocating for ostracized others, and applying fair tactics. In leadership roles, I had no interest in wielding power; rather, I hoped to project positive influence over others and our shared assignments, goals, and visions. Shadow Leader Never quite fitting within a traditional leadership style, I often operated in the background as what I describe as a shadow leader. A shadow leader supports traditional leaders in various relational ways that often go unrecognized (Eveline, 2005; Fletcher, 1999). Shadow leaders’ contributions inherently serve group goals, progressive initiatives, and the overall betterment of collective work. Behind-the-scene shadow leaders freely share their time, ideas, and resources to complement others’ work and growth in an attempt to optimize all situations of which they contribute and serve a pivotal part (See Elliott & Stead, 2008). Managing in the shadows brought light to my authentic leadership style that advanced through myriad life experiences.

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Narrative as Methodology This chapter utilizes meaningful storied events across my history as a leader in exploring how events and inspirational individuals influenced and shaped my present self as a leader. Through an interpretive process of autobiographical reasoning (See Habermas & Köber, 2015), I explicate my identity through past narrative accounts of experiences (McAdams, 1993; Pals, 2006; Pasupathi Mansour, & Brubaker, 2007). These retrospective narrative stories assist me in understanding and making sense of my actions and responses to others’ actions in learning to lead (Chase, 2005; Pasupathi, 2001; Singer, 2004). The data sources include historical anecdotes, personal documents, and most recently select emails, which serve as evidence for what I remember as critical events that triggered self-reflection in shaping my choices as a leader. Additionally, I learn most through challenges rather than successes as the liminal space in which disequilibrium occurs generates action and change. So, most remembered events are the jolting ones, which compelled reflection and adjustment. I start with a summary of what I learned about leadership while serving in the military and transition to one story as a public-school teacher. Although I had over six years of teaching experience in elementary public schools, I had no significant leadership tasks other than mentoring individual teachers; therefore, no critical incidents occurred during those years as a teacher. However, I observed both effective and ineffective leadership in school administrators that are included in the discussion. These stories describe what I learned, how my learning developed, and specific skills transferred into my leadership assignments in academia (McLean, Pasupathi, & Pals, 2007). As a narrative approach in telling these stories (Sparrowe, 2005), self-reflection and insight provide a meaning-making process for developing authentic leadership (Shamir & Eilam, 2005).

Looking Back: Hesitations, Highlights, and Hindsight I begin this narrative with the historical context of my learning as a leader through description of experiential episodes in the military, teaching experience in public schools, and most recently, my position in academia. Each episode grounds something learned that was either carried forward, discarded, or amended in an ongoing transformation of my current view

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of effective leadership behavior and qualities, which now direct my actions and decision-making processes. Looking Back I grew up in a lower socio-economic situation. There was no support and few options for going to college. In fact, once I graduated from high school (the first in my family to do so), I was on my own. Fortunately, an opportunity to acquire employment as well as college funds emerged through military service which provided the G.I. Bill. The tradeoff was a four-year commitment in a draconian, male-dominated social order, i.e., the United States Marine Corps. The type of leadership experienced during Boot Camp was absolute, tyrannical, and eye-opening. A Drill Sergeant’s goal was to indoctrinate trainees in unquestionably following all directions and orders barked at them. I quickly learned to submissively do exactly as told, as compromises were nonexistent and the observed tortuous repercussions for not obeying commands were unpleasant to say the least. Domineering tactics were not the type of leadership approach I aspired to acquire and adopt, but the camaraderie bred among recruits who shared the harsh and challenging experience of Boot Camp was insightful to how loyalty between browbeaten others develops. Being told “You’re only as strong as the weakest link” galvanizes collective strength, which generally ensures successful outcomes for arduous tasks that require concerted effort. Military basic training is predominately designed for instilling discipline, generating respect for collaborative teamwork, and preparing for “life or death” situations, so it serves a distinct purpose. Some lessons learned were carried forward into my civilian life, but others were not applicable or appropriate for implementation. I never assumed an authoritarian ideology within my own leadership methods as subsequent stories will reveal, but I eternally benefited from the reassuring feelings of alliance and solidarity experienced with fellow recruits. The relational aspect of leadership would continue as key to my approach in future experiences as a teacher and teacher educator as I found great appreciation and reward in association and affiliation with trusted others. The following discussion provides insight to my learning to become a leader prior to my position in academia, through my experiences in the military and as a classroom teacher. Those experiences involved:

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hesitations, highlights, and hindsight that collectively grew into an understanding of who I was as a leader and how I hoped to operate as an academic leader. Hesitations In one military situation (as an 18-year-old), I was assigned a troublesome task to rally soldier morale, with little to no guidance or modeling (fated for failure, and possibly deliberately so). I hesitated the charge but learned how to cleverly bend the rules and take action based on awareness of group motivation and incentives to encourage cooperation. To this day, when in a leadership role as an academic, I no longer hesitate, but instead attempt to model expectations and optimize colleagues’ productivity through tailored enticements that are aligned with individual interests and needs. For most of my colleagues in academia, paramount incentives include coveted leadership assignments and top-tier publication opportunities, as both provide credit toward advancement. So, as a leader, I practice: (1) modeling leadership roles and publication expectations and (2) inviting and/or recommending faculty for opportunities of leadership assignments and co-authorships. If faculty have support through the modeling of expectations, provision of incentives, and opportunities to excel, they will. Sidebar—rule bending became one of my strategies when placed in tough situations. Highlights Authentic leaders applaud their troops. One officer publicly gave credit to my industry on a significant unit review (which previously had failed), and took extra effort to write a recommendation letter for a meritorious promotion. The recognition was not expected, but greatly appreciated as this experience boosted my confidence as an individual and self-efficacy as a soldier. Giving credit where credit is due was a huge lesson in effective leadership. We see this type of action in the most respected and honored leaders. I received the promotion but faced embedded biases of gender when the promotion review board asked me a question regarding male uniform regulations. Fortunately, I knew the answer. Ironically, I was the only one going before this review board who knew the answer (and the other candidates were all males). Being underestimated delivered a bittersweet reward; however, the recognition I received taught me an important lesson on effective leadership-genuine leaders acknowledge others’ talents and contributions to collective goals!

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Hindsight After serving in the military, I earned a teaching degree and began my first year of teaching with 37 third graders (27 of which were boys). Yes, first-year teachers often end up with tough situations for cutting one’s teeth on what teaching is all about. However, contextual hardships are not considerations during administrative observations of one’s teaching competency. My first observation was conducted by the Assistant Principal, his first year in this role. Post-observation, he sat me down and listed all the things I had done well, and then presented the one major critique for the lesson. He claimed that he could not give me credit for the lesson because I did not implement the district required management system. In total disbelief, I quickly and confidently explained that I did not subscribe to the ideology of the management system which was focused on student behavior rather than student learning. Additionally, with 37 students in the class, any attempt to effectively use the system was not feasible for ensuring consistency in noting students’ inappropriate actions. He was obviously surprised that a first-year teacher in her first months of teaching would push back with a sound argument. He responded that he would consult with the Principal, who I was later informed dismissed the Assistant Principal’s concerns. The Assistant Principal had followed protocol but failed to see beyond the obvious discrepancy in the management program’s weakness for meeting the needs of this unique student population (and prudent teacher efforts for adapting to an exceptional situation). He focused on the trees but appeared oblivious of the forest through which he was walking (as a sightseer). In hindsight, for myself as a subordinate, I learned that if you are authentic in how you conduct your practice and have a solid rationale for your actions, sometimes your actions will prevail. As a future leader, I learned that authentic leaders need to be open to push back, others’ opposing views, and differences in ideologies, all to best support subordinates’ progress as well as the leader’s own skills in leading. Leaders must be learners. They must also be co-learners with mentees. As a novice teacher, I stood my ground by questioning the suitability of the management strategy with my classroom and taking logical actions. I did not succumb to blindly accepting a system that just didn’t work. Effective leaders will listen and learn from others.

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Summary Throughout my military experience, as a female, troops were often reluctant to follow me as a leader (See Eagly & Karau, 2002). My relational skills and authenticity were invisibly utilized, marginally accepted, and rarely recognized in this male-dominate organizational environment (Eagly, 2005). Public-school teaching yielded similar experiences that questioned authentic leadership traits and expectations. However, through good and bad experiences, I learned and refined many leadership skills that align with my individual values. Many of those learning experiences were carried forward into my leadership assignments in higher education.

Fast Forward: See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, Do no Evil? Fast Forward Over a 40-year time span, what I learned about leadership in the Marine Corps and as a teacher has been reflected upon and impacts my approach as a leader in academia today. From a previous publication (McDonald, 2016), I share a generalization of my leadership experience in the military compared to academia, My saving grace in this milieu was use of strategic intelligence which garnered promotions, but matched to males of similar rank, no power was comparably awarded. A parallel experience has been replicated in academia, acquired rank and added workload, with limited decision-making power in comparison to most males of the same status. My predisposition to ‘play fair’ and blue-collar value of ‘work hard’ directs my professional actions, but these inherent quality traits are abused rather than empowered within academic institutions dominated by male, white-collar administrators. (p. 15)

In this section, some background knowledge regarding my experience in academia is offered to clarify and illuminate my leadership growth and ongoing challenges. I have had experience at two institutions, so stories shared occurred at one or the other university. No identifiable information about individuals is presented. Titles are generalized and gender specificity is neutralized.

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Confession I must admit my greatest vice in being an authentic leader is lack of patience (i.e., in general, as well as with illogical aspects of professional settings that do not employ common sense processes for addressing and resolving issues). I have learned to partially compensate for my impatience through taking time to listen more, which gains respect from others; and making a concerted effort to inform others of my views and problem-solving ideas supported with solid rationales. Sometimes these efforts work; many times, they do not. Ironically, although I operate from an attribute model for supporting others, for my own progress as an authentic and effective academic leader, my self-reflections focus on failures and flaws as my deficits provide the utmost insight for improvement. Some of these challenges are difficult to disclose with a public audience (especially within current situations); and therefore, discussion is tempered in the following sections. Research indicates that academic leaders are often hampered in divulging some truthful narratives as they may thwart their own leadership efforts or potentially generate others’ judgment (See Pasupathi, McLean, & Weeks, 2009). Silenced stories are not less effective in shaping my leadership efforts, they just run as an undercurrent to my stream of consciousness. Although suppressed aspects of my stories may not be shared with others, inferences can be applied to gaps in unspoken sections of the stories. See no Evil The military, with authority supreme, always attempted (and usually succeeded) in covering up mistakes or passing-on unsavory tasks to inferiors. Underlings continuously took the hit or demotion for officers that were often the culprits of troubling situations. This strategy was evident in higher education as well: when in a pseudo-mid-management position, I was directed by higher ups to fire a clinical colleague who was not producing expected skills and assignments. Firing was the right decision, and I never argued that point, but I was not the one who hired this faculty member and I felt displaced by the action to be taken. I realized that being on the bottom rung of the leadership ladder, the responsibility of letting this individual go was assigned to me as the safest possible option for administrators to protect and secure their status. From my perspective, upper-level administrators did not want to be viewed as the “evil one” in this situation. And although the administration sanctioned and

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ordered the firing, they ensured the least amount of repercussions from others because as a novice, I had the least to lose (regarding position at the university). Of course, this troubling task could have been assigned as a test of my leadership ability (but I doubt it). Lesson Applied The firing incident was highly emotional for the clinical faculty member, who most likely viewed me as the devil incarnate. This was not a pleasant undertaking for me either, but it was necessary. Several lessons were learned from this experience. One lesson was that I could deliver when placed in a tough role or assignment (whether directed by authorities or through making my own prudent decisions). A second lesson learned was that some leaders will pass on responsibilities to protect their own selfimage. I immediately realized, as a leader, I never wanted to employ a passing-on strategy to subordinates. I vowed (to myself) to stay strong in tackling disagreeable duties even if this placed me in a potentially bad light with others. Additionally, if ever in a situation as a mentor to a junior faculty who must take on a difficult assignment, I would offer support to that faculty member and attend uncomfortable meetings that they feel may test their leadership aptitude. My senior administrators did not make that offer, which I would have readily accepted. Lastly, I learned that the relational component of leadership is never simple, never cut and dry. Balancing professional responsibilities with personal history is extremely difficult as a leader. And, it is often hard to stay positive in a role when all you can envision is the negative. Hear no Evil I was assigned a new leadership position at my institution. One task I wanted to address in this new role was aligning undergraduate course content with teacher certification standards to optimize students’ learning in preparation for becoming a teacher (and of course, passing the certification test). I decided to start with the neediest course for upgrading content. This particular course had been in our department previously, but at this time was assigned to a different department and rubric. Additionally, the chair for this course was a senior faculty member who had taught it for years. Unfortunately, the content presented in the course did not support acquiring any knowledge toward teacher certification. I requested a meeting with two upper-level administrators to discuss how

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our department could possibly go back in and gain some authority in revising and updating the course, as this was a required course for all teacher certification candidates; and therefore, fell within our auspices. Once the administrators realized the course with the issue and who was course chair, they cautioned, “Don’t go there…do not challenge this faculty member on their course content.” I was flabbergasted. They knew the course was ineffective, as evidence was provided from both negative student feedback on course evaluations and data on student test scores, which revealed students fell short on mastering standards that the course should have addressed. They were also provided with information and detailed ideas for how the course could be amended to better align with certification standards and content. Sadly, they did not want to hear anything about it! They directed me to not converse with this senior faculty member about the course (or anyone else for that matter). Additionally, they didn’t want any behind-the-scene attempts or actions taken to improve the course as they were concerned about this senior faculty member’s potential political push back. Instead of a focus for the betterment of the course which would improve students’ knowledge and passing rates of the test, upper-level administrators forbade me from addressing the issue with the faculty member and making progressive, highly needed changes. Lesson Applied Politics trumped this situation (as sometimes, visionary leaders are restricted in enacting sound changes). The senior faculty member’s clout and power over upper-level administrators in this scenario prevented improvement of the course, and from my perspective the overall program. My hands were slapped and tied. I could not do anything; and therefore, felt I was doing evil. I have since learned that effective leaders sometimes need to take risks. When facing administrators who practice see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and direct junior faculty to do no evil, their motives need to be challenged and awareness of their complicity brought to light, showing how a political stance of status quo and mediocrity negatively impact programmatic progress and improvement. Unfortunately, as a junior and untenured faculty member at the time, I saw, I heard, and I spoke about a critical issue, but was stopped from acting on it. This was not a successful first-step leadership opportunity or outcome. Moreover, the senior faculty member continued as course chair and this course remained untouched for over a decade; therefore, it continued

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to be useless and ineffective in supporting student learning. However, a department protégé took on my previous leadership post and also recognized this course as an issue affecting the soundness of the program. They may take direct action in changing the course through prudent updates. My efforts now are as cheerleader, encouraging the fresh face of leadership to challenge upper-level administrators (different faculty in these positions now) to make long-needed changes. I am optimistic that my leadership failure can become someone else’s success. In the circle of academic life, you can’t win them all, but must remain hopeful that positive changes will eventually occur by holding on to a vision and striking when opportune timing emerges. Speak no Evil Soon after acquiring tenure and being assigned a mid-level leadership role as Program Coordinator, I was selected/invited to participate in an extensive in-house institutional leadership training program. One of the first questions I asked the trainer was, “How many of the current Department Chairs, Associate Deans, Deans and other upper-administrators have completed this training?” His choked response, “none.” This was curious to me. Did high-level administrators not believe they needed leadership training since they were already in a position of power? Or was this training for junior faculty an induction/indoctrination process of “buyin” to the leadership styles of the institution? I naively believed that leaders would want to model that leadership training was important based on the principle of lifelong learning and improvement. This was not the case. For most in the upper level of the hierarchy, there was an elitist air about them regarding their positions at the institution. Others were undeniable bullies who would freely wield power plays to suppress those who did not support them or their initiatives. The irony was that many of these upper-level administrators at this time demonstrated traits that countered effective leadership. For example, when faced with institutional problems, they blamed others or highlighted contextual constraints, deflected direct data on organizational conundrums, subverted whistleblowers, covertly or directly marginalized malcontents who voiced valid critiques, skewed or spun stories for a positive perspective, and in extreme cases, outright lied. There was no open forum for airing dirty laundry and speaking freely. To speak of shortcomings of the institutional structure and leadership players

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was taboo, as everyone was expected to compliantly protect the organization (i.e., if you challenged the system, you could lose your position). From my observation and opinion, mediocrity (the safest form of submissiveness) crept into the system and suffocated vocal progressives. My own attempt to upset the apple cart has been through strategically placed and timed, critical questions that unearth obvious inequities or bring to light problems that should be addressed. Most of the time, my probing or clarifying questions to upper-level administrators were unconvincingly acknowledged and swiftly dismissed as something negligible that could be addressed at a later time (which never happened). I do not remember one specific moment when one of my questions was even considered for exploring further. Although, I do remember being verbally slapped by an administrator who perceived that my question was a direct critique of their leadership decision. Lesson Applied Some individuals believe that an effective, trustworthy leader must refrain from publicly speaking ill of associates (above and below them in rank). I agree with that stance, but I also believe that objective critique and critical questions posed are worthy to be heard and considered for cultivating a professional environment and advancing institutional goals. Dialogue is crucial to this process. What gets tangled up in power platforms and posturing is that some leaders, in order to protect status and stations, will not own up to mistakes. They may become defensive or offensive; both of which are unacceptable bearings for effective leaders. These types of unproductive actions are common in competitive work environments and generate fear in employees, which is always detrimental to organizational health and productivity. Additionally, I have observed artificial leaders throw others under the bus for the sake of self-interest or selfish goals. I have observed paranoid administrators openly criticize individuals based on personality quirks, not liking someone, or believing that a colleague is out to get them or diminish their power base. From these observations, administrators were systemically sanctioned to apply carte blanche critique of others, but no one could dare critique power players without repercussions. I have learned that personal attacks are divisive and play no part in organizational productivity. I have also learned that if power is unbalanced, it is corruptible and destructive. From these observations, I have learned that collaborative interactions and offering collegial support are

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my choices for leading with propriety; as this approach provides liberty for all to speak directly, objectively, and with a shared vision for progress. Do no Evil A colleague had committed an innocent mistake in their position of authority, which resulted in a peculiar student complaint. Unfortunately, the grievance occurred when the colleague was at a professional event in another state; therefore, the student was not getting the immediate results they expected and came to my office to demand action be taken. I listened, and from what I could determine about what the student shared, this was not an intentional offensive act by my colleague against the student. It was an oversight that could be easily resolved, so I addressed it and the student appeared satisfied with the results. Within a couple of hours, an upper-level administrator called me into their office and began yelling at me that I didn’t have the authority to do what I did regarding the student’s situation. I was both surprised and confused, as everything conducted to address the situation tamped down any further complication regarding the student’s complaint and issue. Apparently, although the issue was resolved, the student left my office and then decided to air their grievance to an upper-level administrator (not about me, but about my colleague). The upper-level administrator then urgently called me to their office. They claimed that I should have come to them to handle the situation. They shared, “You, more than anyone Denise, should know about the chain-of-command!” I quickly retorted, “Yes, and that means the Sergeant covers the Lieutenant’s back, the Lieutenant cover’s the Colonel’s back, all the way up the chain. As ‘Sergeant,’ I was covering both my colleague’s and your backs. Doing my job, and doing it right, means that I handle issues and you have-few-to-no complaints to deal with because I take most of the bullets.” The administrator loudly threatened, “I could fire you for this action!” This was such a ridiculous statement, I chuckled and responded, “You could, and then I could get a job someplace else making more money!” Surprisingly, the administrator laughed uproariously. They really were not mad or upset with me. I found out after-the-fact that this administrator despised the colleague in question and if I had not resolved the situation, they could have used the student complaint as fodder against my colleague. This event reinforced the saying that “No good deed goes unpunished!” I thought I was doing a good deed in deflecting a student issue where the student had their sites on

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raising negative claims against a colleague. I thought my actions were sound in protecting my colleague’s reputation (as well as the administrator’s, program’s, and college’s), but it backfired on me. Not knowing the political dynamics of the colleague and administrator (or why that should even matter), I was caught in the crossfire. Fortunately, no negative repercussions occurred against me other than the fleeting and misdirected reprimand that fell silent. More interestingly, the colleague I protected never shared appreciation for my intervention (which is another issue). Lesson Applied I am not one to hesitate in taking action when needed for the greater good and betterment of all. I lead through problem-solving initiative when challenges arise. Unfortunately, there are times when all good intentions fall short or unpredictably evolve into superfluous ordeals. What does this mean? Effective leaders make decisions all the time that potentially upset others (above or below their rank). Action involves risks; most notably (as in this case), when an act is perceived to encroach on someone else’s authority. I was blind-sided by the fine line between being a productive problem-solver and how an upper-level administrator perceived my act as doing evil. Reflecting on this scenario, I would conduct the same process and actions, even if I had foresight on how the administrator would respond. Perhaps the adage of do no evil is relative to the situation or subjectively interpreted by all parties involved. However, evil actions are intentional for causing harm to others, not ones that attempt to remedy a situation. I learned from this incident that exemplary leaders should inquire situational details for gaining a full picture of an event to prevent fallaciously accusing subordinates of wrongdoing. Summary Gmelch and Buller (2015) discuss how academic leaders may not receive formal training for their administrative roles. As a result, many will unquestionably adopt existing leadership approaches that are implicitly established in the system. Others may utilize prior-related experiences that promote the transfer of applicable management skills, but rarely develop a solid foundation of effective leadership. Rare exceptions are individuals who possess social skills, common sense, and emotional intelligence (Angelidis & Ibrahim, 2011; George, 2000; Mayer, Caruso, & Salovey, 2016), which make them more apt to understanding perspectives other

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than their own (an important personal construct for respectable leaders). Regardless, less than stellar prototypes in a system (i.e., those that indiscriminately wield power for their own purposes) and the lack of leadership training leave many ill-equipped in understanding themselves as leaders, developing awareness how to successfully guide others, and implementing reflective processes that assist with decision-making. There appears to be a systemic assumption that individuals who have skills or expertise in one area are inherently prepared to lead. I have not experienced this to be the case, as many administrators flail about in reactive processes, trying to retain their power rather than conducting thoughtful proactive approaches focused on optimizing talents of organizational members. The see, hear, speak, and do no evil mantra perpetuates ignorance of those in leadership positions, reinforcing illegitimate leaders’ ineffectiveness and junior associates’ feelings of powerlessness. There is often little collegial courage to challenge veiled unethical processes of illegitimate leaders and take just actions.

Discussion As noted in this chapter, when I served in the military, there existed a culturally ascribed perspective of leadership (i.e., masculine physicality, assertive directives, controlling actions, imposed power, unquestioned orders, and top-down authority). Leaders deliberately invoked fear in their troops to ensure orders were followed. A similar gender-dominant style of leadership was evident in public-school settings and academia (as the “good ole boys” network), with many power-seeking women adopting this style to work the system and garner leadership titles (as masculinized traits reinforced leader legitimacy) (Eveline, 2005). Women who thrived in climbing the academic ladder, clearly displayed and replicated male traits of dominance as this was the natural order of what was expected and unquestioned in a masculinized culture. Challenges occurred but more often than naught, failed. Within these systems, other women, predominately the quality-seekers, were delegated leadership “roles” for unsavory tasks. For years, colleagues at several institutions jokingly referred to female leaders who took on the minutiae of report writing, time-consuming committee service, and other delegated housekeeping work, as mother hens. This is an accurate description of their valuable (although invisible) contributions to their organizations. Unfortunately, those intense assignments were gender specific, where no power

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was attached to the roles: just dirty work that yielded little recognition, although significant service responsibility was provided through conscientious and collaborative efforts (Read & Kehn, 2016; Ryan & Haslam, 2005; Vial et al., 2016). In general, Hays (2013) found that men desire and pursue power more than women; and conversely, women desire and seek status more than men. This appears to be true as many mother hens at different universities are respected quality-seekers and preen status, while ruling roosters with resources crow their power. I realized early on that I would never be given opportunity to transform established and entrenched institutional norms and culture that possibly could be detrimental to the majority in power (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Magee & Galinsky, 2008). My choices were (and still are) bounded within the system, which at times require subversive actions or a bending of the rules. However, social, cultural, and systemic barriers limit only “assigned” leadership roles. For me, leadership valence is realized through productivity, worthy outcomes, and goal attainment, where authentic leadership actions behind-the-scene continue whether they are legitimated through public acknowledgement or not.

Concluding Comments I have used narratives of self to examine my leadership experiences and identity as well as scrutinize factors within professional environments that influenced or shaped my skills and growth (Pasupathi et al., 2007). Storytelling has provided a meaning-making process for understanding my place and identity in academia (See McDonald, 2016, 2020, and in press). Unfortunately, personal stories of identity and storytelling events which impact identity formation are inherently faulty due to memory lapses, positionality, mature reinterpretation after-the-fact, etc. Memory is limited and with each iteration of a remembered story, slight changes and possible embellishes occur that slant intention of the story shared. Ideally, regarding stories of leadership experience in academia, others’ perspectives of the stories would enhance validity of my perception of events as all stories are eternally embedded with biases and individual positionality limits of perspectives. However, my memories are what influence my identity-forming leadership style and decisions. I own my experiences and actions true to my “self.” They are my narrative truth (Spence, 1984). Through reflections, I realize that in various situations,

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I have both conformed to normative control and resisted typical maledominated leadership styles, depending upon the ultimate goal of a “big picture” view. However, the existing systems of all organizations to which I was a member, have tacitly attempted to shape my identity and leadership actions through a replication process as a complicit colleague who defers to existing power (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002). Additionally, from my own shared history, I acknowledge that I learn more from challenging experiences than those that occur with little to no conflict. So, perhaps these leadership challenges, although unpleasant, are more impactful in shaping productive actions genuine to my values as a leader (Elliott & Stead, 2008). Many of my stories shared are redemptive in nature, in that I overcame challenges and obstacles. Stories of redemption are identity forming and support psychosocial adaptation as well as agency (See Greenhoot & McLean, 2013; McAdams & McLean, 2013). Lastly, as a quality seeker and authentic leader, I hope to influence and inspire rather than direct or dictate others. This requires I adapt when needed, collaborate when possible, apply fairness and common sense, utilize appropriate processes for inclusion of others, implement transformative skills and flexibility to transcend barriers and constraints, and embrace new ideas. These “soft” leadership traits generally do not align with expected demands of stereotypical leadership characteristics at staid institutions. With a presence and focus that decouples power and status, my aspiration to optimize my own and others’ efforts toward betterment of the collective is hidden in the shadows. I was once asked by an upper-level administrator to consider administration positions in the future. I responded, “I am a leader, but my facilitative and relational style does not fit within the leadership expectations at this institution.” I know myself, my values, and how I can best contribute to my work environment and professional field. I attempt to serve as an authentic leader who operates with propriety, with no assigned authority or attached power. The level of influence for this type of leader is often indiscernible, but from my perspective yields valuable support for genuine progress as I model at my home institution and within the Faculty Academy.

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CHAPTER 10

Introverts as Leaders: How Involvement in a Professional Learning Community Can Facilitate Development of Skills Jean Kiekel

Introduction Leadership Leadership is an important characteristic for any organization’s success. Without effective leadership, endeavors will fail (Henkel, Marlon, & Bourdeau, 2019). What are the characteristics of a leader? If asked the question, many would state that a leader is one who can work with people, communicate, participate, and lead, and make presentations when needed. Leaders are people who are able to inspire and motivate a group of people (Evans et al., 2015; Farrell, 2017). Having effective leadership often results in improved performance, organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and employee retention (Bradley, Grice, & Paulsen, 2017).

J. Kiekel (B) University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_10

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Leadership style is made up of personality traits, demeanor, and communication patterns (Aly, Hodge, & Elmahdy, 2019). Farrell (2017) identifies two types of personality traits—extroversion and introversion— which are based on the work of C. G. Jung who first identified these traits. For the most part, the traits associated with extroverts are the ones seen as most valued for leadership (Stephens-Craig, Kuofie, & Dool, 2015). These traits include being outgoing, gregarious, socially competent, assertive, and quick decision makers who are willing to take risks. Extroverts draw energy from their surroundings (Buller, 2018; Evans et al., 2015; Weinstein, 2017). Being an introvert, however, often means leadership potential can be overlooked by the organization (Buller, 2018; Connelly, 2014; Farrell, 2017). The character traits most often associated with introverts are: selfmotivated, thinking carefully before speaking, risk-averse, shy and quiet, socially incompetent, artistic, creative problem solvers, detail-oriented, good listeners, calm, and relationship-oriented (Dodge, 2017; Vien, 2016; Weinstein, 2017). While introverts can be good leaders, they often do not see themselves as having the right set of skills to be good leaders within certain authoritatively directed environments and may underestimate what they are capable of producing (Dodge, 2017; Layman, 2017). When introverts do become leaders, it is often because they have a passion about something which makes them feel more comfortable in moving into a leadership role (Connelly, 2014). It is estimated that one-third to nearly one-half of all people identify themselves as having introversion tendencies (Connelly, 2014). While the workplace is often set up to cater to the extrovert, this does not mean the introvert cannot become a leader. While everyone is born with certain innate skills and abilities, leadership skills can be developed, although it may take the person with introvert tendencies longer to do so (Aly et al., 2019; Connelly, 2014). Leadership in the Academy Higher education in general is seen as a field that has a high number of introverts who self-select into this career due to the solitary nature of teaching (Buller, 2018). As an academic, there is value placed on independence and academic freedom and an ability to function autonomously. For

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this reason, people who identify as introverts move into leadership positions only when they feel passionate about something and are comfortable in taking the lead (Buller, 2018). Women are often underrepresented in leadership positions (Redmond, Gutke, Galligan, Howard, & Newman, 2017), especially in academia. Today’s junior faculty in higher education are much more likely to be older, female, ethnic minorities, or foreign-born making their experiences very different from the traditional, tenured, white-male faculty (Collins, Slough, & Waxman, 2009). Females are marginalized in academic positions and experience less success when compared to male faculty (Collins et al., 2009). This may be because female faculty often feel like outsiders to the structure of the academy due to external obligations and responsibilities (Gibson, 2006). Programs to develop leadership in academia, especially for early career females, are not seen as an important part of academia’s culture with most of the leadership development being learned on the job (Bradley et al., 2017). The time taken for the learning curve in acquiring leadership skills places a significantly smaller number of women in contention for leadership positions. Another potential reason for fewer women in senior leadership roles in academia is not just a lack of leadership training, but also a lack of suitable role models and mentors (Redmond et al., 2017). Because of this, women who are in leadership roles have little experience in supporting other women looking to acquire leadership roles. This means they are unable to offer their support and may even consider other women as a threat to their own continued advancement (Redmond et al., 2017). Because women often feel that they are outside the structure of the academy due to familial and other responsibilities, they may not take ownership of their own career progression or they may find it extremely challenging to do so. In order to be successful in moving into leadership assignments, ownership of career progression is an important step (Redmond et al., 2017). Many introverts do not feel they have the skills necessary for leadership, and therefore, may not know how to develop the skills necessary to take control of their progression as a leader. Through their own awareness and persistence, introverts can take charge of their own skill development by demonstrating their own passion and finding a good mentor (Vien, 2016). For the introvert, moving into a leadership position may sometimes feel like a random activity (Redmond et al., 2017). The introvert may suddenly realize that they are in a leadership position with no real sense

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of how they got there. Through reflection, however, the attainment of a leadership position is often achieved because of the passion and feelings about the activity that move the introvert into the position of leadership as well as the intentional acquisition of the skills necessary to lead (Redmond et al., 2017). Professional Learning Communities and Benefits for Introverts and Their Leadership Development Individuals and organizations must find ways to develop leadership capacity through development of personal and professional strengths (Roupnel, Rinfre, & Grenier, 2019). A recognized method for developing such skills is through networking. Networking can be done by joining expertise-specific professional organizations, using social networking to find like-minded individuals, or joining a Professional Learning Community (PLC). PLCs can include mixed-gender networks, female-only networks, informal and formal networks, geographic networks, and discipline specific networks (Redmond et al., 2017). PLCs encompass the different social networking opportunities that introverts may need to help them develop leadership capacity. A PLC is a group of individuals, often multidisciplinary, who come together to realize and cultivate professional growth (Wilson, 2016). Characteristics of a PLC include: a focus on learning, commitment to collegiality, and results (Battersby & Verdi, 2015). The primary goal of a PLC is to provide a collaborative professional culture that helps members become successful in their endeavors (Battersby & Verdi, 2015). Participation in a PLC can aid the introvert in development of the skills necessary to be a good leader. One necessary characteristic of a PLC is that, in order to become a cohesive and valued source of information, members have to trust each other (Hands, Guzar, & Rodrigue, 2015). Members need to feel that they can easily share information in a non-evaluative environment. Because such groups use open dialogue and feedback to develop and improve leadership skills and abilities, without trust, open communication could not occur and the effectiveness of belonging to such a community would not be realized (Hands et al., 2015). PLC participants cheer on the efforts of group members. This form of support is done by providing constructive criticism, feedback, acknowledgment of abilities, suggestions for additional resources, expression of

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pride in others’ accomplishments, and encouragement for future efforts. Because PLCs are multidisciplinary, these provisions of support allow for an environment of coaching to take place (Hands et al., 2015). All members of a PLC engage in various dimensional aspects of coaching through the diversity of its multidisciplinary membership and expertise of its members (Gutierez & Kim, 2018). Progressive individuals seek out PLCs as a way to fill gaps in their own learning. Because continuing education is important in any profession, especially in education, involvement in a PLC allows members to share their strengths as well as their own shortcomings and seek out other members who can help them improve in areas needing enhancement. As a social community, PLC members network to learn from and with other members (Gutierez & Kim, 2018). A PLC assists in the development of skills and abilities not only through open dialogue and feedback, but also with reflection on practice, and development of new practices (Hands et al., 2015). Effective participation in a PLC provides benefits to the individual as well as the organization to which they belong (Battersby & Verdi, 2015). Involvement in a PLC can be extremely helpful in assisting women and those with introvert tendencies to take ownership of their own leadership progression (Redmond et al., 2017). Educators are life-long learners. Therefore, they need to stay up-todate on best practices and new research (Gutierez & Kim, 2018). Novice faculty often do not know what they do not know. This lack of awareness makes it difficult for neophytes to ask the right questions and get the information they need to be successful—not only for moving into leadership roles, but also to be effective in their positions—especially if they have high introvert tendencies (Collins et al., 2009). Therefore, it is important for them to seek out their own forms of support. Involvement in a PLC can provide opportunities for collaborative research projects as well as give confidence and validation to the efforts of the new faculty member who seeks leadership roles within their institution or professional organizations of which they are a part (Collins et al., 2009). Faculty Academy as Knowledge Community The Faculty Academy is a knowledge community (Craig, 1995, 2007; Curtis, Reid, Kelley, Martindell, & Craig, 2013) that I have been involved in since 2010. As a knowledge community, it shares many of the same characteristics of PLCs of which I am involved. These characteristics

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include the opportunity to bring the group challenges and experiences that are being faced and receive constructive, reflective feedback and support. The Faculty Academy has offered me the opportunity to share my story with others as well as hear their stories and offer reflective feedback and support. The group could not operate as a knowledge community if there was no trust among members (Hands et al., 2015). This group has been especially helpful in areas of publication and gaining promotion and tenure. As a group, the Faculty Academy was initially formed in 2002 initially as a group of professionals interested in improving practice, research, and writing in a collaborative and collegial atmosphere, as well as providing leadership opportunities to members. It was originally formed across three campuses of a university-wide system, but today includes members from six universities. This organization has been a major support mechanism for me in honing leadership skills and self-confidence, improving my teaching abilities through collaborations with like-minded professionals, and working across disciplines to access richer research opportunities.

Research Methods This chapter utilizes a narrative inquiry approach for discovering how I, a very introverted person who had no desire to ever move into any sort of leadership role, came to realize that I had made such a transition into leadership. Narrative inquiry offers important insight into the personal and social conditions associated with my transition to leadership roles (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). Narrative inquiry begins with the telling of a story. It details the individual’s life over time and in relation to people and situations, leading less to generalizations and certainties but rather more toward the wonderings and imaginings of other possibilities (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). Everyone has a story to tell and it is in the telling of the stories that we, and others, are able to understand the contexts of what we are doing and why, as well as how it might shape the future (Meier & Stremmel, 2010; Pritzker, 2012). It is through our stories that we make sense of our existence allowing for an understanding of the larger “cultural, social, familiar, and institutional narratives” that help shape the experiences (Caine, Estefan, & Clandinin, 2013, p. 577). In this chapter, an autobiographical narrative inquiry is shared because the story being told is my own: I transitioned from being one who was

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content to stay in the shadows grounded in my introvert tendencies to one who has now moved into more outgoing leadership roles when the conditions are suitable. My story starts with a vignette and offers a reflection on how that event shaped me. Through my autobiographical reflection of my story, I also explore the impact of how being involved in a knowledge community facilitated my development of skills most often associated with extroverts, allowing and honoring me to “be” an introvert but function as an extrovert when necessary.

My Story and Reflections A few years ago, I was attending an international conference—a conference in which approximately 20,000 people attend annually—and the Board President saw me sitting in the cafeteria. She came to me, called me by name, and said I was just the person she was looking for. She was thinking about an edited book project and thought I would be the perfect person to co-edit with her. I was very honored that she would think of me for such a project. This encounter led me to further reflection, which had me wondering how it was that I had made such an impression upon her that not only did she know who I was (from such a large organization), but that I was the right person to co-edit a book with her. During this reflection, I came to the realization that I currently held leadership roles not just within that international organization, but also within several other national and international organizations and was recognized for those roles. I began to contemplate how it was that I had come into leadership roles, roles that I never thought I would aspire or achieve. From the Beginning Growing up, I have always been the wallflower: the shy, quiet girl without much self-confidence, who was content to sit in my room and read or support my more outgoing friends in their endeavors, but never seeking recognition for myself. I recognize now that these are introverted personality traits. I grew up the oldest of seven children, six of whom were anywhere from 10 months to 15 months apart in age. We were not wealthy and some would say that we grew up in poverty. Our clothes were handme-downs or homemade by my mother and grandmother, which I often found embarrassing. I was often bullied in the Catholic school I attended,

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from third through eighth grade, by members of the more popular cohort of students. This only increased my desire to remain in the background, avoid confrontation, think before I spoke, and work in groups whenever possible, since I did not want to become a leader of any sort. In 9th grade, I transferred to the public-school system. No one knew me there. They did not know of my shyness or anything about my previous history. In true adolescent form, I experienced the desire to remake myself through experimenting with my personality to try to break out of some of my introverted characteristics (Santrock, 2019). With a larger pool of peers, I made more friends than the few I had at the Catholic school. I did not experience the bullying in the public-school system either, which made my transition to public school very good for me. I also involved myself in more activities that made me more visible, although I am not sure I thought of them as ways to get over my shyness. I tried to choose my friends carefully, looking for people who could pull me out of my shell. I made friends with two people who were very outgoing and included me in activities without a second thought. While I did come out of my shell, I was still very shy outside my cohort of friends. Reflection My childhood and adolescence laid the groundwork for where I am today. Looking back, I recognize the traits in me that I exhibited that were very different from my sisters and brother. I honestly desired to be more like one of my sisters, the tough sister who stood up for herself and was very assertive, but unfortunately, I could never bring myself to do so. Growing up poor also left its mark on me. Being in poverty at the time was very different from growing up in poverty today, but some of the effects are still the same. I did not go to the best high school in town, but I had parents who valued education and pushed my sisters and me to always excel. I also had teachers who pushed me even when I did not think I had the ability or skills to excel. When I received my first “B” near the end of 9th grade, I asked the teacher why and he said it was because I could do so much better. He held my feet to the fire that final 9-weeks of the school year and because of his influence, I always pushed myself. Because of him, all through high school, I took courses that truly challenged me with some of the most demanding teachers in the school. Even though I was being challenged and I earned good grades, I still never felt smart enough. I also now recognize this behavior and feeling of not being good enough as an introvert tendency. I knew what these teachers expected, and I was

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able to give it to them because of my attention to detail, reflective nature, and persistence, which are hallmarks of those with introvert characters (Buller, 2018). University and Higher Education I never thought I was going, or even could go, to college and complete even one degree, much less three. Because I lacked self-confidence in my own abilities, I did not think I was smart enough to go to college even though I graduated near the top 10% of my high school class (ranked 44 of 401 students). In addition to that, because I grew up poor, I knew my parents did not have money to help me go to college. One of my best friends made me believe that I could go to college and we planned to go to the university together. However, it ended up that she got pregnant, married, and our dream of going to the university together did not happen. I did not have the confidence to go to the university on my own. My parents encouraged me to go to the local vocational-technical (vo-tech) school to learn a trade and this is what I decided to do. At the vo-tech, I enrolled in a course that taught me medical transcription—the act of transcribing doctors’ progress notes, intake summaries, discharge summaries, surgical summaries, etc. This is also where I was given my first real leadership opportunity. While in this vo-tech program, the instructor obviously saw leadership potential in me because she placed me in charge of the group planning the annual trip that her class went on every year. It terrified me to no end that the trip would not be successful because I might forget some important detail to tell the planning committee or where the reservations or arrangements would not be made. I did lead the group and the trip was successful, even though I was afraid the entire time that it would be a disaster. After getting married, I supported my spouse with my vocational skill while he attended university. While he was working on his degree, he encouraged me to take courses on a part-time basis in the evening as a way for him to receive additional tuition assistance grants because this would ensure that we had two people in the family attending university. While I initially resisted because I did not feel like I would be successful, eventually I started taking classes. When he graduated, he accepted a position with an oil and gas company in the middle of the state—a distance of about 300 miles round trip from the college town where we were living. I encouraged him to accept the position, saying that I was really only

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taking courses to help us out financially. However, after moving away from the college town, I realized that I had started something I really wanted to finish—my bachelor’s degree in Business Administration. So, with his further encouragement, I made the 300-mile round trip two days a week for one semester until we moved to a town 70 miles from the university, and I carpooled with different groups for the next two years to complete the degree. I even went on to complete my master’s degree as well, at a satellite campus for the university in the town we were living. It took nine years to earn both degrees, but I did it. When I later went back to school to earn my Ph.D., I had two experiences that shaped and pushed me into developing leadership qualities. One was that I became the graduate teaching assistant for the Associate Dean of the College of Education. She was a very demanding and wonderful mentor who, again, pushed me to excel. In this position, I helped teach the Education Honors course, created and distributed the college’s quarterly alumni newsletter, assisted in report writing for accreditation, and served on university committees. This professional assignment was an opportunity to see what life would be like once I received my first university appointment (and beyond). I also became a member of the graduate student organization in the College of Education. In fact, I held the role of president for two years. As leader of this group, I was responsible for planning and facilitating meetings and agendas and communicating with members. This organization sponsored monthly brown bags so graduate students, mostly doctoral students, could come together, share resources, talk about ideas and difficulties with their research, and many times others were able to offer solutions and assistance to others in attendance at these meetings. Reflection As has been noted, introverts often have no self-confidence and do not feel that they can accomplish what their more able, outgoing peers can (Layman, 2017). This was certainly true for me. In the beginning, I did not feel that I had the ability to be successful in higher education, even though I was nearly a top 10% graduate of my high school class and pushed myself with challenging teachers who demanded excellence of me (e.g., my friends questioned why I was taking my fifth course from my favorite English teacher who was the most challenging of all English teachers in my school). Supporting those whose personality traits may not

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fit with what is expected of leaders in traditional settings—those extrovert qualities—has been shown to be incredibly effective in helping the introvert move into the spotlight and take on leadership roles (Banasik & Dean, 2016). It may not be a quick transition, but it is commonly how introverts move into leadership roles (Roupnel et al., 2019). There also must be passion and caring about the cause if the introvert is going to be able to move into positions of leadership (Connelly, 2014). This is how I started to move into leadership roles. I found myself having small success with groups and causes—such as my involvement in the graduate student organization—which I felt were important because they gave me more self-confidence and commitment to the organizations of which I became a leader. In retrospect, I realized through reflection, that my early leadership experiences seem random, but they also helped me build leadership skills which are serving me well in my current leadership roles. Academia My first position in academia was at a small university that was part of a larger system in the Midwest. I was part of a five-faculty member graduate program in elementary and secondary education with initial certification. This position was a tenure-track position and I was lucky enough to work with supportive faculty that helped me grow and feel like a valued member of the system. The only aspect of this position that was not ideal was that it required that I spend a year living away from my family, because my spouse was unable to secure a job in his field in this location. This led to conflicting feelings about my position within the academy and my ability to be successful. My second position in academia was at the main campus of a fourcampus university system in the South. This was again in a College of Education, but in a non-tenure track, full-time faculty position. In this position, I was responsible for teaching and serving the institution, but research was not a requirement. The major issue I faced at this institution was that a large percentage of the non-tenure track, full-time faculty positions were held by people who had graduated from the system. As such, these faculty, myself included, were often treated like graduate students rather than the degreed and credentialed peers we were. While research was not a requirement at this institution, if I ever wished to achieve a tenure-track position I knew that I would have to demonstrate a track record of publications. Each year when I reported my research

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activities along with my teaching and service work, I always received the feedback that such activity [research] was nice and “we are happy you are researching and making presentations, but it isn’t necessary.” In addition to this, as a non-tenure track faculty, in fulfillment of service to the university by serving on committees, my contributions to those committees were often belittled. After making a valid suggestion at one committee meeting, I was told by a tenured professor, “You wouldn’t understand, you are just a visiting [with emphasis on this word] assistant professor” (Note -Visiting assistant professor was the classification given to non-tenure track, full-time faculty at that time). Because of the frustration I experienced during my second academic appointment, I made an effort to find a position that would allow me to become a tenure-track faculty member. I was encouraged by the Faculty Academy to do research and members supported my endeavors to find a more suitable position, which I eventually did. My current position is at a small Catholic liberal arts university in the South, and I achieved tenure two years ago. This institution is very much like my first academic position. The full-time and tenure-track faculty percentage is relatively small in my department, but we do get support for our endeavors. In this current position, I have taken on more leadership roles as well. Some of this leadership activity has been because of my passion for my subject. For example, I have started a new M.Ed. program at my institution related to instructional technology, one area of passion. The past two years, however, have been faced with uncertainty across the university as declining enrollment and financial instability are taking their toll. This has led to some increased insecurity regarding my perceived skills and abilities even though I have been active in doing what I can to prove I am worthy of my tenured position. Reflection My first position in academia reflects the mixed loyalties that female faculty must face—are they part of the academy or are they bound by their outside responsibilities such as family obligations? I say this because I have five children. During my first professional position, I had one child in college and four still in K-12; I seriously felt the pull between the conflicting priorities of family and career. I spent my weekends driving eight hours each direction between my job and my family. This also left little time for conducting research, which is an essential part of moving up the ranks in higher education. The divided loyalties (Gibson, 2006)

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between career and family caused me to leave my first academic position after just one year. It was during my second academic appointment that I was invited to join Faculty Academy. This knowledge community began in 2002 to provide support to junior and non-tenure track faculty in this university system. It was through this organization that I discovered I was not the only person who experienced the previously described treatment at that institution. It is known that universities are increasingly turning to nontenure track faculty to fill positions due to financial flexibility, changes in technology, and changes in enrollment. These characteristics often result in a tiered system where non-tenure track faculty feel undervalued (Banasik & Dean, 2016). I also did not feel like I was able to make the social connections necessary with the tenured faculty I worked with every day in my department to truly feel like I was a valued faculty member at the institution. The Faculty Academy provided me with the support and encouragement to persist at the institution, until such time as I found a tenure-track position at another institution. One aspect of academic work is that there are elements of “employment equity, academic freedom, balance and flexibility, professional growth, and collegiality” (Banasik & Dean, 2016, p. 335). The presence of these elements creates an environment that will generate respect and maximize the intellectual contributions of the faculty regardless of their status. As a non-tenure track faculty member, I did not feel that this respect was present and, as such, job satisfaction decreased. In some cases, performance may decrease due to a decline in job satisfaction. However, it is not in my nature to give less than 100% in the hopes that my students are successful. Because of this personality trait, I worked extremely hard to ensure that my students were properly served even though I did not enjoy the working conditions. Being a member of Faculty Academy helped me feel that my knowledge and skills were respected by some faculty members, even if it was not the institution as a whole. Involvement in the Faculty Academy really has helped me in my current position. In addition to providing support, collaborative research opportunities, and development of leadership skills, being part of this knowledge community has allowed for my development of new skills and abilities, including my increased ability to use a wide variety of teaching techniques (Banasik & Dean, 2016; Collins et al., 2009). Thanks to the diverse membership of Faculty Academy, I have networked with professors across several institutions who teach the same content I teach. We

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were able to collaborate on course development, which is a large part of any faculty member’s job description. This collaborative experience has been a great benefit to my students in the design of courses as well as through enhanced activities and deepening of personal learning. Another positive outcome from belonging to Faculty Academy has been the opportunity for collaborative writing which contributed to my achievement of tenure at my current university (Collins et al., 2009). It has also encouraged me to branch out to work with other groups in other organizations I belong to, which has further promoted collaborative research. Being able to connect with more experienced peers in the Faculty Academy and other organizations for research and publication purposes has also improved my research and writing skills (Collins et al., 2009). Involvement in Professional Organizations Since moving into academia, I have become involved in a state education organization, one national organization, and two international organizations. In each of these organizations, I have moved into leadership roles simply through volunteering and becoming involved. Even though I know I am a very shy person who is quite content to stay in the background, I understood the importance of being involved in these organizations and getting out of my shell. In my first leadership role in the first international organization I joined, I became a Special Interest Group (SIG) leader of the largest SIG of the organization. The three other officers who came on board with me were very outgoing and social, which forced me a little out of my comfort zone, but I embraced the experience. I have been a member of this organization for 15 years holding various leadership roles across three PLCs (SIGs became PLCs). In the past two years, I have collaborated with two groups consisting of university faculty and K-12 teachers across the United States to research, publish, and present at annual conferences. Ten years ago, I joined the second international organization and quickly volunteered to run for office in one of the SIGs of that organization. After serving my two-year term as co-chair, a new SIG was formed and I was asked by senior leadership to chair that SIG, which I did. My involvement and willingness to take on these leadership roles has continued to expand due to the confidence and involvement in Faculty Academy.

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Five years ago, I joined a national organization for teacher education, and I am entering my second year as a member of the Board of Directors of that organization. I have also held a leadership role in the state chapter of this national organization. Through my affiliation with these two organizations, I have taken on a role that once again pushes me outside my comfort zone, such as being part of a planning committee for a world conference. I am currently contemplating running for office that would take me into the presidency of the national organization in the coming years, something I never would have contemplated when I began my career in academia. Reflection My involvement in international organizations started out by just being a member of the organization with no real commitment other than an interest in the discipline of the organization and a passion for learning more. This led to running for a SIG leadership position. When I was first elected to leadership of the SIG, it was supposed to be shadowing the chair for a year before taking over. The chair was someone I highly admired and his research had dotted my dissertation through multiple citations, which was why I chose to run for office in that SIG. However, my hopes of meeting my “rock star” were soon dashed as this person failed to show up to the organizational meeting, which did have an effect on my self-confidence. The SIG coordinator of the international organization did a lot of hand-holding support for me that year as I worked through the ins and outs of the leadership of an organizational SIG in such a large organization. Without her guidance, and the support of my other officers, my insecurities related to my developing leadership abilities at the time assured me that the SIG would have failed, but it continued to grow. Throughout my time with this organization, my passion about the content and support I received from my social networks within the organization have allowed me to develop and utilize my skills so that I can function as an extrovert when necessary. Initially, after being elected to the board of the national organization, my introvert tendencies came out as I felt that I was out of my league considering the stature and experience of other members. Other board members included deans, former deans, and some people I would consider to be my “rock stars”—the people I look up to and admire, as well as individuals I would love to collaborate with on projects.

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I am still in regular contact with the board member mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. Although our book has not come to fruition— yet—due to life happenings, it is still on the back burner for both of us. I message this woman several times a month about different things related to our field. She is a friend on my social media. It is my outgoing friends and acquaintances over the years that have led to me being willing to stretch myself to become a leader and get involved.

Conclusion Organizations need good leaders and must find ways to develop them (Roupnel et al., 2019). While extroverts are often seen as better leaders due to their dynamic nature, introverts can also become good leaders by capitalizing on their strengths and learning to act like an extrovert. Introverts become leaders when they are passionate about what they are doing and willing to lead others in projects related to that passion (Connelly, 2014). Being involved in a PLC can facilitate the development of leadership skills. The nature of a PLC allows members opportunities to collaborate and learn from each other, which help develop the skills necessary to become leaders. PLCs also offer encouragement, which helps build confidence, encouraging introverts to take on the roles and responsibilities of leadership (Roupnel et al., 2019). Because today’s society values the qualities of an extrovert over an introvert regarding leadership opportunities, it may cause difficulty for the introvert to function in leadership positions (Dodge, 2017). This is why Faculty Academy and other professional affiliations that have been a beneficial part of my leadership development. Without such groups, I would not have the confidence in my abilities—leadership, research, writing, taking initiative to get something done—that I have. While I am currently nervous about the state of my current position, the support I receive from the Faculty Academy knowledge community and my other PLCs will help me get through whatever comes my way.

References Aly, E. R., Hodge, D. S., & Elmahdy, S. Y. (2019). The relationship between preferred leadership style and personality predisposition. International Journal of Educational Organization & Leadership, 26(1), 49–74.

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Banasik, M. D., & Dean, J. L. (2016). Non-tenure track faculty and learning communities: Bridging the divide to enhance teaching quality. Innovative Higher Education, 41(1), 333–342. Battersby, S. L., & Verdi, B. (2015). The culture of professional learning communities and connections to improve teacher efficacy and support student learning. Arts Education Policy Review, 116(1), 22–29. Bradley, A. P., Grice, T., & Paulsen, N. (2017). Promoting leadership in Australian universities. Australian Universities’ Review, 59(1), 97–105. Buller, J. L. (2018). The introvert’s guide to chairing the department. Department Chair, 29(1), 3–5. Caine, V., Estefan, A., & Clandinin, D. J. (2013). A return to methodological commitment: Reflections on narrative inquiry. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 57 (6), 574–586. Clandinin, D. J., & Huber, J. (2010). Narrative inquiry. In B. McGaw, E. Baker, & P. P. Peterson (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (3rd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Collins, T., Slough, S., & Waxman, H. (2009). Lessons learned about mentoring junior faculty in higher education. Academic Leadership: The Online Journal, 7 (2). http://www.academicleadership.org. Connelly, G. (2014). The quiet effect. Principal, 93(5), 32–36. Craig, C. (1995). Knowledge communities: A way of making sense of how beginning teachers come to know in their professional knowledge contexts. Curriculum Inquiry, 25(2), 151–175. Craig, C. (2007). Illuminating qualities of knowledge communities in a portfoliomaking context. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 13(6), 617–636. Curtis, G., Reid, D., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. T., & Craig, C. (2013). Braided lives: Multiple ways of knowing, flowing in and out of knowledge communities. Studying Teacher Education: A Journal of Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices, 9(2), 175–186. Dodge, S. (2017). Make the most of introvert traits. Training, 54(3), 14. Evans, L. S., Hicks, C. C., Cohen, P. J., Case, P., Prideaux, M., & Mills, D. J. (2015). Understanding leadership in the environmental sciences. Ecology and Society, 20(1), 50. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-07268-200150. Farrell, M. (2017). Leadership reflections: Extrovert and introvert leaders. Journal of Library Administration, 57 (4), 436–443. Gibson, S. K. (2006). Mentoring of women faculty: The role of organizational politics and culture. Innovative Higher Education, 31(1), 63–79. Gutierez, S. B., & Kim, H.-B. (2018). Peer coaching in a research-based teachers’ professional learning method for lifelong learning: A perspective. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 64(2), 214–321.

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Hands, C., Guzar, K., & Rodrigue, A. (2015). The art and science of leadership in learning environments: Facilitating a professional learning community across districts. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 61(2), 226–242. Henkel, T. T., Marlon, J., & Bourdeau, D. (2019). Project manager leadership behavior: Task-oriented versus relationship-oriented. Journal of Leadership Education, 18(2), 1–10. Layman, E. (2017). Interpreting as an introvert. Legacy (National Association for Interpretation), 28(5), 28–29. Meier, D., & Stremmel, A. (2010). Reflection through narrative: The power of narrative inquiry in early childhood teacher education. Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 31(3), 249–257. Pritzker, D. (2012). Narrative analysis of ‘hidden stories’: A potential tool for teacher training. Teacher Development, 16(2), 199–215. Redmond, P., Gutke, H., Galligan, L., Howard, A., & Newman, T. (2017). Becoming a female leader in higher education: Investigations from a regional university. Gender and Education, 29(3), 332–351. Roupnel, S., Rinfre, N., & Grenier, J. (2019). Leadership development: Three programs that maximize learning over time. Journal of Leadership Education, 18(2), 126–137. Santrock, J. W. (2019). Adolescence (17th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Stephens-Craig, D., Kuofie, M., & Dool, R. (2015). Perception of introverted leaders by mid to high-level leaders. Journal of Marketing & Management, 6(1), 62–75. Vien, C. L. (2016). Leadership tips for introverts. Journal of Accountancy, 221(4), 46–50. Weinstein, M. (2017). Introvert vs. extrovert leaders. Training, 54(3), 22–24. Wilson, A. (2016). From professional practice to practical leader: Teacher leadership in professional learning communities. International Journal of Teacher Leadership, 7 (2), 45–62.

CHAPTER 11

Resiliency and Women: The Journey to Academic STEM Leadership Sandy White Watson

Introduction As a STEM educator and former and current co-director of a UTeach replication site, I am a leader in STEM education at the university level and as such, must collaborate across universities in the United States, across the state of Texas, and across colleges and disciplines within my own institution with individuals also engaged in education and the STEM disciplines. Like the women in STEM leadership positions portrayed in this chapter, I too have experienced many rewarding moments, multiple challenges that I met head-on or not, and times of extreme frustration as I navigated overt and subtle barriers to women in STEM. I learned the value of collegiality and collaboration with all constituents, the importance good role models (accelerators) made in my journey, and how critical perseverance is to success. As with most difficult goals one sets for herself, the goal of obtaining a leadership position in academia in

S. W. Watson (B) University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_11

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STEM for women is fraught with hurdles and barriers. One must always consider the cost of such ambitions before embarking on them, for there is always a cost, to self, to career, to family. But for those still set on seeking the STEM leadership position, the rewards are many. What I garnered in the process are professional skills that have helped me be not just a better mentor to junior colleagues in STEM education, but also an accelerator, an opportunity advancer. In addition, I learned the value of collegiality for myself, and for my colleagues. In the Faculty Academy, I learned that everyone has stories, experiences, and knowledge that are indispensable; that all members should be valued; that all are worthy, and that together we have a powerful voice, but alone our voices are weaker and may or may not be heard. In addition, the Faculty Academy is rife with accelerators who encourage and promote their mentees. In conclusion, academics have chosen a unique path, one that when traveled alone, can be narrow and hazardous, but when traveled together, seems less daunting. The stories I have collected in this study serve to illustrate the criticality of collaboration, collective efforts, and perseverance toward the ongoing diligence and resolve of women in academic STEM leadership positions.

Background of the Problem Historically, women have been significant contributors to STEM advancements: revealing the structure of DNA; discovering new genes; creating processes to harvest fats from seeds for intravenous feeding; devising methods to process, store, and ship foods; developing computer and programming languages, etc. These are the accomplishments of the exceptional women of this study, who managed to persevere in STEM fields despite lack of funding, recognition, and acceptance by male counterparts. Typically, women prepare for STEM careers at a rate similar to that of their male counterparts and demonstrate high levels of STEM academic achievement (Amon, 2017). However, once they gain entrance into colleges, they are less likely than males to pursue and persist in STEMrelated careers (Hill, Corbett, & Rose, 2010). Women encounter barriers that include bias, stereotyping, willful ignorance, and blatant discrimination: thus, women hold only 24% of STEM positions. However, it is interesting to note that in academia, once women obtain tenure-track

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faculty positions in STEM, they are very successful, productive, and persistent; they are rewarded and promoted at rates comparable to their male colleagues (Cici, Ginther, Kahn, & Williams, 2014; Cici & Williams, 2011). What is problematic is their lower rates of application for such positions, as opposed to the incorrect notion that they have higher rejection rates than their male counterparts. Because women with PhDs are not applying for STEM tenure-track positions, their representation in STEM academic leadership positions is also low. Additionally, women are not only underrepresented in STEM fields, but are even more underrepresented in STEM leadership positions in academia (National Science Foundation [NSF], 2019). As of 2016, 35.2% of all U.S. deans, associate deans, and department chairs were women with degrees in a STEM field, likewise 35.2% of all U.S. university/college presidents, provosts, and chancellors were women with STEM degrees (National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2019). Given that research illustrates that women in STEM academic positions are highly successful, what is it that deters them from pursuing such positions of leadership? A key factor in the lack of women in academic leadership positions is the “pipeline”: a direct result of the lack of women earning STEM degrees. Table 11.1 depicts the percentage of STEM degrees awarded to women in the United States in 2015–2016 (National Science Board, 2020). Undoubtedly, female representation across all STEM degree fields is below that of male representation, and since the research clearly demonstrates that women are very capable of being highly successful in STEM Table 11.1 Percentage of degrees earned by women in postsecondary institutions in the United States (2015–2016) (National Science Board, 2020)

Biological and biomedical sciences Mathematics and statistics Physical sciences and science technologies Engineering and engineering technologies Computer and information sciences and support services All STEM Fields

Bachelor’s (%)

Master’s (%)

Ph.D. (%)

59.9 42.5 38.8 19.7 18.7

57.3 41.7 37.8 25.2 30.8

53.0 28.5 32.2 23.5 20.1

35.5

32.6

33.7

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fields, their lack of presence in STEM fields is not a reflection of their abilities. This leads us to the conclusion that other mitigating factors act to deter women from pursuing and persisting in STEM. This study acknowledges that these factors include how STEM is perceived as a masculine culture that is unwelcoming to women, that males receive more startup funding in academic STEM careers than women, that men receive higher salaries than equally experienced and credentialed women, that women in STEM experience subtle and overt microaggressions from male counterparts. Yet in spite of all of these impediments, some women persist and thrive in STEM careers, successfully obtain advanced degrees in STEM, and earn high-level leadership positions in STEM career fields. For this reason, this researcher is interested in examining the resiliency factors of female academic STEM leaders as they encountered barriers and struggled while traveling their leadership journeys.

Challenges to Persistence and Success There are two lines of thought regarding why women are disproportionately represented in academic STEM leadership positions. The first one posits that women’s low levels of representation in STEM academic leadership roles is due to their personal circumstances, such as their marital statuses, maternity career interruptions, parental obligations, inability to relocate or travel, low career aspirations, (Schultz & Easter, 1997) or that they place too much emphasis on teaching, advising (both considered to be nurturing types of activities) (Konrad & Pfeffer, 1991) or service (Chrisler, Herr, & Murstein, 1998). Grant, Kennelly, and Ward (2000) found that the nature of STEM academic careers is modeled after the lives of male scientists in higher education; thus, they do not readily conform to women’s lives that are commonly heavily invested in family and childcare. The second line of thought considers the very nature of higher education as a setting with invisible barriers preventing women from pursuing leadership positions. For example, women are more likely to be hired at less prestigious, two-year community colleges than they are at elite Research I institutions (Bellas & Toutkoushian, 1999); women academic STEM leaders’ salaries are approximately 80% of those of their male counterparts (Monroe, Ozyurt, Wrigley, & Alexander, 2008); universities are

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often organizations that idealize male experiences and masculine behaviors, and reject women’s experiences and behaviors (Gropp, 2006); thus, excluding women from STEM leadership positions that are traditionally perceived as masculine; and, the competition theory, which manifests itself when a minority group (female STEM leaders) grows and becomes a threat to the majority group (male STEM leaders) as hostility (Robst, VanGilder, & Polachek, 2003). Interestingly, in an effort to determine whether women performed comparable to their male counterparts in academic leadership positions, Colorado Women’s College (2013) found that female academics “earned the majority of research awards, and that female administrators were more likely to hold the presidency or chancellorship within the top-ranked, top 10 institutions, than among all doctoral-granting institutions” (p. 8) and that women are among the highest of performers, but are most underrepresented in leadership. In essence, women are outperforming men, but men are bringing in greater salaries. Perhaps this discrepancy arises because the lower salaries available for women in STEM leadership positions reduce their motivation to pursue such positions. This also points to the presence of biases such as gender-STEM stereotypes that target women as poor performers and favor men in STEM and their work (LaCrosse, Sekaquaptewa, & Bennett, 2016), and societal beliefs concerning the roles women and men should occupy (Heilman & Eagly, 2008) that serve to deter women from pursuing academic leadership positions (Gangone & Lennon, 2014).

Resiliency Theory The literature defines resiliency as an internal mechanism by which individuals develop the positive character traits such as patience, determination, risk-taking, responsibility, determination, etc., necessary to overcome adversity (Christman & McClellan, 2012; Grotberg, 2003). Resiliency is further described as an adaptive and/or coping mechanism (Christman & McClellan, 2012) developed during times of adversity in order to persevere. Grotberg (2003) expanded the notion of resiliency by describing it as transformative. In other words, it is more than just persevering through tough times; it involves the actual alteration of one’s personality to better persist through times of adversity or hardship. Furthermore, resiliency leads to recurring self-awareness and substantiates identity (Chrisman & McClellan, 2012). Self-awareness and

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identity are traits conducive to those in leadership positions (Ackerman & Maslin-Ostrowski, 2002). Fergus and Zimmerman (2005) suggest that positive contextual, individual, and social variables known as promotive factors act in opposition to risk factors and further state that there are two groups of promotive factors: assets and resources. They, and others, define assets as positive interior characteristics or personal resilient qualities, such as selfesteem and self-efficacy (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005), intellectual ability (Masten, Burt, & Coatsworth, 2006), easy temperament (Jacelon, 1997), autonomy (Jacelon, 1997), communication skills (Werner & Smith, 1982), forgiveness (McCullough, 2000), gratitude (Emmons & Crumpler, 2000), humility (Tangney, 2000), dreams (Snyder & McCullough, 2000), and sociability (Brooks, 1994), while resources are factors residing exterior to a person, such as parental support, mentors, spousal support, faculty development programs, etc. (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005). Resiliency theorists offer three models that serve to illustrate how the previously described promotive factors may counteract, shield from, or inoculate a person against the negative effects of various risks (Luthar, 2006; Zimmerman, 2013). These models include the compensatory model, the protective model (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005; Garmezy, Masten, & Tellegen, 1984), and the challenge model (Hollister-Wagner, Foshee, & Jackson, 2001). The compensatory model (see Fig. 11.1) posits that promotive factors act counteractively to neutralize risks (Zimmerman, 2013). For example, mentor support might counteract risks associated with a hostile work Compensatory Model Low Protection Victimization

Fig. 11.1 Representative graph of compensatory model of resilience (Marsh et al., 2009)

High Protection

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environment. This model is additive in that it posits that risk and protective factors diminish negative outcomes from any type of risk exposure (Marsh, Evans, & Weigel, 2009) and that risk and protective factors are independent of one another and thus have unconnected but direct impact on negative outcomes (Dubow, Huesmann, Boxer, & Smith, 2016). The protective factor model suggests that “promotive assets or resources modify the relationship between a risk and promotive factors and outcomes” (Zimmerman, 2013, p. 382). Other researchers describe this model as one in which multiple protective factors work simultaneously to reduce the impact of risks on possible negative outcomes (HollisterWagner et al., 2001; Marsh et al., 2009). In addition, according to Zimmerman (2013), protective models can be further classified as riskprotective (see Fig. 11.2) (promotive factors diminish the association between risks and negative outcomes) and protective-protective (see Fig. 11.3) (promotive factors enhance promotive factor effects). In the context of this study, an example of a risk-protective model could be a situation in which a female academic mentor in a leadership position protects her female mentee who is attempting to pursue a leadership position by excusing her from evening assignments so she can be at home with her children and making sure she suffers no ill effects from such a release of duties. In contrast, an example of a protective-protective model in the context of this study could be a female STEM dean changing her appearance to appear larger or physically equal to male dean counterparts to increase the likelihood of being heard in meetings, proactively working Risk Protective Model

Low Protection Victimization

Fig. 11.2 Representative graph of risk-protective model of resilience (Marsh et al., 2009)

High Protection

Risk→

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Fig. 11.3 Representative graph of protective-protective model of resilience (Marsh et al., 2009)

Protective-Protective Model

0 Protective Factors

Victimization

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1 Protective Factors

2 Protective Factors Risk→

on her own communication strategies, and consulting a mentor prior to critical decision-making. Each of these factors further reduces impact of the risk. The challenge model (see Fig. 11.4) presents risks and outcome behavior as curvilinearly related, meaning “a little risk exposure is more beneficial than no risk exposure in reducing the negative outcome” (Marsh et al., 2009, p. 232). Zimmerman (2013) further describes this model as one in which a person’s exposure to a risk acts as a form of vaccination against additional risks; however, the initial risk must be substantial enough to allow the victim to establish effective coping mechanisms to overcome the initial risk and any subsequent risks. As an example related Challenge Model

Victimization

Fig. 11.4 Representative graph of challenge model of resilience (Marsh et al., 2009)

Risk →

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to this study, a female STEM faculty member might experience interpersonal conflict with a male colleague that is resolved amicably. This initial experience of conflict helps the female faculty member better navigate more contentious disagreements that might occur later in settings such as departmental or college-wide meetings. Resiliency theory provides a conceptual framework for contemplating a strengths-based approach to comprehending how women in academia successfully pursue and attain leadership positions in STEM. This study embraces proactive leadership styles of women in STEM rather than concentrating on their victimization.

Methodology Derived from Resiliency Theory In this study, potential participants were selected from a website featuring women in STEM positions, including those in academic leadership positions. All women in STEM academic leadership positions featured on the website were contacted, of which four responded and indicated they would be willing to participate. Participants’ responses were analyzed through the lens of resiliency theory to examine the impact of resiliency on leadership position attainment and perseverance. Specifically, the cumulative effects of several promotive factors across varying ecological domains were examined to more accurately assess the influence of those promotive factors on the journey toward, attainment of, and perseverance in academic leadership positions in STEM among four women participants, a strategy endorsed by Stoddard, Zimmerman, and Bauermeister (2012). Interviews Data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews conducted either via email or telephone. The researcher received and transcribed the participants’ responses, read, re-read, and qualitatively analyzed them, then a follow-up email was sent to each interviewee for verification and memberchecking purposes. During qualitative analysis, the participants’ responses were coded and organized into emergent themes. The interviews were semi-structured in nature and consisted of the following three primary questions/directives:

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1. The research tells us that women remain consistently underrepresented in executive leadership in academia (department chair, dean, provost, president) due to gender role stereotypes, the lack of female role models, and childcare and domestic duties. In addition, the glass ceiling effect, the ivory basement, and velvet ghetto situations also prevent women from obtaining executive leadership positions. Describe your experiences with bias, stereotyping, or prejudice as you sought leadership positions in higher education. Please share your most challenging experience. 2. What do you believe is the primary reason you were successful in obtaining an academic leadership position when so many other women are not? 3. What do you think is the most significant barrier to female academic leadership? Participants Four women with STEM degrees were interviewed who hold academic leadership positions in the United States were employed full time by their respective institutions of higher education in the following states: Texas, New York, Idaho, and Missouri. The participants were women who identified as European American, Indian, and Polish. What follows are brief biographies of each of the participants (pseudonyms were provided to protect privacy). Liz Simpson Dr. Simpson is an Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the School of Engineering at her university. She holds a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering, both from Ivy League universities. Her research interests include the micro-mechanical behavior of two-phase systems, and the nanodielectric, mechanical, and optical properties of polymer nanocomposites. Dr. Simpson is of European American descent and comes from an uppermiddle-class family of academics. Jill Lawson Dr. Lawson is the Dean of the College of Engineering at her university, holds a B.S. and Ph.D. in chemical engineering, and is a fellow

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of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Her research focuses on combustion-generated fine particulate matter formation and carbon capture technologies. Dr. Lawson is of European American descent and was raised in a middle-class family in the United States. Marleigh Sills Dr. Sills is the Dean of the College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology at her university. She holds a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. Her research interests include biomechanics of the shoulder and elbow, baseball pitching mechanics, and medical device development. Dr. Sills is Polish and was raised in a low SES family in the United States and is the youngest participant in this study, at 49 years old. Sharon Mustovich Dr. Mustovich is Department Chair of Physics at her university. She holds a Ph.D. in physics and her research interests include compact starts, planetary atmospheres, and nucleosynthesis. Dr. Mustovich is of Indian descent and was raised in a family with a lower socioeconomic status in Islamabad.

Results Responses to Q1 (Describe your experiences with bias, stereotyping, or prejudice as you sought leadership positions in higher education. Please share your most challenging experience). Dr. Sills Dr. Sills responded that when she was hired as department chair at her current institution she felt as though her colleagues viewed her negatively because she was an external candidate (thus seen as an outsider) as well as a biomedical engineer who was female who would be leading an all-male, all foreign-born department. She shared one specific incident in which a male dean wanted the department to engage in an initiative that faculty were resisting. As chair, she brought their concerns to the dean and stated that she did not feel the initiative was something faculty wanted. As a result, the dean crafted a “visceral nasty response” to her in the form of a letter which included personal attacks against her, which he then read aloud to her in a meeting that included many colleagues. After the reading of the letter, Dr. Sills stood up and addressed the dean in front of

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everyone in the meeting. She stated, “I want to remind you that personal attacks are never appropriate in a professional situation, so I am going to ignore some of the things you said.” She ended up gaining respect from many of her colleagues for her “grace under pressure” and how she handled that incident. Consequently, the dean who authored and publicly read that letter was forced to resign (not solely due to that incident) and Dr. Sills successfully applied for his position. Dr. Lawson Dr. Lawson believed that she adequately prepared herself for her academic leadership position through taking opportunities to serve in related positions prior to seeking the position she currently holds. Thus, she did not experience instances of prejudice, bias, and stereotyping. Interestingly, she believed she experienced success with this strategy because it allowed her to develop a distinctive vision toward the position she was seeking. For example, she developed a strong alumni/development program as engineering department chair so that she could “speak to it.” However, she did indicate that at first, she tried to be everything to everyone before finally deciding that there would be some people she could never please so she ended up deciding to “be myself.” Dr. Simpson Dr. Simpson indicated that she navigated biases, stereotypes, and prejudices by creating the “rules of the game” (strategies for persevering in a setting that is at the very least, unwelcoming to women) for women in academic leadership. The key ideas included: (1) Identify your priorities (in her case family came first and career was second; balance between career and family; medium-sized research group; family dinners together; if a child is sick, one parent stays home; exercise must happen); (2) Give it up—e.g. you cannot be the CEO and be at home (expect possible delays in promotion; realize that less travel means less networking); (3) Prove your worth—gain flexibility (she cited a time when her family moved to the Netherlands for two years for her husband’s career and she worked 75% during that time; key studies indicate flexibility programs decrease work absenteeism; she also chose to work part-time when her children were babies); (4) Who’s watching the children? (her university was very accommodating as she had a crib and changing table in her office on campus for her children when they were young and she was still nursing and these accommodations were often used by students who had to bring

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their children to school; she had a rule that faculty meetings must end at 5 p.m.; school holidays were planned for; nannies and grandparents were involved in childcare). Dr. Mustovich Dr. Mustovich described her belief that women are underrepresented in academic leadership due to two primary reasons. First, male colleagues are not accepting of female colleagues as leaders in academia. She stated that women must be “extra smart to win the race” and are judged with more stringent criteria than are their male counterparts. She went on to state that sadly, women often also tend to judge their female colleagues in leadership positions more harshly than males in such positions. Secondly, Dr. Mustovich, whose ethnicity is Indian (Islamabad, Pakistan), stated that in her culture, and in other cultures as well, girls are not raised to have the confidence in themselves necessary to succeed in leadership positions; they often view their fathers, brothers, and other male members of the household as household heads, so they often do not imagine themselves in leadership positions. Responses to Q2 (What do you believe is the primary reason you were successful in obtaining an academic STEM leadership position when so many other women are not?) Dr. Sills Dr. Sills responded to this question with the word “layers,” meaning there were individual and environmental factors involved in her success. She believed that her individual tendency to make decisions based on data (not emotions); and her organizational, rational, and logical nature and ability to maintain her cool, all worked in her favor. She believed this because she stated that these characteristics were also held by the male engineers she would supervise and they would presumably respect her more if she thought and behaved like they did. Dr. Sills also mentioned environmental factors that she referred to as the “surrounding ecosystem.” She indicated that in her first couple of leadership roles, those around her recognized her leadership strengths that she had not realized she possessed. As department chair, she realized the power in hand-selecting

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the individuals with which she wanted to work. She credits her ascension to the dean’s position to her ability to succinctly and thoroughly answer questions in meetings, her very clear vision for the college, and to standing up to the previous dean. She also indicated that she had young children who were still nursing when she was seeking tenure, which could have been a problematic situation. But her female dean was understanding and allowed her concessions during that time period, such as not requiring her to attend every evening event. Her university also provided on-campus child care and she was blessed with a understanding spouse. She did state that this time period took a detrimental physical toll on her body. Dr. Lawson Dr. Lawson attributed her very strong family support system with obtaining an academic leadership position in STEM because when she was seeking her position, she had two small children at home, and family could step in with them as needed. She also credited strong mentors, particularly one senior faculty member who repeatedly nominated her for initiatives, published with her, and collaborated with her. She called this person an “accelerator” and went on to say that not all mentors are accelerators. In other words, according to Dr. Lawson, some mentors give advice while others are accelerators who pave the way for opportunities for mentees. Dr. Simpson Dr. Simpson believes she was destined to follow a STEM path toward her current position as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in her university’s School of Engineering because both of her parents were scientists and academics and her childhood was steeped in science experiences. After a stint in industry as an engineer in an industrial position, she entered academia and together with her husband, established priorities they would adhere to (see the aforementioned “rules of the game”). She also credited some wonderful mentors in academia, all of them male, with her success in achieving her position as well as her own persistence and stubbornness. Dr. Mustovich Dr. Mustovich witnessed her own mother “idealizing educated women” (revering women who are teachers) and in doing so, she wanted to fulfill her mother’s dream. She was the youngest among her siblings

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and the only daughter and she selected her parents’ dreams as her own. She always idealized teachers; and thus, chose to become one and later obtained a Ph.D. in physics and became Department Chair of Physics at her university. Responses to Q3 (What do you think is the most significant barrier to female academic leadership?) Dr. Sills Dr. Sills indicated that the most significant barrier to female academic leadership is that of being heard. She stated, “woman offers idea and no one hears her…man offers same idea and everyone praises him.” She went on to say that the person (usually male) with the largest ego and loudest voice is often the one who is heard. As a result, her personal tendency is not to speak up in a meeting, even if she has something credible to add to the conversation. Her experiences in this regard have led her to change her physical appearance to appear more authoritative and “have presence in a room.” For example, at 5’9” in height, she will also wear heels so that she is assured of being able “to look someone in the eyes.” However, she credits her experiences with being ignored with “steeling her” and elevating her confidence in herself. Dr. Lawson According to Dr. Lawson, there is a preponderance of implicit (those who support gender equality may still hold subconscious biases, e.g., men are superior to women in STEM) and explicit bias (men procure higher salaries, women experience workplace policies that discriminate such as inadequate maternity leave, etc.) in academia regarding what a STEM academic leader should look and act like. She believes these biases held by academics are barriers to women in leadership positions in higher education. Dr. Simpson Dr. Simpson believed that a lack of communication is the most significant barrier to women in academic leadership positions. She stated that if a woman wants to push an academic institution toward greater flexibility, she must constantly communicate. For example, when a female appears

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to be absent from a faculty meeting due to a family obligation, she must clearly communicate that she was indeed there but Skyped in (or whatever the case may be). Dr. Mustovich Dr. Mustovich believed that in her culture, she was raised to be subordinate to men and as a result, she had a tendency to select out (willingly choose not to pursue leadership because it was in opposition to her cultural norms) of leadership positions. She believes this is a primary deterrent to striving for STEM academic leadership positions for many women in minority cultures.

Recognizing Resiliency All four participants developed resiliency: they recognized what was necessary to succeed and then adopted those necessary characteristics in response to struggles they faced in their journeys to academic leadership positions. Resiliency can be categorized as combinations of assets and resources. In this study, however, only mentors were identified as resources. In contrast, five assets were identified as resiliency factors: characteristics, communication, sacrifice, preparation, and flexibility. In particular, each themed resource of resiliency is categorized as either a resource or an asset (Fergus & Zimmerman, 2005). Resources as a Theme in Resiliency Mentors/Accelerators Most of the participants mentioned the need to surround one’s self with mentors or “accelerators” (those whom actively protect, support, and engage in actions that serve to accelerate the careers of their mentees) throughout their journeys, but especially during critical times, such as tenure-seeking periods. Interestingly, mentors were most often identified as females, but one participant indicated that all of her mentors were male (men can sometimes be our biggest advocates). In addition, one participant described the presence of accelerating mentors as one of the environmental layers that enabled her success in her leadership position. Others stressed the need to surround one’s self with such mentors by hand-picking them when the opportunities arose to do so.

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Assets as a Theme in Resiliency Masculine Characteristics Most of the participants indicated the need to adopt characteristics society often deems as “masculine” in order to successfully persevere in STEM academic leadership positions. These traits included rationality, making decisions based on data rather than emotions, being highly organized, being “louder” in meetings, being physically dominating (taller), and stressing logicality. Recognizing what is necessary to succeed and then adopting traits that embody those necessary characteristics is a key dimension of resiliency. However, it is interesting to note that one participant opted to wear heels during meetings with male colleagues in order to create a more commanding presence, but she admitted that she often opts out of saying anything in those meetings (heels or not), because she felt what she had to contribute would not be heard or valued. Communication Several participants indicated that learning to communicate effectively and consistently was an important key to their successful attainment of academic leadership positions. One respondent stressed that although she was excused from many evening meetings due to family obligations, she was careful to maintain her presence in those meetings by appearing via Skype. Sacrifice Sometimes personal sacrifices are made when one recognizes they are necessary to persevere; thus, sacrifices go hand-in-hand with resiliency. All of the participants indicated that they had to make personal sacrifices to succeed in their current positions as STEM academic leaders. For those who had small children during their journeys toward leadership, the sacrifices seemed more significant. For example, two participants were breastfeeding during their leadership journeys and had to be excused from meetings. Dr. Simpson even accepted a part-time position for two years while she spent more time caring for her young children and admitted that this sacrifice meant promotion delays and decreases in networking opportunities. One participant indicated that breastfeeding during a stressful career trajectory was physically detrimental to her health. It seems that the respondents were always the primary childcare providers in their families. Thus, several of them experienced position delays and

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other negative career effects, while their male spouses’ careers continued on track with no ill effects. In any case, the ability to simultaneously negotiate career and family obligations is a facet of resiliency. Preparation Many of the participants in this study shared that they researched and prepared for their leadership positions before seeking them. This involved crafting visions for departments and colleges and being able to clearly articulate those visions under stressful conditions. One might argue that preparation is not resiliency, but when it involves determining what traits one must have in order to be successful, and then changing one’s self to accommodate those new traits, this researcher believes preparation can be categorized as resiliency. Flexibility The final themed resiliency asset identified in this study is the overarching theme of flexibility that encompassed all other named themes. All four respondents mentioned the ability to be flexible as critical to their own success. Whether it was being able to work from home to breastfeed or care for small children, work harder than male counterparts for the same successes, rely on family support systems for childcare, alter physical appearances to appear as equals to male colleagues, adopt better communication strategies, reduce workload, thoroughly prepare for a new position, surround one’s self with accelerating mentors, or handpick those with whom they will work on a daily basis, all the women participants demonstrated considerable levels of flexibility.

Discussion The findings of this study agree with and substantiate the aforementioned research studies pertaining to resiliency theory. For example, many of the resiliency resources and assets identified in this study could be categorized directly into the three resiliency models (compensatory, reflective, and challenge) as described by Zimmerman (2013). However, this researcher found the task of categorizing themes into the three resiliency models problematic as resiliency assets and resources seemed to cross over model lines and became blurred. For example, one of the identified themes of this study was that of mentoring, and three of the four participants

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stressed the importance of one or more mentors to their academic leadership success in the neutralization of hostile work settings. Mentors could be considered an example of a promotive factor in the compensatory model that acts in opposition to risks in order to neutralize them (Zimmerman, 2013), but in addition, mentors could also fall into the protective factor model category (risk-protective) as the respondents in this study shared that their mentors mitigated potential problems by intervening on their behalf and providing much needed release from evening academic obligations for time spent with young children. Regarding the resiliency asset themes identified from respondents’ statements, the adoption of masculine characteristics so as to appear more equivalent to male counterparts and to diminish potential negative outcomes was one such theme that could be classified as risk-protective (Hollister-Wagner et al., 2001; Marsh et al., 2009). It is classified as such because it is a factor that does not enhance promotive factor effects, but rather diminishes the association between risks and negative outcomes. Another identified asset resiliency theme in this study was that of communication. More than one respondent mentioned that she actively worked to improve her communication skills in order to better present her ideas to colleagues and to be more present in work conversations. Improving communication could be classified as a protective-protective factor because it enhances promotive factors. Like communication, the following asset themes: sacrifice, preparation, and flexibility are also considered protective-protective factors. The findings of this study substantiate those of Schultz and Easter (1997) who stated that women’s personal circumstances (parental obligations, maternity career interruptions) often preclude them from seeking and obtaining academic leadership positions. Three of the four women who participated in this study shared that breastfeeding and childcare responsibilities required them to make adjustments in their career trajectories, such as opting out of evening meetings, travel, and even promotion. The findings of this study also corroborate the second line of thought in the literature as to why few women hold academic STEM leadership positions: there are invisible barriers imposed by universities that serve to deter women from considering and pursuing such positions. While the participants interviewed were examples of women who had persevered and obtained STEM leadership positions in academia, all of them shared experiences in which they navigated such barriers. For example, Dr. Sills’

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experience with the hostile dean could be a manifestation of the competition theory (Robst et al., 2003) as the hostile response directed at her by the male dean could have arisen because he was threatened by her presence and competence; and, the finding that several of the participants adopted masculine characteristics in order to be seen as equals to male counterparts substantiates the notion that universities have normalized male behaviors as the ideal (Gropp, 2006).

Conclusion In conclusion, this study corroborated the literature regarding the two lines of thought as to why men hold more academic leadership positions in STEM than do women: the personal circumstances of women, and the artificial barriers imposed by universities against women preclude them from pursuing and persevering in such positions. Furthermore, the findings of this study are in agreement with the literature regarding resiliency theory’s role in women’s perseverance in academic STEM positions. In particular, both resiliency assets and resources serve as accelerants to women seeking leadership positions. However, this study concluded that some resiliency assets and resources cross model lines and embrace two or more models. The findings of this study support my personal understandings related to the perseverance of women in academic STEM leadership positions, particularly the critical need for collegial collaboration and mentors who are also accelerators. The Faculty Academy is a safe space for women (and men) in academia for fostering relationships that promote collegiality, communication, and encouragement, and is home to accelerators and mentors.

References Ackerman, R. H., & Maslin-Ostrowski, P. (2002). The wounded leader: How leadership emerges in times of crisis. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Amon, M. J. (2017). Looking through the glass ceiling: A qualitative study of STEM women’s career narratives. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 236. Bellas, M. L., & Toutkoushian, R. K. (1999). Faculty time allocations and research productivity: Gender, race, and family effects. Review of Higher Education, 22(4), 367–390.

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Hill, C., Corbett, C., & St. Rose, A. (2010). Why so few? Women in science, technology, engineering and math. Washington, DC: AAUW. Hollister-Wagner, G. H., Foshee, V. A., & Jackson, C. (2001). Adolescent aggression: Models of resiliency. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 31, 445–466. Jacelon, C. S. (1997). The trait and process of resilience. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 25, 123–129. Konrad, A. M., & Pfeffer, J. (1991). Understanding the hiring of women and minorities in educational institutions. Sociology of Education, 64, 141–157. LaCrosse, J., Sekaquaptewa, D., & Bennett, J. (2016). STEM stereotypic attribution bias among women in an unwelcome science setting. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 40(3), 378–397. Luthar, S. S. (2006). Resilience in development: A synthesis of research across five decades. In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology (2nd ed.): Vol. 3. Risk, disorder, and adaptation (pp. 739–795). Hoboken: Wiley. Marsh, S. C., Evans, W. P., & Weigel, D. J. (2009). Exploring models of resiliency by gender in relation to adolescent victimization. Victims and Offenders, 4, 230–248. Masten, A. S., Burt, K., & Coatsworth, J. D. (2006). Competence and psychopathology in development. In D. Cicchetti & D. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology (2nd ed., pp. 696–738). Hoboken: John Wiley. McCullough, M. E. (2000). Forgiveness as a human strength: Theory, measurement, and links to well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 43–55. Monroe, K., Ozyurt, S., Wrigley, T., & Alexander, A. (2008). Gender equity in academia: Bad news from the trenches, and some possible solutions. Perspectives on Politics, 6, 215–233. National Science Board, National Science Foundation. (2020). Academic research and development. Science and Engineering Indicators 2020. NSB2020-2. Alexandria, VA. https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20202/. National Science Foundation, National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. (2019). Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering: 2019. Special Report NSF 19-304. Alexandria, VA. Robst, J., VanGilder, J., & Polachek, S. (2003). Perceptions of female faculty treatment in higher education: Which institutions treat women more fairly? Economics of Education Review, 22, 59–67. Schultz, E. L., & Easter, L. M. (1997). A study of professional aspiration and perceived obstacles: A case for administrative change (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 417174).

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Snyder, C. R., & McCullough, M. E. (2000). A positive psychology field of dreams: “If you build it, they will come…” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 151–160. Stoddard, S. A., Zimmerman, M. A., & Bauermeister, J. A. (2012). A longitudinal analysis of cumulative risks, cumulative pro- motive factors, and adolescent violent behavior. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 2, 542–555. Tangney, J. P. (2000). Humility: Theoretical perspectives, empirical finding and directions for future research. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 19, 70–82. Werner, E. E., & Smith, R. S. (1982). Vulnerable but invincible: A longitudinal study of resilient children and youth. New York: McGraw-Hill. Zimmerman, M. A. (2013). Resiliency theory: A strengths-based approach to research and practice for adolescent health. Health, Education, & Behavior, 40(4), 382–383.

CHAPTER 12

Leading from the Shadows: School Librarian Leadership Janice Moore Newsum

Introduction School libraries became my professional life in 1998. Long before I became a librarian, I spent 20 years as an early childhood/elementary teacher. While I have had a variety of instructional leadership titles, I have remained in K-12 education for almost the entirety of my professional career. My entre into higher education was a mere two and a half years ago. In response to the inevitable question during job interviews— “what is your greatest strength/weakness?” my response was always that my greatest strength is also my greatest weakness. I have spent the greatest portion of my entire professional career as a practitioner in public K-12 education. My varying roles in K-12 included both formal and informal leadership positions. Leading at the local campus level, district level, as well as state and national levels gave me a sense of confidence to lead in multiple

J. M. Newsum (B) University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_12

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areas. The many years of experience and education helped guide my leadership practices. On the other hand, my singular focus on K-12 education, limited exposure to leadership in the context of higher education, and my professional background revealed my barely adequate proficiencies in university systems, the academic process, and academic identity. Thus, the flip side of my greatest strength, my greatest weakness, was the years spent as a K-12 school library leader and the accompanying learned leadership skills. As a school district librarian supervisor in the Houston Independent School District (HISD), helping others find comfort in leadership roles became a mission. The department was led by a non-librarian, a person who saw value in bringing the myriad expertise and experiences of school librarians to the forefront for the sake of presenting librarians as leaders in instruction, advocacy, curriculum, reading, and literacy promotion. Our leader fully embraced the five roles of the school librarian as delineated by the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) (2010). The 2009 AASL Guidelines prioritized teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, program administrator, and leader as school librarian roles in library practice. As an HISD department, we focused professional development on various aspects of leadership and sought to empower school librarians to engage as campus leaders. School librarians were frequently asked to prepare and present professional development for their peers as a means to promote quality teaching and library programming. Library Services participated in legislative days in Austin and sponsored transportation to the state capital so that district librarians could experience leadership in advocacy. Organized district-wide reading programs led by campus librarians were offered from kindergarten to high school. Librarians were invited to participate on a district supported advisory committee charged with such tasks as selecting a system-wide integrated library management system (ILMS). Teams of librarians were engaged in writing the library scope and sequence and revising the district’s school librarian handbook. Leadership opportunities were plentiful and purposefully organized to maximize the district’s school librarians’ leadership engagement. In my leadership capacity, preparing school librarians to address the needs of an increasingly diverse student population became paramount. HISD, by multiple standards, met the definition of an urban district with the characteristic issues of poverty, structural racism, limited English speakers, low academic achievement, high mobility, teacher shortages, low employee retention rates, and high unemployment rates. The challenges faced by HISD in hiring and retaining effective leaders were indicative of

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the multiplicity of the tangible disadvantages of urban areas and the need for strong leadership at all levels. The strong leadership necessary for school improvement and reform efforts in a large urban school district are critical components of a complex process designed to bolster instructional competence, professional accountability, and educational change (Reed & Swaminathan, 2016). The unique challenges and leadership needs of the large, urban school district profit from shared leadership responsibilities with contributions to the leadership capital by both positional and informal leaders across the school community (Göksoy, 2015). Significant research on the influence of leadership on school improvement and student academic achievement in the context of urban schools (AASL, 2011) and the contribution of effective school librarians to the leadership capacity has emerged in recent years (Everhart, 2007; Foster, 2014; Gavigan & Curry, 2015).

Characteristics and Qualities of Effective School Librarians The primary goal of education to promote scholarly success and differential treatment is intuitively “felt” but difficult to quantify. There is little disagreement that the classroom is a complex environment that involves multiple social and psychological progressions. “Classroom” is a term applicable to the school library as well. In most districts, the library is staffed by a professionally trained and credentialed educator. The qualities of effective school librarians and library programs are important areas of investigation as they replicate knowledge sources and instructional leadership expected to benefit learners. School librarians have a unique advantage as the singularly trained educator in resource evaluation and selection, new technology and web tool curation, curriculum and instructional strategies, research and digital content resources for diverse learners, and text and reading level programs. The specialized skills of a well-trained, credentialed school librarian, working in conjunction with school administrators, classroom teachers, and other educational leaders can be leveraged to benefit district

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and school literacy initiatives, instructional priorities, resource allocation, and digital content adoption. The transfer of innovative knowledge into classroom practice is an essential element of establishing new norms of teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Decades of research have attempted to identify qualities and characteristics of school librarian efficacy and school library program effectiveness. In the revision of the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries (AASL, 2018a), AASL drew upon collected feedback from 1,300 school librarians to propose “… a clear expression of the qualities of … effective school librarians, and dynamic school libraries” (AASL, 2018b, p. 3). Essential professional beliefs and descriptions conclude that the innovative, qualified school librarian leader provides: (1) access to information and enables the connection between academic knowledge and deep understanding; (2) lead and perform the five interlocked roles as “instructional leaders, program administrators, educators, collaborative partners, and information specialists” (AASL, 2018a, p. 12); (3) use evidenced-based practices to ensure equitable, inclusive learning environments to prepare learners for college, work, and life; (4) promote a culture of reading as essential to lifelong personal and academic competency; (5) advocate for the right of all patrons to unimpeded “access to ideas and information” (AASL, 2018b, p. 3); and (6) work to mitigate the digital divide by affecting equitable access to information technology.

Leadership Roles of School Librarians School librarian leadership is an expectation and a mandate. Professional librarian and technology organizations include leadership as a component of school library standards. ALA and AASL remain pivotal organizations giving standards-based guidance for school librarian leadership, although, the National Education Association (NEA) first codified “the roles and responsibilities of school librarians” (Johnson, 2013, p. 8) in 1896. ALA formalized school library standards in 1918 and 1920, directing school librarians to collect and display specific materials based on the needs of classrooms, cultural and recreational reading needs, and teacher recommendations to be “housed in a central location” (Callison & Preddy, 2006, p. 210). Consistent standards-based guidelines for school librarian leadership in collaboration, curriculum, technology, and student academic success have become the norm.

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Four distinct areas of school librarian responsibilities were first described in Information Power, the AASL initial guidelines for school librarians, as teacher, information specialist, instructional partner, and program administrator (AASL, 1998). AASL promoted the school librarian’s enactment of leadership around these four roles. The 2009 AASL publication, Empowering learners: Guidelines for school library programs, expanded the four roles to include the fifth one, leader. These new guidelines provided the framework for school librarians to successfully participate in the leadership “needed to create and maintain a relevant and vibrant school library program” (Larsen, 2013, p. 13). Included among the five roles of the school librarian as determined by the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries (AASL, 2018a) is “leader.” School library educator preparation accreditation standards promote leadership as a critical component of librarian preparation programs and are applicable to all graduate-level librarian preparation programs. The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), under the auspices of ALA/AASL, is the professional accreditor providing the official endorsement of university programs which produce school librarians who are academically and operationally competent leaders. AASL is joined in its support of the school librarians as leaders by such organizations as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE, 2010) and the National Board for Profession Teaching Standards (NBPTS, 2010). By NBPTS standards, school librarians are encouraged to exhibit leadership professionally, administratively, and instructionally in technology integration, project-based learning, data analysis, and evidenced-based decision making (NBPTS, 2010, 2012). While the International Literacy Association does not specifically mention “librarians” in a recently released position statement, Children’s Rights to Excellent Literacy Instruction, the call for “accessible learning environments that provide opportunity for robust, literacy rich experiences, interactivity and exploration of thought” (International Literacy Association, 2019, p. 2) is reflective of the AASL Common Belief that, Under the leadership of the school librarian, the school library provides learners with access to resources and technology, connecting classroom learning to real-world events. By providing access to an array of wellmanaged resources, school libraries enable academic knowledge to be linked to deeper personalized learning. (AASL, 2018b, p. 11)

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Professional best practices encourage school librarians to be “visible leaders who model various leadership behaviors” (Smith, 2014, p. 56). While the expectation of the school librarian’s active engagement as a leader is explicit in professional guidelines and standards, according to Everhart, Mardis, and Johnston (2011), school librarian leadership is rarely prevalent.

Leadership Responsibilities The school librarian functions in an equal partnership with the classroom teacher in the establishment of learning priorities, curricular support, and lesson delivery. Their unique training and experiences prepare school librarians to interact with students and adults using a “distinctive skill set separate from those of a classroom teacher” (Smith, 2013, p. 16). The professional learning components of the school librarian’s leadership as an instructional partner include collaborative skills, curriculum and resources knowledge, and multi-literacy modeling. AASL endorses the belief that school librarians are teachers/educators, as well as collaborators with other educators who guide student learning in the library, classrooms, learning labs, learning commons, makerspaces, as well as in virtual learning environments (AASL, 2010; 2018a). Instructional Partner Digital innovation and the proliferation of virtual resources are at the forefront of the re-conceptualization of the school library and new opportunities have emerged for the school librarian to assume leadership as an instructional partner, especially in the realm of technology integration (Kuhlthau, 2010; Todd, 2008). The practices of school librarians include “numerous roles in daily practice” (Johnston, 2012b, p. 19), but leadership in technology integration (Johnston, 2012b; Wine, 2016) has emerged as one of their most vital roles. Instructional partnership is a core activity of technology integration (Johnston, 2012b). As school librarians and other educators perceive school librarians to be technology leaders, the explosive growth of technology in school libraries has opened pioneering opportunities to explore leadership as central to leading through instruction (Moreillon, Kimmel, & Gavigan, 2014). The promises and opportunities of classroom technological innovations can be utilized both as a practice within the school library and as an instructional

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strategy in collaboration with the classroom teacher. As they exemplify technology integration leadership in educational settings, school librarians are poised to make significant contributions to school improvement and student academic achievement (DiScala & Subramaniam, 2011; Dotson & Jones, 2011; Moreillon, 2013). Teacher School librarians may serve in a variety of areas as teaching staff, ancillary support, or as one of several content specialists. Licensure requirements vary from state to state (AASL, http://www.ala.org/aasl/educat ion/recruitment/licensing; University of Kentucky, https://education. uky.edu/accreditation/certification/states/), but the majority of states, Texas included, mandate initial teacher certification, teaching experience, and an advanced degree to become a credential school librarian. These states require school librarians to hold dual certification as a classroom teacher and school librarian. Varying professional titles are used for these specialization certificates, including “library media specialists,” “teacher librarian,” “media coordinator,” or information professional. Despite the variety of degree names and professional titles, those who hold credentials are teachers who manage library and information services in Pre-K settings and are highly credentialed professionals who possess specific “knowledge of pedagogical principles and curriculum, paired with technology and information expertise” (Johnson, 2013, p. 18). School librarians are among the most degreed and credential educators in schools, exerting a positive impact on classroom practices through librarian leadership. In Texas, the requirements to become a school librarian are equal to the requirements to become a school principal (TEA, https://tea.texas.gov/Texas_Educators/Certification). Subsequent to a 1999 revision of the Texas state certification requirements by the Texas State Board of Educator Certification (SBEC) (Administrative Code Rule §239.60), school librarians are required to complete a state-approved certification/educator preparation program and pass a state certification test (the TExES School Librarian 150). In contrast to principals, school librarians’ responsibilities as instructional leaders necessitate regular engagement in instruction delivery. While teacher leadership, which may include both formal and informal leadership, is considered by some to be a recent phenomenon, school librarian

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leadership as teachers has been the clarion call beginning in the early 1900s. In the teacher role, school librarians are proficient in curriculum and pedagogy, have content knowledge, and provide competent instructional leadership. The school librarian’s knowledge of the curriculum can be leveraged by collaborating with educators to enhance student learning, promote reading, and support student research. (Hoffman & Mardis, 2008). In order to obtain a positional title of leader, such as a dean of instruction, principal, or content specialists, frequently requires additional education and leaving the classroom (Fennell, 2016, Helterbran, 2010). Some may view leaving the classroom as an impediment to teacher-focused leadership, as “many teachers are seeking opportunities to expand their roles while staying connected to the classroom” (ASCD, 2014, p. 26). School librarians maintain the benefit of facilitating teacher and student improvement in a formalized administrative position in the “library/classroom” as they exemplify leadership in the educational setting (DiScala & Subramaniam, 2011; Dotson & Jones, 2011; Keengwe, 2007). Information Specialist The school library is a venue that provides access to information via a wide array of formats (Johnston, 2012a). School librarians provide the expertise as an information specialist to assist students and teachers to locate, use, and evaluate emerging technologies, data, and global communication. School libraries are safe spaces where students and teachers can employ new technological tools and information resources with confidence. As spaces where students and teachers work together, school librarians use technology integration strategies in the school library instructional program to help both students and adults explore, investigate, and create and propel “learning to deeper levels and wider vistas” (AASL, 2009, p. 12). According to Ertmer and Ottenbreit-Leftwich (2010), school librarians, in their role as information specialists, guide teachers in the exploration of new uses for familiar web-based tools, emerging new media, and in the construction of “deep and connected knowledge, which can be applied to real situations” (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010, p. 257). The use of technology by teachers and students for personal and academic tasks in the second decade of the twenty-first century is

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routine (Evans, 2019; Project Tomorrow, 2012), but the use of technological tools in entrepreneurial ways requires a depth of understanding that exceeds a basic knowledge of instructional technology. Highly qualified school librarians competent in the role of information specialist are integral to the successful preparation of both students and teachers as critical thinkers in a globally connected, information-rich society (Everhart, 2007). There are both opportunities and challenges as school librarians seek to support the ways in which students use technology for personal curiosity and academic endeavors (Johnston, 2015). Accomplished school librarians provide a wellspring of expertise to enhance the integration of technology into teaching and learning. School librarian preparation programs (Johnston, 2012a; Kuhlthau, 2010) in compliance with state, national, and technology standards, offer specialized librarian training in combination with professional expertise designed to expose students to the learning modes and resources needed to move beyond simple technology substitution to new applications of technology tools (http://fcit. usf.edu/matrix/matrix.php). Program Administrator School librarians’ skills as program administrators influence the quality of school library programs. A major component of the school librarians’ work is instructional, but school librarians also have fiscal responsibility as the program administrator and must also promote the strategic, fiscally responsive use of allocated funds and library resources within and beyond the boundaries of the physical library (AASL, 2010). As a program administrator, and in accordance with national standards, school librarians use their skills in the organization, management, and allocation of physical and virtual resources, inclusive of facilities, budgets, and personnel. Leader After decades of research in leadership and the impact of leadership on school effectiveness, a conclusive definition of leadership remains elusive. Spillane (2006) connected leadership to the “core work of the organization” (p. 11) and defined leadership as “activities that administrators and teachers design to influence others” (p. 12). In general, leadership is seen as the influence within an organization, the creation and representation of

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a clear vision, and the communication and commitment to organizational values. Per AASL, the school librarian leader passionately communicates the values and shared vision of the program for student learning (AASL, 2007) and achievement (AASL, 1998, 2009). The school library leader’s role intersects with improved instruction and student learning. Locating, collecting, organizing, and disseminating information and resources are traditional school librarian tasks that encourage lifelong learning in a participatory culture and are expressly enhanced by the introduction of technology tools. As the situated leader in the acquisition, provision, and allocation of resources needed for instruction and learning (Johnston, 2012a), the school librarian is unique among educators: the specialized knowledge of the school librarian is the most direct connection to improved student achievement in support of educational reform. These skills are frequently untapped human capital (Johnston, 2015) that presents new opportunities to strengthen student learning and solidify professional partnerships. In the contemporary sense, school librarians do not have positional authority, but school librarians have the potential to lead in instruction by their specialized training, content, and pedagogical knowledge. Unrecognized Leadership A customary expectation of preparation programs for the professional licensure of school librarians is the school librarian’s capacity as a leader. Although a number of school librarian training programs include an emphasis on quality leadership (Jange, 2012) development in the coursework, school librarian leadership skills frequently remain unrecognized (Mardis, 2013). Librarians are consistently recognized as leaders in literacy promotion (International Literacy Association, 2019). Less well recognized is the school librarian’s role “in implementing district goals, key instructional initiative and school improvement strategies” (Lance & Kachel, 2018, p. 18). A significant barrier to the school librarian’s full participation in school and district-wide initiatives such as technology acquisitions, device roll outs, STEM/STEAM programs, or new instructional strategies (i.e., AI, augmented reality) is fixed scheduling. Many school librarians are hampered from full leadership engagement by scheduling requirements to cover teacher planning periods or fixed rotation schedules

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(Johnston, 2012a). The failure to recognize school librarian’s technological knowledge and the under utilization of school librarians as professional development providers perpetuates an outdated stereotypical view of school librarians (Johnston, 2015; Lance & Kachel, 2018; Lewis, 2016). In a climate that values innovation and autonomy based on respect for professional competence (Lupton, 2016), along with established conditions of leadership development, school librarian leadership can flourish.

Student Academic Growth and School Librarian Leadership Beginning with the first school library impact study in 1997 (Lance, Welborn, & Hamilton-Pennell, 1997), consistent findings (Francis, Lance, & Lietzau, 2010; Lance, 2001; Todd & Kuhlthau, 2005) indicate a positive correlation “between high quality library programs and student achievement” (Lance & Kachel, 2018, p. 10). Higher test scores and improved student outcomes realized in schools with credentialed librarians, as indicated in multiple state library impact studies (Kachel, 2013), are not the simple effect of the librarian’s presence, but rather are associated with school librarians’ effective daily practices (Lance & Kachel, 2018). Such activities as collaboration, planning and instruction, professional development delivery, technology integration, school committee participation, reading programs, advocacy, and regular communication with administrators, were viewed by school administrators, classroom teachers, and librarians themselves as leadership engagement. Thirty-four statewide school-wide library studies suggest that strong school library programs produce higher student scores on standardized tests (Gretes, 2013). Additional student success indicators, such as graduation rates and academic standards mastery, are associated with school library programs that are strongly resourced in terms of staffing and materials (Lance & Kachel, 2018). The benefits of high-quality library programs are greater among “students of color, low income students and students with disabilities” (Lance & Kachel, 2018, p. 19). When controlled for school and socioeconomic factors, such as funding and teacher qualifications, the correlation between school library program strengths and student achievement remains consistent (Lance & Kachel, 2018; Scholastic, 2015). The increased access to books offsets the effects of poverty and a demonstrated positive effect on reading achievement

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is confirmed by impact studies from 22 states (Gretes, 2013). The longheld consensus that a credentialed school librarian exerts a positive impact on student outcomes and school effectiveness is substantiated by the multitude of school library impact studies. (Francis et al., 2010; Kaplan, 2010). Change Agents The vastness of the information available at our fingertips can overwhelm the most information- savvy. K-12 students are interacting with information technologies in ways that sometimes are not well understood. They need guidance in areas such as decision making, ethics, problem-solving, critical thinking, and digital citizenship. Reading, viewing, and listening are skills that people utilize with content that was born digitally, as well as with traditional print. Rethinking, retooling, and reinventing school libraries to meet the changing nature of information is without question a priority. Change is a complex process that can produce anxiety and resistance. Affecting change in classroom practice and behavior is typically attempted through the introduction of professional development or training. School librarians’ delivery of professional development to colleagues can take control of “building 21st century skills throughout the school environment” (AASL, 2009, p. 17) and advance them and their role in schools as campus change agents. Teacher professional development is intended to affect change in teacher practice (Johnson & Fargo, 2010). Classroom professionals participate in professional activities to increase their individual knowledge and to contribute to their success as classroom teachers who support the development of the necessary twenty-first century student skills, knowledge, and competencies (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, & Gardner, 2017). The research of Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) builds upon and confirm the perception by many teachers that well developed and delivered professional development can produce the desired results in improved instruction. The goals of professional development include change; change in practices, beliefs, attitudes, and ultimately, in student learning. According to Darling-Hammond et al. (2017), professional development is one key element of the resultant differences and they further state that those practices teachers find to be successful are maintained and used repetitively.

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Distributed Leadership Theories of leadership in education have developed over time and include, “instructional, situational, transformational, and, distributed” (Daniels, Hondeghem, & Dochy, 2019, p. 114), as well as leadership for learning (Murphy, Elliott, Goldring, & Porter, 2007). School librarian leadership emphasizes the effective distribution of leadership centered on leadership cultivation and building leadership capacity in a model that is collaborative and is “accomplished through the interaction of multiple leaders” (Daniels et al., 2019, p. 115). The use of shared or distributed leadership can alleviate the demands on the positional instructional leader, the school principal. In addition, engagement in distributed leadership can increase leadership opportunities for other campus personnel. Sharing leadership across the school community shifts away from the omniscient positional leader paradigm, which focuses leadership as a top-down approach (Aas & Brandmo, 2016). The distributed perspective of leadership is defined by the interaction of positional leaders and followers in the context of specific situations, which may overlap, be defined and redefined, and executed over time. The overarching standard in distributed leadership as explained by Spillane (2006) takes “shape in the interaction of leaders, followers, and their situation” (p. 14), with “follow-ship” as a central component of the practice of distributed leadership, and which is “more than the sum of the actions of individual leaders” (Spillane, 2006, p. 16). Effective school leadership comes from the contribution of multiple leaders, some positional and some self-designated. School personnel who have never perceived themselves as leaders, specifically school librarians, with a strong mandate to enact leadership, can participate in distributed leadership through measured responsibilities and involvement in the school improvement with confidence and a sense of community within the school.

Personal Reflections I spent years honing my leadership skills with the help of both formal and informal mentors. For two decades, I thought of myself as a relatively successful school librarian and an effective school library leader. My colleagues affirmed my beliefs by recognizing my leadership with election to organizational leadership positions and invitations to advisory boards

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and, ultimately, leading the Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, as the manager of the Library Services Department. Nationally, I served as a member of the Library of Congress Professional Development Review Committee, was a program reviewer for the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) (currently the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation), and was a training partner for the Teaching of Primary Sources at the University of Central Florida; a testament to my abilities to lead in curriculum development and professional development. After extensive leadership experiences, exceptional educational participation in leadership forums, and following my selection as a mentor to early career librarians in the Texas Library Association (TLA) Tall Texans Leadership institute, I was confident in my skills, knowledge, and training as a leader. TLA rivals most national organizations in the promotion of leadership development. My deep knowledge of librarian leadership from a scholarly perspective was bolstered by continuing education and the acquisition of advanced degrees in school library and information science. As a practitioner, leadership was comfortable and comforting. I led in the full splendor of my resilience and ability to learn from failure! The transition from K-12 education to higher education, however, has, at times, left me feeling wholly inadequate as a leader. Higher education leadership has been simultaneously gratifying and intimidating. I have struggled to find solid footing along a clear path. Initially, my entrance into higher education felt very isolated and the leadership roles I once confidently enacted appeared to have less value. Fortunately, early in my transition from a K-12 practitioner to a tenure-track faculty member, the Faculty Academy extended an invitation to “membership.” As I learned to navigate the unfamiliar territory of academe, the expert support structure of the Faculty Academy provided much needed opportunities for collaboration, training, and mentoring. The members of the Faculty Academy, through individual connections, modeled leadership competencies in the areas of accountability in higher education (teaching, service, research). As was also evident in school librarian leadership, for those on a new career path, mentoring in leadership development in higher education is a critical component to successful acclimation, stress reduction, and lessened anxiety. The Faculty Academy opened lines of communication about common goals of writing, research, and professional networking. Slowly, I am learning to navigate the uneven terrain of higher education and to appreciate that with just two and a half years in, I am a

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“toddler in the academy,” barely able to speak the language, and just learning to walk and eventually run. From diverse research fields, whether formally recognized and acknowledged, school librarian leadership is a growing responsibility to fulfil the promises and opportunities of an effective, equitable education for all students. I have chosen to embrace that leadership role in higher education and represent what can and needs to be accomplished.

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Lance, K., Welborn, L., & Hamilton-Pennell. (1997). The impact of school library media centers on academic achievement. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. Larsen, N. (2013). Plan for success: The AASL planning guide for empowering learners. Knowledge Quest, 42(1), 10–13. Lewis, M. (2016). Professional learning facilitators in 1:1 program implementation: Technology coaches or school librarians. School Libraries Worldwide, 22(2), 13–23. Lupton, M. (2016). Adding value: Principals’ perception of the role of the teacher librarian. School Libraries Worldwide, 22(1), 40–61. Mardis, M. (2013). Transfer, lead, look forward: Further study of preservice school librarians’ development. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 54(1), 37–54. Moreillon, J. (2013). Educating for school library leadership: Developing the instructional partnership role. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 54(1), 55–66. Moreillon, J., Kimmel, S., & Gavigan, K. (2014). Educating pre-service school librarians for the instructional partner role: An exploration into university curricula. School Library Research, 17, 1–25. Murphy, J., Elliott, S., Goldring, E., & Porter, A. (2007). Leadership for learning: A research-based model and taxonomy of behaviours. School Leadership and Management, 27 (2), 179–201. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). (2010). The five core propositions. https://www.nbpts.org/standards-five-core-propositions/. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). (2012). Library media standards (2nd ed.). http://www.nbpts.org/sites/default/files/doc uments/certificates/NB-Standards/nbpts-certificate-ecya-lm-standards_09. 23.13.pdf. Project Tomorrow. (2012). Learning in the 21st century: Digital experiences and expectations of tomorrow’s teachers. http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/tom orrowsteachers_report2013.html. Reed, L., & Swaminathan, R. (2016). An urban school leader’s approach to school improvement: Toward contextually responsive leadership. Urban Education, 51(9), 1096–1125. Scholastic, Inc. (2015). School libraries work! A compendium of research supporting the effectiveness of school libraries (2016 edition). Danbury: Scholastic Library Publishing. Smith, D. (2013). The role of mentoring in the leadership development of preservice school librarians. Education Libraries, 36(1), 15–23. Smith, D. (2014). Improving the leadership skills of pre-service school librarians through leadership pre-assessment. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 55(1), 55–68. Spillane, J. (2006). Distributed leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Texas State Board of Educator Certification (SBEC) Administrative Code Rule §239.60. http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/sbecrules/tac/chapter239/ch2 39b.html. Todd, R. (2008). Youth and their virtual networked worlds: Research findings and implications for school libraries. School Libraries Worldwide, 14(2), 19–34. Todd, R. J., & Kuhlthau, C. (2005). Student learning through Ohio school libraries, Part 1: How effective school libraries help students. School Libraries Worldwide, 11(1), 63–88. Wine, L. (2016). School librarians as technology leaders: An evolution in practice. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 57 (2), 207–220.

CHAPTER 13

Learning Through Co-teaching as Critical Friends Judith Quander, Jacqueline J. Sack, and Timothy A. Redl

Introduction Like others, our university is concerned with increasing the number of preservice secondary mathematics teachers. To address this shortage of students in the secondary mathematics teaching pipeline, our mathematics and urban education departments began to work collectively to

J. Quander (B) · T. A. Redl Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. A. Redl e-mail: [email protected] J. J. Sack Department of Urban Education, University of Houston-Downtown, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_13

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confront this problem. As a result, faculty in the mathematics department and in the urban education department came together as leaders to develop a partnership with an emphasis on strengthening the secondary mathematics pre-service program. As part of this effort and with grants from the National Science Foundation/Robert Noyce Foundation and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the three authors—one from the department of urban education and two from the mathematics department—designed undergraduate and graduate secondary mathematics content courses modeling student-centered, inquiry-based problem-solving pedagogy. This study highlights the critical friendships that developed between these three faculty members and the important role that co-teaching played in their development as teacher educators as well as mathematics educators. Co-teaching has a variety of definitions because in a meta sense, it means any situation where there are two teachers in the same classroom at once (Cobb & Sharma, 2015). However, depending on the context, the definition varies. For example, in a special education context, a “one teach, one assist” (Cobb & Sharma, 2015, p. 41) model is typical. Other examples include “…parallel teaching (co-teachers teach the same content to split groups), alternative teaching (teachers deliver different content to support varied learning needs), synchronous teaming (educators collaboratively teach simultaneously)” (Cobb & Sharma, 2015, p. 41). However, none of these sufficiently captured our vision—especially since we tend to combine these models as material or students require. We identify with a “holistic co-teaching” model (Cobb & Sharma, 2015, p. 42)—collaboratively planning, creating assignments, grading, reflecting, and addressing the need for change. Cobb and Sharma (2015) warn about challenges that can arise in a holistic co-teaching model, such as “finding time to plan and dialogue, balancing power dynamics in the relationship, establishing and balancing roles, and negotiating differences in personality and teaching style” (p. 42). We contribute our ability to circumvent these challenges and to our critical friendship that has developed over the course of working together for several years. At the crux of that critical friendship is a collective responsibility that we feel toward promoting exemplary secondary mathematics teaching.

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Theoretical Framework Critical friendship goes beyond general camaraderie or collegial relationships. Swaffield (2008) refers to a critical friend as someone “who provides both support and challenge” (p. 323). Baskerville and Goldblattt (2009) describe a critical friend as “a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data for examination through an alternative lens, and offers critique as a friend” (p. 207). Critical friends are each motivated by the other’s learning and success, which should result in growth and self-improvement (Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009). As such, participants can feel uncomfortable or challenged at times. Critical friendship has the potential for inciting anger, hurt feelings, and inaction. When issues such as power struggles and competing priorities arise, the established critical friendship is in trouble (Swaffield, 2008). Nilsson, Wennergren and Sjöberg (2018) declare that trust, courage, and ownership (of problems) are necessary components of the critical friendship. Swaffield (2008) suggests that in addition to trust, open communication, constructive criticism, and advocacy are also foundational to a healthy critical friendship. Baskerville and Goldblatt (2009) suggest that critical friendships do not require its members to have similar personalities or general beliefs or backgrounds. Instead, it is the workingtogether on a common problem that is central to the critical friendship. In our case, our common goal is to improve our teacher education practices. While there are many studies describing critical friendship as part of developing a learning community among faculty, preservice teachers, and practicing teachers (Carlson, 2019; Kuh, 2016; Moore & Carter-Hicks, 2014), there are few if any that focus on critical friends in the context of co-teaching. Even more, the focus on critical friends tends to be at the K-12 level among teachers as opposed to among college faculty. Carlson (2019) warns that “calling a group ‘critical friends’ does not guarantee critical thinking or friendship” (p. 15). As illustrated in our data, the three of us were able to find both.

Methodology Our methodology is rooted in self -study and narrative inquiry. Self-study is a qualitative methodology that requires the researcher and the subject to be one and the same (Tidwell, Heston, & Fitzgerald, 2009). This entwinement of the researcher and the subject is crucial for our study

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on our experiences as critical friends and as co-teachers. The purpose of self-study is to better understand and ultimately improve our practice. Beyond helping to improve the teaching of the individual(s) conducting the study, self-study aims to add to the knowledge on effective teaching. Self-study researchers understand the importance of making data collection methods and data transparent to readers (Tidwell et al., 2009). For this study, we use narrative inquiry to study our experiences in co-teaching—both as individuals and as a pair (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007). Narrative inquiry “embraces narrative as both the method and phenomena of study” (Pinnegar & Daynes, 2007, p. 5), beginning with participants’ recounted experiences and interpreted with theoretical perspectives that extend the understanding of the experiences with which the inquiry began. We wrote individual narratives describing our experience as co-teachers with each other and in previous situations. We read each other’s narratives and discussed similarities and differences. Discussions, recorded and transcribed, served as the collective narrative for us. Critical friendship emerged as a potential framework for understanding how this co-teaching experience differed from previous unsuccessful attempts with other faculty. Judith, first author of this study, then took the lead on analyzing the data in terms of the critical friendship framework. Cross-checking of the resulting report took place both individually and collaboratively to triangulate and validate the data analysis. Data Each of the three authors has been involved in a co-teaching relationship with one or both of the other authors. Judith and Jackie co-designed, co-planned, and co-taught two content courses for secondary preservice mathematics teachers. They took turns being the lead teacher in one of the courses based on their content expertise. Judith was the lead teacher for a course called “Topics in Secondary Mathematics” while Jackie worked in a more supportive role. In the second course, “Geometry for Teachers,” Jackie was the lead teacher while Judith supported. Both courses were required for mathematics majors earning secondary teacher certification. These two courses are taught in the mathematics department but historically they were taught by mathematicians with a heavy emphasis on proof and with no attention to pedagogy. Under the Noyce/NSF grant, these two courses were redesigned with an emphasis on both content and pedagogy to fill the need for a course that addressed

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secondary mathematics methods. Judith and Jackie redesigned the courses with a focus on a deeper understanding of traditional high school mathematics topics while also learning about inquiry-based, student-centered pedagogy. As part of a Teacher Quality Mathematics Leadership Project funded by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, Jackie and Tim co-taught a series of graduate-level mathematics and mathematics education courses for credit to a number of local 7th and 8th grade middle school teachers, during two years of intensive one-month long summer sessions along with monthly evening meetings during the academic years that followed. Courses focused on geometry, numeracy and mathematical operations, probability, and combinatorics, and were taught using an inquiry-based approach to learning. Participants in the Teacher Quality (TQ) Project also received a number of credit hours toward a Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented (TAGT) Awareness Certificate, and wrote final papers at the end of the project documenting ways in which they implemented knowledge gained from the TQ Project into their classrooms. Research Questions Our sources of data were both our personal and collective narratives written during the years of 2016–2019, after which much of our coteaching had taken place. What follows is a presentation of our data with respect to two questions: 1. How did our critical friendship develop in the context of coteaching? 2. How did our critical friendship play a role in our professional development and teaching philosophy as instructors of mathematics and mathematics education? Researchers’ Shared Values Our critical friendships are developed out of our collective responsibility to growing our secondary mathematics teacher education program. This work started six years ago, and during that time we began to learn about each other. In particular, we learned that we have similar beliefs about

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teaching and a commitment to helping those students most in need. These foundational shared beliefs pushed us to attempt co-teaching in order to offer our students coursework that reflected the specialized mathematical content that they need along with student-centered pedagogical practices. We each brought different strengths to teaching and wanted our students to benefit from those combined strengths. Courage, trust, and willingness to be challenged are important to critical friendships (Nilsson et al., 2018; Swaffield, 2008). Trust in one another and a desire to improve teaching for the benefit of students shows up numerous times in our personal narratives. Judith and Jackie have cotaught the two secondary mathematics content courses regularly for over three years. Jackie and Tim co-taught over two summer sessions and two academic years. Judith and Tim, while not having explicitly co-taught, serve as leaders as co-assistant chairs of the mathematics department. In these roles, they have written grants and designed projects together with the goal of improving pedagogy among faculty in their department. All three authors attribute the critical friendship that they have created to the success of their professional partnerships. Jackie writes: We have developed strong and supportive relationships together, regardless of how we are paired. This allows us to personally develop our own mental databases of instructional strategies and of particular conceptual strategies; and also to question one another when we see any issues that the other(s) may have missed. It is okay to be critical of one another, knowing our purpose is to continually improve our teaching and understandings.

Tim writes: The critical friendship that we have formed is built on a foundation of trust and respect for each other as teachers. While we are not carbon copies of each other, we do share common elements in our teaching philosophies, and the three of us continually express a genuine concern and care for our students. As critical friends within a community of teaching and research practice, we are comfortable sharing ideas and experiences, while also occasionally expressing our differences or critiquing each other, with the purpose of improving our craft.

Each of the three authors recognizes that the others bring a certain mathematical and pedagogical strength to their work, and so power is able to be balanced within the critical friendship relationship (Swaffield, 2008).

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The authors acknowledge that they have different areas of expertise and are willing to learn from each other. For example, in the Geometry course co-taught by Judith and Jackie, Jackie was the expert. Similarly, in the second content course that the authors co-taught, the focus is on algebraic functions, and Judith is the “expert” while Jackie supports. Jackie says of this role: “I thought about some of this mathematics in a much deeper way while co-teaching this course with Judith. Some of these mathematical relationships, I had never considered.” Jackie and Tim co-taught graduate courses in mathematics and mathematics education during several summers as part of their TQ project aimed at increasing the mathematical and pedagogical knowledge of practicing middle school teachers. Teaching teachers was a new experience for Tim, who at the time taught mostly traditional mathematics courses. Tim writes about the experience: Going into the experience, we each realized the individual teaching strengths and areas of expertise that we could bring to the classroom, and were both confident and trusting not only in ourselves but in each other. Light tensions did arise at times when I would find myself ‘talking and telling too much’ and putting the focus back on me as the teacher rather than on the students, and Jackie would quickly step into remind me to step back and let the students figure it out for themselves.

Tim talks about how initially he was afraid that the students would see him as a “struggling apprentice” to Jackie as the “master teacher.” However, he realized that stepping back and letting the students explore was something he had to work on if the experience was to be successful for the students. Our narratives are peppered with other examples such as these that indicate a willingness to support, challenge, and trust each other as part of our co-teaching experience. We compare these experiences to an earlier co-teaching experience for Jackie that was not positive. She writes: Before that, I co-taught with another faculty member who was pretty rigid in the way that she thought the course should be taught. I shared my concerns about the content in the course and the person was not completely responsive.

The tension between the two was noted by a student who brought it up to Judith who discussed the issue with Jackie. The student said that

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she did not think she would want to co-teach because Jackie and other faculty member did not seem to get along, and that this faculty member appeared stressed in the classroom. Jackie agreed and suggested that the faculty member did not like to give up “control” of the classroom. In this instance, Jackie felt reluctant to provide feedback or to challenge the faculty member, and as such just followed her lead despite recognizing missed opportunities to model good pedagogical practices for their preservice students. Our data suggest that our co-teaching relationship could have been troubled by issues of power. However, mutual trust, respect, and a shared goal—all part of our critical friendships—supported our work in co-teaching. It is important to note here that while Judith and Tim never co-taught, they have been co-leaders of several important initiatives in the mathematics department. They wrote several internal grants to support the improvement of instruction among the mathematics faculty. We will not go into detail about those experiences and their impact on their critical friendship, however, as this chapter focuses specifically on co-teaching. Other themes that emerged from the analysis of our personal narratives were the ways in which these critical friendships contributed to our reflective practice, and our personal development as even stronger and more effective instructors of mathematics and mathematics education. We discuss these findings in terms of three major ideas: A. How co-teaching taught us to “hold-back” when teaching, B. How co-teaching encouraged us to continue to reflect on and improve our teaching, and C. How co-teaching gave us a place to talk about teaching.

Holding Back Letting students struggle mathematically is a crucial element of studentcentered, problem-solving based mathematics teaching (NCTM, 2000). By holding back in giving students solutions to problems, mathematics teachers allow students to wrestle with important mathematical ideas, which promote conceptual learning. When mathematics teachers are too quick to jump in and show students a solution to a problem with which they are struggling, they take away opportunities for deep learning

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and making sense of mathematical content. All three authors espoused a similar teaching philosophy that highly regards a focus on inquiry, students’ conceptual understanding, and a facilitator role for the teacher. However, as Kaymakamoglu (2018) found, beliefs about teaching do not always match instruction, and while well-meaning teachers, such as ourselves, really believe that a more constructivist approach to teaching is a better approach, we may struggle at times to make that a reality in our classrooms. Our data suggest that co-teaching with critical friends was instrumental for our own professional development as instructors. Tim writes: I remember a day when we were working together as a class on some challenging problems in probability, and one problem in particular involved a dice game in which you win if you are able to roll at least one “6” in four successive rolls of a six-sided die. If not, then you lose. I asked the class to calculate the probability of winning the game. Knowing that the problem could be more easily solved by first calculating the probability of losing the game rather than by calculating the probability of winning directly, I quickly started to give hints to the class as to how to start to solve the problem, rather than give them ample time to think for themselves. As I did this, Jackie abruptly (but respectfully) told me to ‘stop talking’ and to allow our students to ‘mess with the problem’ on their own. It was a lesson that not only I needed to learn, but one that our students (being teachers themselves) were learning as well, while watching this interaction between Jackie and me that had happened more than a few times as we co-taught during the two-year project.

This idea of holding back was something Jackie had previously learned from another classroom teaching experience and felt it important to share: The official wait time of 10-20 seconds after asking students to solve a problem or think of possible ways to begin was much too short for them to process. Best to wait up to 10 minutes to give them time to process, discuss with a partner, try something to see if it makes sense, in addition to holding back or nodding or shaking one’s head to allow more time for processing. For example, one girl was solving a multi-step contextual problem and asked me, “Is this right?” I responded that I did not know, but to discuss it with her table partner. This way, both would deepen their understanding of the concepts, through discussion and by thinking about it in their own ways. When co-teaching with Judith and Tim, I shared this with them and I believe they saw the benefits immediately.

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Reflective Teaching Reflection in teaching has been shown to be effective professional development, especially for K-12 teachers (Postholm, 2018). Zimmerman (2009) describes reflective teaching in terms of its potential to connect theory to practice. She writes, “A cyclical connection between theory and practice is what the critical educator aims for -- a reflective teaching practice which goes beyond awareness and acknowledgement, to action” (p. 46). In our own experience as instructors, constant awareness of our pedagogical actions in the classroom promotes our professional growth as we continue to strive to be better instructors for our students. Furthermore, reflective practice and critical friendship can work hand-in-hand for the purpose of supporting pedagogical change or shifts in practice (Gregory & Burbage, 2017). As the three of us worked in our coteaching pairs, our narratives indicate how our interactions both caused for reflection and also ignited change in our respective practices. Judith writes: Jackie and I have very similar beliefs about teaching, but somehow over the past several years, I had been conflicted and my beliefs about teaching did not match what was actually playing out in my classroom. With Jackie in the classroom with me, I slowed down and focused more on understanding and less on covering the material. I allowed for more flexibility with respect to approaches to solving problems. I am also more mindful of student understanding. Jackie stops me when I am moving too fast or glossing over some facts that may be obvious to me but not to the students. This has been really helpful. Jackie keeps me in check.

Similarly, Jackie writes: Judith supported my curricular and pedagogical approach and we both saw it as an opportunity to learn -- Judith to learn my curriculum and for me to improve on my instruction of it. During this initial trial, I took on the role of course auditor, wanting to see how the students responded. The completely learner-centered instructional style was also challenging and I welcomed Judith’s insistence on more time for the class to process certain concepts.

The importance of trust and working toward the same goal, part of the critical friendship, seemed to undergird the relationship between coteaching and reflective practice, with each of us open to allowing the other

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to critique our instruction in an effort to improve the experience for the students. Judith recounted a time when, on the spur of the moment, Jackie jumped in and redirected the class discussion to emphasize an important part about teaching a concept: We were working on graphing linear equations and I had drawn a coordinate plane but had not paid close attention to the spacing between the tick marks on the x-axis. Jackie jumped up and said something like ‘hold on, hold on’ and proceeded to fix my spacing. Jackie then told the students why, as teachers, it was important to be accurate with the spacing. I had never considered that and just assumed that everyone understood that I meant for the spaces to be regular. After that, I started to realize that in my other courses, I drew graphs inaccurately and that students could be misinterpreting what I was trying to convey with the graph. From that point on, I was very mindful and careful about my drawings.

Judith goes on to write, “I would not have been okay with anyone else jumping up and interrupting me while I was teaching,” indicating that the trust extended to Jackie was important. Outside of a critical friendship, Judith might have been insulted and the reflection might have been more on the experience of being critiqued as opposed to the on the opportunity to make a pedagogical change for the improvement of Judith’s teaching. A Place to Talk Each of the three authors described how they rarely discussed mathematics teaching and learning in their respective departments. Judith and Tim, in a mathematics department, talked about how conversations with other faculty focused on logistical issues such as textbooks, schedules or creating common final exams and not how students learn mathematics or using technology to support learning. In recent years and spurred on by a desire to improve instruction in the department, Judith and Tim have developed several initiatives on inquiry-based instruction aimed at faculty within the mathematics department. However, not having the critical friendship with the other faculty limits both authors in how they feel that they can provide suggestions or criticism to their peers. Judith writes: I have tried to bring up teaching differently in our mostly lecture-style department only to be told that I am patronizing or pushing an agenda. It can be frustrating because I hear from students when they feel like they

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are not learning or are scared to ask questions in colleagues’ classes but I cannot say anything to the instructors because they will be offended and not want to hear what I say.

Tim comments that the critical friendship with Judith and Jackie gives him a “safe space” to try out ideas for his classes that he knows may not be well-received and respected by others in the department. Tim writes: Without such a safe space to discuss (and occasionally vent) with each other, I would likely feel as though I was mostly ‘on my own’ when it came to my growth as a teacher, even with an abundance of faculty development programs available at our university. Such programs are often beneficial but will never substitute for the support and care that critical friends can provide.

Conclusions Our experience as co-teachers was largely successful because of our critical friendships with each other. Going into each of the experiences, we had already decided that we trusted each other, were open to critique from one another, and were working toward common goals of improving our teaching, as well as providing our students with rich, engaging opportunities for learning mathematics. What we see from our data is the way co-teaching provided valuable opportunities for reflecting on our individual practice, as well as supporting the development of each other’s (Golby & Appleby, 1995). In particular, we found that having a trusted critical friend in the classroom reminding us to “hold back” helped us to better align our practice with our beliefs about good teaching. Also, co-teaching with critical friends influenced our reflective practice effort as we had someone to provide feedback and discuss pedagogical instances in our classrooms. Finally, as opportunities to open up our teaching to others was rare in our respective departments, our critical friendships gave us a safe place to discuss ideas, fears, and frustrations in teaching with genuinely concerned critical friends who through co-teaching were privy to our teaching strengths and weaknesses. Another important point is that the issue of power between critical friends did not emerge from our data. Power has often been cited as a potential roadblock to developing strong, successful critical friendships

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(Swaffield, 2008). Instead, what emerged from our data and our experience was the appreciation that each of us brought to the friendship through different strengths from which others could learn. Also, we allowed for shifts in power within the co-teaching experiences, with one of us leading the direction of the class in one instance while the other led in another. We believe that allowing for this sharing of power along with our respect for each other’s knowledge and talent prevented any one of us from feeling dehumanized or threatened by the other. Finally, having a bigger overarching goal of giving our students important opportunities to truly learn mathematics kept us from taking anything personally, as illustrated in the instance above where Tim discusses where he worried about being the “struggling apprentice.” Tim recognized that the work that he and Jackie were doing was focused on the students and their learning, and so he was able to move forward. Finally, we acknowledge that there are limits to our narrative study. There are several identifying factors of our particular experiences that we think may also contribute to the success of our co-teaching and critical friendship. For one, our institution has championed our work as co-teachers with accolades coming from higher administration for the work that we are doing. The support from our institution acknowledges that the work that we are doing is important and further motivates us to ensure that we are successful. Secondly, our departments of urban education and mathematics work together willingly. In the larger field of mathematics education, this is not the case, with each community working in a silo to develop courses and teach secondary mathematics preservice teachers (Leikin, Zazkis, & Meller, 2018) We are very fortunate to have established a strong partnership between our two departments that makes our critical friendship stronger. Lastly, our work began with external funding that allowed us course releases to begin this work. Even though the funding, which initially paid for our time to collaborate and co-teach, has since ended, we continue the work ourselves because it means so much to us both personally and professionally. Had we not started with funding to buy us out of our standard teaching expectations within our departments, we might not have had the time to develop our critical friendship nor would we have been so inclined to attempt coteaching. Studying our critical friendship here and in Sack et al. (2015) grew out of our work with the Faculty Academy. As members of this group, we discovered critical friendship and self-study as a framework to deeply explore our experiences and to write about and share with a

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broader teacher education community. Our publications across a range of mathematics and mathematics education research journals and conference proceedings all deal with mathematics and mathematical learning. However, our work with the Faculty Academy has provided us opportunities to reflect on our growth as educators since the members of the Faculty Academy are all education researchers but across a range of genres, such as science, social studies, psychology, and others. Since we all review each other’s work, we have all provided each other with perspectives on education that extend our narratives of learning and teaching beyond our individual areas of expertise. Finally, we wish to acknowledge the leadership of Cheryl Craig and Denise McDonald for their commitment to the many years of support for the members of the Faculty Academy in developing their research agendas. Authors’ Note This research was funded by the following grants: National Science Foundation Grant 1136222, Espirit de Corps: Expanding STEM Professionals’ Roles in Teaching

References Baskerville, D., & Goldblatt, H. (2009). Learning to be a critical friend: From professional indifference through to challenge to unguarded conversations. Cambridge Journal of Education, 39, 205–221. Carlson, J. R. (2019). “How am I going to handle the situation?” The role(s) of reflective practice and critical friend groups in secondary teacher education. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 13(1), 1–20. Clandinin, D. J., & Rosiek, J., (2007). Mapping a landscape of narrative inquiry: Borderland spaces and tensions. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 35–75). New York: Sage. Cobb, C., & Sharma, M. (2015). I’ve got you covered: Adventures in social justice-informed co-teaching. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 15(2), 41–57. Golby, M., & Appleby, R. (1995). Reflective practice through critical friendship: Some possibilities. Cambridge Journal of Education, 25(2), 149. Gregory, K. H., & Burbage, A. K. (2017). Exploring faculty development identity through self-study: Teaching philosophies, reflective practice, and critical friendship. Journal of Ethnographic & Qualitative Research, 12(2), 110–124. Kaymakamoglu, S. E. (2018). Teachers’ beliefs perceived and actual classroom practice in relation to traditional (teacher-centered) and constructivist (learnercentered) teaching. Journal of Education and Learning, 7 (1), 29–37.

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Kuh, L. P. (2016). Teachers talking about teaching and school: Collaboration and reflective practice via critical friends groups. Teachers & Teaching, 22(3), 293–314. Leikin, R., Zazkis, R., & Meller, M. (2018). Research mathematicians as teacher educators: Focusing on mathematics for secondary mathematics teachers. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 21(5), 451–473. Moore, J. A., & Carter-Hicks, J. (2014). Let’s talk! Facilitating a faculty learning community using a critical friends group approach. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 8(2), 1–17. NCTM. (2000). Principles and standards for school Mathematics. NCTM. Nilsson, M., Wennergren, A., & Sjöberg, U. (2018). Tensions in communication—Teachers and academic facilitators in a critical friendship. Action Research, 16(1), 7. Pinnegar, S., & Daynes, J. G., (2007). Locating narrative inquiry historically: Thematics in the turn to narrative. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 3–34). New York: Sage. Postholm, M. B. (2018). Reflective thinking in educational settings: An approach to theory and research on reflection. Educational Research, 60(4), 427–444. Sack, J., Quander, J., Redl, T., & Leveille, N. (2015). The community of practice among mathematics and mathematics education faculty members at an urban minority serving institution in the U.S. Innovative Higher Education. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10755-015-9340-9. Swaffield, S. (2008). Critical friendship, dialogue and learning. Leadership for Learning, School Leadership and Management, 28(4), 323–336. Tidwell, D., Heston, M., & Fitzgerald, L. (2009). Introduction. In D. Tidwell, M. Heston, & L. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Research methods for the self-study of practice (pp. xiii–xxii). Dordrech: Springer. Zimmerman, L. W. (2009). Reflective teaching practice: Engaging in praxis. Journal of Theory Construction & Testing, 13(2), 46–50.

CHAPTER 14

Learning and Leading as Teacher Researchers Jacqueline J. Sack and Irma Vazquez

Research Method: Self-Study in the Narrative Inquiry Vein Self-study is a genre of research that can use the narrative inquiry method to study one’s own practice (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). In self-study and narrative research, the teacher simultaneously serves as an inquirer and a learner in order to make good sense of the teaching and learning in a particular environment (Guðjónsdóttir & Kristinsdóttir, 2011). Selfstudy, though, is uniquely aimed at making actionable contributions to the teaching and teacher education professions. As for the narrative inquiry research method, Bruner (1990) speaks of it as conjuring up conceptual interpretations, which are “metaphoric, allusive, [and] very sensitive to context” (p. 61). Bruner states that “[it] is composed of a

J. J. Sack (B) Department of Urban Education, University of Houston, Downtown, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] I. Vazquez Houston Independent School District, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_14

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unique sequence of events, mental states, happenings involving human beings as characters or actors.” (p. 43) These constituents are given meaning by their place in the overall plot. When stories depart from the ordinary or expected, the interpretation of these departures makes the story comprehensible. Self-study methods always involve others collaboratively through one’s own practice in interactions with others. When reflecting on events collaboratively, one is able to validate and deepen each other’s perspectives. “We do not construct practice alone, and most often coming to know practice involves deepening our understanding of and relationship with others” (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009, p. 14). It is these interpretations, which become the foundations for the creation of theory in narrative research. We provide evidence of our courage to persist, together and independently when teaching difficult concepts, and also in supporting our learners as they develop confidence and understanding. Through our collaborative reflection on our work together we show how we have evolved as learners and leaders. The following two sections deal with Jackie’s and Irma’s beginnings as teachers, teacher educators, and collaborative classroom researchers.

Jackie’s Story I grew up in South Africa. In high school, Mathematics and Physical Science were my favorite subjects. My undergraduate degree plan, based on the British system, comprised 10 courses over 3 years. My first year comprised 4 subjects: Mathematics 1, Chemistry 1, Physics 1, and Geology 1. This selection allowed me to study each subject in some depth and then select a major for the second and third years. Over the course of a year, each course met daily and after each professor had completed his section, another replaced him to teach a new topic. I decided to double major in Mathematics and Chemistry. However, my Mathematics 2 experience was abysmal. The professors walked into the lecture hall, proceeded to write line- after-line of abstract mathematics on the board at the front of the lecture hall, which students were expected to copy and understand. They also showed how to apply these concepts to various problems but were not open to student questions. For homework, we were expected to solve a variety of difficult abstract problems and attend tutorials managed by a Mathematics graduate student. The line for help was often up to six people long. One would ask for help on a particular item; the tutor would quickly write down several unintelligible lines

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of mathematics; and, then pronounce, “Next!” without any intention of clarifying misunderstandings or confusion. At the end of the year, we sat for two or three 3-hour exams covering the entire year’s work. After averaging the final exam scores, one could earn a 1, 2, 3, S, or F, 1 being the highest grade and F being a failure. Students, including myself, who received an S were considered borderline passing/failing and could sit for a Supplementary exam, which might allow them to move forward the following year. I made an appointment to meet with the professor whose work was most confusing to me to go over my first exam and hopefully improve my chances of passing. Sitting in a communal office with two or three other department faculty, he opened my exam, looked at what I had written, and said, “This is rubbish! What did you expect?” I asked if he could explain what I needed to know, and he snidely dismissed me based on my apparent lack of application in the course during the year. I had worked very hard to make sense of the course, and I had devoted myself to improving my knowledge just to pass the supplementary exam. Even though I was successful, I decided to drop the pure Mathematics major, and continued with Chemistry, in which I excelled: I went on for two more years to earn a Chemistry Honors degree, equivalent to the coursework taken in the United States for master’s degree programs. These mathematics learning experiences are very similar to those of my colleagues who received their school and undergraduate education in other countries, including the United States. There is an international perspective that math is taught by “telling” and “showing” traditional abstract and unforgiving algorithmic steps, developed by mathematiciantype minds, and devoid of alternate ways to represent or explain concepts. This mathematician-minded culture was not one of caring but was set up to weed out all but those who could handle the directness of how to teach and do mathematics. To my way of thinking, its hidden story—its curriculum—was gate keeping. I fell into teaching by accident. After I graduated with my Honors degree, my spouse and I moved to the United Kingdom, where we resided for almost 5 years. We then migrated again, this time to the United States to join one of my siblings, who had settled in Houston. I earned my Master’s Degree in Library Science while taking care of our two children. On the day I took our 6-year-old son to meet his 1st grade teacher in a private school, I asked the principal if I could volunteer in the school library. She asked about my background and offered me the half-time position as school librarian since the position had just

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opened up. The school primarily served Pre-K to 5th grade students but had a small cohort of secondary level learners. After my first year, I was asked to teach an Algebra and an Earth Science class. My life changed. Teaching was exciting, different every day, and challenging as I strove to give my students the best instructional care—and to never let them feel as abandoned as I had felt as an undergraduate student in that second-year mathematics program. I taught a variety of secondary level courses, including Algebra I and II, Geometry, Physical Science, Chemistry, and Earth Science over my eight years in private school before a 10-year stint in public schools, in the 8th largest public school district in the United States. In public school, I taught mainly eighth-grade mathematics classes, which included Algebra I and Geometry for academically advanced students. After attending the Rice University School Math Project’s (https://rusmp.rice.edu) summer session, my pedagogical and mathematical content knowledge became recognized, and I was then invited to offer professional development sessions for middle-grades teachers. These opportunities arose in spite of my less-than-stellar undergraduate experiences. By then, I had figured out various ways to reach all learners in every group I taught. During my last year in the classroom, I met Retha, a researcher with a Ph.D. in Mathematics Education. She had recently moved to the United States but was unable to take on full-time work. She visited my classroom several times a week over the course of that year. She immediately recognized my teaching strengths, including my ability to ask good questions and to expect my students to wrestle with concepts before I shared my perspectives. She also taught me to extend my “wait time” from about 20s to more than 10 min, so that students could continue to experiment with the mathematics collaboratively. As a researcher, Retha also began to share primary research articles with me. I believed I knew everything about mathematics instruction since I had kept up with teaching publications and attended as many professional development opportunities in mathematics instruction as were offered at that time. I then realized that I did not know everything about learning and teaching and also that the teaching articles I had read were watered-down synopses of important research work that did not do justice to the depth of these findings. My conversations with Retha and the articles she shared with me inspired me to enroll in a doctoral program so that I could formally continue to develop my knowledge and ultimately obtain my Ed.D. in Mathematics

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Education with Cheryl Craig, initiator of the Faculty Academy, as my co-advisor. After 18 years in the classroom, I became a mathematics specialist for my district. In this position, I wrote curricular activities that were more learner centered than the traditional textbook approaches and also provided professional development sessions and extended courses for teachers. Retha and I co-taught an 18-hour Geometry for Elementary Teachers course that met once a week over 6 weeks, which Irma attended. While most of the other elementary teachers in the course appeared to have a superficial, procedural perspective of doing and teaching mathematics, Irma stood out clearly due to her deep conceptual mathematical knowledge. I learned she had grown up in Bolivia and, like myself, had done well in Mathematics and Chemistry, also taking post-baccalaureate Chemistry courses prior to emigrating to the United States. A year later, after Retha had moved away, Irma became my instructional partner for the after-school geometry course for elementary teachers. This opportunity gave me a chance to take on a leadership role and to offer her mentoring experiences as she worked alongside teachers. She too was able to directly share elementary teaching perspectives about how our activities impacted her own 3rd grade students to make them more plausible and attainable for our participants. We then decided to launch a formal research project to document our work together in her classroom.

Irma’s Story My own beliefs as a mathematics educator, leader, and lifelong learner were validated and enhanced by reading about the mathematical growth mindset (Boaler, 2016). Boaler encourages learners to understand that, through effort, persistence, and good teaching, their individual mathematical abilities and talents can be strengthened. It reminded me of how fortunate I was that where I grew up in Bolivia. As a mathematics learner there during my elementary through high school years, my experiences were challenging but also rewarding, because my teachers required me to think critically instead of just following preset procedures to solve a problem. Upon graduating from high school, I pursued a career in Chemistry. I further developed visualization skills while studying mineral crystallization, electron energy levels, and organic compound structures, properties and reactions. My analytical mathematics knowledge was sustained while working with the laws of fluid thermodynamics

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and stoichiometry calculations. After working in a series of lab positions, I realized that this monotonous work was not my calling. I missed interacting with fellow students and the thought-provoking questions we discussed in class. I left Bolivia in 1980 after I was married. After more than a decade of enjoying a carefree life in the United States, a teacher friend asked me if I would be interested in teaching. My immediate reply was “Yes!” only to find out a second later that the position was as an elementary teacher in a bilingual classroom. I would be teaching little human beings from 7 to maybe 10 years old, which was so different from the college students I tutored back home in Bolivia. I enrolled in an alternative certification program and soon afterwards, I began teaching at a Title-1 elementary school in one of the largest school districts in Greater Houston. Schools are designated Title-1 by the US government when more than 40 percent of their students are below the poverty line. A few years later, I moved to another school where a dual-language, English/Spanish program was being implemented one grade level at a time. The school served approximately 500 students, with more than 60% of Hispanic/Latino origin, 15% White, 12% Black, and the remainder were Asian or mixed ethnicity. I became the lead science teacher for the school. I was placed in charge of science fair. I loved it—human interaction, inquiry-based studentcentered learning, and bilingual education! Later, I became the lead math teacher. I thought things could not be better than this. In 2002, I enrolled in a professional development course for elementary teachers offered by my large urban district. I met Jackie, who was co-teaching with Retha Van Niekerk, both originally from South Africa. I experienced firsthand these two master teachers’ inquiry-teaching and problem-solving approaches to learning geometry. Several months later, Jackie offered me the incredible opportunity to co-teach the same 6-session, after-school geometry course for elementary teachers from different school districts. Together we led and observed that several of our teacher participants struggled with similar misconceptions that my younger learners encountered with three-dimensional visualization and other geometric tasks. These teachers attributed their difficulties to the direct, teacher-centered way they had been taught mathematics when they were in grade school. After attending our sessions, they became more aware and reflective about their own practices as educators. Additionally, they became eager to share the inquiry-based and student-centered approach with their own students and colleagues. I also

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shared how my 3rd graders eagerly responded to these activities in my own classroom. As a result, Jackie and I decided to embark on a 3D visualization after-school project with my students. This morphed into a collaborative design research project, which brought us international exposure in mathematics education research over the following decade through presenting our work at research conferences and publishing internationally in recognized math education journals. My personal ongoing professional growth continued when Jackie agreed to be my mentor and thesis advisor for my master’s degree in multicultural education. I used the 3D visualization program as a framework for my thesis research, along with the computer interface, Geocadabra (http://www.geocadabra.nl/geocadabra_english_ove rview.htm), developed and later customized for us by Tom Lecluse, a teacher from The Netherlands. Since then, we have continued to work together investigating how young children in a dual-language setting develop 3D visualization skills. Now, after 13 years, this project is occurring in the campus’ after-school program. I am elated that our personal teaching, leading, and learning paths continue to cross to this day. After the many years of our collaboration, our enthusiasm, and commitment to this project has not faded away. In the next section we share our design research method that we used for our 3D visualization project and later for the numeracy project to help Irma’s below-level students bridge their numeracy gaps.

Design Research Design research principles, focused on fine-grained individual learners’ conceptualizations, guide our curricular underpinnings (e.g., Simon et al., 2010) of our projects. Each lesson is carefully monitored to ascertain learners’ comprehension. These reflections guide the planning of subsequent lessons. The design research process is exactly how we see ourselves and each other unfolding as inquiry-based teachers, who focus on student understanding and reflection to improve learning. The entire curriculum for our course was outlined but individual lesson details were added each week over the course of the year. In the following years, the process was repeated using the past year’s trajectory and overlaying it with ongoing refinement. What we do aligns with Lesson Study (Sack & Vazquez, 2011). While traditional Lesson Study involves multiple teachers collaboratively planning the lessons that each will independently teach, and then

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meeting to reflect and refine each lesson for the following year, we teach our lessons collaboratively and then met to share our reflections and analyses of our observations. We then plan the lesson for the following week based on needs or perceived learner interests based on our analyses. Through this collaborative teaching and follow-up reflection process, we both learn from each other, given that Irma has considerable experience working with elementary-age children and Jackie has in-depth conceptual understanding of the content through her work with secondary level mathematics teaching. We now focus on our stance as leaders of these classroom lessons and as learners as we self-reflected and as we collaboratively reflected as well. Our narrative includes third person, as Irma and Jackie, as the collaborative work entails reflections from both of us within the same experiences. Our first project entailed teaching 3rd grade children 3D visualization skills. Instead of impacting the instructional day, which was very tightly regimented and typically did not leave sufficient time for any enrichment work, we met our group once a week for an hour after school. Irma and the other 3rd grade teacher invited all of their students to participate in the class and 10–15 attended consistently. Irma had also intentionally invited students who had learning needs that she hoped to support through this project. The research project evolved over 8 years, each year building on past years’ trajectories and has been fully documented in Sack and Vazquez (2016). The program itself has been institutionalized in the school and is now running its 14th cohort. Fourth-grade and middlegrades teachers tell us they can identify children on the first day of each year who have been participants in our project. At the end of each year, we invite the children’s parents and siblings to a party where our students challenge their family members with math quizzes and celebrate their accomplishments. We order a cake from a high school geometry teacher, Laura, who is an outstanding baker who creates cakes that replicate a “cake puzzle” created by one of the students using puzzle pieces from our project. Also, a few years ago, when Jackie went to Laura’s classroom in a nearby high school to pick up the cake for that day’s party, Laura shared that one of her students had noticed the cake and told her he knew what it was. He had participated in our project when he was in 3rd grade and informed her this was the reason he did so well in her 10th grade class. This organic development validated the ongoing ripple effect impact of our collaborative project.

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In our first cohort, Irma included Sally, who had reading and numeracy gaps and struggled with most of her regular 3rd grade classroom work, which to a large extent required competency in reading or decoding symbolic characters (letters/numbers). To Irma’s surprise, Sally became one of the most gifted students in our visualization project, and also started to show totally different personality traits, for example, volunteering, sharing her thinking, and pushing us past our expectations for many of our lessons. Sally taught us the importance of using visual representations as a matter of course in our everyday teaching. Our state objectives and math teacher guides stress the importance of utilizing multiple representations, but these are usually given minimal coverage, just enough for the teacher to check a tick box on the long list of required objectives. Sally was able to think very abstractly using visuals and Irma began to infuse elements of number work into some of our projects. (See Sack & Vazquez, 2016, pp. 37-44 for details.) Another child, Daniel, had difficult social interactions with his peers, who usually tried to exclude him when any group work was required. He was also very gifted academically and this showed up in our visualization project too. We were often surprised by his inventive ways of solving 3D problems and Irma frequently invited him to share his solutions with the class. Since they had already engaged and struggled with the same problems, they were able to follow his explanations and this, in turn, gave Daniel the much-needed social confidence that he lacked. We established our second project to address numeracy gaps that had continued to plague the 3rd grade students at Irma’s school. Now in its third year, the class of about 20 meets for 1 h every week after school. Students with gaps are identified using second-grade reports and a carefully researched method of analyzing learners’ numeracy abilities. Essentially, when asked to solve a problem such as, “Johnny had some marbles. His father gave him 27 more. Now he has 83 marbles. How many marbles did his father give him?” The numbers in the problem would be adjusted to meet the standards for the learners’ grade level. A Level 1 child will count out 87 marbles starting at 1; then count off 27 marbles starting from 1 from the 83 group; and then count the remaining marbles starting from 1. A Level 2 child may count on (from 27 to 83) by 1s or count back 27 from 83 by 1s. A Level 3 child can decompose or recompose numbers in a variety of ways. For this problem s/he may begin with 27, add 3 to get 30, add 50 to get to 80, and then add 3 more to get to 83, finally stating 56, keeping track of the steps in his/her

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head. Children below Level 3 will struggle to make sense of multiplication, division, and fractions, and are frequently identified when they are observed counting on their fingers. We utilize a carefully developed instructional program (retrieved and translated from http://academic.sun.ac.za/mathed/MALATI/). The program was developed using design research methods in South Africa over several years in indigenous classrooms. Its inquiry-based methods have become our instructional norm from our 3D visualization project. Therefore, from the onset, we decided not to change the order of the instructional problems. Continuing to use the principles of design research, we collaboratively reflect on each lesson, and redesign teaching elements for subsequent lessons. The children are presented with a contextual situation (e.g., sharing 8 candy bars among 3 children) and must draw pictures to solve each problem. We move about the room, attending to the way the children work, asking for volunteers or selecting interesting solutions to present to the class. As with our 3D project, by engaging with each problem and then observing a range of the students’ solutions, we select best ways to solve such problems and also to tighten up the consistency of the students’ drawings. Over time, these visual representations have helped students to make connections between multiplication and division, and fractions. At the end of our first year working in this way, all but one of Irma’s students passed the state end-of-year test, indicating that those in the after-school project had attained grade-level competence.

Learning and Leading We have learned to lead and learned about leading in many ways in our collaborative project, which is also informed through Jackie’s participation in Faculty Academy. Engaging in classroom-based research at the outset was an opportunity for both of us to lead each other toward our learners’ mathematical growth. We both came to become teachers with strong backgrounds, not only in math, but also the physical sciences. Through these projects, we have enhanced our own and each other’s teaching using visual representations.

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Irma As a learner, Jackie inspires me to take action and contribute to change the traditional top-down approach of leading mathematics learners in my own classroom, school, and beyond our district. Her tenacity, and goal-setting skills make it possible for us to co-present our research findings and learn from other researchers and practitioners both at regional and international conferences. I have had opportunities to work within an international Lesson Study group and we co-authored a chapter in an ensuing book on Lesson Study (Sack & Vazquez, 2011), became a member of a peer-review group, and have the satisfaction of co-authoring the summative work on our 3D visualization project in an international publication. Without Jackie’s constant support, guidance, high expectations, and leadership, none of these learning opportunities would have been possible for me as an elementary teacher and lifelong learner. In my regular classroom, the milieu my learners and I have created allows us to celebrate our mistakes and learn from them, in spite of the direct instructional methods infused by teachers and instructors within my own school and university courses. It never ceases to amaze me how children can “invent” strategies to solve complex problems if I, as a leader, give them the opportunity to think and struggle through a challenging task. They learn to be fascinated by each other’s mistakes, using mathematical discourse to negotiate meaning, and they enjoy learning from each other. As their leader, I make a point of reminding them that I am also learning as I observe them. In more traditional classrooms, if students are invited to show their work to the class, most often it is the top performers in the subject who generally rise to the task and very little is done to support those who may be struggling. By encouraging all students to present their work and asking others to make sense of what they observe, everyone learns, and leads. The mere act of recognition for weaker learners helps them to move past their insecurities, especially when they see others in the same situation as themselves. This provides them confidence and builds their potential to take on leadership roles. Jackie Through my collaboration with Irma, I have learned how curricular research should play out in a real classroom, taught by the children’s teacher, with whom they have already established a working relationship.

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I have given Irma the chance to step back and give her learners time to think about problems in the way that Retha taught me so many years ago. I have also come to know what kind of mathematics to expect young children to produce, some of which has been surprisingly advanced. Our 3D visualization project enables them to become masters of topics that many high schoolers never have the opportunity to entertain. While I engage my own preservice teacher candidates in the same Malati activities that we use for our project, I have learned that they and the children are generally on similar levels when it comes to visualizing solutions to the problems. From Irma, I have also learned the importance of integrating other representations (e.g., number lines when counting fractional parts) to help our learners make connections within the numeracy strand. When Irma and I attend conferences, many of which are at an international level, we share the presentation lead position according to our comfort levels: I review the research frameworks and Irma shares and discusses students’ work and the teacher’s instructional role in getting them to the desired level of competence.

Conclusion Our collaborative writing of this self-study conducted in the narrative vein has captured our evolutions as leaders and learners and deepened our perspectives of the value of this narrative methodology. We have searched within ourselves for our own truths about our roles and how they have evolved over the years. From our own experiences as students or observers of rigid, teacher-centered instruction, devoid of instructor– student interrelationships, we entered the education profession knowing we would connect with our own learners and ensure they would not be left behind. As we collaboratively worked at and reflected on our inquiry-based instruction methods (undoubtedly enhanced by our separate physical science backgrounds) we enriched our understanding of our individual practices through sharing our perspectives on our learners’ and each other’s development. We have established a very strong critical friendship (Swaffield, 2008) in which difficult instructional or interpersonal situations can be discussed safely, with the ongoing goal of improving our own instructional strategies and relationships with our students. This self-study in the narrative inquiry vein has provided us with an even deeper opportunity to reflect back over our entire professional lives and to consider important moments that have shaped us

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as learners and as professional educators. Jackie’s association with the Faculty Academy has additionally provided us with the opportunity to further develop our personal understandings of this collaborative work. Other Faculty Academy members have read these reflections and analyses of practice through narrative inquiry minds and offered suggestions for improvement. They have sought our perspectives on their own development where they were able to identify with some of our findings. The opportunity to share and reflect with like minds in supportive settings like the Faculty Academy has been invaluable in our leading and learning. Acknowledgement Authors’ Note: The authors acknowledge the ongoing support of Dr. Retha Van Niekerk, Senior Lecturer: Foundation Phase Mathematics Education, School for Mathematics, Science and Technology in Teaching, Northwest University, South Africa.

References Boaler, J. (2016). Mathematical mindsets: Unleashing students’ potential through creative math, inspiring messages and innovative teaching. Jossey-Bass. Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Harvard University Press. Guðjónsdóttir, H., & Kristinsdóttir, J. V. (2011). Team-teaching about mathematics for all collaborative self-study. In S. Schuck & P. Pereira (Eds.), What counts in teaching mathematics. Self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (Vol. 11 pp. 29–43). Springer. Pinnegar, S., & Hamilton, M. L., (2009). Self-study of practice as a genre of qualitative research: Theory, methodology, and practice. Springer. Sack, J., & Vazquez, I. (2011). The intersection of lesson study and design research: A 3-D visualization development project for the elementary mathematics curriculum. In I. C. Hart et al. (Eds.), Lesson study research and practice in mathematics education (pp. 201–220). Springer. Sack, J., & Vazquez, I. (2016). A 3-D visualization teaching-learning trajectory for elementary grades children. Springer. Simon, M., Saldanha, L., McClintock, E., Karagoz Akar, G., Watanabe, T., & Ozgur Zembat, I. (2010). A developing approach to studying students’ learning through their mathematical activity, cognition and instruction. Cognition and Instruction, 28, 70–112. Swaffield, S. (2008). Critical friendship, dialogue and learning, in the context of leadership for learning. School Leadership and Management, 28(4), 323–336.

CHAPTER 15

Learning and Leading as Collaborative Physics Education/Physics Partners: Building a Physics Teacher Education Program Donna W. Stokes and Paige K. Evans

Introduction As a faculty member who teaches physics (Donna Stokes) and one who prepares physics teachers (Paige Evans), our journey to building a successful physics teacher education program has resulted in a collaborative model that has led to the increase of certified physics teachers from the University of Houston (UH). As a professor of physics since 2001, Stokes’ early scholarship was in the area of condensed matter physics where she conducted experimental physics research. Her research focused on the growth, optical, and structural characterization of semiconductors;

D. W. Stokes (B) Department of Physics, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] P. K. Evans Department of Mathematics, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_15

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however, she became increasingly concerned about why/how students learned physics, and the factors that influence their success and persistence toward completing physics/STEM degrees. Research shows that less than half of STEM undergraduates enrolled in a STEM major, actually complete the degree. To ensure the education of a diverse and skilled STEM workforce, Stokes realized that her research should include identifying factors that contribute to low student success rates in physics courses as well as in attaining physics/STEM degrees. As a result, her main research focus is now on the recruitment, retention, and persistence of students in physics and STEM fields, especially underrepresented minority (URM) students. She knows their story, because it is hers: her research in the last 10 years reflects her scholarly impact on improving STEM educator and STEM student success. Stokes wants to be the researcher that makes a difference to the students and their experience: her passion has always focused on teaching and training students whether that be in or outside the classroom or in the laboratory. But physics teacher preparation was not something she worked on in her research efforts, nor was it a research focus in the Department of Physics. In the late 1970s to the early 1980s, physics Department faculty, Hudson, conducted physics education-related research which mainly focused on student success in introductory physics courses (Hudson, 1977, 1985; Hudson & Rottmann, 1981; Lieberman & Hudson, 1979). Dr. Hudson also taught several master’s level courses in the late 1980s through 1994, training in-service certified physics/physical science teachers in physics content areas. The courses, listed in Table 15.1 with their course descriptions and prerequisites, were offered for Physics/physical science degree requirements for master’s programs offered through the College of Education. These courses could not be used to meet any requirements for a degree in Physics or the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (the courses were no longer offered after Hudson left the university).

Journey to Physics Education Researcher When Donna Stokes joined the Physics faculty in 2000, faculty in the department showed little interest in resurrecting the courses nor for working with in- or pre-service teachers. However, several faculty continued to explore ways to improve student success in the introductory course, mainly by employing interactive teaching techniques that have

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Table 15.1 Physics teacher education courses offered at the graduate level in the department of physics at the University of Houston Course Name

Course Description

Prerequisite and course notes

Physics for High School Teachers I

Kinematics and dynamics of motion in one and two dimensions, rotational motion, energy and heat

Physics for High School Teachers II

Electricity, magnetism, waves, and optics

Selected Topics in Physics for High School Teachers

Modern topics in atomic, nuclear, solid state, or space physics. Application of modern technology to teaching high school physics

Certification in physics or physical science. May not apply toward a degree in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Completion of Physics for High School Teachers I. May not apply toward a degree in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics Consent of instructor and certification in physics or physical science. May not be applied toward a degree in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. May be repeated for credit when topics vary

been proven to be effective through physics education research. Stokes has pursued her interest in improving student success in the introductory and upper level undergraduate physics courses throughout her career. In 2007, she supervised a graduate student who earned a master’s degree related to physics education research. The Physics Department Graduate Studies committee did not fully support offering graduate degrees with a physics education research focus as the Department did not offer any courses to support a degree related to physics education nor were they willing to accept science education courses offered in the College of Education for meeting physics degree requirements. However, the committee was willing to award a master’s degree to the student as long as s/he met all course requirement for the physics master’s degree with a thesis which could be related to physics education research. Still, it was clear: because the Department did not have the infrastructure to offer physics education-based courses, a PhD with a dissertation based on physic education research could not be supported.

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From High School Physics Teacher to Higher Education Teacher Preparation Paige Evans, now Associate Director and master teacher in the UH teachHOUSTON (t H) STEM teacher education program, previously taught high school physics for 17 years. She taught all levels of science and mathematics in high-need school districts both abroad and in the US. The majority of her public-school teaching career was spent teaching high school physics in Texas. From her experience in the public-school setting, Evans was aware of the drastic shortages of physics teachers both locally and nationally. Additionally, she completed her master’s degree in physics education at the University of Texas at Austin. Her thesis advisors there were instrumental in setting up the UTeach program, a nationally acclaimed program that places teacher preparation under the auspices of Colleges of Natural Sciences and Education and is a site for replication by other institutions. As a student in her physics inquiry course at the University of Texas at Austin, Evans changed her mindset about teaching physics. As a result, of that experience, she transformed her physics curricula for high school. She subsequently embarked on a plan to create a physics inquiry course at University of Houston for preservice physics teachers. With her experience teaching physics, her collaboration with founding professors of the UTeach program, and her desire to expand her influence to preservice teachers, Evans accepted a position at UH to serve as a master teacher in the teachHOUSTON program in the fall of 2008. teachHOUSTON Program: STEM Teacher Preparation In 2007, the University of Houston had been preparing approximately four STEM (science, technology, engineering, and/or math) teachers annually. Leaders from both the Colleges of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Education believed in the importance of having highly qualified STEM teachers, especially in the energy corridor of Houston. At the same time, UTeach, founded at the University of Texas at Austin, was seeking funding to replicate their program across the country to see if the program would work in areas different than Austin. The Houston area, as a large and diverse urban center, was an ideal location and teachHOUSTON became the first of the current 47 replication sites. The teachHOUSTON program was established in 2007 and is a collaboration

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between the Colleges of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and Education and with local school districts. This interdisciplinary collaboration was essential in building the teachHOUSTON program as it allowed disciplinary silos, which often exist in these colleges, to be broken down (Evans, Dillard, Rodriquez-Wilhelm, & McAlister-Shields, 2019). t H started with 14 students and now has over 350 students. Its program goals are aligned with the Prepare and Inspire report (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010), which discusses the need to train 100,000 qualified STEM middle and high school teachers. The program fully integrates grade 7-12 teacher certification courses in the STEM degree plans without adding time or cost to the four-year degrees. It prepares teachers through early field-experiences and research-based instruction in the STEM content provided by faculty who have also taught STEM courses in public schools. In 2020, the teachHOUSTON program will graduate approximately 50 secondary STEM teachers. Physics Teacher Goals Although teachHOUSTON aims to cultivate and increase the number of qualified teachers for math and all sciences, Evans had goals particularly related to increasing the number of certified physics teachers graduating from the teachHOUSTON program. She wanted to prepare these teachers using teaching techniques based on promising practices for teaching Physics. She had a goal of creating a physics inquiry course where preservice teachers would learn physics content through inquiry, as she had done in a similar physics course in her master’s program. She firmly believed that content inquiry courses should be included in STEM teacher preparation programs and she set out to establish a pathway for this to occur in teachHOUSTON. Evans also recognized there were no physics students in the t H program and that UH had not graduated a certified physics teacher through t H nor the College of Education in over a decade. This led her to approach faculty in the Department of Physics to establish collaborations to address these issues. To her surprise, only a few faculty in the Department were receptive to her effort/request to establish a pathway for training physics teachers. Her requests resulted in a few limited collaborative efforts that focused on writing/designing test for AP exams, but this is where the collaboration ended. Stokes continued to conduct physics education research despite the fact that many of her peers in the Physics Department felt that science

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and teacher education research should be performed by faculty in education departments/colleges, which is generally where this type of research and training is housed. However, in the past 25 years, science education research has transitioned from education departments to the specific science disciplines, and this transition was led by physics education researchers. Discipline-based science education research has led many science departments to (1) hire faculty with interests in science education, (2) develop education-based curriculum and courses, and (3) offer education degrees, i.e., BS, MS, and PhD degrees. The University of Houston’s Department of Physics is following this trend and Stokes has been a leader in development of its education-based program.

Building a Physics Teacher Preparation Program In 2009, when Donna Stokes met Paige Evans and heard her talk about her passion for physics student success and for training qualified physics teachers, she immediately became interested in physics teacher education at the University of Houston. In 2010, Stokes’s student completed a physics master’s degree thesis that was based on physics education research (Stokes, Forrest, & Voight, 2012). Stokes continued to build collaborations with Evans on their specific goal of training physics teachers. Evans shared data regarding physics teacher preparation at UH with Stokes. They both concluded that a partnership needed to be formed to address the challenges of training physics teachers and to develop and enact courses and formal/informal experiences within t H that would increase the number of certified physics teachers graduating (Stokes et al., 2017). To address the current and future demand for physics teachers locally and nationwide, we realized that the Physics department would need to make a commitment to expand the availability of teacher education courses and programming, and to help to recruit and retain high-quality students who were interested in teaching physics. In 2010, one of our first efforts to address establishing a teacher training program in physics occurred when we submitted a letter of intent to the American Physical Society and American Association of Physics Teachers Education Coalition (PhysTEC) program. This program, funded by the National Science Foundation, assists physics departments in colleges/universities in developing and/or improving their physics teacher education program. In the letter of intent, we proposed to develop a program and recruitment model for attracting, training, and retaining students to the

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physics/teachHOUSTON program. In this way, we would increase the number of physics majors earning a BS/BA degree with teacher certification. Although we were not invited for full submission of a proposal, this process stimulated many conversations between Stokes and Evans about how we could move forward with the proposed effort at some level in order to get students in the physics teacher education pipeline or pathway. We decided the first of these efforts would be the development of BS/BA degree plans for physics, which included the required teacher education courses. Degree Plans for Physics Majors and Minors with teachHOUSTON As the chair of the Physics Department’s Undergraduate Studies Committee (UGSC), Stokes worked with the committee members, five tenure/tenure track and/or non-tenure-track instructional faculty, to develop the BS/BA physics degree plans. The committee, which is responsible for oversight of the physics undergraduate course curriculum, determined the best placement in the 4-year plan to include teacher education courses in order to have the least impact on the course workload for each semester. This was challenging particularly because of the university’s limitation of the 120 credit hours for bachelor’s degrees. The BS/BA plans, which included 106 credit hours of required core, math and physics courses, only had 14 credit hours for minor and/or free elective courses that could be replaced by the 26 credit hours of teacher education course. Stokes worked closely with Evans to determine if any courses could be used to meet requirements for both physics and t H. Only one course, Research Methods, in the teacher education program, was identified as a possibility to serve as 3 credit hours of an advanced physics elective and could also be used to meet a 3 credit hour course requirement for the teacher certification program. The physics UGSC was hesitant to allow the course dual credit as they were concerned that the rigor of the teacher education course, which would not be taught by physics faculty, would not be sufficient to serve as an advanced physics elective. They were also concerned that students who were not planning to earn teacher certification would take this course to serve as their advanced physics elective. The UGSC charged Stokes with reviewing the course content to ensure it met the requirements of an advanced physics course. In addition, the UGSC decided that the course would not be accepted as an advanced

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physics elective for students who were not enrolled in the t H program. Stokes and Evans reviewed the Research Method course content and were confident that the course rigor was sufficient to meet requirements for both programs. The UGSC approved the BS/BA plans with a t H certification which now contain a total of 127 credit hours and incorporates the 23 credit hours of teacher certification course with the Research Method course replacing one advanced physics elective. This course was then cross-listed as a physics and t H teacher certification course. This was a critical development because it required trust between the faculty in physics and t H. The collaboration allowed a science teacher education course to serve as an advanced physics elective. This was a great step in the right direction for developing a partnership between the physics department and t H. We (Stokes and Evans) continued to collaborate on the development of the degree plans and on courses which could be used to meet both the physics degree and t H requirements which is critical to the recruitment and preparation of STEM teachers (Evans et al., 2019). National Science Foundation Noyce Scholarship Program In 2012, Stokes as PI and Evans as co-PI were awarded a grant through the National Science Foundation (NSF DUE Award#1240083) for the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program that aimed to encourage STEM majors and professionals to become K-12 teachers for teaching in high-need schools. The UH Robert Noyce Scholarship Program addressed recruitment, preparation, and retention of science majors for secondary education in physics and chemistry. The goals of the program not only included awarding scholarships to students but also offered summer internships for early exposure to formal and informal teaching experiences (Evans, Stokes, & Craig, 2017), as well as developing and enacting a “science by inquiry” course and evaluating instructional strategies for training highly qualified physics and chemistry teachers. Cheryl J. Craig, the founder of the Faculty Academy and dissertation advisor for Evans, served as the evaluator for this program. Physics by Inquiry Course The Physics by Inquiry course aimed to engage/prepare Noyce scholars as well as other STEM majors and physics minors in the t H program, in

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inquiry-based teaching pedagogies to effectively teach physics at the 8– 12 level. Stokes and Evans collaborated to develop the course curriculum based on McDermott’s Physics by Inquiry Volume 2 (1996). Stokes and Evans added their own materials that they had developed over the years for their own courses. The course allows preservice teachers to learn physics concepts through interactive learning with hands-on experiments, and additionally teaches them how to utilize these interactive techniques in their own classrooms with their students. Evans taught the course for the first time as a special topics course in physics in summer 2013. With the course’s success, in fall 2013, Stokes approached the UGSC to have the course serve as an additional 3 credit hour advanced physics elective toward the BS/BA degree and be cross-listed as a physics and/or t H certification course. This was approved by the UGSC, again with the exception that the course could not be used to meet physics BS/BA degree requirements for student who were not in the t H program. Through the leadership of Stokes and Evans, the course was institutionalized as part of the physics and t H programming. Table 15.2 gives a listing of the courses that have been incorporated into the BS/BA degree plans for physics teacher certification. Table 15.2 Courses instituted as both a Physics and/or tH teacher certification course Course Name

Course Description

Prerequisite and course notes

Physics By Inquiry

This course is designed to build students’ deeper conceptual understanding of science concepts and pedagogical knowledge through a process of guided inquiry Students perform four independent inquiries, combining skills from mathematics and science to solve research problems

Knowing and Learning Science and Math (t H certification course) and either General Physics I (algebra-based) or University Physics I (calculus-based)

Research Methods

Knowing and Learning Science and Math (t H certification course) and General Physics I Lab or University Physics I Lab

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Results of Collaboration Stokes and Evans’ collaboration has resulted in an increase in production of certified physics teachers at UH. Table 15.3 outlines this increase. There were no certified physics teachers graduated from t H nor the College of Education for over a decade before 2012 and now on average, physics/teachHOUSTON has produced three certified physics teachers per year since 2014. Extending Collaborative Efforts Through Grants Our (Stokes and Evans) collaborative efforts for training qualified physics teachers did not end with the Noyce Scholarship Program. We went on to apply for and be awarded several additional NSF awards (NSF DUE Awards #1557309, #1557273, #164491). These programs not only aim to train physics teachers, but support future STEM teachers in general. The programs also allow for research on STEM teacher education programming at UH as well as at other institutions in the state of Texas, in order to gain insight on how/what is required in the teacher education programming, preservice teacher self-efficacy (Stokes et al., 2017), course work, relationships with local school district/administrators, recruiting practices, certification requirements, etc., that increase the production of qualified STEM teachers to meet the local, state, and national demands. We (Stokes and Evans) continued working to build and sustain the physic teacher pipeline at UH. In 2018 we, along with two additional physics faculty, were selected as members of the first group of American Physical Society PhysTEC Fellows, a two-year appointment from US institutions of higher education that recognizes and supports efforts to Table 15.3 Graduation numbers for certified Physics teacher 2014–2019 by academic year Graduates

2014–2015

2015–2016

2016–2017

2017–2018

2018–2019

Physics teacher education graduates*

3

2

2

4

2

* Any student who graduated from with a major or minor in physics and completed the tH teacher certification program

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develop/improve their physics teacher education programs. As PhysTEC fellows, we and they (1) established routine recruitment activities within the University Physics courses and promoted the physics major/minor to students in the t H program; (2) collaborated with advisors from other STEM disciplines to develop physics minor degree plans that included the t H courses for STEM majors in Biology/Biochemistry, Chemistry, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Computer Science, and Mathematics; and (3) developed course flowcharts that outlined the courses students can take at local community colleges in order to be on track to transfer to UH and earn a Physics degree and teaching certificate within 4 years. We continue to work together to determine what influenced past t H physics major/minor graduates and in-service physics teachers to pursue physics teacher certification. This research will allow us to determine further effective strategies for recruiting and preparing physics teachers.

Conclusion Collaboration between faculty in STEM and teacher education departments is very necessary to ensure the production of qualified math and science teachers. Building trust is critical for ensuring efficacy in training the students that is ensuring that courses that can serve to meet the requirements of both programs are actually taught with the rigor expected by both programs. Not only did the collaboration morph into a partnership, but it also has led to other outcomes, including our recognition as PhysTEC Fellows. Because of the success of the Physics by Inquiry course, a Physics for Pre-service Middle School Teachers, was developed, implemented and instituted in t H, for building content knowledge and effective pedagogical approaches for teaching science through discoverylearning modules. We (Stokes & Evans) have published papers and given presentations at national and international conferences on our work. For example, Stokes and the team published a chapter, The Gordian Knot of teacher induction: When context trumps teacher preparation and the desire to teach (Craig, Evans, Li, & Stokes, 2018) and an article, A tribute to “unsung teachers”: Teachers’ influences on students enrolling in STEM program with the intent of entering STEM careers (Craig, Evans, Verma, Stokes, & Li, 2019). In 2017, Stokes et al., (2017) successfully published another chapter Developing STEM teachers through both informal and

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formal learning experience. All of this research pertains to the preparation of physics/STEM teachers. For Stokes and Evans, physics/STEM student success and teacher preparation are fulfilling aspects of their jobs and for Stokes, it has become the focus of her research, i.e., The influence of parents on undergraduate and graduate students entering the STEM disciplines and STEM careers (Craig, Verma, Stokes, Evans, & Abrol, 2018). Collaborating has allowed them to learn, share, and lead one another on a journey to recruit and train physics teachers through formal and informal experiences, which have positively impacted the number of certified physics teachers produced through the Department of Physics and t H at the University of Houston. Our collaborative efforts may serve as a model for establishing/improving teacher education programs for producing the next generation of qualified math and science teachers at institutions nationwide. Stokes and Evans continue to collaborate on additional projects for increasing the number of qualified physics teachers as well as for improving STEM student success. They have strengthened their collaboration through their connection to the Faculty Academy that has served as a collaborative space in which to share ideas with like-minded faculty at other universities. Evans first met the founder of the Faculty Academy, Cheryl Craig, when Craig served as her doctoral advisor. Her doctoral dissertation, A narrative inquiry into teaching Physics as Inquiry: An examination of in-Service exemplars, served as the genesis of the now successful physics inquiry course and subsequent National Science Foundation Grants of which Craig serves as the evaluator. Stokes’ interaction with Craig started when they began working on the proposal for the NSF Noyce award, for which Craig was also the evaluator. Meeting Craig and hearing her talk about her involvement in writing groups and the Faculty Academy fascinated Stokes. For physics faculty, writing groups are not components of quantitative science-based research studies. When Stokes was invited to attend a Faculty Academy meeting, she immediately found a place where she could interact with other scholars, particularly those engaged in qualitative research. The connections we both made with faculty from other universities have catapulted our initiatives to a much larger scale than previously imagined. In fact, we are further realizing the potential of our collaboration for improving the state of physics/STEM teacher education and student success at a local, regional, and national scale.

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Authors’ Note This research was funded by the following grants: National Science Foundation DUE Award 1240083, Recruitment, Preparation and Retention of STEM Students as High School Teachers National Science Foundation DUE Award 164491, STEM Scholarship Program with Promotion and Retention of STEM Education through Networking Team (PARENT) Support National Science Foundation DUE Award 1557309, University of Houston: Learning through Informal and Formal Experiences National Science Foundation DUE Award 1557273, Collaborative Research: Understanding Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Outcomes in Texas

References Craig, C. J., Evans, P., Li, J., & Stokes, D. (2018). The Gordian Knot of teacher induction: When context trumps teacher preparation and the desire to teach. In D. McDonald (Ed.), Facing challenges and complexities in retention of novice teachers. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Craig, C., Verma, R., Stokes, D., Evans, P., & Abrol, B. (2018b). The influence of parents on undergraduate and graduate students’ entering the STEM disciplines and STEM careers. International Journal of Science Education, 40(6), 621–643. Craig, C., Evans, P., Verma, R., Stokes, D., & Li, J. (2019). A tribute to ‘unsung teachers’: Teachers’ influences on students enrolling in STEM programs with the intent of entering STEM careers. European Journal of Teacher Education, 42(3), 335–358. Evans, P., Stokes, D., & Craig, C. (2017). Developing STEM teachers through both informal and formal learning experiences. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 961–971. Evans, P., Dillard, K., Rodriquez-Wilhelm, D., & McAlister-Shields, L. (2019). Like-minded people: University-based interdisciplinary collaborations in STEM teacher preparation programs. Journal for STEM Education Research, 2, 35–54. Hudson, H. T. (1977). Computer-graded homework in introductory physics. American Journal of Physics, 45(10), 896–898. Hudson, H. T. (1985). Teaching physics to a large lecture section. The Physics Teacher, 23(2), 81–84. Hudson, H. T., & Rottmann, R. M. (1981). Correlation between performance in physics and prior mathematics knowledge. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 18(4), 291–294. Lieberman, D., & Hudson, H. T. (1979). Correlation between logical abilities and success in physics. American Journal of Physics, 47 (9), 784–786.

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President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. (2010). Prepare and inspire: K-12 education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for America’s future. Executive Office of the White House. Stokes, D., Forrest, R., & Voight, C. D. (2012). Pre-testing and early intervention in introductory general physics I. In INTED2012 Proceedings (pp. 4450–4459). Stokes, D., Evans, P., & Craig, C. (2017). Developing STEM teachers through both informal and formal learning experiences, search and research: Teacher education for contemporary context. In J. Mena, A. G. Valcarcel, F. GarciaPenalvo & M. M. del Pozo (Eds.), Publiusher ediciones universidad de salamanca (pp. 961–971).

CHAPTER 16

teachHOUSTON Alumni: Agents of Change in Secondary STEM Education Mariam Manuel, Paige K. Evans, and Leah McAlister-Shields

Introduction TeachHOUSTON is the University of Houston’s (UH’s) secondary STEM teacher preparation program and is the first replication site of UTeach, a nationally acclaimed teacher preparation program. TeachHOUSTON began in 2007 and is a collaboration between the colleges of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) and Education (COE) along with local school districts (Craig, Evans, Stokes, & Bott, 2017). The program is directly aligned with the goal of the Prepare and Inspire report, aimed at training 100,000 new quality STEM middle

M. Manuel (B) · P. K. Evans · L. McAlister-Shields Department of Mathematics, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] P. K. Evans e-mail: [email protected] L. McAlister-Shields e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_16

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school and high school teachers (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010), and combating the shortage of qualified math and science teachers (Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century 2007). The program provides grade 7– 12 teacher certification for those obtaining a STEM degree, emphasizing early and ongoing field experiences. To date, teachHOUSTON has graduated 318 STEM teachers and is changing the face of regional public education. Annually, 90% of teachHOUSTON graduates enter teaching, of which 95% are teaching in the Greater Houston Area: 100% are teaching in high-need school districts and an estimated 80% are teaching in high-need schools. Moreover, 88% of these teachHOUSTON teachers continue beyond five years, which greatly exceeds the national average of 50%. This translates to approximately 180,000 students that have been taught by highly trained teachHOUSTON graduates and these students will, therefore, be better prepared to persist through the challenges of a STEM major and STEM career. Of teachHOUSTON graduates, 69% identify as minorities, reflecting UH’s diversity (Fig. 16.1) with 34% Hispanic, 25% White, 30% Asian, and 8% African American. This compares favorably to U.S. and Texas teachers (Boser, 2014), which is essential as successful academic outcomes occur when minority teachers serve as role models (Basit & McNamara, 2004; Dee, 2005; Pitts, 2007).

Fig. 16.1 Ethnicity of tH teacher vs. U.S. vs. Texas teachers

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The teachHOUSTON program has the following characteristics: collaboration between NSM (College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics) and COE (College of Education); active recruitment of NSM majors to take the two initial one-hour teachHOUSTON courses; a focus on developing deep-level understanding of the subject material and incorporating effective approaches using technology in teaching; guidance and inspiration provided by faculty and highly experienced public school teachers who serve as Master Teachers; compact degree plans allowing students to complete their major and teachHOUSTON courses in four years; courses taught by faculty members experienced in teaching in the public schools and actively engaged in science and/or math education research; integrated research-based professional development courses that focus on teaching both mathematics and science, and an array of informal student opportunities. In 2014 the associate director of the program, Paige Evans, recognized a need and urgency for providing support to the alumni not only in terms of induction, which generally spans the first three years of teaching, but also through opportunities for leadership. Through a collaborative partnership with a graduate from one of the first teachHOUSTON cohorts, the teachHOUSTON Alumni Advisory Board (tHAAB) was launched. The advisory board sought to inform the practices of the teachHOUSTON preservice teacher preparation program by empowering alumni to share their insights and recommendations. The board members consisted of the associate director and four alumni, all of whom were strategically selected to represent regions around the greater Houston area, content expertise, and years of graduation. The Board organized networking and professional development events based on responses to an alumni survey which inquired about the needs of teachHOUSTON teachers and how the tHAAB could help support them in their practice. The majority of the responses included teachers who wanted additional training on incorporating meaningful technology in the classroom. An emergent area of need included alumni seeking opportunities to further develop their leadership skills. This request derived from teachHOUSTON graduates who found themselves in positions such as Team Lead, Department Chair, and Instructional Coach, all of which required them to collaborate and empower fellow STEM teachers. Furthermore, through survey responses, and discussions during the networking sessions, it became evident that teachHOUSTON teachers

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were taking charge and advocating for innovative instructional practices. TeachHOUSTON alumni were not only supporting the prescribed agenda of their schools, but they were also shaping the initiatives by spearheading professional developments and conversations surrounding pedagogy and student support. In doing so, teachHOUSTON STEM teachers were serving as both teacher leaders and agents of change. Although there has been an increase in studies related to the development of teacher leaders, there is little current research about the methods through which a preservice teacher program can support and empower its own graduates to become teacher leaders. The narratives we have shared throughout this chapter will contribute to the body of literature on teacher leaders. Our stories help document the impact of leadership building efforts conducted through a university-based preservice teacher preparation program. This chapter includes the journey of an alum who embarked on several leadership opportunities before landing the position of master teacher (Mariam Manuel) for the same teacher preparation program that was responsible for her teaching career. The chapter also includes the narrative of the master teacher and associate director (Paige Evans) who is responsible for the cultivation of opportunities that create a community steeped in a culture of caring, mentorship, and collaborative partnerships. Lastly, the chapter includes the perspective of the faculty advisor (Leah McAlister-Shields) who coaches all aspiring teachers through their preparation and continues to serve as a source of mentorship and support when the teachers enter the classroom. As authors of this chapter and teacher educators, we are honored to be part of the Faculty Academy, a group of leaders and scholars in teacher education who meet monthly to support each other in their endeavors including publishing, promotion, and the discussion of issues facing higher education. The Faculty Academy provides a safe and caring community where faculty members can collaborate, partner, and receive mentorship in an effort to extend their impact beyond bounds of their university programs. It is because of our association with the Faculty Academy that we felt empowered to share the journey we have each embarked on to cultivate teacher leadership in the graduates of teachHOUSTON. We begin with Mariam’s narrative of experience (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) and then move on to Paige’s and Leah’s experiential stories.

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From Preservice to Master Teacher: A Journey in Teacher Leadership I, Mariam Manuel, began my journey into teaching the year teachHOUSTON was first established as a capstone for STEM majors at the University of Houston. I can vividly remember sitting in my calculus class among nearly 500 other students when the professor shared information about a brand-new program designed to support and prepare aspiring STEM teachers. I enrolled in the first course that weekend and even then I knew that I had just taken a pivotal step toward my calling (Hansen, 1995). Upon completing my undergraduate degree, I taught high school physics, both on-level and advanced placement, in a high-need school district located in the greater Houston area. My journey into teacher leadership was less planned and more organic, in that the transitions felt seamless. During my first-year teaching, I began using the innovative instructional practices (inquiry-based instruction and project-based learning) teachHOUSTON had prepared me to integrate in my classroom. To my surprise, I was noticed by instructional specialists and asked to host a professional development program that summer for interested physics teachers from around the district. The following school year, I was asked to serve as team lead for the advanced placement physics team. Soon after, I began facilitating professional development programs for the district’s gifted and talented program. I was also invited to participate in curriculum writing sessions and assist with textbook adoption. During this time, it occurred to me that in a school district with nine high schools and approximately 30 science teachers per school, I was being reached out to and viewed as someone with expertise. I found this realization to be empowering and humbling. My goals for teacher leadership were shaped by role models I encountered in the form of master teachers in the teachHOUSTON program. One person specifically stands out as her mentorship extended my outlook on what was possible for me as a teacher and ultimately as a teacher leader. Co-author Paige Evans was instrumental in my preservice teacher preparation and was the first person who shared with me the options that are available for teachers who want to pursue graduate degrees. Accordingly, while still in the classroom, I earned my master’s degree in engineering education through the University of Texas. After doing so, I served in various leadership positions including taking on the role of

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Science Instructional Coach for two high schools in the district, and thus working with approximately 60 science teachers. Meanwhile, I continued to stay connected with teachHOUSTON and Paige Evans. As she progressed in her career through the acquisition of prestigious NSF grants, I was able to watch the journey and become a partner when possible. One such collaboration included formation of the teachHOUSTON Alumni Advisory Board (tHAAB). It was our collective vision to design avenues for networking and learning to take place between teachHOUSTON alumni. Around the same time, the National UTeach institute launched the UTeach STEM Educators’ Association (USEA). USEA aims to develop STEM literacy for all students through innovation and excellence in university-based teacher education. At this point, I had previously served as a guest speaker at a national UTeach conference and was involved in some national alumni related endeavors. Paige suggested I apply to serve as the alumni representative on the board, and, to my delight, I was selected. While I was serving as a science instructional coach, I was informed about the development of a STEM center for the district. Given that I had just completed my master’s in engineering education, I found myself drawn to the center. I applied and was selected to serve as the STEM instructional specialist. Through this role I was able to design formal and informal STEM learning experiences for students in all grade levels. I also was a member on committees with district leaders such as principals and assistant superintendents. I began to meet with school board members and soon entered a new realm of instructional leadership, one which involved making decisions about opportunities that have the potential to impact students on a macro level. Around this time, I authored and began teaching a physics course for preservice middle school teachers at the College of Education and taught the class in the evenings. It was Paige Evans who had pitched the idea for the course to me as she was designing a similar course herself that was geared toward prospective high school physics teachers. She also offered me the chance to design a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for the Advanced Placement (AP) Physics exam. For this venture, I recruited one of my colleagues with whom I taught AP Physics prior to serving as an instructional coach. We designed the course modules together, while Paige and I monitored the course discussion boards. Over the span of three years, the course ended up serving 10,000 students in approximately 100 different countries. I found myself in awe of all that was possible from

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a higher education position and with the support of grant funds. Accordingly, I began pursuing my doctoral degree in STEM education through Texas Tech University with the hopes of one day impacting change from the university level. Hence, when teachHOUSTON interviewed me for, and offered me the position of master teacher, I wholeheartedly accepted. Returning as a faculty member to the teachHOUSTON program and the community that greatly contributed to my development as a teaching professional has been self-efficacious and empowering. Knowing that I was once in the same seat as my students has distinctly shaped my teaching philosophy. Like my students, I also pursued and earned a degree through the College of Natural Science and Mathematics at University of Houston. As a first-generation university student, I worked multiple jobs while commuting to school and still struggled to make ends meet financially. I can relate and sympathize with the struggles my students have, while also providing support and encouragement as someone who has been there and persisted. As such, my teaching approach is centered around showing empathy, and providing mentorship. Should I find that a student is experiencing hardships, I make myself available to offer resources, and serve as, an often much needed, advocate for their success. Once my students graduate, I continue to provide support by organizing efforts such as the teachHOUSTON alumni panel, networking sessions, and a mentoring hotline for teachHOUSTON graduates in their first three years of teaching. Most recently, I helped design and host a new teacher academy. All these endeavors are examples of what I needed myself upon graduation and therefore are a part of my mission in sustaining and empowering STEM teachers and teacher leaders.

Paving the Pathway for Teacher Leadership I, Paige Evans, am currently a clinical professor and the associate director for the teachHOUSTON program in the Department of Mathematics in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. As readers will recall, teachHOUSTON prepares STEM majors to teach through experiential learning by providing early and ongoing field experiences in high-need area school districts. Prior to embarking on my career with the teachHOUSTON program, I taught math and science for approximately 17 years in a variety of schools both in the U.S. and abroad; thus, I was well equipped to bring practical experiences to complement the coursework in the teachHOUSTON program. From the beginning

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of my career in the teachHOUSTON program at UH, I knew it was important to build a supportive atmosphere for both preservice teachers and our graduates. In fact, we, the faculty in teachHOUSTON, prided ourselves on the close-knit community that we built and believed that this would help with teacher retention at a time when teacher retention was and still remains an escalating problem faced by the United States among other nations (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). However, as the program developed this proved to be exceedingly more difficult with the larger number of students and graduates matriculating through the program. Hence, I sought out ways to connect alumni with current students. I started collaborating with co-author, Mariam Manuel, who is a 2010 graduate and at that time who was a rising star in K-12 science education. She assisted with professional development initiatives and networking events put on for new teachers by graduates. As previously mentioned, we embarked on several innovative initiatives such as the physics course, the Massive Online Open Course for physics, and induction events for graduates, among other endeavors. We had several conversations about teachHOUSTON, as I wanted input about how we could improve our program. She provided advice on what worked well and areas for improvement, based on her experience. I learned that she was also concerned about the importance of continuing the community beyond graduating from the teachHOUSTON program. We reached out to other graduates informally and with a survey to address their needs. We realized that many had taken on leadership positions while others wanted advice on how to navigate leadership opportunities at their schools and districts. We were both elected to the inaugural executive board of the UTeach STEM Educators Association which was formed to connect 44 UTeach replications sites, alumni, and stakeholders in promoting STEM literacy for all. We decided that if this could be done at a national level, then we could do the same for our alumni. Hence, the idea for the teachHOUSTON Alumni Advisory Board was formed and became a reality in 2014.

An Advisor’s Journey---Meeting Students Where They Are I, Leah McAlister-Shields, am a lecturer and faculty advisor with the teachHOUSTON Program. My journey began as a first time in college (FTIC), first-generation African American woman pursuing an Electrical Engineering degree at the University of Houston. As a first-generation

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student, I did not possess the college-going knowledge or have access to the types of support systems needed to successfully navigate my experience. As one of three African American women pursuing an Electrical Engineering major, the lack of diversity and inclusion of students with similar experiences to my own, as well as the dearth of programming and advising services focused on students of color who are also FTIC and first-generation, all placed limits on my ability to navigate my educational journey. This stood in stark contrast to the supports received throughout my K-12 learning experience where I had excelled and achieved. The mismatch between supports received prior to college and during my initial years of post-secondary education later informed my work as a faculty advisor in profound ways. Following a change of major and access gained to faculty who were supportive and nurturing, I completed a double major in Sociology and Political Science. With the help of faculty, I pursued a graduate degree in Social Work where I began working with college students overseeing student success initiatives, as well as a scholar society in the African American Studies Program. In particular, working with students of similar background and experiences to my own triggered a passion for working with college students and helping them to successfully navigate their undergraduate experiences. Following completion of my graduate degree, I served in student affairs office as a career counselor followed by my work with computer science majors as a program coordinator. During year two of program implementation, I was brought on to provide advising to STEM majors pursuing teacher certification in the teachHOUSTON Program. My initial work with teachHOUSTON involved the development of advising services and the creation and streamlining of degree plans. These efforts evolved into student programming and success initiatives focused on the whole student. As a result, a student-led program orientation was created, a student society, peer-to-peer tutoring, and advising services were offered. I also began to serve on the scholarship committee, working with faculty in the program to meet the financial needs of students. My role in the program began to expand after the completion of my doctorate degree, where my research focused on the social and cultural capital of minority STEM majors and the wholistic supports needed for successful degree completion. Since the completion of my doctoral program, I have continued to work with students and faculty to meet the advising needs of our students. In addition, I have been involved in writing grants that were

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successfully funded and which support the academic needs of students in the teachHOUSTON Program. I also teach undergraduate and graduate classes for the program, focused on culturally responsive teaching of STEM content. Reflecting on my own journey as a woman of color, FTIC and first-generation college student, the experiences, from the difficulty navigating college and then later receiving support from faculty that helped me to decode and make sense of the college experience inspired and informed my work with college students from all backgrounds with a diversity of lived experiences. I truly believe my role is to meet students where they are and to help students access whatever supports are needed.

Teacher Leadership Research confirms that the most critical contributing factor to student success is the quality of the teacher (Craig, Evans, Verma, Stokes, & Li, 2019; National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996; Ross et al., 2011). The shortage of quality teachers is a multifaceted issue requiring attention to both recruitment and retention (Liston, Borko, & Whitcomb, 2008). Specifically, sustaining teachers in the field involves paying attention to initial or preservice preparation, providing mentorship to new teachers, building leadership capacity, and ensuring adequate opportunities for professional development are available (Darling-Hammond, 2007; Ross et al., 2011). Given the power harnessed by teachers, it is no surprise that over the past two decades there has been a rise in the call for supporting teacher leadership (Gray & Bishop, 2009). Barth (2001) argued for investing in teacher leadership by stating, “all teachers have the capacity to lead their schools down a more positive path, to enlist their abundant experience and craft knowledge in the service of school improvement” (p. 244). Extending the capacity of teachers to serve as leaders in their field includes the benefit of allowing them to inform their practice and reform educational policies (Gray & Bishop, 2009; Ross et al., 2011). Accordingly, building teacher leadership is regarded as an effective method for school improvement (Cheng & Szeto, 2016). While many facets of working conditions impact the retention of new teachers, a key factor includes the mentorship and support received from principals and teacher leaders (Liston et al., 2008). Although there is no agreed upon definition of what teacher leadership entails (Neumerski, 2013), it can take many forms including formalized roles

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such as team lead, department chair, and instructional coach (Ross et al., 2011). Furthermore, Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009) have explained that teacher leaders have the power to influence change both within and beyond the walls of their classroom. As co-authors, we shared four major categories that are used to define the forms and functions of teacher leadership: (1) leadership toward school decisions and serving on school improvement committees; (2) leadership geared toward student activities, such as, coordinating academic programs and sponsoring student organizations; (3) leadership of operational tasks that help the school move forward in achieving prescribed goals; and (4) leadership on instructional improvement through roles such as instructional coach and curriculum specialist (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009).

Teacher as Change Agents The characterization of teachers as human agents who are capable of driving change through action entails the understanding that agentic behavior includes the capacity to reflect, learn, and evolve through observations and experiences (Van der Heijden, Geldens, Beijaard, & Popeijus, 2015). Agency is integral to the enactment of change. The concept of teachers’ utilizing their agency to cultivate change is rooted in the progressive education movement led by John Dewey (Cobb, 2001). Dewey believed that in order for societies to transform the educational system, the teachers must serve as an agent for the desired change (Dewey, 1933). These views were echoed by philosophers and researchers who helped envision teachers as change agents (Apple, 1978, 1987; Giroux, 1983, 1988). Cobb (2001) further explained the role of a teacher serving in this capacity: The teacher who is a change agent believes that schools must not simply perpetuate the present social order but seek to effect change by assuring that all students have the necessary skills for equal access to the job opportunities that, in turn, will provide access to the good life. (p. 91)

According to Lukacs and Galluzo (2014) teachers serving as “change agents” are defined by their well-developed pedagogical content knowledge coupled with their sense of responsibility to solve problems in their schools.

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Teacher Leaders vs. Teacher Change Agents Lukacs (2009) explained that while teachers can be leaders in school initiatives that do not necessarily translate into them being change agents. There is a difference between having a title and being the change, to reflect back to Dewey and his having-being discussion. For instance, a teacher involved in leading the school or administration agenda might attend meetings and bring back pertinent information and tasks for his or her colleagues to implement. However, the teacher who is an agent of change will trailblaze an agenda or initiative cultivated through their own agency and creativity. Therefore, while both teachers are leaders, only the latter is a change agent (Lukacs, 2009). Lukacs and Galluzo (2014) provided four defining characteristics as part of the Teacher Change Agent Scale (TCAS) (Lukacs, 2009) to further distinguish teachers who are change agents from those who are school leaders: Teacher change agents: 1) can read their school environment; 2) enable the participation of their colleagues in generating solutions; 3) possess the skills to address the problems they identify in their schools; and 4) feel a sense of ownership with regard to those problems. (p. 103)

Connecting Alumni with Preservice Teachers Alumni Panel and Teacher Talks To build leadership capacity not only in the alumni but also in the preservice teachers, the faculty members of teachHOUSTON have strategically organized endeavors to connect aspiring and current educators. One such event includes the teachHOUSTON alumni panel which takes place each semester in conjunction with the teachHOUSTON Student Society Banquet. Graduates are invited to serve as panelists to answer questions submitted by preservice teachers. Graduates of the program share their experiences and give advice on how to navigate difficult situations, promote student learning, and further their professional development. As such, preservice teachers are able to envision the path ahead and hear from someone who was once in their shoes. Each semester, graduates are also invited to participate in a teacher talk session which entails an alum sharing their expertise on topics such as, use of technology, classroom management, and data-driven instruction. The teacher talk entails a 30-minute presentation followed by 15 minutes of

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Q&A which allows for direct interaction between aspiring and in-service teachers. The presentation topics are guided both by alumni choice and preservice teacher requests. Through the teacher talks, preservice teachers meet new graduates and gain additional opportunities for mentorship. teachHOUSTON Alumni as Mentors Field-Based Course Mentors An integral component of the teachHOUSTON program are the fieldbased courses through which teacher candidates observe exemplary teachers and teach STEM lessons with diverse student populations. Preservice teachers in these courses receive mentoring from high-quality classroom teachers who work closely with them on lesson preparation and implementation. Accordingly, it is highly beneficial for graduates to serve in the mentor teacher capacity because it allows preservice teachers to receive support and guidance while also build relationships with members of the alumni community. Moreover, the teachHOUSTON alumni are able to gain experience in providing feedback, encouragement, and lesson plan critique, all of which allows them to extend their leadership skills. Student Teaching Supervisors University Supervisors are an essential part of the teachHOUSTON student teaching experience, as they provide coaching during the student teaching semester and beyond. They provide the highest quality of evaluation, guidance, and dialogue that enables student teachers to grow and thrive in high-need school districts. As University Supervisors have extensive experience teaching math and science in high-need schools, they are well equipped to provide instructional coaching in a nurturing way which helps student teachers navigate the ever-evolving teaching landscape. Student teachers are observed and coached each week followed by a post conference. The special relationships formed during this integral experience live beyond the student teaching semester and evolve well into the first few years of the student teachers’ careers. Summer Camp Lead Instructors The teachHOUSTON program is highly involved in providing outreach to the Houston area community. A part of the program’s mission includes cultivating STEM literacy and improving STEM learning experiences for

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all students, especially those from populations that are historically underrepresented in STEM careers. As such, the program hosts a variety of STEM summer camps for students in grades 6 through 9, many of whom are able to attend on full and partial scholarships. Over the past twelve years these summer camps have allowed preservice teachers to serve as counselors and teach lessons, thus, interacting with students and gaining experience through an informal learning environment.

Conference Opportunities Agents of change are motivated to share their experiences and expertise with other instructors. They lead conversations and movements in education that springboard change, thus, extending their impact into the classrooms of other instructors. One avenue for sharing their expertise includes professional development conferences. Hence, teachHOUSTON alumni are regularly invited to present at national research and educational conferences. The program supports travel through grant funds and scholarships provided by conference providers. The teachHOUSTON alumni are partnered with each other and at times with preservice teachers based on shared interests toward presentation topics.

Induction Support Rationale In the U.S. nearly half of the teachers in their first three years are estimated to leave the field and contribute to the growing percentage rates of teacher turnover (Parker, Martin, Colmar, & Liem, 2012). The cost to replace teachers places an insurmountable burden on the nation due to attrition, which implies the teachers have completely left the field, and migration, which indicates that teachers have moved schools or districts. In 2003, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) estimated the annual loss attributed to teacher turnover at $7.3 billion (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 2007). To this end, it is critical for a program such as teachHOUSTON to provide induction support that fosters a community of collaboration and support. Hence, during the summer of 2019, the teachHOUSTON program partnered with the National Math and Science Initiative to embark on induction support for teachHOUSTON teachers during their

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first three years in the classroom. The induction program is designed to provide conference-style professional developments that foster pedagogical conversations on current best practices; organization and discipline for newly hired teachers; and a community of collaborative peers cultivated through experiential mentoring. Additionally, the induction program is geared to provide support for effective participation in professional learning communities, promote student-centered classroom instruction, and build collegial relationships. The activities included in the teachHOUSTON induction program are conducted by alumni who hold leadership positions in their respective school districts and are experienced in supporting teachers. New Teacher Academy, Networking, and Mentoring Hotline The inaugural new teacher academy hosted during the summer of 2019 included conference-style workshops designed to facilitate success in the first year of teaching for new graduates. The induction program also includes networking mixers that are planned by the induction team and hosted by an alum. The networking mixers provide opportunities for interaction between alumni and allow the induction leaders to engage in conversations that help identify areas of need that can be addressed during the subsequent new teacher academy. An additional innovative component of the induction program includes a digital support system which was launched during the 2019 new teacher academy. The hotline allows new teachers to reach out for advice or assistance and receive immediate feedback.

Conclusion This chapter highlights initiatives and programs resulting from teachHOUSTON alumni working in concert with faculty to grow and develop STEM teacher leaders. Through their efforts as trailblazing educators, alumni of the teachHOUSTON Program have not only led based on existing and proposed school and district policies but have also introduced and advocated for new and innovative educational practices. Out of this advocacy, teachHOUSTON Alumni have created new agendas and areas of focus shifting in their work and in their roles from teacher leaders to agents of change (Lukacs, 2009). As a result of the collaborative partnership with teachHOUSTON faculty, strategic endeavors to build leadership capacity has also included alumni reaching

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back to mentor and guide preservice teachers in the teachHOUSTON Program. As mentors, teachHOUSTON Alumni provide unique and insightful guidance through their shared college-going experience and insider knowledge about the teaching profession. Such opportunities allow for alumni to mentor preservice teachers creating community and granting students exposure to agents of change in action (Budge, 2006). The innovative initiatives that support change agentry in the teachHOUSTON Program were cultivated and supported by faculty members who employ mentorship practices and have continued to enact change within the teachHOUSTON Program (Long et al., 2012). Unique perspectives from faculty—one of whom is a former student who started many of the student-led initiatives still in existence, from another faculty member who joined the program from near-inception and now leads the program as associate director, and from a faculty advisor whose own lived experiences of stopping out as a STEM major informs the direction and the breadth of advising experienced by students in the teachHOUSTON program, together indicate a collective culture of caring for students and alumni (Dawson, 2014). This community of collaboration is exemplified through the Faculty Academy, which has enabled the three authors of this chapter to collaborate with professors from other regional universities around matters of teaching and teacher education practices and research as well as one’s own career development. Because of the continued mentoring, networking, and advocacy provided through the Faculty Academy, teachHOUSTON faculty members much like their graduates are serving as agents of change for schools and districts. Authors’ Note National Science Foundation DUE Grant 1240083, Recruitment, Preparation and Retention of STEM Students as High School Teachers National Science Foundation DUE Grant 1557309, Learning through Informal and Formal Experiences (UH-LIFE) National Science Foundation DUE Grant 1759454, Enhancing STEM Teacher Leadership through Equity nd Advocacy Development (UH-LEAD) National Science Foundation DUE Grant 1557273, Collaborative Research: Understanding Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Outcomes in Texas

References Apple, M. (1978). The sociology of education: Analyzing cultural and economic reproduction. Harvard Educational Review, 48(4), 495–503.

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Apple, M. (1987). Will the social context allow a tomorrow for “Tomorrow’s Teachers?”. Teachers College Record, 88(3), 330–337. Barth, R. S. (2001). Teacher leader. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(6), 443–449. Basit, T. N., & McNamara, O. (2004). Equal opportunities or affirmative action? The induction of minority ethnic teachers. Journal of Education for Teaching, 30(2), 97–115. Boser, U. (2014). Teacher diversity revisited: A new state-by-state analysis. Center for American Progress. https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/upl oads/2014/05/TeacherDiversity.pdf. Budge, S. (2006). Peer-mentoring in post-secondary education: Implications for research and practice. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 37 (1), 73– 87. Cheng, A. Y., & Szeto, E. (2016). Teacher leadership development and principal facilitation: Novice teachers’ perspectives. Teaching and Teacher Education, 58, 140–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.05.003. Cobb, J. B. (2001). Graduates of professional development school programs: Perceptions of the teacher as change agent. Teacher Education Quarterly, 28(4), 89. https://search-proquest-com.lib-e2.lib.ttu.edu/docview/222858 155?accountid=7098. Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century. (2007). Rising above the gathering storm: Energizing and employing America for a brighter economic future. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. Craig, C. J., Evans, P., Bott, S., Stokes, D., & Abrol, B. (2017). Attracting, preparing, and retaining teachers in high need areas: A science as inquiry model of teacher education. In M. Peters, B. Cowie, & I. Mentor (Eds.), A companion to research in teacher education (pp. 455–470). Springer: Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4075-7_30. Craig, C., Evans, P., Verma, R., Stokes, D., & Li, J. (2019). A tribute to “unsung teachers”: Teachers’ influences on students enrolling in STEM programs with the intent of entering STEM careers. European Journal of Teacher Education, 42, 335–358. Darling-Hammond, L. (2007). The flat earth and education: How America’s commitment to equity will determine our future. Educational Researcher, 36(6), 318–324. Dawson, P. (2014). Beyond a definition: Toward a framework for designing and specifying mentoring models. Educational Researcher, 43(3), 137–145. Dee, T. S. (2005). A teacher like me: Does race, ethnicity, or gender matter? American Economic Review, 95(2), 158–165. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Chicago: Henry Regnery.

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CHAPTER 17

Discovering Stories Data Might Be Telling: Collaborative Research as Leadership, and Lessons Learned in Promoting a Culture of Evidence Jane McIntosh Cooper, Laura Turchi, and Margaret Kuczynski

Introduction A presumed value in a “culture of evidence” or “data-based decisionmaking” has permeated both higher and K-12 education in the US (Elden, 2011; Millett, Payne, Dwyer, Stickler, & Alexiou, 2008; Peck & McDonald, 2014). Teacher education programs, already highly regulated by state policy (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018), have been significantly

J. M. Cooper (B) · L. Turchi · M. Kuczynski Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. Turchi e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_17

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impacted by the belief, some would say the dogma, that deploying a set of measures to assess a variety of program outcomes, and using those data to improve one’s efforts, is the highest good. The national accrediting agency, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), requires systematic data gathering and analysis by programs about future educators. Standard 3: Candidate Quality, Recruitment, and Selectivity expects that a program will be able to provide “multiple forms of evidence to indicate candidates’ developing content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and the integration of technology” (http://caepnet.org/standards/standard-3). Thus, a teacher education program must have, if not a culture of evidence, a sophisticated system to obtain evidence about the impact of its work. Under CAEP, a teacher preparation program’s capacity to gather and understand evidence of its work becomes a consequential measure of its quality: leaders are held accountable for data collection systems that enable a program to demonstrate continuous progress toward its goals. The quality of traditional teacher education has been under scrutiny at multiple levels for decades (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018; Zeichner, 2017). Teacher education as a field has sought to be self-regulating and treated as a profession, but state regulation and national accreditation agencies make many external demands (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018). The common critique of teacher education in a university is that there is a significant gap between theory and practice (Russell, McPherson, & Martin, 2001), with “theory” the focus of the program and “practice” the work in classrooms and schools. Boyd, Grossman, Lankford, Loeb, and Wykoff (2009) attempted to show a relationship between a teacher’s preparation and the standardized test scores of students in her classroom. The study concluded that there was not an adequate research base to define teacher quality in a way that successfully mapped back to preparation. These gaps and other beliefs about the inadequacies of teacher education have resulted in the demand for data, but as Wineburg points out, there is an important “…absence of a shared consensus about what should be measured and how” (2006, p. 52). Data collected for externally determined national rankings and funding tied to such rankings have served as levers for program changes, and data gathered in the name of increased rigor and accountability have been presumed to measure program quality. The Faculty Academy group that has collaboratively created this book uses many forms of data and inquiry to understand its practices, including narrative inquiry (i.e., Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and self-study (i.e.,

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Loughran, 2004) to answer important questions about the quality of our wide-ranging work as teacher educators. The authors of this chapter all served in the same teacher education program. Two have been members of the Faculty Academy, and the third author supported their data collection and analysis as a statistician for an accountability office in the college of education. As we will discuss, each of us took on different aspects of program responsibility and even leadership in the course of this study. In this chapter, we describe the systematic analysis we carried out on student teacher performance assessment and then turn our attention to the collaboration that made the analysis possible. We, as authors, anticipated that, with our varied perspectives and roles, we could lead the collection and dissemination of findings that would lead to improved individual practices (including our own), better align student coursework with field or practical experiences, and generate compelling data that would inform meaningful and useful programmatic change. We hoped that embracing a culture of evidence would help us determine what data were most valuable, and would best enable the program to showcase its effectiveness when under external scrutiny. By creating a “culture of evidence” we imagined we could build collegial capacity for articulating shared program values and for communicating ideas about continuous program improvement.

Context---Studying Student Teacher Performance Assessment This current study results from previous work examining teacher candidate assessment scores over eight semesters, in a college of education, in a large southeastern university in the United States. What follows is a description of that extended inquiry as a context for our self-study. We chose to study teacher performance assessment as a possible indicator of program quality because we recognized its centrality to our program practices. Each semester the teacher education program oversaw literally thousands of instances where an observation and evaluation instrument were deployed to gauge the classroom practices of the student teachers it had prepared. We refer to both the observation and the instrument used as student teacher performance assessment. Student teacher performance assessment happens when a university supervisor (representing the teacher education program) visits a school classroom, watches

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a student teacher lead one or more class activities, and provides documentation and feedback in a written form and/or online that includes categories of actions (“indicators”) and numerical ratings that represent the supervisor’s judgments on the professional quality of the observed classroom practices. While it must be noted that the instrument changed over the semesters that we studied it, student teacher performance assessment has been a consistent feature of the student teaching experience in our teacher preparation program for many years. We suspect this is true of many teacher education programs, particularly because CAEP (and its predecessors NCATE and TEAC) accreditation processes have formal observations of teaching practice written into the standards. In the course of the study, the instrument used for student teacher performance assessment changed almost every semester. The number of indicators decreased from 16 to nine, and then to six; the number of formal observations decreased from five to two. The training supervisors received for using the instrument and scoring student teachers also varied. At the beginning of the study the instrument was created by the program and indicators were taken directly from state standards. Later, when the program joined a Gates-funded reform project, it adopted the TAP rubric created by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) for its comprehensive school reform initiatives. NIET has a body of research to support the validity and reliability of its instrument when deployed to assess practicing, rather than student teachers. With a five-point scale used by trained evaluators scoring 19 indicators, a teacher whose practice is consistently scored at a “3” is likely to have students who make a year’s growth as a result of the year in her classroom. As part of the Gates-funded partnership, our program first adopted TAP and then twice modified that rubric, ultimately using a “Big 6” (six of the nineteen indicators) version. NIET made no claim about the validity or reliability of the modified rubrics. The teacher education program leadership also changed its expectations for how the instrument would be used in the different semesters. Some semesters included training for supervisors on using the rubric and testing the use for inter-rater reliability (this is a dimension of NIET/TAP requirements). However, the rubric was modified, as described above, and the frequency of its use in a semester was changed. From a teacher education perspective, especially as reforms were implemented, consistency in scoring was one key to demonstrating program quality. As noted above, CAEP accreditation encourages student teaching

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scores to be important evidence a program can use to make claims about the quality of its graduates. Paradoxically perhaps, if all student teachers were receiving high scores, the program’s competence might be questioned: it could appear that the program was insufficiently rigorous. The Gates-funded reform initiative, as implemented in our program, assumed that there was a problem in the reliable assessment of student teacher performance, and so trained supervisors and other program faculty on the rubric and scoring expectations. One of these expectations was that student teachers could not be assessed as “too” good, with scores at the top of the scale, because the NIET/TAP rubric was designed to capture the work of veteran teachers. Our goal as a research team was to pay attention to what we could learn from the changes that the reform initiative brought to our collective practices as teacher educators. Because two of the authors had experience as student teaching supervisors, we were also aware of changing expectations for the written commentary that accompanied the scores. We knew that there were many kinds of feedback that student teachers received, and that the numerical scores were in a sense embedded in the relationship between the supervisor and the student teacher. The authors began with broad ambitions to capture many data points related to student teacher performance assessment, but we ultimately focused on the numerical ratings and the instrument that defined what those ratings meant. Over semesters Spring 2015–Fall 2017, we used multiple methods to analyze results from the observation instruments in use and to reflect on how the scores reflected aspects of program quality. The challenge to the team was to balance the mixed methods of our collaboration: we wanted to test the qualitative information gathered from the supervisors and student teachers to see if it was aligned, reinforced, or contradicted in statistical analysis of the scores. Protocols and data collection procedures for the study were approved by the University of Houston Committee for the Protection Human Subject (16120-EX –7030). As a team we utilized qualitative methods to analyze data sets including audio tapes and transcripts of focus groups with volunteers representing student teachers and supervisors, and open-ended surveys of supervisors. We reviewed comments and transcripts using thematic analysis (Creswell, 2007) to analyze program practices in terms of what student teachers and their supervisors described as mattering most to them. Our descriptive statistical methods varied as we asked our statistician (third author) to

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help us understand the extent to which the scores reflected what we were hearing from our research subjects. Her quantitative methods included analyses of medians, means, and chi-squares of Likert scale surveys of student teachers at program completion, and through her we came to better realize why it was important to question the assumption of equal spacing in the Likert scale, especially when scores did not seem to vary. We now shift our attention away from why we studied these performance assessments to describing how the collaborative self-study we engaged in gave us insight into the practical realities of a culture of evidence.

Methods The three authors met regularly to analyze and bring differing perspectives to the data. The first author was the most experienced in self-study methodology, and she led the group through an effort to improve our research practices through reflection as well as the analysis of data (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2008). We engaged in dialog to make meaning of our individual and co-constructed experiences (Hamilton, Pinnegar, & Davey, 2016). These meetings became the basis for understanding each other’s unique “professional landscapes” (Craig, 2004), through highlighting connections and stories we constructed to understand the data under analysis. The continued conversations about our “lived experience” in relation to the data has been essential for the co-construction of new and unexpected knowledge (Cooper, Gauna, Beaudry, & Curtis, 2019). Initial conversations were audio-taped, and individual journal entries, capturing emerging themes, were brought to meetings as a basis for further conversations. As members of the team moved to different locations, we held meetings over Skype. Our journaling became more specific as themes emerged, and shared documents were created (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) as we coded our writings for resonating themes (Charmaz, 2009). Initial writings were drafted and re-drafted, as meanings became clarified: we utilized each other for member checking as well as clarity as we prepared various reports on our work for different stakeholders.

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Analysis: Identifying Themes and Visualizing Data Sets Through our work together evaluating the student performance data, several themes about the expectations of the assessment instrument emerged: (1) Students teachers expected to be directly and explicitly taught the skills that were measured in performance; (2) The skills required for the assessment should be consistently evaluated across supervisors in the program; and (3) All parties expected that professional growth will occur through the experience of student teaching and that growth can be measured over time. These findings from our analyses of multiple data points and the conversations around them became the lens through which we now analyze these themes as questions for our selfstudy. By paying close attention to the formulation of these discussions and our reflections, we gained insights into the collaboration’s strengths. In the analysis that follows, we focus on conversations surrounding key data visualizations and how we made meaning of the data we examined. Skills Taught and Skills Measured as Indicating the Integration of Coursework and Evaluation As we analyzed data together, one emergent theme was integration. As a teacher education program reforms itself and seeks indicators of its quality, all the participants want integration between what is valued and practiced in university classwork and what is expected and enacted in student teacher placements. The pedagogy of faculty, supervisors, mentor teachers, and student teachers should reflect the institutional values described by the performance assessment rubric. This aligns with aforementioned research, which suggests that preparatory coursework should closely align with what is taught in the K-12 classroom (Boyd et al., 2009). As our research team examined the data collected from the performance assessments, we wanted to see what we could tell about the integration of theory and practice in the program. Early in the adoption of the TAP rubric, student teacher commentary reflected a desire for more consistent alignment between the rubric indicators and university classroom practices. One student teacher praised the rubric because it “allowed me to zoom in on the specific areas I needed to improve.” But student teachers wanted earlier and stronger connections between this assessment rubric and the expectations of their university

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instructors. One student teacher reported, “I think having a chance to fully use and see the performance assessment before would be useful. It wasn’t until the first lesson that you get your rubric back that you’re fully aware.” As a team, we knew the teacher education program was adopting reform measures (TAP) that required consistent training on the use of the rubric provided by outside trainers. Supervisors, mentor teachers, and school administration were encouraged to engage with the criteria for good teaching described by the indicators on the rubric. University instructors were also urged and then required to be trained on the rubric, and program leadership expected aspects of the rubric would become operationalized in university coursework. Our team’s question was whether this integration could be evidenced in the performance assessment scores. Figure 17.1 is an image that we found shed light on the question of coursework-fieldwork integration. The graph shows the scores that were earned by two sets of student teachers: ST1s (first semester of student teaching) and ST2s (the second/final semester in the program) in their final observations of each semester. All student teacher performances as rated by all the various supervisors are averaged together to achieve these composite scores, which are broken out by indicators. Looking at the differences between the aggregate scores for ST1 and ST2, it was clear that student teachers improved on all indicators as they grew closer to graduation (every ST2 did better than every ST1). Any program might use this chart to demonstrate its quality, but our self-study process caused us to consider how data like these might help a program to improve. For instance, the lowest scoring indicator in both semesters was “questioning.” A program might use this evidence to spur program improvement by, for instance, urging instructors to examine the ways they were requiring future teachers to practice asking questions through coursework materials or assignments. We also considered whether there was something about the rubric criteria (the descriptive words that accompanied the indicator and the score) that made this category particularly difficult to score (for the supervisor) or to score well on (for the student teachers). More broadly, we wondered if there was a mismatch between the rubric indicators and the opportunities student teachers had in their placements in the area’s public schools.

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Fig. 17.1 Spring 2016 observation indicator mean scores by student teaching semester

We, as research team members, thought about ways to share and discuss what we were seeing from the aggregate scores with supervisors and instructors, but the program’s pace of change was swift. We no sooner identified “questioning” as an indicator topic worth discussing, and led a short professional development talk about it, than the program deleted it from the rubric. This change was not announced or discussed, perhaps because it was the result of adopting the six-indicator adaptation of the TAP rubric promoted by the Gates-funded initiative. As a research team, hoping that our program would aspire to a culture of evidence, we felt a bit thwarted. We believed that student teacher performance assessment scores might be very useful to guide how instructors and supervisors supported lesson planning and specifically ideas about “questioning” in coursework. We began to wonder further about the relationships between

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indicators (what was assessed) and what was taught or emphasized, again, reflecting together on gaps between theory and practice. Thus, in our examination of whether results on the assessment rubric could demonstrate integration between coursework and student teacher performance, we found mostly a disconnect. Our conversations and examination of the data showed us that tracing the relationships between lower scores and contextual features led to more questions than answers: teaching is complex. We did feel that seeing lower scores in Fig. 17.1 in lesson planning and questioning could lead back to ideas for improving classwork. Stronger professional development of supervisors and instructors, with an emphasis on an alignment between coursework and assessment might help raise the scores. But we were not in positions of leadership where we could promote using the evidence of the scores as a focus for program improvement. When we then looked at the expectation for and value of consistency in the use of the performance assessment rubric, we found the questions became larger and the unanswered questions yielded more complex stories to tell. The Quest for Consistency and the Perception of Fair Measurement for All One of our emergent themes was how much the consistency of scoring by supervisors was valued and even expected. Supervisors certainly wanted affirmations that they were doing their jobs correctly and well. We also learned that student teachers regularly discussed their scores with each other, and that they were keenly aware of any perceived unfair discrepancies. As a group, likely because they were so conscious of the hard work demanded of them, student teachers tended to believe that their efforts should be rewarded with high scores. Figure 17.2 shows the distribution of scores given by supervisors for a single formal observation during ST1. Each supervisor observed and scored at least ten student teachers, and some gave a much wider range of scores than others. We asked ourselves what this chart told us about program quality claims as well as the practices of individual supervisors. We knew that the teacher education program required a “cut score” of 3 on all indicators for successfully completing student teaching: one thing looking at these scores suggested was that student teachers had room for

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Fig. 17.2 Student teaching I—Fall 2017—distribution of average observation scores by supervisor for lesson 2 of 2

improvement in their next semester without being at risk of being numerically over-praised. It seemed possible that supervisors were allowing for this room, even as they had been trained by the program to use the assessment instrument with inter-rater reliability. From the perspective of Laura, thinking as a program evaluator, the supervisors indicated by the numbers 59 and 69 in Fig. 17.2 represented a puzzle. Supervisor #59 had scored student teachers within a very tight range; #69 had presumably seen a much wider range of performance. Given that this observation was early in student teaching experience, one might wonder whether all of #59’s student teachers could be performing at such a relatively high level. Was #69 being more discerning in giving the wider range of numbers? Or less consistent, given the norm-referenced instrument? The perspective of student teaching supervisors was articulated by Jane. From our notes on our discussions, Jane offered a range of possible explanations, including: “Perhaps they [for instance #59] felt that all of their students were on the right track, so the need to delineate a specific score was irrelevant,” and “They might give very individualized attention in person, and just complete the rubric as a meaningless form for compliance.” From the perspective of practice, the insights into the pragmatic workings of the role of supervisor, many rationales could be imagined.

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In our meetings Margaret, the statistician, offered her perspective, including her impression that the data were very “messy” and, “the values we collected for each… [had] no standard definition.” When as a team we were unclear about what the numbers were telling us, Margaret often had to step back and ask different questions. For Fig. 17.2, in particular, she later journaled, “I remember struggling - did the supervisors use the rubric differently?… I remember struggling on how to translate” (11/9/18). Margaret could create many visualizations of the data sets, but she was concerned about translating the programmatic and practical questions into appropriate statistical methods. Similarly, we had to be careful in explaining different dimensions of teacher education and the typical student teaching experience, that we did not inadvertently explain away something that we needed to better understand. A Question of Context and Accounting for the Impact of Reform Our team’s conversations around Fig. 17.3 highlighted a kind of peril in judging a program from an uncontextualized perspective, as well as the challenge of demonstrating a program’s quality as it was undergoing reform. Figure 17.3 graphs the scores given by all student teaching supervisors, and these aggregated scores clearly decline over time. To our statistician, working to muster evidence for accreditation, the pattern

Fig. 17.3 All scores over several semesters for all student teachers

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represented in the chart might be devastating. To the two of us more directly involved in the daily work with students in the teacher education program, Fig. 17.3 seemed to be good evidence of supervisors responding to changing program requirements. How could a graph like Fig. 17.3 better communicate these changes and their impact on supervisor scores? Over the semesters represented, the student teacher performance assessment rubrics changed from one created in-house to the TAP Rubric, which was then further modified. What is more, in Spring 2015, student teacher grades were determined by the cumulative total of all their observation scores, and a “loss” of more than a point or two on the rubric meant receiving less than an A. Scores were very high indeed. In contrast, in Fall 2015, the program encouraged supervisors to score observations without regard to a final grade, which they could determine “holistically” to reflect overall student teacher accomplishment. With the beginning of the adoption of the TAP rubric, scores went down: as supervisors were trained on and used the nationally normed TAP scale, student teaching performance scores began to reflect far less variance with lower scores and a narrower distribution of those scores. As a team, looking at Fig. 17.3 caused us to realize that deep knowledge of program policies in the different semesters was essential to explain why the data appeared as it did. We pondered how a culture of evidence might get bogged down in understanding what was valuable context and what was excuse-making. Looking for Evidence of Student Teacher Growth, and Finding It Given our discoveries about data such as represented in Fig. 17.3, we realized that a culture of evidence built around the evaluation of teacher candidates and of programs depended on defined notions of growth. After all, teacher preparation is fundamentally about developing individuals into teaching professionals: metaphorically growing them into new identities and roles. Growth became one of our most passionately discussed themes throughout our work together. What does growth look like for our student teachers and by extension for our program? In what ways do the data collected on the rubrics communicate successful growth? Our qualitative data from the student teachers captured adamantly positive self-assessments of their hard work and understandable needs to feel that their efforts were recognized and rewarded. We wondered how the scores

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they received on their classroom performances reflected these desires and demands. In fact, it was very easy to see student growth in the data from the student assessment rubrics that we analyzed. In Fig. 17.4, even as scores drop overall (as explained above); nonetheless, within every semester the average score increased from the beginning to the end. That is to say: performance assessments of student teachers indicate that they always grow—their practices always improve over time. As a working group we surmised that this figure visually confirmed the expectations and desires of the student teachers, their supervisors, and perhaps the program: as student teachers worked at their craft in teaching, their abilities should demonstrably improve. We wondered if there existed a confirmation bias, meaning that because everyone believes that improvement will happen, the supervisors ensure that scores rise. Put

Fig. 17.4 Mean student teacher observation scores across 6 consecutive terms

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another way, it seemed possible that the expectation of growth influenced the scores more than evidence for actual growth. Further Evidence that the Expectation of Growth Influences Scoring on Performance Assessments Figure 17.5 is another way to see the expectation of growth: it shows mean scores on evaluations of student teachers in an academic year as represented by four points of assessment: two formal observations in each of the two semesters. Note: without further context, these data show that all student teacher performance declines on every indicator from the end of the first semester to the beginning of the second semester. We knew that an earlier associate dean, working on CAEP accreditation, had seen this pattern for scores in year-long student teaching and dubbed it the “double swoop” because of what she believed was a predictable pattern of scores improving within each semester. Our team wanted to understand that double swoop better in the context of our program. We first considered whether it was possible that “growth” for student teachers regressed between semesters, over the winter holiday or summer break. We realized a summer break meant that there would be all new children in a classroom in the fall, and it made sense that student teaching performance might be unsettled. There would be some turnover in mentor teachers over the summer, which could require student teachers

Fig. 17.5 Following students over their time at COE: Spring 2017 for student teaching 1 and Fall 2017 for student teaching 2 (n = 95)

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to create new relationships that might impact their performance. We also considered how, in the interest of having “room for growth,” supervisors might give lower scores on first observations in a semester regardless whether they were observing new or returning student teachers. This possibility was echoed in Jane’s journal reflecting on this phenomenon as a supervisor. … at first I want to ensure that they (student teachers), have something that they can improve on, no matter where they are in regard to success in practicing teaching. I always think carefully about where they need to improve and mark that a bit lower, just so that they have something they need to improve. So, very strong student teachers, I will still use the rubric to encourage them to continue working. (Journal, February 2019).

Our team discussed how some supervisors might have as many as 20 student teachers, some in ST1 and some in ST2, and that it would be understandable for the expectations of student teachers to be recalibrated with each semester. The conversations about the cause of the “double swoop” might support competing theories, but it is clear that student teachers showed predictable improvement every semester, and that our investigation could not rule out a confirmation bias. Further Reflections on Growth and the Student Teaching Experience Because of our interest in leading in the program, it was important for our team to pull back from the supervisor/student teacher’s perspectives of growth and consider what these graphs might tell us about a culture of evidence for program improvement. We each had our own thoughts over what growth even meant. Margaret thought that “growth happens when a person steps out of her/his comfort area where s/he is confident…” (Personal Journal, January 2018). The idea of risk-taking came up again as Jane listed activities that would spur growth in student teachers, such as “deconstructing their ideas of what teaching should look like,” and “a placement with CT (cooperating teacher) who is different from them” (Personal Journal, February 2018). Each of these activities offers cognitive and context-driven dissonances that prepare teachers to grapple with the complexities of the teaching and learning experience of student teaching. The teacher education program values “risk-taking” as a professional

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attribute, measured by an entirely different instrument than the rubrics we were analyzing. The descriptors for risk sounded to us like important dimensions of growth: The candidate will demonstrate this attribute by his or her readiness to step in, get involved, get up out of his or her chair, take risks, attempt the unfamiliar, and, sometimes, fail. He or she will show a willingness to assume leadership of his or her own learning rather than wait for learning to happen. (https://uh.edu/education/student-services/teachered-handbook/professional-attributes/)

The phrase in the indicator about attempting the unfamiliar, and risking failure, resonated with our ideas about what growth looks like. Margaret described growth as “…seldom monotonic; it spurts and stalls, plateaus and spirals” (January 2018). The team then had questions about how the program encouraged this risk-taking, and we wondered to what extent the student teacher’s performance assessment scores reflected this attribute. We felt certain that the tight consistency of performance assessment scores and the seemingly inevitable improvement each semester on all indicators might be changed if student teachers took instructional risks as they were observed. We asked ourselves if supervisors might even penalize a student for taking risks in the classroom. We considered Jane’s story about encouraging a student teacher to implement group work in a classroom that had never used it: Mona (pseudonym) was already so gifted that I wanted to push her. I encouraged her to set up stations so that she could work one-on-one with a small group and level her students. We spent a long time on the lesson plan together. When the day came for the lesson, the students, who had never really been encouraged to work or talk together in the classroom, really didn’t engage, they were off task. The cooperating teacher was not happy, and although she followed it through to the end, Mona was very disappointed. I couldn’t penalize her for practicing something that is good for kids. Especially when even veteran teachers would have struggled. I mean the students need to practice too. I’m not sure if other supervisors would see this the same way. (Personal Journal, March 2019)

The risk-taking described here, the disappointing classroom results, and the fact that a supervisor would have important choices to make about

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how such risk-taking would be documented on a performance assessment rubric, all caused us to reconsider what we thought we knew about our data. For instance, we looked back at Fig. 17.2, and Supervisor #59, through a new framework. It seemed possible that scoring all student teachers with a three might allow them to embrace the challenges and opportunities for risk-taking. Perhaps strong individual relationships—including trust that one’s efforts would be understood and credited—allowed for much higher risk by, and therefore growth for, individual teacher candidates.

Discussion There are many stories that data might tell about student teaching performance: the alignment of practices, the consistency of scorers, and the growth evidenced in an individual or a program. Our collaborative work uncovered and confirmed many narratives about how an evaluation process communicates about the quality of a future teacher’s teaching. We found ourselves often considering a culture of evidence: about what was statistically sound, or valid and reliable in the most scientific sense, but also what was fair, what was usefully standardized, and what promoted success. Before we turn to analyze what we found out about leading this project from within the program, we will finish the story of what happened with the data. We offered some professional development and presented our work to members of the teacher education program who also seemed to find our questions thought provoking, and in this way, we expanded our little culture of evidence. The impact we had on decision-making at the administrative level is difficult to ascertain, although we know that data collection about all aspects of the program continues, to a wide range of purposes. We no longer serve in the same roles within the program. Laura is pursuing other research, Jane no longer is a site coordinator, and Margaret has retired from the university. While we have all gone on to new and different work projects, we feel that the story which we invested in has been told, and we do not know who is now writing the script or what the story line is. We continue to think about the multiple ways in which the supervisors, the wielders of the rubric, use performance assessment and the value it has for them and the student teachers they evaluate. Is the rubric a scientific instrument communicating the best practices to be assessed

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through observational data? Is it a pro-forma checklist? Is it as a reflective tool through which to engage in dialog about improving practice with teacher candidates? Is it a tool to incentivize student teachers to take risks or to comply with their wishes? It is truly difficult to know the answers to these questions through the numbers that the instrument provides. There are many interests served by the collection and dissemination of the data on the performance assessment rubric, including efforts to improve teaching and learning outcomes in K-12 schools. CAEP sets standards that teacher education programs attempt to fulfill. The Gatesfunded initiative seeks to engage teacher education programs in reform based on evidence collected, in this case providing the rubric and judging its effectiveness based on the improved scores after their reforms. The teacher education program defends its effectiveness based on the accumulation and dissemination of the rubrics’ data and the use of the data for rankings. Supervisors use the evaluation tool in order to improve the teaching of student teachers. And finally, student teachers engage with the rubric in order to learn how to teach. We cannot say that all of these data consumers are joined in a culture of evidence. As a research team, we felt we were leading the charge for establishing a culture of evidence. By looking deeply into the evidence of student teacher effectiveness revealed by the rubric, we hoped to contribute to continuous program improvement. What we learned very early on was that data were messy and overwhelming, that there was often lots of evidence collected but not a clear sense of how it could be helpful. We found making meaning very difficult: every time we tried to drill down to hear what the data were telling us, we found more individual stories, more exceptions and good intentions than straightforward causalities. We were constantly looking for triangulation to support the data that we did have, or to create counter examples to disprove our working theories. We saw data that led us to surmise that scoring was unfair across the program, but soon we could understand claims why, in practice, this might not be so. We also learned that we could not discover much about coursework in the program that could correlate cleanly to scores on the performance assessment rubric. And finally, we learned that student teacher growth certainly seems to occur, but we are fairly sure that the expectation and desire for growth is a bias that infects all uses of the performance assessment rubric.

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We found that working together within our different roles and examining the data gave each of us insight into a problem from new perspectives. Looking at this experience from a personal lens to an institutional lens, it was the collaboration that we found most impactful, not necessarily the pursuit of evidence. There is ample research to suggest teacher education program faculty have competing values and roles (Russell et al., 2001) and that faculty work and research in silos (Burgen, 2009). Our collaboration demonstrates how new knowledge can be generated and should be interrogated by various members of teacher education faculty, and also demonstrates why it often is not. We found this work very challenging and time consuming. We each came in with our own personal agendas. We very soon realized that we were inclined to have our own beliefs and opinions that were not supported by any statistical mean (Audio, 10/11/19). This confrontation between our beliefs and the data is likely an important step toward real reform. We also found that very soon we needed each other to bring a new set of eyes and perspective to the situation. I saw the meaning of data from new perspectives, what it might do for the program, and how messy it was (Journal, 10/20/18). By having three different roles and perspectives, we really could dig in and examine the data in a new way, as well as gain appreciation for others who normally would not be within our sphere of influence. When engaging in efforts to create a common culture of evidence, building understanding and perspective-taking feels imperative for sustaining success. External accountability and cultures of evidence are impacting teacher education programs across the country. Internal efforts to respond to collected data in a systematic and collaborative way are being called for. Teacher education programs could take the lead in promoting internal democratic examinations into the data produced at all levels of the institution. Encouraging collaboration and camaraderie within colleges of education can only strengthen purposes and align visions. Allowing various ranks with different perspectives to work together seems essential, but collaboration is messy. As one of our members said, It’s easier if we don’t work together - it’s easier to stay in our silos (Audio, 1/9/19). But we came to treasure our learning and believe that this is the kind of work that can benefit the ongoing functioning of the institution.

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References Boyd, D., Grossman, P. L., Lankford, H., Loeb, S., & Wykoff, J. (2009). Teacher preparation and student achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 31(4), 416–440. Burgen, M. (2009). What ever happened to the faculty: Drift and decision in higher education. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Charmaz, K. (2009). Shifting the grounds: Constructivist grounded theory methods. In Developing grounded theory: The second generation (pp. 127–154). Abingdon: Routledge. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative Inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cochran-Smith, M., Carney, M. C., Keefe, E. S., Burton, S., Chang, W. C., Fernandez, M. B., … & Baker, M. (2018). Reclaiming accountability in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Cooper, J. M., Gauna, L. M., Beaudry, C. E., & Curtis, G. A. (2019). A relational approach to collaborative research and practice among teacher educators in urban contexts. In J. Kitchen & K. Ragoonaden (Eds.), Mindful and relational approaches to social justice, equity and diversity in teacher education. Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield. Craig, C. J. (2004). Shifting boundaries on the professional knowledge landscape: When teacher communications become less safe. Curriculum Inquiry, 34(4), 395–424. Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative research design: Choosing among five approaches. Los Angeles: Sage. Elden, R. (2011). Data-driven and off course. Education Next, 11(1), 88. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1237831496/. Hamilton, M. L., & Pinnegar, S. (Eds.). (2008). Reconceptualizing teaching practice: Self-study in teacher education. London: Psychology Press. Hamilton, M. L., Pinnegar, S., & Davey, R. (2016). Intimate scholarship: An examination of identity and inquiry in the work of teacher educators. In J. Loughran & M. Hamilton (Eds.), International handbook of teacher education. Singapore: Springer. Loughran, J. J. (2004). A history and context of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. In J. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey, & T. Russell (Eds.), International handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. Springer International Handbooks of Education (Vol. 12). Dordrecht: Springer. Millett, C. M., Payne, D. G., Dwyer, C. A., Stickler, L. M., & Alexiou, J. J. (2008). A culture of evidence: An evidence-centered approach to accountability for student learning outcomes. Educational Testing Service. Peck, C., & McDonald, M. (2014). What is a culture of evidence? How do you get one? And… should you want one? Teachers College Record, 116(3), 1–27.

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Russell, T., McPherson, S., & Martin, A. (2001). Coherence and collaboration in teacher education reform. Canadian Journal of Education, 26(1), 37–55. Wineburg, S. (2006). A sobering big idea. Phi Delta Kappan Magazine, 87 (5), 401–402. https://doi.org/10.1177/003172170608700514. Zeichner, K. M. (2017). The struggle for the soul of teacher education. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 18

Sustaining Critical Practice in Contested Spaces: Teacher Educators Resist Narrowing Definitions of Curriculum Jane McIntosh Cooper, Leslie M. Gauna, Christine E. Beaudry, and Gayle A. Curtis

Context/Introduction This study arises out of reflections from an ongoing, nine-year, collaborative research effort comprising the authors of this study. We met as doctoral candidates in a social education program focused on critical pedagogy and social justice initiatives in urban K-12 environments. We joined to support each other in our professional roles as teacher educators through inquiry into practice. We soon became known as “Las Chicas

J. M. Cooper (B) Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. M. Gauna University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_18

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Criticas,” a name denoting our commitment to critical theory and pedagogy. We became members of Faculty Academy not long after completing our doctorates in order to broaden our collaborative opportunities and to learn from the collective knowledge of the group. Our collaboration’s inquiry stance has resulted in, among other interests, investigations into how our pedagogy, or classroom practices, have aligned to our critical values within our urban teacher education classrooms. All authors have continuously worked through this collaboration teaching in three urban colleges and universities located in two Southern states of the United States. Our collaborations have taken place while the authors held large teaching loads in three or more teaching appointments. We quickly realized that the examination of our pedagogy was both pragmatic and necessary. The added pressures to engage in research, service, and practice required us to make choices regarding where best to spend our time. Additional pressure included the continual pressure to conform to standardized and quantifiable classroom practices for internal and external accountability measures. This self-study asks how the choices we have made to research and iteratively improve our classroom teaching practices define our work as radical leadership. We further present inquiry on how we cultivate another generation of educational leaders. This question about radical leadership led us to wonder how traditional notions of academic or faculty leadership are enriched or enhanced by our broadening the existing curriculum. Our critical values demand that we take the stance as advocates for our students, and work alongside them. We cling to an identity of “teacher” in order to align our work with that of our students’ most pressing demands. We have found that this identity of teacher, while at the heart of multiple course assignments in the colleges of education, appears not to be central to the demands placed upon faculty. This, perhaps, is not surprising as external demands for accountability, data production, and rankings often

C. E. Beaudry Nevada State College, Henderson, NV, USA e-mail: [email protected] G. A. Curtis University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

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supercede the more nuanced aspects of the educational milieu such as identity (Zeichner, 2017). When we adopt the ethical stance of our teacher educator identities, we align our critical values to the teaching practices we enact with our students. These values include promoting a democratic, inclusive, classroom community; privileging student voices; and empowering students to make decisions and engage in critical thinking. Critical thinking is a foundational skill that leads to well-founded critique of unjust practices, as well as allows for deliberative democratic practices (Gutmann, 1996). Through our ongoing systematic self-study into our practices, themes that have emerged cluster around multiple perspective taking (Gauna, Beaudry, Cooper, & Curtis, 2000), critical thinking (Cooper, Beaudry, Gauna, & Curtis, 2018), and relationship making (Cooper, Gauna, Beaudry, & Curtis, 2019). This exploration will draw from our various previous findings and the subsequent iterative changes we have made in our pedagogy to show how those changes have resulted in a broadening of curriculum for ourselves and our students. We have seen great success with our methods described below, evident through student feedback survey results, perceptions of less resistance from students engaging in exploring difficult topics, and students’ overall expressed enjoyment in classes. We have also found that these successes have sustained us as faculty in institutional environments that do not often share or value our critical perspectives.

Literature Critical Leaders Leadership, as traditionally understood, is where decision-making experiences are situated in the leaders positionality and delivered top down (Spillane, 2005). Our critical values are at odds with this conceptualization of leadership. With our work in urban environments, we want to model democratic and critical leadership styles that future teachers can enact in their classrooms while simultaneously giving them tools to take action to enact social justice. Developing and refining curriculum around these broad themes, we hope to model and lead our students to see opportunities for their own future work as “curriculum makers” (Craig, 2012). Aligning ourselves with a Freirian vision of conscientization (1972), we see every educational instance as an opportunity for value

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and curriculum creation in a democratic deliberative (Gutmann, 1996) learning environment (Uljens, 2015) within our classroom. The impact of top-down hierarchies of standardized curricular elements in K-12 experiences is widely documented, resulting in a lack of professionalism, lack of rigor, increase of standardized curriculum and procedures, and enforced compliance (Au, 2016; Ravitch, 2013). Narrowing of the curriculum in terms of teaching practices are complex trends in K-12 education, with resulting deprofessionalization and demoralization among teachers, and leading to among other crises, one of teacher attrition (Santoro, 2018). In terms of deprofessionalization, narrowing of the curriculum has meant increased standards and oversight, and subsequent reforms are also present and increasing in teacher education programs in the United States (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018; Zeichner, 2017), as well as impacting other aspects of higher education. As practitioners in teacher education programs, we experience the narrowing of the curriculum as pressures for standardized assessment, competency-based evaluation and other evidence-based practices. We are concerned with the totalizing effect of conformity throughout the K16 educational pipeline and how these practices can degrade learning and professionals who teach (Mehta & Fine, 2019; Zeichner, 2017). We also fear, as critical educators with a commitment to diversity, that these stratifying experiences will affect those students who come from communities that lack access to academic resources. Urban students of color and in poverty are more negatively affected by the standardizing conditions of reform measures (Au, 2016). As professors at public urban universities, the impact of reform measure on learning are of utmost importance to us. Our critical stance requires us to ensure that we elevate and deepen the learning in teacher education programs to ensure that our students see beyond reform efforts like testing, and that our students have a path forward to make and implement curriculum that is higher order, connected to experience, and engaging. Our aims are to give light to practices that confront these challenges to rigorous, deep, and expansive educational experiences. Our civil society needs deeper learning to be able to sustain itself. Freedom and resistance hinges on the ability of members of society to engage in true deliberation (Gutmann, 1999). In our collaborative, inquiry-based practices, we resist the narrowing of curriculum, and thus renew the educational society. Critical democratic curriculum leadership underscores the need for reflective and deliberative negotiation

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of both curricular development and practice (Kincheloe, 1999). While critical pedagogy cites and engages practices like deconstruction and reconstruction (Giroux, 1992) of ideas and institutions, what our work brings to bear is a direct mapping of the value and classroom practice that supports these notions. Through providing exemplars of practical adherence to critical values like deconstruction, we cite and model classroom experiences for our future teachers, who otherwise have little educational grounding to understand the concept. This is not uncommon, as enacting values is a difficult task, especially in educational contexts, where educational institutions are responding to many competing local, state, and federal demands (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018). What is often missing in institutional leaders is the ability to work to the values they espouse (Mehta & Fine, 2019): thus, our practical adherence to our democratic values enhances our work as one of democratic leadership. Democratic Leaders As leaders, we model democratic deliberation of curriculum making in systematic decision-making in our classes. Dewey suggests that democratic leadership, “consists in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to the need in the values which the groups sustain” (1991/1922, p. 147). Leadership traditionally has focused on the individual, who makes changes, but Distributed Leadership (shared, team or democratic leadership) trends have opened the space to encompass decision-making as a shared task (Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2004). Social justice leadership (Santamaria, 2014) takes these expanding notions of shared leadership and includes notions of equity and participation in the political as part of the purposes of leadership. Deliberation for decision-making is central to notions of fairness in our society (Gutmann, 1996). We see ourselves as enactors of curricular deliberation, while we modify and refine our curriculum and practice with each other. Aligned with the notion of co-construction, deliberation allows for multiple voices to be heard and a well-reflected acceptable outcome or decision can be reached. We see our deliberation about our curricular choices, both with our students and with each other, as central to this democratic, equitable, and radical strain of leadership. Valuing multiple perspectives and cultural responsiveness are central to core educational (Hammond, 2014) and democratic needs (Gutmann,

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1996) of our democracy. We have practiced these skills in our collaboration, instilled these in our classroom curriculum, and practiced them with our students. Many of our students will be teaching in diverse urban contexts where the needs for skills of cultural responsiveness and rigor are strongly warranted in response to unique challenges faced in these contexts. Curricular Leaders Curriculum, from a critical perspective, has a goal to transform, to clearly identify the realities of context, self-reflection, and pushing against known boundaries collectively and individually (Gay, 2010). As with all curricula, our teacher education curriculum seeks to include developmentally appropriate practices that reach all learners. Responsive teaching is central to the ability to meet all learners where they are. Every context and culture is varied in urban environments, requiring curricular decisions to be flexible. Leadership is needed as these contextually driven decisions are consistently at odds, both at a level of values and practice, with trends of managerial professionalism that currently govern educational institutions at all levels (Uljens, 2015). Managerial professionalism has reached new outcome-driven heights in colleges of education (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018; Zeichner, 2017). Our classrooms and our identities, mirroring those of our students, are situated within these managerial spaces, where we resist the demands that are at odds with our values. If curriculum can be defined as the rationale, goals, objectives, content, learning activities, and evaluation of learning experiences (Gay, 1995), we explain how we take these curricular elements into our practice to expand what counts as education in our college classrooms. We broaden curricular content to include lessons we have learned from each other in our collaboration. Through this process, we become leaders in resisting the ever-narrowing of curriculum that is too often a response to standardized and evidence-based teacher educator practices.

Methods Our ongoing work together is an offshoot of a series of iterative selfstudy cycles, each examining aspects of our work with students, including critical values, relationship building, dialogue, feedback, and assessment.

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Our work together has focused mainly on our improvement of classroom practices and the values that we try to enact within them. As we turn our attention here to questions of how we conceptualize what we do as related to leadership, we rely on our standards of collecting data. Our data consist of both recordings and transcriptions of our weekly online meetings, shared writings, and spontaneous conversations. Classroom artifacts include student reflections, assignments, assignment descriptions, and syllabi. Interim texts have been developed from these data sources. Interim texts were created based around coded themes, including journal responses, audio tapes, and drafted versions of articles. These interim texts have been coded by all authors, aligning them with predetermined codes (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Data collected was re-visited, coded, analyzed, and interrogated for meaning during weekly meetings. The representation of the data collected below is fictionalized in some cases to ensure anonymity. For rendering our findings, we borrowed Mehta and Fine’s tripartite description of foundational goals for deeper learning, (1) mastery, (2) identity, and (3) creativity (2019) to organize how the findings resonate with our goals as educators. The three goals for ourselves and our students; identity, mastery, and creativity represent not just theoretical notions that we aspire for students to gain, but goals for practice. These goals take on added dimensions when enacted within our teaching, and when our students achieve them. Deep learning about the skills and professional identity allows our students to creatively build curriculum, marking them as leaders within the current climate of education.

Discussion Building socially just and effective curriculum is not just a practice from which to teach, but one that resists the status quo in education today. Theories of curriculum design that are not responsive are not based on justice. Being able to build and enact responsive pedagogy enacts justice for students, and it also encourages the growth of strong and resistant teacher identities for our students, future teachers. In our classroom we focus on challenging and building teacher identities, helping them master the skill of relationship-building and encouraging creativity in curriculum building. Our goals are to create a generation of teachers, who lead in their classrooms and professionally, building competencies for deeper thinking. Below, we trace how our joint inquiry formed our developing

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identities and how the values learned here became the backbone of our ever-evolving curricular goals with our students. Identity Mehta and Fine (2019) suggest that schools that focus on identity strive to help students “develop a stronger sense of themselves as learners, citizens, and soon-to be professionals… re-engage students in their education and lead to deeper learning” (p. 34). In our reflection of our experiences, we realized that coming to terms with our own identities helped lead us to intellectual and social growth. Lessons learned from our collaboration, in turn, became curriculum for our classrooms with our students. As novice teacher educators, we began to make connections between our critical commitments and new roles as faculty which was further fostered throughout our ongoing weekly meetings where these values were strengthened and oftentimes challenged by each others “personal practical knowledge” (Clandinin & Connelly, 1988). As our collaboration grew, we realized our ongoing development of our identities was central to our work. Below, we look to how our work together helped form the core values that make up our identities as teacher educators. Integrating the full humanness of our many roles and choosing relational practices for and collaborating with others to make meaning are both core values to our identities. These values become the basis for the work we do with our students, as we lead them into their future teacher-selves. Identity Integration When asked what I do for a living, I often say ‘I teach teachers’, this is the core of who I feel myself to be, not as a professor, but as someone who teaches… (Journal, Fall 2019)

As novice faculty, one is confronted with a myriad of new roles to navigate, none of which is “teacher.” The authors came to the field of education not as a blank slates, but as individuals with experiences. Ongoing tensions existed for the group as they tried to adapt to new roles, while still trying to hold on to previous dearly loved roles, as educators. Not unlike teacher educators who are trying to fit into a new professional role, we found it difficult to validate both the role of “teacher” in with

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our new status as faculty. This tension is demonstrated by the following conversation we had while working on our dissertations together. I’m not really sure why I’m doing this, I think I might rather be teaching in the classroom. I agree, I really miss working with my ninth graders, but we’ve done all this work…

As new faculty, we tried to fit into our new roles as researchers. We were unsure about these new roles and intimidated by the pressure to succeed. Through the confluence of two events: one the need to manage all the new courses we were teaching, the other the mentorship of a colleague, we began a journey to systematically and rigorously investigate and publish on our classroom practices. The integration of our new role of researcher and core identities of “teachers” allowed for the emergence of our “best-loved selves” (Craig, 2017). We were allowed to focus more on the work we were doing to help students, while completing new roles as researchers. Looking back on the process, we have found that the renewed vigor for this joined identity as teacher-researchers, has brought about more professional success for us, while allowing us to not disavow personal values associated with our teacher-selves: primacy of student-centered learning and success, curriculum making, and student mentorship. The success we have found relies heavily on our ongoing collaboration that we affectionately call “the hub.” We reflected on how the alienation from roles we loved from our past is similar to the dissonance associated with “imposter syndrome”(Bothello & Roulet, 2018) in the academy. Not being able to fully be yourself, or integrate your identities into an already multi-faceted role, we have taken this lesson and created a space in our curriculum to help students both understand and grapple with who they are and want to be in education. Exploring what brings a student joy and how they can bring that identity into their future classroom are experienced through introductory activities, overt connections to student experiences, and an effort on our part to determine who our students are, all to help them make stronger connections.

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Relational Pedagogy We call the Chicas’ relationship a “hub,” where our multiple identities as professor, mentor, daughter, friend, parent, teacher, researcher, and women are all brought forward as powerful in their own rights. By embracing each of these roles within our collaboration, we have gained powerful insights into our work together. Through checking in with each other, one might share an insight that they had with their mother on the phone, and connect that insight to our work together. As our relationship over the years has deepened, we have learned that this role integration was not just useful, but central to our knowledge building and production. Elemental to our identity integration within our collaboration is the trust that we have built with each other. While it might seem that our years together would automatically engender trust, there have been very concrete insights and actions about how we deepen, sustain, and develop trust in our collaborative group (Cooper et al., 2019). We found that care and empathy needed to be practiced in order to be felt by the other and for work to begin. We adopted strategies that helped project care to our colleagues in ways that made the other feel heard and respected both personally and professionally. By emitting empathy (Kitchen, 2009), and practicing vulnerability (hooks, 1994). we allowed for intellectual risks to be taken, including sharing developing work or sometimes just showing up (meeting, Fall 2019), even if a member might not be prepared or ready. Not unlike a good marriage, just showing up is often difficult with all of the competing demands. In our classrooms we consciously practice empathy with our students, who also juggle competing demands. Conscious classroom practices include acknowledging the contributions they bring, even if it is not the homework, such as checking in before classes start and asking questions about their families and personal aspirations. These practices, among others, have all made it into our classroom curriculum, not as an afterthought, but as planned practices. For example, one author has a checklist of students, checking off when personal conversations are made, so that she can be sure to have at least one personal conversation with each of her 109 students. Other ways we prioritize our human connection in our collaborative group include planning time together when no work is completed, like coffee, dinner, or travel. Other caring practices we have added to the curriculum of our classrooms include; bringing homemade food and celebrating with our students and allowing them to share the stresses in their

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lives before formal lessons begins. Sharing good movie selections with the class or great things they did over the weekend are among practices essential for bringing the personal into the learning space. Planning for this explicitly within our practice has helped our students build knowledge (Gauna et al., 2000). Collaborative Knowledge Construction When I used to talk about the importance of co-construction it was all theoretical, I believed it… with y’all I feeeeel it. I have experienced it… Lived it. (October 2019)

We have found that by centering the relational within our collaboration, we have been able to create knowledge and expand upon that knowledge. Through enacting cyclical iterations of inquiry into our values and practices, we have seen tremendous impacts on our identity formation through this new learning. As an example of this co-construction of knowledge within our practice is this exchange where we were talking about our values as critical educators. Member 1: Our values really haven’t changed that much though Member 2: I wouldn’t say that, it’s not that my values have changed, but how I focused on them have… Member 1: then they matured… Member 2: I would say that… (January 2020)

As the above excerpt highlights, core values are constant, but the enactment of them has ripened and grown, showing a maturity of ideas because of our attention to the enactment of them. We understand that our work together has helped shape the nature of our values and how those values get enacted pragmatically in our classrooms in our experiences holistically. We have learned from our collaboration that deeper knowledge comes through the experiences we have in dialogue in the classroom (Gauna et al., 2000). These have caused us to investigate and enact dialogue in the classroom as a main tool for interpretation of knowledge. By centering dialogue of students, and decentering our role as lecturer, we hope that students show increases in knowledge about teaching and learning. The response from students’ suggests that they see the value of some of the

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practices of co-constructing that we have enacted with them in the classroom. This is a response to a prompt about their feelings about dialogue in the classroom. I think it is really valuable. It not only helped me see things from a new perspective, it filled in any gaps I had and made me feel closer to my classmates. (Fall 2019)

Lessons we have learned about integration and interrogation of our identities, the relational aspect of collaboration, and the way that collaboration leads to knowledge formation, have become central curriculum in our classes. The expansion of our curriculum beyond the content of our subject allows for a resistance to impersonal and institutional educational experiences. Emphasis on compliance, including standardized rubrics across courses, syllabi, and evidence-based practices, are all antithetical to responsive teaching and they narrow the curriculum. By decentering the human identity, including culture, experience, and the relational, deeper learning is less possible in colleges of education (Hammond, 2014, Mehta & Fine, 2019; Zeichner, 2017). By cleaving to our identities as teachers, and feeling secure in our relations, we continue to re-center the humanness in teacher education classrooms, resisting the narrowing of curriculum. Mastery Once human needs of identity integration, compassionate and shared connection, are met, it is then possible for deeper learning, or mastery to take place. Being a teacher, creating and enacting curriculum is complex and requires many skills. We aspire for our students to learn skills to help them master “curriculum making” in their own future classrooms, and not be reliant on curriculum delivered to them. In our teacher education classrooms, how to build and enact curriculum is the central task of professionalism required. Mehta and Fine suggest that schools that focus on mastery, or on ‘the goals of supporting students in developing deep knowledge, skills, and competencies within the academic disciplines are models for great teaching’ (2019, p. 33, emphasis by the authors). To master the knowledge, skills, and competencies of becoming a teacher, our students need to move from student-mind to begin to inhabit a teacher-mind. As we mentor our students through this transition, we rely

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on humanness to see us through the complex and often difficult transition for them. Deconstructing Student Mind Many of our students have been raised through a system that favors standardized testing, and they have been relatively successful there. This means that they are very comfortable regurgitating information, taking multiple choice tests, and checking all the boxes. Also, our universities are all relatively open-enrollment public institutions, which cater to local students in urban districts that emphasize test preparation, and as a result our students often have not had the opportunity to think broadly intellectually (Au, 2016). As students, they have learned that there is one right answer that they can fill in with bubbles. This experience is at odds with the learning of teaching, in which complexity and many right answers are possible. Mastery of the teacher-mindset requires much more from them than just answering questions correctly, or even enacting “best” practices. Collaboration, flexibility, and confidence within this confusing space is a cornerstone of this continued learning of teacher. Our tenure as critical pedagogues leads us to talk about how we need to confront students with challenges to their perceived knowledge about what teaching is, so that they can deconstruct their experiential meanings and pedagogical understandings (Giroux, 1992) or un-learn what they think they know about education. Critical pedagogy has much to add to the conversation of challenging student thinking, but is often times challenging for students to access and make connections to. Several of us have given students work by Paulo Freire to students to read, only to find that their inability to access the reasoning within the work becomes a stumbling block and a stressor for them. We also found that direct challenges to students’ ideas were sometimes seen as attacks to their identity, which was met with defensiveness. When defensive or scared, students are not ready to learn. One member likes to say it “turn that values problem into a pedagogy problem.” By embracing our identities as teachers, we sidestep the “wrong values” and embrace the question of how we might, as teacher educators, engage students to learn more deeply. Scaffolding them to accept challenging ideas that they might encounter is one way. Reconstructing Teacher Mind It is not just the theory behind critical pedagogy that students cannot access, but also their lack of concrete connections to a model of teaching

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that they can replicate. As we try to model and enact our values of critical pedagogy in our classrooms, we have made concrete practices that make central to our work and what our students see. To enact scaffolding, we decentered “critical pedagogy” in classroom discussions and emphasized “critical thinking,” a term less intimidating to students. We enacted multiple perspectives as a way to enact authentic dialogue with each other, texts, and as a whole group (Gauna et al., 2000), having them bring their experiences to bear upon the ideas presented in the classroom. We are sure to make transparent purposes behind these methods, connecting back our desired goal explicitly for students. We challenge students’ ideas giving them multiple opportunities verbally in class, and independent reflective time both in class and at home, to demonstrate new learning garnered from these experiences. A classroom example of this practice is as follows: one activity includes having students individually reflect upon what makes a good warm up question to introduce a lesson, then have them brainstorm who might answer it, who might not in their classrooms, then have them talk about what they could do to make the question better, asking six other students in their class and then go back and rewrite the question. Finally, giving them a chance to say why the question is good, and most importantly how they learned to make it better. Using these findings as the content for structure class mini-lessons follows. (Journal, Fall 2019)

This type of exploratory learning, using just each others’ individual and cultural assets and experiences to bear upon the topic of question creation, might seem basic. However, many students are uncomfortable with this idea, because they come wanting expert experience from the instructor. They are used to passively waiting to be told the right answer. This is evidenced from student responses like, “when are you going to teach us?” It is clear that this perspective embeds beliefs that there is a correct answer, and a teacher will tell you what it is, and it really does not require student engagement intellectually. Enacting our values in the class is not enough, in order for studentminds to turn into teacher-minds: we must not just model our values but also have students make sense of the modeling and how they might find success with students in their own classrooms. Often times, we assume that if we model our methodology, this will immediately translate to student copying. However, without connection to deeper purposes that transfer is not complete. A transparency of purpose for teacher moves in

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the classroom has become a curricular centerpiece within our classroom. This means that each activity enacted, each question posed, each feeling felt, each disruption experienced, and each error we make can be the content or curriculum which we teach. For instance, class interruptions during transitions, when students will not stop talking, are a reflective and teachable moment in the classroom. Because we are suggesting a constructivist model, disruptions of this type will be common in our students’ future classrooms. Pausing for a minute to describe how it feels for the professor to be distracted at this time becomes a transparent “mini-discussion.” Investigations into what possible options that teachers have to this type of disruption and the practical consequences of these decisions are flushed out. Through these examples of deeper learning, we allow our students to become more connected to the open-ended experience of the teacher, not unlike a think-aloud about our curricular choices and purposes. Taking breaks to ask questions like “Why do you think I did stations today?” will help students unpack the many aspects of classroom life that teachers attend to while curriculum making. It helps them see that there are multiple, not just one, ways to teach and learn, but that it will be up to them to make curricular decisions in the classroom. Including discussions about the time and effort that the professor makes to engage in difficult learning strategies, like stations, so that they understand that purpose for learning can supercede ease for instructors, and perhaps should. Mentoring-Curriculum of Feedback We consider ourselves mentors to our students: like midwives, we usher them into the professional landscape of teaching. We understand our students cannot make sense out of the complex world of teaching without a personal and individualized relationship with us. Founded upon Noddings (1986) notion of caring for our students, we must engage them individually for them to acquire maximum bravery to lean into difficult learning experiences with us. Throughout our time together, we have found that grades, and student expectations of grades have been a stumbling block to engaging in learning. We know that the work we ask students to do is challenging and difficult. We know that we are asking them to take risks intellectually and practically. We know that there is not a way for “right” to be expressed, so we also know that grading these attempts and efforts will be challenging. Couple that with the fact that our students are grade obsessed,

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often completing work with an eye to only the number in the grade book. As a curricular cornerstone, we have decentered grades and prioritized feedback. We have worked on ways that students receive intrinsic and extrinsic rewards for engaging in difficult work and trying to improve. We say that great teaching is “like Nirvana, you never get there, we are all just making approximations.” If this is true, the question of objective grading based on outcomes would deny that reality. In order to prioritize feedback, we have treated our classwork like revisions and/or drafts, where we give feedback and suggestions for improvement. We have also instituted in class “live-grading” where all students in the class meet with the professor, and she gives feedback on the work aloud in front of the student, while the rest of the class engages in other activities. This mentoring activity, verbally expressing our thought processes as we assess their work gives them deep insight into the teacher-mind. Thus, feedback and grading itself have become a curricular experience for students. We also give plenty of class time for revisions and improvement of class products, as this most directly mirrors teaching experience. Unlike traditional classrooms, where individual knowledge is assessed, teaching is a field where it is suggested that we “steal” our best ideas for curriculum from each other. Thus, this process allows students to continue to build consensus and co-construct ideas and make deeper meaning. As students try on a teacher-mind to interrogate each other’s work, the complex decision-making and communication skills needed to give guidance to others is developed. These authentic experiences of giving feedback to others allow for our students to think deeply about which ideas to support or attend to, and how best to do that. The tone or affect of feedback must be considered, how critical or supporting should one’s feedback be. These kinds of deep questions are the type that teachers face daily and students have almost no experience in. Our values have led us to center curriculum around deconstructing existing schemas about teaching in the student-brain through dialogue and multiple perspectives. We have also created curriculum that supports reconstruction through transparency of purposes and feedback. These changes have necessitated that we make time and room in our curriculum to support these key competencies and skills. The expansion of curriculum has the pragmatic effect of paring down our classroom activities and assignments. By prioritizing deeper learning about teaching, we have resisted evidence-based signifiers of teaching in learning; long lectures,

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many assignments, and grades. We have taken the lead through building learner and student-centered curriculum. Creativity Teaching is sometimes called an art, antithetical to current conceptions of competency-based best practices, and it is something that is personalized, enacted in multiple ways. Teaching is like setting up a production in which one needs to decide who takes the starring role and how the act will proceed. We see alignment here to Mehta and Fine’s conception of creativity, which is defined as a way in which learners are able to “act or make something” (2019, p. 16), in this case make and enact the pedagogical knowledge within their teacher-mind. Curriculum making is the culmination of the creative act of teachers and what we wish for our students. Once we deconstruct their ideas about what they might need to accomplish in classrooms, guide them to strategies like “stealing” ideas from others, and have them see the benefit of this collaboration, we hope they see that their creativity in making curriculum lies directly in their own transition into expert professional and their collaboration with other professionals to improve their practice. Because we see this as a central goal of our teaching, we emphasize each of these as our and their future curriculum. Creativity Through Vulnerability We believe that our rigorous inquiry into our practice keeps our eyes on the essential values of our practice. Our ongoing and iterative study has changed and shaped our curriculum and teaching in such positive ways that we feel it might be integral to deeper learning about the teaching profession. Strategies of inquiry include (1) having clear curricular goals and then using systematic data gathering and analysis to determine if these goals have been met, (2) having student feedback through exit tickets and reflections where students periodically give their opinions about what they learned and how they learned it (Russell & Martin, 2019), along with how much they liked or what we can improve in our classes, and (3) holding discussions about our curricular goals and our students’ feedback within our collaboration group. All these inquiry strategies give us “just in time” reflection about our practices. Transparency with our students about the purposes for these reflections as self-assessments helps model the inquiry of practice. Creating moments

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of vulnerability with our students are integral (hooks) as we admit that we often do not live up to our own expectations regarding successful implementation of lesson components. Curricular decisions are often studded with critical teaching stories that exemplify low points in our teaching careers. One of those teaching stories follows: In my class students were working in small groups independently, while I circulated, focusing on students who were struggling. One young man, Raul, completely understood the material, but was getting off-task and starting to engage with the other young men in the room, getting them off task also. I started to become frustrated as their behavior continued. I started getting angrier and angrier, I then lost my cool and told the entire class that ‘since they could not handle working in groups, I would have to monitor their behavior, and they would have to work independently without my support.’. I was so mad, all weekend I kept thinking about Raul, and what I was going to do about it, how was I going to punish him, why was he doing it. I was obsessive. On Monday morning in the shower, it came over me, and I realized what Raul was doing, that Raul was a child, and he was trying to get my attention. He was frustrated that I was spending time with all the other students and he didn’t feel cared for. I was so ashamed that I had acted so immature. (Journal, Spring 2018)

By seeing us as human, and our admitted vulnerabilities, these states of being allow empathy: students can see themselves and their failings as ones that we have gone through, giving them hope that when facing struggles they can sustain themselves through honest reflection. The teaching profession sometimes does not value admitting failure. Students are resistant to admitting failure or reaching out for assistance for fear that they will be negatively judged. This limits their future competency in asking for help when needed. By letting them know through our opening up to them that failure is part of an educator’s journey into mastery and that creativity is an opportunity for inquiry into those situations, students can see themselves authentically as future professionals. The creative act of trying new pedagogies in an era of highly controlled and at times scripted lessons requires a risk-taking disposition. One must be able to accept failure in the trying and learn from that experience. Creating centers is an example that often comes up in class when modeling station works for student teachers. Many of their mentor teachers on their urban campuses will say things like: “our kids can’t handle centers” or “I tried centers once, it was terrible.” Students

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find themselves, when considering implementing centers, faced with a dilemma. On one side, they are willing to invest the time and practice to implement organized centers and the scaffolding their K-12 students need to do in them; however, on the other side they resist, unwilling to risk the “I told you so” attitude of some of their mentors. Through modeling vulnerability and risk-taking in our classrooms, we show our students that we are not afraid of failure, see it as a “puzzle to be solved” and embrace it as a basis for reflection and creativity. Tinkering Toward Creativity Teaching can be an art of “curriculum making” or it can be an act of “curriculum receiving.” We aspire for our students, as future teachers, to engage in the creative process of curriculum making. Real leaders will be creative and responsive to their context and consistently build capacity for curriculum development. Often, students already in the field do not witness responsive, individualized instruction in their placements. We need to scaffold them with purposes and pragmatic practices to encourage and engage them to make curriculum. We need to encourage practice to build capacity as well as nurture deep understanding behind the purposes of varied instructional strategies. We have learned from our collaboration that change is iterative, contrary to calls for educational revolution by critical pedagogues or the silver bullet of best practices. It is very difficult to start from a blank slate when creating or improving teaching. We understand our practice as in constant state of revision, with multiple iterations of improvement, making a change, standing back and looking at our outcomes creates purposeful and meaningful change. We know that when we implement curriculum, it is as good as it can be for that time and context. Our students often struggle with the open-endedness of this kind of practice. By demonstrating examples of our own experiences of “not-finished” but still-moving forward lessons, talks or papers, we help them see the fluid and unending nature of the work we do. We reassure students that their work is good enough. Reminiscent of art studios where one piece might be worked on over and over again as paint is layered onto a canvas, we encourage multiple revisions of student work. A continuous cycle of editing, feedback, discussion, and clarification has helped our students see their work as curriculum makers always in revision. Together we examine the growth, expanding our notions of what quality looks like.

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Curriculum as Art Art is an act of interpretation of the viewer. The same is true for classroom instruction (Bruner, 1986). Curriculum making must take into account how “students” receive it, from both an intellectually and affective perspective. Simple classroom acts like how chairs are arranged, how one speaks to students, how one handles a student who does not turn in homework, or how a cold-call home might feel to a student, are all perspectives novice teachers must consider when curriculum making. Classroom activities we employ, such as moving our students into rows and having them sit alphabetically once during the semester, can help them understand their future students’ perspectives. Having feeling toward a classroom experience that they might not have felt before has a greater impact on student insight than just rotely learning about it. Creating popsicle sticks and calling on our college students to respond to the homework, and then transparently asking them how they felt about that, and sharing those thoughts with one another, allows them to make stronger future classroom decisions. We expect our teachers to be creative curriculum makers. This requires vulnerability to failure, an inquiry toward constant improvement, and inquiry into creative solutions for their classrooms. The art of classroom teaching sustains practice, encourages collaboration, and improves learning for students.

Conclusion This investigation is the product of using our values as a guidepost for classroom instruction and curriculum making. We have become leaders because we have done the difficult work of enacting the values we espouse, which is often not present in institutional leaders (Mehta & Fine, 2019). We traced how elements of identity, mastery, and creativity (Mehta & Fine, 2019) are component parts of deeper and more expansive teaching and learning. The importance of these three components was derived from our collaborative work together. Our discoveries about how we learned together were morphed into curriculum for our student teachers in our classrooms. Teaching is complex. We have shown how we have displaced more traditional aspects of teacher education classrooms, like quizzes, exams, and direct teaching, in order to center primary dispositional needs of curriculum makers. The centering of development of teacher identity

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integration, moving from student-mind to teacher-mind, and creative construction within our classrooms has demanded class time to help students make meaning of these complex ideas. By decentering practices of managerial professionalism (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018) through curriculum making, we have enacted our critical leadership. As critical theorists, we believe that these iterative changes we have made empower us as leaders and our students as well. These strategies of collaboration, aligning instruction with purpose and consistent inquiry into practice have all made us stronger professionals. The practice has allowed us to flourish professionally, find confidence in new roles, and create classrooms that we enjoy. It has also helped us have courage to resist narrowing curriculum supported by students’ feedback about their learning (Ravitch, 2013; Zeichner, 2017), with new teachers entering education empower students and give them knowledge and skills to help them thrive and determine their own futures. Aligning ourselves to goals of social justice leadership (Santamaría, 2014), we lead through our expansion of curriculum and practice so our students can do just that.

References Au, W. (2016). Meritocracy 2.0: High-stakes, standardized testing as a racial project of neoliberal multiculturalism. Education Policy, 30(1), 39–62. Bothello, J., & Roulet, T. J. (2018). The imposter syndrome, or the misrespresentation of self in academic life. Journal of Management Studies, 56(4), 854–861. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1988). Studying teachers’ knowledge of classrooms: Collaborative research, ethics, and the negotiation of narrative. The Journal of Educational Thought (JET)/Revue de la Pensee Educative, 22(2A), 269–282. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cochran-Smith, M., Carney, M. C., Keefe, E. S., Burton, S., Chang, W. C., Fernandez, M. B., & Baker, M. (2018). Reclaiming accountability in teacher education. New York: Teachers College Press. Cooper, J. M., Beaudry, C. E., Gauna, L. M., & Curtis, G. A. (2018). Theory and practice: Bridging theory and practice: Exploring the boundaries of critical pedagogy through group self-study. In D. Garbett & A. Ovens (Eds.), Enhancing self-study as methodology for professional inquiry. Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP). selfstudysyig.wordpress.com.

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Cooper, J. M., Gauna, L. M., Beaudry, C. E., & Curtis, G. A. (2019). A relational approach to collaborative research and practice among teacher educators in urban contexts. In J. Kitchen & K. Ragoonaden (Eds.), Mindful and relational approaches to social justice, equity and diversity in teacher education. London: Rowan & Littlefield. Craig, C. (2012). Professional development through a teacher-as-curriculum maker lens. In M. Kooy & K. van Veen (Eds.), Teacher learning that matters: International perspectives. New York: Routledge. Craig, C. (2017). Sustaining teachers: Attending to the best-loved self in teacher education and beyond. In Quality of teacher education and learning (pp. 193– 205). Singapore: Springer. Dewey, J. (1991/1922). The public and its problems. Athens: Ohio University Press. Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Rinehart & Company Publishing. Gauna, L. M., Beaudry, C. E., Cooper, J. M., & Curtis, G. (2000). A tapestry of voices: Enhancing pedagogies of critical dialogue in teacher education classrooms. In D. Garbett & A. Ovens (Eds.), Textiles and tapestries: Self-study for envisioning new ways of knowing. Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP). selfstudysyig.wordpress.com. Gay, G. (1995). Modeling and mentoring in urban teacher preparation. Education and Urban Society, 28(1), 103–118. Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research and practice (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. Giroux, H. (1992). Theory and resistance in education: Towards a pedagogy for the opposition. Westport: Bergin & Garvey Press. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Gutmann, A. (1996). Democracy and disagreement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gutmann, A. (1999). Democratic education. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hammond, Z. (2014). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain: Promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge. Kincheloe, J. (1999). The foundations of a democratic educational psychology. In J. L. Kincheloe, S. R. Steinberg, & L. E. Villalverlde (Eds.), Rethinking intelligence: Confronting psychological assumptions about teaching and learning. Florence: Routledge.

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Kitchen, J. (2009). Relational teacher development: Growing collaboratively in hoping relationship. Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(2), 45–62. Mehta, J., & Fine, S. (2019). In search of deeper learning: The quest to remake the American high school. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Noddings, N. (1986). Fidelity in teaching, teacher education, and research for teaching. Harvard Educational Review, 56(4), 496–511. Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of error: The hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to America’s public schools. New York: Random House. Russell, T., & Martin, A. (2019). Practicum and the epistemology of learning from experience. Paper presented at the annual Invisible College for Research on Teaching, Toronto, ON. Santamaría, L. J. (2014). Critical change for the greater good: Multicultural perceptions in educational leadership toward social justice and equity. Educational Administration Quarterly, 50(3), 347–391. Santoro, D. (2018). Demoralized: Why teachers leave the professional they love and how they can stay. Cambridge: Harvard Eduction Press. Spillane, J. P. (2005). Distributed leadership. The Educational Forum, 69(2), 143–150. Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2004). Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36, 3–34. Uljens, M. (2015). Curriculum work as educational leadership—Paradoxes and theoretical foundations. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 2015(1), 271010. Zeichner, K. M. (2017). The struggle for the soul of teacher education. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 19

Generous Scholarship: A Counternarrative for the Region and the Academy Cheryl J. Craig

Introduction The seedbed of this chapter traces to an invited keynote address I was to give at the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT) Conference at Lucien Blaga University in Sibiu, Romania in 2019. Unfortunately, a compelling topic about which to speak did not immediately come to mind. For months, I lived in fear, dreading that any day the conference organizers would contact me and request a title and abstract of my talk for publicity purposes. To make matters worse, the more I deliberated, the more elusive the subject of my invited address became. Of course, I had several interesting papers underway: (1) “Data is [G]od,” which is now published in Teaching and Teacher Education, (2) “The Gordian Knot of international teacher education,” which is a manuscript in preparation with four colleagues (two who are Faculty

C. J. Craig (B) Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_19

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Academy members), and (3) “The joys and challenges of conducting field-based research,” a robust article whose text only existed in my head. However, I determined that the “Data is [G]od” paper was too American, the “Gordian Knot” manuscript did not have equal parts content and passion, and the “Field-Based Research” one would not address all audience members’ research methods. Hence, I found myself returning to the proverbial drawing board, devoid of a subject that would resonate with my peers and provoke discussion in the international study association milieu. Then life happened. A situation occurred in my workplace where I felt betrayed. I subsequently had the choice of deciding whether that experience would remain “miseducative” for me or whether I would transform the experience’s rawness into something “educative” (Dewey, 1938). I chose the latter course of action. The miseducative experience became the intellectual fodder that subsequently ignited the educative talk that I titled “the best-loved self, choice and action.” Near the denouement of that lecture, I introduced “generous scholarship,” a behind-the-scenes stance that has guided my career and contributed greatly to my framing and leadership of the Faculty Academy (faculty research group) and the Portfolio Group (teacher research group). Therefore, it is fitting that my first published work on generous scholarship appears in here in Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education: Cases of Learning While Leading. It is important that I add that the Portfolio Group has a sister book, Knowledge Communities in Teacher Education: Sustaining Collaborative Work (Craig et al., 2020), also published by Palgrave Macmillan and almost simultaneously appearing in the same series. Before I share my understanding of generous scholarship, I need to introduce my research niche and show how it naturally gave rise to my generous scholarship conceptualization.

Research Niche When I first began my career, the inquiry question fueling my program of research had to do with how—and what—beginning teachers come to know in their professional knowledge contexts. Since then, my niche has expanded to include preservice and practicing teachers’ knowing, doing and being in context. Most recently, the intellectual seeds I have harvested have revolved around “curriculum making, reciprocal learning and the

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best-loved self.” In fact, that is the title of my single-authored book in Palgrave-MacMillan’s Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education Series (Craig, 2020). Let me say more about each of the three strands. They segue nicely into my research method and finally my elaboration of what I mean by generous scholarship, this chapter’s central focus. The idea of curriculum making originates with Schwab, Clandinin, and Connelly and follows my intellectual lineage. Schwab was Michael Connelly’s advisor at the University of Chicago; Michael Connelly was Jean Clandinin’s advisor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (now the University of Toronto); Jean Clandinin was my doctoral advisor at the University of Alberta (I was her first graduated doctoral student); and Michael and Jean supervised my Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada post-doctoral fellow program at the University of Toronto. Schwab (1983) maintained that teachers are “the fountainhead of the curriculum decision” because they are the only ones who live with students “for the better part of the day” (p. 245). Schwab’s (1973) earlier work on the curriculum commonplaces (teacher, learner, subject matter, milieu) formed the foundation for two images of teachers that Clandinin and Connelly (1992) proposed: (1) teacher as curriculum-implementer—teacher as an agent of the state doing public work for which s/he is compensated—and (2) teacher as curriculummaker—a teacher acting according to his/her professional sensibilities keeping in mind the learner, subject matter and the micro and macro milieus, which serve as a backdrop for his/her curriculum making in context. Teachers who are curriculum makers want their student to learn not through parroting politically authorized content, skills, and attitudes but through “coming to possess knowledge as part of their best-loved selves” (Schwab, 1954/1954, p. 125). As foreshadowed, the idea of the “best-loved self” traces to Joseph J. Schwab, the Deweyan/Aristotelian originator of scientific inquiry in the American context and my academic grandfather/great-grandfather. The concept complements Connelly and Clandinin’s (1999) research on “stories to live by”—identity expressed in narrative terms—and Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop’s (2004) as well as others’ trail-blazing studies on teacher identity as a key conceptualization in the field of teaching and teacher education. As I have stated elsewhere, the best-loved self recognizes that each human person is “a self-moving thing” that is able to

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“produce itself,” “develop itself” and to “create a personal history that is non-replicable” (Schwab, 1963, p. 8). Oddly enough, Oliver Sacks, the deceased neurologist and best-selling author, recently offered what is perhaps the best distinction between curriculum borrowing via curriculum implementing and curriculum living via curriculum making as I discuss in my recent book (Craig, 2020). Sacks (2017) wrote: All of us, to some extent, borrow from others, from the culture around us. Ideas are in the air and we may appropriate them, often without us realizing phrases and language of the times. We borrow language itself, we did not invent it. We found it, we grew into it, though we may use it, interpret it, in very individual ways. (p. 142)

What was important for Oliver Sacks is not that we borrow or imitate or that something is derivative or influenced, but what is at stake is what one does with what is borrowed, imitated, or derived—that is, how deeply we assimilate it within one’s self and one’s actions. This unavoidably affects others because educators are not universe-of-one people, despite some choosing to act that way at times. I again quote Sacks: “It has to do with how one…takes it into oneself, compounds it with one’s experiences and thoughts and feelings, places it in relation to oneself and experiences it in a new way, one’s own” (p. 142). In a nutshell, this is how acts of curriculum making cultivate teachers’ and our own best-loved selves. Put differently, when curriculum becomes made and experienced in one’s own way, one’s best-loved self finds expression and fulfillment. In such scenarios, the best-loved self entertains future thoughts, choices, and actions because the past, present, and future are inextricably linked (Dewey, 1938). This brings me to reciprocal learning. Reciprocal learning is a new view of international education/comparative education introduced by Connelly and Xu (2019; Xu & Connelly, 2017). It occurs when “each [partner] learns from the other and each teaches the other and no one leaves unchanged”—as Mary Catherine Bateson (1994, p. 249) aptly described mutually beneficial exchanges. It means that those interacting in partnerships move from learning about each other to learning from each other and then to learning with each other (Zhu, 2018, italics in original). With this critically important background in place, I now introduce narrative inquiry, my career-long research method.

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Research Method Narrative inquiry is both a way of conducting research and a form of communicating what is learned from one’s studies (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). However, the narrative inquiry approach is much more than simply telling stories and using story as a representational form; it involves thinking with stories and continually analyzing the storying and restorying process. Margaret Olson (2000), who completed her doctorate at the University of Alberta alongside me, describes the narrative inquiry research method this way: Careful examination and exploration of stories is the essence of narrative [i]nquiry. People often focus on the word narrative but skip lightly over the word [i]nquiry. Yet it is the [i]nquiry into the stories that creates the educative experience as individuals find new and more expansive ways to interpret their own and others’ experiences. Thus, narrative [i]nquiry continually opens up new story lines to pursue and new issues to address. (p. 350)

In short, working with stories provides opportunities “to think otherwise” (Greene, 1995). By interacting closely, we “listen each other [into] being” (Atkins, 2016). Through narration, we “hear who we are” (Silko, 1997, p. 30). In the field of education, the method takes two forms: (1) fieldbased narrative inquiries (Xu & Connelly, 2010) and (2) autobiographical narrative inquiries (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). I generally conduct field-based narrative inquiries in Houston’s urban schools (i.e., Craig, 2004, 2013, 2019a) through focusing on stories of teachers/teacher stories, stories of school/school stories, stories of reform/reform stories (Craig, 2007), and the like. These juxtaposed narratives—given and lived—largely form narratives-counternarratives to the status quo ones prescribed by society. But even in context-embedded studies, researchers’ personal thinking and narratives become revealed. This is because our wonders and ponders inform our inquiries and our relationships with participants are essential to how research puzzles become understood. In autobiographical narrative inquiries, on the other hand, an individual’s stories play the lead role. My “fish jumps over the dragon gate” exploration (Craig, 2019b) is a case in point. It features four narratives that reflect my career trajectory thus far. The work features my experiences with (1) theory-practice chasms, (2) gender issues, (3) ageism, and (4) a

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context where excellence not affiliation is the order of the day. Researchers who write autobiographical inquiries share the truths of their lives with “candor and deep introspection” (Nash, 2004, p. 31). This is because we know, on one level, that “we become the autographical narratives we ‘tell about’ our lives” (Bruner, 1987, p. 694). On quite another plane, we illuminate “lives interweav[ing] with other lives, and out of that tapestry arises…answers to questions that raze at the bone of life” (Popova, 2019, p. 5). This generous scholarship chapter has an autobiographical starting point. Its roots begin with the personal. Its issue is one deeply lived. The understandings it yields, however, have wide transferability.

Literature Betrayal At the outset of this chapter, I mentioned a public betrayal that happened a few years back, something that had never previously occurred in my career. The situation, those who were lead characters and the university backdrop are not important for others to know. The tint of the moment has long passed. What is of central importance is how I dealt with the lack of trustworthiness in its aftermath. Schwab once said that students are placed in the hands of teachers with the hope that teachers will treat them in the way the “best and wisest parent” would do—to borrow Dewey’s (1907) words. The same is true of faculty members. We, as adults, place ourselves and our professional lives in the hands of peers and leaders who we hope will engage in exemplary practices and work with us in ways that are not “narrow and unlovingly”—to cite Dewey (1907) again. At the same time, we similarly attempt to act wisely and in a pedagogically loving way toward the undergraduate and graduate students whose lives and futures are placed in our hands. All of these roles, responsibilities and relationships form sacred trusts for most—if not—all of us. We know that roles, responsibilities and relationships should not be taken lightly; we are acutely aware they should be handled with utmost care because harming someone for life is an ever-present danger. Unfortunately, though, betrayal of our best interests, hopes, and dreams do happen through choices others make and actions they take. Joseph Schwab, who I earlier introduced as fueling the intellectual line that I am on, knew this phenomenon all-too-well. He left home at the tender age of 15 using money a stranger loaned him at the local train

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station. Schwab apparently convinced the stranger that his running away from home was justified and that abandoning his family and community was the only course of action that would move him in the direction of his best-loved future self. Schwab’s father would not allow him to attend university, was a bigot and had beat his son’s African American friend (Levine, 2006). These were the circumstances under which the younger Schwab left America’s Deep South for Chicago where he studied and taught for over 50 years. He eventually became one of the world’s most respected curriculum theorists and science educators, a professor who taught a human genome researcher and the only faculty member to be awarded the University of Chicago’s venerable teaching prize twice during his career. Sadly, betrayals like the one experienced by Schwab also happen to us, although thankfully not of his magnitude. These betrayals happen in our personal lives and in our professional lives, which we know are intertwined (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Flores & Day, 2006; OrlandBarak & Maskit, 2011). These betrayals most often occur at the hands of those with whom we closely interact, those to whom we have temporarily entrusted the shaping of our futures. Schwab considered his betrayal life-altering. It brought with it a profound lesson; it forced him to grow up. This is not surprising, given that Connelly and Clandinin (2004) have found that “ephemeral, passionate, shadowy, significant [kinds of] experiences” have the most impact on us; they constitute the stuff of life. So, the question is not that stuff like betrayals happen to us. Rather, the question is what we choose to do with the stuff of life—what we do in what Schwab termed “our moments of choice”—how do we “selfeducate” and “intelligently rebel” after our formal training? (Schwab, 1967, p. 23). How do we put our practical knowledge—Aristotle’s civilization seed borrowed by Dewey—into action? To whom do we direct it? In what way? For how long? To what end? It is not easy when we, our students and the preservice and in-service teachers and principals with whom we work, feel betrayed by those in whom trust has been placed. We become so vulnerable (Kelchtermans, 2005) that we feel like the orange whose ripped peel is carrying its rounded fruit. This is comparable to the paper-thin skin of our torsos supporting the heavy weight of our bodies. These images are ones that a teacher participant in one of my studies called forth when she was

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wrestling with micro-aggressions in her school context (Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002). In my research over time, in my institutional life in both Canada and the United States and through vicarious experiences that my local and international colleagues have shared with me, I have become keenly aware of not-so-good things happening to fine scholars and leaders through no initiation or fault of their own. Weaving back to Schwab, I have wondered about their self-educations and creative rebellions in the aftermath of their harrowing experiences. And, threading back to Oliver Sacks, I have questioned: How did they assimilate these miseducative experiences into their thoughts and future actions? How did these miseducative experiences, which further compounded their vulnerabilities, work their ways into their beings and become part of their revamped “stories to live by”—their identities understood narratively? First, self-facing (Anzaldua, 1987/1990; Lindemann Nelson, 1995) and other-facing through storying (Craig, 2019c; Tappan & Brown, 1989) and letting stories work on you is a must. There is an urgent need to reflectively review how we/they choose to act/not act on and how those choices affected the outcomes of disturbing situations. This is extremely hard for those of us who come across as “Dimple Dotty’s”— which is a pet name given to me by a critical theorist who revoked the term upon discovering that I too can be fierce despite my pleasant demeanor. However, my fierceness does not come from a universally applied theoretical stance. My stance arises in lived cases of one, which provide ample evidential warrant and justified call for counternarratives and counteractions. All of us need to come to our own narrative truths about disquieting situations that personally and professionally throw us off balance. We need to name what is offensive and story why it is so troubling. Annie Lamott, the well-known author who offers sage advice about writing, tells us that we …can’t get to truths sitting in a field smiling beatifically [like Dimple Dotty’s?], … We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into… the [metaphorical] rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we [are] told not to go into. (Lamott, 2007, p. 201)

We need to dig deeply into our narrative truths (Spence, 1984) and link our past experiences and past versions of self in ways that bring us to new light and fortify our “story to live by”—an identity that deliberately

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chooses to see our life stories as larger than the miseducative experiences that in the short-run wound us.

Generous Scholarship In my case, I imagine what a generous scholar would do when faced with displeasing choices and action. Generous scholarship is a framework that has practically operated in my mind and guided my actions for some years now. I call forth this image when I am working my way through academically, morally, and ethically troubling situations. Generous scholarship is a term I have coined to describe an academic view concerned with sensemaking and problem-solving. Generous scholarship is not wishy-washy; neither is it self-absorbed. It does not easily give up or give in. Generous scholarship has to do with continuing to enact one’s best-loved self in highly constrained academic settings, while leaving room for others to enact their best-loved selves, which may or may not run counter to our own interests. I would like to share some examples of generous scholarship that I have come to know through my knowledge communities (Craig, 1995a, 1995b, 2007; Curtis, Reid, Kelley, Martindell, & Craig, 2013)—that is, through the stories of experience that my academic colleagues have shared with me across place and over time. In my multiple communities of knowing, my choices and actions have been influenced by many local, national and international scholars. Through sharing snippets of storied experiences that have spoken to me, while not using specific colleagues’ names, I pinpoint aspects of generous scholarship in action during these mind-boggling, entrepreneurial research-privileged times when those who are blaring, demanding and self-absorbed act in ways incommensurate with their contributions to research, teaching, and service. Generosity in Action I am fortunate to personally interact with local, national and international scholars who as a matter of choice conduct research studies that are “pureof-purpose.” Through their sterling examples, I have learned—alongside them—that generous scholars never get involved in “fill-the-purse” investigations that take advantage of underserved students and schools without ensuring that something of value is returned to them. The same principle

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underlying action also applies to teachers and principals who work with disadvantaged students and the communities where they live. I know many other researchers (mostly females) who continue to do good work, despite ideological and institutional barriers that have blocked their career development and/or continue to bound their academic journeys. Their stories of experience underscore the importance of pressing on—even when the going is tough. In some cases, local, national and international colleagues who were underdogs one day ended up winning institutional, national and international honors and/or being promoted/tenured the next day. These individuals constantly remind me that part of generous scholarship means understanding that life goes on and that change is always possible. Furthermore, shifts can always come from unanticipated quarters. Several other generous scholars I know take up research topics that vex them as much in their university settings as much as they disturb teachers in the schools. These mutually shared vulnerabilities (Kelchtermans, 2005) form prime topics of investigation. Said scholars also defend those who are maltreated in their organizations. In my case, I have stood up for three females who received less-than-fair support as department chairs. Close to 15 years have passed and I have continued to name their ill-treatment and to respect them—even when this has worked to my own disadvantage. I know many local, national and international scholars from both the Eastern and Western hemispheres who have done the same. Two colleagues in Turkey particularly come to mind here. From members of my knowledge communities near and far, I have learned that sometimes one has to be on “the short end of the stick,” as one of my research participants once described. My and others’ generously chosen stance means that we will inevitably lose some economic battles. However, we collectively know that an unyielding focus on teaching and learning is the only way the educational field will be won at the end of the day. Hence, generous scholars play the long game; their eyes are fixed on end goals, not temporary skirmishes, wins and losses. Like those on my academic line (Schwab, Connelly, Clandinin), I do not suffer foolishness lightly. When one reviewer threatened to reverse the decision on one of my already accepted high impact journal articles by demanding that I cite six authors whose research I have never read or used, I saved the editor’s job by being creatively rebellious. I dutifully added six more references, all being teachers or graduate students of the six recommended authors who I was being forced to cite.

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Furthermore, those of my academic lineage and other generous scholars in my communities of knowing are not afraid about speaking about or writing about deeply etched, morally challenging circumstances without being disrespectful or dismissive of those whose interests and interpretations differ from their own. Case in point is the text of the speech that seeded my writing of this chapter. Here, my Faculty Academy colleague who writes satirical narratives bubbles to the surface. As a female in academia, I, like so many with whom I associate, know that my leadership as a generous scholar matters in my workplace and in the world. I concurrently know I am under constant scrutiny. I am well aware that every choice, every action, every non-action and every inquiry move that I and they make is watched by those who are modeling our stories to live by (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999), our stories to begin again by (Craig, 2017) and our stories to leave by (Clandinin et al., 2011). Members of my knowledge communities in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Australia, Israel, Portugal, and numerous other countries dotted around the world constantly remind me of the impact of the narratives we are living. And, locally, a male of color pulled me aside to say that “we students have our eyes cast on you.” In this instance, the immediate reach of my own influence became palpable. Finally, I take it as the responsibility of a generous scholar to not only write manuscripts, book prospectuses and research grants, but to review manuscripts, book prospectuses and research proposals for others. I likewise write evidence-based and experience-based promotion and tenure letters by the score. I always say yes to these requests—as I know many of my closest colleagues do—because we know that our generous scholarship grows a richer, more diverse international research community and a better world—despite setbacks that happen in our home institutions from time-to-time. Overall, I have learned again, again and again—through baptismby-fire experiences—that generous scholars focus on being, as Dewey (1977) advised, not on having or possessing the spoils of the academy. Having anything—awards, accolades, money, titles, competitive grants and research centers—is a tinny prize if the diminishment of one’s bestloved self is the price-of-purchase. It is okay for others to use their gender, their entrepreneurial research status, and their backroom connections to game the system to their advantage in their places of work and/or in the academy-at-large. Generous scholars know what is happening with our students, our research teams and with our border-crossing colleagues is

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the priceless commodity that the world most needs and wants. All else is dross, self-adulation and unworthy of a world in need.

Final Statements I began this chapter by sharing a dilemma I faced regarding the topic of a lecture I had agreed to give. I end this work knowing personally, locally, nationally and internationally that generous scholarship is what my bestloved self favors from a bevy of possible alternatives. In the process of taking up this topic, I have mapped “the what” and “the how” of being a generous scholar. What is left is “the why”—that is, why we should choose to act this way or that and what are the consequences of our choices and actions to others and ourselves? I found the rationale articulated in this single line in a 2000 Australian educational policy document: “The future is not something that merely happens, but it is something constructed— It is constituted by our choices or our failures to choose…” (Hughes, 1991). Tying the threads of this chapter together, we are the products of the choices that our selves make and the subsequent actions and non-actions we take. Similarly, our world is the product of our cumulative choices and actions that we collectively make and take/do not make or take as human beings. This is the reason why generous scholarship is so critically important to the educational enterprise. It is a pathway to a kinder, gentler future academy and a kinder, gentler future world.

References Anzaldua, G. (1987/1999). Borderlands la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Atkins, S. (2016, January 26). Listening each other into being and a poem. https://www.suzibanksbaum.com/listen-each-other-in-to-being/. Bateson, M. C. (1994). Peripheral visions: Learning along the way. New York: HarperCollins. Beijaard, D., Meijer, P., & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(2), 107–128. Bruner, J. (1987). Life as narrative. Social Research, 54, 11–32. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1992). Teacher as curriculum maker. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 363–401). New York: MacMillan Publishing Company.

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Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1995). Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. New York: Teachers College Press. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco: Wiley. Clandinin, D. J., Huber, J., & Murphy, M. S. (2011). Places of curriculum making: Narrative inquiries into children’s lives in motion. Binkley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1999). Shaping a professional identity: Stories of educational practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (2004). Canadian teacher education in transition. In Y. C. Cheng, K. W. Chow & M. C. Magdalena Mok (Eds.), Reform of teacher education in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium: Trends and challenges (pp. 35-43). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publisher. Connelly, F. M., & Xu, S. (2019). Reciprocal learning in the partnership project: From knowing to doing in comparative research models. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 25(6), 627–646. Craig, C. (1995a). Knowledge communities: A way of making sense of how beginning teachers come to know in their professional knowledge contexts. Curriculum Inquiry, 25(2), 151–175. Craig, C. (1995b). A story of Tim’s coming to know sacred stories in school. In D. J. Clandinin & F. M. Connelly (Eds.), Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes (pp. 88–101). New York: Teachers College Press. Craig, C. (2004). The dragon in school backyards: The influence of mandated testing on school contexts and educators’ narrative knowing. Teachers College Record, 106(6), 1229–1257. Craig, C. (2007). Illuminating qualities of knowledge communities in a portfoliomaking context. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 13(6), 617–636. Craig, C. (2013). Teacher education and the best-loved self. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 33(3), 261–272. Craig, C. (2017). Sustaining teachers: Attending to the best-loved self in teacher education and beyond. In Quality of teacher education and learning (pp. 193– 205). Singapore: Springer. Craig, C. (2019a). From starting stories to staying stories to leaving stories: The experiences of an urban English as a second language teacher. Research Papers in Education, 34(3), 298–329. Craig, C. (2019b). Fish jumps over the dragon gate: An eastern image of a western scholar’s career. Research Papers in Education, 45(3), 290–305. Craig, C. (2019c). Positioning others in self-facing inquiries: Ethical challenges in self-study of teaching and teacher education research. In R. Brandenberg

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& S. McDonough (Eds.), Ethics, self-study research methodology and teacher education. Singapore: Springer Nature. Craig, C. (2020). Curriculum making, reciprocal learning and the best-loved self. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Craig, C., Curtis, G., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. T., & Perez, M. M. (2020). Knowledge communities in teacher education: Sustaining collaborative work. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Curtis, G., Reid, D., Kelley, M., Martindell, P. T., & Craig, C. J. (2013). Braided lives: Multiple ways of knowing, flowing in and out of knowledge communities. Studying Teacher Education, 9(2), 175–186. Dewey, J. (1907). The school and the child. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago. Dewey, J. (1938). Education and experience. New York: Collier Books. Dewey, J. (1977). Poems of John Dewey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Flores, M., & Day, C. (2006). Contexts which shape and reshape new teachers’ identities: A multi-perspective study. Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(2), 219–232. Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Hughes, P. (1991). Australia 2000: A shared challenge, a shared response. Youth Studies, 36–43. Kelchtermans, G. (2005). Teachers’ emotions in educational reforms: Selfunderstanding, vulnerable commitment and micropolitical literacy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 995–1006. Kelchtermans, G., & Ballet, K. (2002). The micropolitics of teacher induction. A narrative-biographical study on teacher socialisation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(1), 105–120. Lamott, A. (2007). Grace (eventually): Thoughts on faith. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Levine, D. (2006). Powers of the mind: The reinvention of liberal learning in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lindemann Nelson, H. (1995). Resistance and insubordination. Hypatia, 10(2), 23–40. Nash, R. (2004). Liberating scholarly writing: The power of personal narrative. New York: Teachers College Press. Olson, M. (2000). Curriculum as a multistoried process. Canadian Journal of Education, 25(3), 169–187. Orland-Barak, L., & Maskit, D. (2011). Novices ‘in story’: What first-year teachers’ narratives reveal about the shady corners of teaching. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 17 (4), 435–450. Popova, M. (2019). Figuring. New York: Random House.

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Sacks, O. (2017). The river of consciousness. New York: Albert A. Knopf. Schwab, J. J. (1954/1978). Eros and education: A discussion of one aspect of discussion. In I. Westbury & N. Wilkof (Eds.), Science, curriculum and liberal education: Selected essays (pp. 105–134). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schwab, J. J. (1963). Biology teachers’ handbook. New York, NY: Wiley. Schwab, J. J. (1967). Problems, topics, and issues. Quest, 9(1), 2–27. Schwab, J. J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. School Review, 81, 501–522. Schwab, J. J. (1983). The practical 4: Something for curriculum professors to do. Curriculum Inquiry, 13(3), 239–265. Silko, L. M. (1997). Yellow woman and a beauty of the spirit: Essays on Native American life today. New York: Touchstone. Spence, D. (1984). Narrative truth and historical truth: Meaning and interpretation in psychoanalysis. New York: W. W. Norton. Tappan, M., & Brown, L. (1989). Stories told and lessons learned: Toward a narrative approach to moral development and moral education. Harvard Educational Review, 59(2), 182–206. Xu, S., & Connelly, M. (2010). Narrative inquiry for school-based research. Narrative Inquiry, 20(2), 349–370. Xu, S., & Connelly, F. M. (2017). Reciprocal learning between Canada and China in teacher education and school education: Partnership studies of practice in cultural context. Frontiers of Education in China, 12(2), 135–150. Zhu, S. (2018). Reciprocal learning partnerships between elementary mathematics teachers: A partnership between Canada and China (doctoral dissertation). Canada: University of Toronto. Retrieved from https://search-proquestcom.srv-proxy2.library.tamu.edu/pqdtglobal/results/C3949875DDF3480 3PQ/1?accountid=7082.

CHAPTER 20

The Faculty Academy in Review: What, So What, Now What? Denise M. McDonald, Cheryl J. Craig, and Laura Turchi

Overview All chapters in this book on leadership, and learning to lead, highlight collaboration across disciplines and institutions. These chapters present various vantage points, but they share an overall focus on Progress involving Professional and Identity-Forming Actions of Learning

D. M. McDonald (B) University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] C. J. Craig Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. Turchi Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6_20

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to Lead. These actions are the “What” of our work, and identity-forming actions are impacted through several processes of learning, which include reciprocal learning, experiential learning , critical reflection (of one’s challenges and effects of self-actions), and openness to differing perspectives. Moreover, codified actions of learning to lead induce and form our Commitment to the Profession (and to others) and exemplify our authentic values of leadership. These values are shaped and molded through influences of affect such as social connections , relational bonds , and trust (built through our connections and relationship). Enacting our values through well-formed social connections, bolstered relational bonds developed over time, and the honored trust shared among Faculty Academy members is the “So what,” or how we learn to lead at our respective institutions and through shared leadership matters. These values and actions demonstrate our unconditional commitment to teaching and teacher education. Lastly, through focusing on progress, learning, actions and interactions; commitment to the profession, academia and each other; and our values, connections, bonds and trust; our continuous ponderings and questioning reveal the “Now what?” or how we take on the challenging Unknown Future to enact our evolving professional selves as leaders and as members of a community founded on shared leadership. This summary chapter highlights selected book chapter quotes which capture our understanding of the “What,” “So What,” and “Now What?” of collaborative leadership and learning we have experienced as members of the Faculty Academy and as academics.

The What Progress Through Professional and Identity-Forming Actions of Learning to Lead The “What” of the Faculty Academy is our professional and identityforming actions of learning to lead through respectful reciprocity: our experiences, ongoing reflections, and openness to others’ varying values and perspectives. These themes are emphasized throughout multiple chapters. For example, as Cheryl Craig aptly noted about our actions as academic leaders, “generous scholars in my communities of knowing are not afraid about speaking about or writing about deeply etched, morally challenging circumstances without being disrespectful or dismissive of those whose interests and interpretations differ from their own” (Chapter 19). From Craig’s perspective, our actions are identity-forming: as leaders we lead through example, enduring challenges while embracing

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the diverse perspectives of all members of an organization. In a genuine organization of collaboration such as the Faculty Academy, members see active models of authentic leadership in how the Faculty Academy works and in the stories members tell each other about leadership as a way of being. Various aspects of learning to lead are mentioned in several chapters. For example, Xiao Han emphasized the importance of reciprocity in learning while engaged in collaborative efforts by citing Mary Catherine Bateson (2011) who observed that “no one will leave a learning partnership unchanged” (Chapter 8). Basically, we change through interaction, and hence we need each other in order to progress. Additionally, Bernardo Pohl underscored how our experiences and interactions with each other involve movement “as we learn from experience, we are forced to move inward and outward, backward and forward in our lives” (Chapter 7) as Clandinin and Connelly (2000) have suggested. However, this movement is rarely unidirectional. We are on a collaborative journey of discovering opportunities for authentic leadership, with some actions planned and others emerging through serendipity or happenstance. Ideally, our interactive give-and-take trusted exchanges involve growth and progress that direct where we are headed. Irma Vazquez described this growth as “…seldom monotonic; it spurts and stalls, plateaus and spirals” (Chapter 14) as there are unknown elements in most endeavors. In collaborative interactions, developed trust allows for critical queries and reflections amongst members. For example, Judith Quander, Jackie Sack, and Tim Redl described their learning to lead through collaborative interactions as “a safe place to discuss ideas, fears, and frustrations in teaching with genuinely concerned critical friends who through co-teaching were privy to our teaching strengths and weaknesses” (Chapter 13). In safe places, individuals and initiatives flourish. Regarding the understanding, acceptance, and inclusion of others’ perspectives in collaborative efforts, Jane Cooper, Laura Turchi, and Margaret Kuczynski captured the power of working together in optimizing the output of one’s individual and collective work. In safe places, individuals and initiatives flourish as described below: By having three different roles and perspectives, we really could dig in and examine the data in a new way, as well as gain appreciation for others who normally would not be within our sphere of influence. When engaging in

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efforts to create a common culture of evidence, building understanding and perspective-taking feels imperative for sustaining success (Chapter 17).

Additional chapter quotes, which specifically underpin our values of learning and leading through reciprocal learning, experiential learning, critical reflection, and openness to difference are included below. Reciprocal Learning Regarding reciprocal learning, leaders learn from and with others. As stated by Denise McDonald, leaders “must be learners. They must also be co-learners with mentees…Effective leaders will listen and learn from others” (Chapter 9). This form of learning taps into “the potential for professional growth when cross-institutional dialogue and interactions occur” that Gayle Curtis and Cheryl Craig noted in their chapter (Chapter 2). Insight gained from our collaborative work as a knowledge community yet again validates our values. Most importantly, as Xiao Han, reflecting her Confucian roots, asserted, “What is valuable is the spirit of learning from others with an open mind, but even more so is the fact that we not only need to learn from others’ merits, but also from others’ shortcomings” (Chapter 8). Experiential Learning Our individual and collective experiences exponentially feed our professional growth as academics. We find our united efforts have proven fruitful, especially regarding our growth as leaders and decisions to take risks within our respective institutions. According to Curtis and Craig, “the Faculty Academy shifted its focus to supporting one another in the lived experiences in the academy and engaging in collaborative learning and research” (Chapter 2). Carrie Markello added how she valued her learning within the learning community and attributed successes to “the flexibility and persistence of Faculty Academy members to do things, consistently encouraging collaborative initiatives and experiences impacting me and other members” (Chapter 3). These are positive experiences that have helped build our community of knowing and being. However, new experiences also presented challenges and fear that may thwart, place doubt or interfere with professional growth. Pohl articulated that challenge with “the experience of being thrown into the leadership

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roles did not come alone. It came with a great sense of personal distrust and even failure” (Chapter 7), which, as he later explained, he was able to overcome through support from others. Critical Reflection (on One’s Challenges and Effects of Self-Actions) In numerous chapters, individuals and members of collaborative work shared how they gained insight through critical reflections. These reflections often focused on the necessity of taking risks in confronting taxing issues or difficult situations within an institution, self-critiques or questioning of competency as an academic, policy discrepancies or with challenging personalities. In Craig’s view, “All of us need to come to our own narrative truths about disquieting situations that personally and professionally throw us off balance” (Chapter 19). She expounded that “our wonders and ponders inform our inquiries and our relationships with participants are essential to how research puzzles become understood” (Chapter 19). Critical reflection also involves adopting a humble perspective and process. Pohl agonizingly expressed this challenge when he stated: “I questioned my abilities on a daily basis, wondering how long it would take before others discovered my insecurities and my weaknesses” (Chapter 7). Reflecting similar sentiment, McDonald disclosed: “I learn most through challenges rather than successes as the liminal space in which disequilibrium occurs generates action and change” (Chapter 9). Critical reflections invariably move us from likely stagnation or status quo to agentive engagement and achievements. Regarding their critical research and insight, Mariam Manuel, Paige Evans, and Leah McAlister-Shields emphasized this point by stating that …a teacher involved in leading the school or administration agenda might attend meetings and bring back pertinent information and tasks for his or her colleagues to implement. However, the teacher who is an agent of change will trail-blaze an agenda or initiative cultivated through their own agency and creativity. (Chapter 16)

Lastly, several authors expressed angst regarding their self-doubts as academic leaders (i.e., Jean Kiekel, Carrie Markello, Sara Raven) and others referenced feeling like Imposters within their scholarly sphere (i.e., Bernardo Pohl, Chestin Auzenne-Curl, Janice Newsum, Omah WilliamsDuncan, Jane Cooper, Leslie Gauna, Christine Beaudry, Gayle Curtis).

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These critical perceptions propel action toward identity-forming events as leaders, evidenced in their eloquently described stories of learning to lead. Openness to Differing Perspectives Reciprocal and experiential learning, along with critical reflection, require that one opens their thinking to others’ thoughts, ideas, and perspectives. Markello expressed how “our differences added to the richness of the group and were fundamentally valued” (Chapter 3). Openness to differing perspectives is key to effective leadership, as McDonald echoed in her assertion that “authentic leaders need to be open to push back, others’ opposing views, and differences in ideologies, to best support subordinates’ progress as well as the leader’s own skills in leading” (Chapter 9). From a complementary position, Cooper, Turchi, and Kuczynski’s chapter highlighted the importance of the different perspectives each of them brought to their shared research efforts. We found that working together within our different roles examining the data gave each of us insight into a problem from new perspectives. Looking at this experience from a personal lens to an institutional lens, it was the collaboration that we found most impactful, not necessarily the pursuit of evidence. (Chapter 17)

Sara Raven, Trina Davis, and Cheryl Craig further noted that “the three of us could not mentor or be mentored without cultivating trusting relationships where what is shared is understood from the other person’s perspective” (Chapter 5). Additionally, from a global/international perspective, Xiao Han declared how “Switching between different worlds, and different people, cultures, education, and traditions has expanded my horizons of learning and helped me to more acutely understand both differences and similarities, with some of what I have come to know being painful” (Chapter 8). Diverse viewpoints strengthened collaborative work through the new insights gained. However, that is only achievable through demonstrating respect for others’ stances and individual humbleness, i.e., recognition and acknowledgment that no one knows it all. Therefore, we must model our acceptance of others’ views and provide a platform for all to contribute. This point is articulated by Chestin Auzenne-Curl when she wrote:

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I try to always listen to story rather than [to] author it for my students and colleagues. I try to couple what I hear in those stories with care and understand. I know that to leave a lasting impact, I must model by using my gifts to support cultivation of the gifts of others. (Chapter 6)

Lastly, there is power in the perspectives shared within the group, as detailed by Jackie Sacks and Irma Vazquez: …association with the Faculty Academy has additionally provided us with the opportunity to further develop our personal understandings of this collaborative work. Other Faculty Academy members have read our reflections and analyses of practice through narrative inquiry minds and offered suggestions for improvement. They have sought our perspectives on their own development where they were able to identify with some of our findings. The opportunity to share and reflect with like minds in supportive settings like the Faculty Academy has been invaluable in our leading and learning. (Chapter 14)

Modeling leadership through sharing with and listening to each other in the “safe space” of Faculty Academy membership generates lessons learned. These lessons are carried forward to other external professional settings, to collaborative efforts, and to our work with teachers and students alike. In sum, the “What” of our work is defined by the ongoing process of our professional actions of learning and leading through reciprocity, experience, reflections, and openness to others’ views as representative Faculty Academy members have asserted above.

So What Commitment to the Profession (and to Others) Teacher education, inclusive of the wide range of content areas within the field, is the profession of all authors of this book. The authors are learning and leading as they represent multiple roles and assignments within their respective institutions. These roles add multiple layers to how we enact our commitment to the profession. Our professional commitment should not be mistaken for or dismissed as solely service to our institutions; rather, it involves deep devotion to scholarship and our independent and collaborative scholarly work. Commitment to our profession

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of teacher education (and others) is demonstrated through our authentic values, which are shaped and molded through influences of affect such as social connections, relational bonds, and the safety found in trust of others. Our commitment to the profession and others provides the “So What” of how we rationalize what we do and why we believe it matters. In Craig’s words, Generous scholarship is not wishy-washy; neither is it self-absorbed. It does not easily give up or give in. Generous scholarship has to do with continuing to enact one’s best-loved self in highly constrained academic settings, while leaving room for others to enact their best-loved selves, which may or may not run counter to our own interests. (Chapter 19)

Craig’s insight on commitment to our “selves” as leaders continued when she shared, “We know that roles, responsibilities, and relationships should not be taken lightly; we are acutely aware they should be handled with utmost care because harming someone is an ever-present danger” (Chapter 19). McDonald extended discussion of our strong stance as leaders by articulating action to be taken, where our “deeds exponentially increase and yield positive results of justice. If not at first, at other points as fair measures accrue” (Chapter 9). Our commitment to the profession and others is foundational to the “So what” of what we do as academics. Some additional book chapter quotes captured below highlight our authentic values of leadership as evidenced through our social connections, relational bonds, and trust. Authentic Values of Leadership Book chapter authors describe their different leadership roles: as academic peers, teacher educators, in professional service posts, and as collaborative researchers who live by their values. According to Jane Cooper, Christine Beaudry, Leslie Gauna, and Gayle Curtis, “We have become leaders because we have done the difficult work of enacting the values that we espouse” (Chapter 18). Extending that point, McDonald commented how displaying oneself as a leader requires a bold commitment to “Give of yourself honestly. Step up with conviction. Say your words and act on them. Question injustices and power imbalances” (Chapter 9). She added, “leadership valence is realized through productivity, worthy outcomes, and goal attainment, where authentic leadership actions behind-the-scene continue whether they are legitimated through public acknowledgement

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or not” (Chapter 9). Our values as Faculty Academy members are inherently authentic to purposeful leadership: we recognize our individual needs but nevertheless work toward a greater good, even at the risk of personal sacrifice. We are inspired by and connect with those who share these same values. As Craig evocatively professed, I am fortunate to personally interact with local, national, and international scholars who as a matter of choice conduct research studies that are ‘pureof-purpose.’ Through their sterling examples, I have learned—alongside them—that generous scholars never get involved in ‘fill-the-purse’ investigations that take advantage of underserved students without ensuring that something of value is returned to them. (Chapter 19)

Her motivational sentiment enthuses those of us fortunate to be affiliated with Faculty Academy endeavors and provides solid ground for what this collaborative learning community has sustained membership for nearly two decades. Additional quotes are highlighted below regarding the importance and impact of social connections, relational bonds, and the development of trust within our groups of researchers. Social Connections Authors Denise McDonald, Chestin Auzenne-Curl, Kent Divoll, Jean Kiekel, Janice Newsum, and Omah Williams-Duncan appreciated how the “Faculty Academy offered members sustenance for exploring career passions, connection with other educators, validation as practitioners and researchers, personal encouragement, and when needed, professional patronage as promising academic leaders” (Chapter 4). The social connections grown in Faculty Academy through various professional undertakings made a difference in their identity, confidence, and efficacy as academics and leaders. More so, Janice Newsum movingly described how involvement in the Faculty Academy knowledge community informed and assisted her as she learned to navigate the unfamiliar territory of academe, the expert support structure of the Faculty Academy provided much needed opportunities for collaboration, training, and mentoring. The members of the Faculty Academy, through individual connections, modeled leadership competencies in the areas of accountability in higher education (teaching, service, research). (Chapter 12)

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Our connections are not limited to each other as Faculty Academy members, but extend peripherally to other peers, and notably to our students. Sacks and Vazquez especially conveyed the importance of social connection with students in modeling expectations for the profession as they progressively move forward in their careers: We have searched within ourselves for our own truths about our roles and how they have evolved over the years. From our own experiences as students or observers of rigid, teacher-centered instruction, devoid of instructor-student interrelationships, we entered the education profession knowing we would connect with our own learners and ensure they would not be left behind. (Chapter 14)

Social connections within a genuine community of knowing are not just functional for specific purposes: they encompass humane emotional support out of respect to the profession and others. Raven, Davis, and Craig, as members of academia, noted that “what is interesting is that institutions seek to advance faculty member’s cognitive and rational capacities, but sometimes negate the fundamental importance of the personal and emotional in scaffolding the cognitive and the rational” (Chapter 5). We have all been the recipients of informal and formal leading in academia. Different forms of leadership commonly result in different approaches (but not always). Official leaders may perceive institutional pressure to follow scripted, often authoritative leadership guidelines. Informal leaders have more leverage to adopt personal, subjectively shaped interactions with others that fall outside assigned leadership templates. McDonald reported that “‘soft’ leadership traits generally do not align with expected demands of stereotypical leadership characteristics at staid institutions” (Chapter 9). Moreover, in effective collaborative groups, the personal and subjective nature of individuals is always at the forefront and never discarded or dismissed, as reiterated by Markello who described the “Faculty Academy function[ing] both as a support for professional and emotional well-being and as a place for developing strategies for professional doings such as writing, presenting, and publishing” (Chapter 3). Lastly, Watson averred that there is a “critical need for collegial collaboration and mentors who are also accelerators. The Faculty Academy is a safe space for women (and men) in academia for fostering

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relationships that promote collegiality, communication, and encouragement” (Chapter 11). Perhaps, safe spaces launch risk-taking behavior through supportive collegial nudges, pushes, and pressure to move, do, and achieve beyond what is individually envisioned? Fortunately for Sacks and Vazquez, their value of collaboration and harmonizing connection with each other as professionals steered their work. They shared that Allowing various ranks with different perspectives to work together seems essential, but collaboration is messy. As one of our members said, It’s easier if we don’t work together - it’s easier to stay in our silos. But we came to treasure our learning and believe that this is the kind of work that can benefit the ongoing functioning of the institution. (Chapter 14)

In these types of collaborations, fortuitous opportunities, progress, and unexpected rewards arise as Donna Stokes and Paige Evans shared below: The connections we (Stokes and Evans) both made with faculty from other universities has catapulted our initiatives to a much larger scale than previously imagined. In fact, we are further realizing the potential of our collaboration for improving the state of physics/STEM teacher education and student success at a local, regional, and national level. (Chapter 15)

The benefits of social connections to collaborative research studies reinforce the “So what” of our commitment to the profession and to each other, with our shared values and academic interests. Relational Bonds Our professional, as well as personal, relationships forged over the years as Faculty Academy members cannot be disputed. Bonds have developed, expanded, and considerably grown, as has been shown through our research efforts. In fact, fully portraying the power of relationships, some groups have applied monikers to their union. For example, Cooper, Gauna, Beaudry, and Curtis extolled with pride “the success we have found relies heavily on our ongoing collaboration that we affectionately call ‘the hub’” (Chapter 18). Additionally, within these bonds of advancement, surprises and serendipity led to extensions of collaborative work. For instance, Stokes and Evans acknowledged the significance of relational bonds in their

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joint endeavor and noted unexpected rewards: “Not only did the collaboration morph into a partnership, but it also led to other outcomes” (Chapter 15). Similarly, Cooper, Beaudry, Gauna, and Curtis claimed growth through their academic partnerships: We have found that by centering the relational within our collaboration, we have been able to create knowledge and expand upon that knowledge. Through our enacting cyclical iterations of inquiry into our values and practices, we have seen tremendous impacts on our identity formation through this new learning. (Chapter 18)

Even in ideal research and collegial relationships, we cannot account for all outcomes or situations. Misinterpretations, miscommunications, power issues, and other missteps can occur. As imparted by Craig, “Unfortunately, though, betrayal of our best interests, hopes, and dreams do happen through choices others make and actions they take” (Chapter 19). However, as found in perspectives shared by Kiekel and Pohl: although we remain realistic regarding how situations can emerge, for us, those painful issues have been few and far between. We acknowledge what McDonald had to say about leadership: “the relational component of leadership is never simple, never cut and dry. Balancing professional responsibilities with personal history is extremely difficult as a leader” (Chapter 9). The positive benefits of relational bonds outweigh the negligible negatives. Markello extolled the value of relationship building in Deweyan terms: “The opportunity to listen and talk to each other about what was important to us in an inclusive, safe environment hastened doings to become the undergoings of positive growth experiences” (Chapter 3). According to McDonald et al., taking time to genuinely develop these relational bonds is intensive and involved “trusting interactions, recognition of and respect for all participants as co-learners, the integrity of mutual engagement in collaborative work, and commitment of shared responsibility to one another and our research goals” (Chapter 4). Lastly, in Auzenne-Curl’s chapter, she sincerely explicated the individual benefit of relationships in building her efficacy as a researcher, I recognized that this was a strong gesture of my readiness to own the work and step out of the cinders I was hiding beneath. The relational negotiation shifted for me. I do realize that I accepted that view under the encouraging gesture of my supervisor [Craig]. She did not grant me permission

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to be that scholar. As a friend and colleague, she made the gesture which encouraged me to actualize a place that I had already claimed. (Chapter 6)

The beneficial aspects of relational bonds when conducting research and operating as collegial peers cannot be fully captured through a few quotes shared here. Our bonds are tangibly evident in the work we have produced as well as our plans for ongoing and future research studies. Trust Trust in others provides a safe place to explore one’s potential and successes, as well as challenges and failures. Trust is necessary in institutional environments where professional identity develops most fully (not stunted or thwarted by the betrayals and missteps that too often characterize academia). In Stokes and Evans’ chapter, they explained that “Building trust is critical for ensuring efficacy in preparing students” (Chapter 15). Their statement reiterates the meaningfulness of trusting relationships in the profession. However, in collaborative work developing trust is rarely uncomplicated. Quander, Sacks, and Redl admitted “…our co-teaching relationship could have been troubled by issues of power. However, mutual trust, respect, and a shared goal – all part of our critical friendships – supported our work in co-teaching” (Chapter 13). Neither easy nor unproblematic, trust among others involves the affective aspect of ourselves being placed in others’ confidences. Nevertheless, one of the most potent methods for generating trust among Faculty Academy members involved facing our vulnerabilities through stories shared. Curtis and Craig highlighted that The restorying of experiences promoted trust within the group, which— intertwined with the co-construction of knowledge—transformed us into a knowledge community of teacher researchers. For Gayle and other members, the Portfolio Group became a generative space characterized by dialogue, reflection, feedback, shared ways of knowing, and knowledge growth. (Chapter 2)

Cooper, Beaudry, Gauna, and Curtis added, “Elemental to our identity integration within our collaboration is the trust that we have built with each other” (Chapter 18). They recognized how professional identity is influenced and shaped through interactive, shared, trusting relationships.

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Within many chapters, authors echoed the concept of “safe space” and how feelings of safety create “honesty” in growing trusting relationships. Markello shared, “Faculty Academy created safe space by honoring members’ thoughts and words. For example, conversations were respected and (to the best of my knowledge) were not shared outside of the group without permission” (Chapter 3). She added, Because Faculty Academy values and respects members’ honest conversations, it is a safe space for honesty that is accessible to members. In my view, the real work of collaboration, reflection, and meaning making happened because of the creation of a safe space. (Chapter 3)

Markello continued with “Faculty Academy became a safe place because our meetings provided a sense of freedom from the dangers that lurked in some of our academic settings” and added, “The group enabled both social interaction and scholarly professional development with a genuine sense of caring for our development” (Chapter 3). Overall, Jean Kiekel echoed the foundational quality underpinning the Faculty Academy’s existence in writing that “the group could not operate as a knowledge community if there was not trust among members” (Chapter 10). Hence, the “So what” of our learning to lead is grounded in our intent and actions to respectfully engage with others for optimal productivity. Professional satisfaction is especially rewarding for us who operate through social networks and relational bonding, even though these academic approaches are often underestimated or dismissed as trivial in autocratic institutional settings. Quander, Sacks, and Redl, stressed the importance of trust in their work in the following excerpt from their co-authored chapter: The importance of trust and working towards the same goal, part of the critical friendship, seemed to undergird the relationship between coteaching and reflective practice, with each of us open to allowing the other to critique our instruction in an effort to improve the experience for the students. (Chapter 13)

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Now What? Unknown Future Collaborative efforts ensure a collective sturdiness when facing ongoing challenges and instability of the unknown. Markello employed the metaphor of rhizomatic relationships (citing Deleuze & Guattari, 1987/2002, Chapter 3): there are many individual nodes for potential growth, and those professional opportunities for leadership will be responded to more authentically because of the enriching environment that the Faculty Academy has become for its members. Evidenced through their writing, Faculty Academy members embrace the unknown in their academic future for multiple professionally sound reasons. For example, Han perceptively shared, “my present and past stories create new knowledge to inform my future experiences and prepare me for even other experiences on the distant horizon” (Chapter 8). In Pohl’s chapter, he stated, “I was willing to set aside my fears of the unknown and be firm about my convictions to my new career…I was truly entering the unknown with a lot of second thoughts and doubts” (Chapter 7). The Faculty Academy group has created the space to not only tell these stories informally in meetings: it has also established this book as a platform to expand and to inform potential leaders and demonstrate the value of learning to lead as members representing multiple disciplines in a cross-institutional academy. We, as collaborators, understand the fluidity of change and how the unexpected can prompt dismissal of original plans and speedy alterations toward innovative responses or actions. This holds true with the relational aspects of our collaborative efforts as well. Raven, Davis, and Craig recognized that relationships can be complicated and are not static in nature. They contended that “there can never be a stable mentoring ‘curriculum’ because of shifting personal, professional, and contextual circumstances” (Chapter 5). Additionally, we respect how the unknown is challenging; however, it often catapults our efforts in ways not expected, adds new endeavors, and potentially extends our productivity…to places not previously imagined. Auzenne-Curl confirmed “I am still in the crosshairs of where I’ll go and what I’ll do” (Chapter 6). Furthermore, Sacks and Vazquez noted, What we learned very early on was that data were messy and overwhelming, that there was often lots of evidence collected but not a clear sense of

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how it could be helpful. We found making meaning very difficult: every time we tried to drill down to hear what the data were telling us, we found more individual stories, more exceptions and good intentions than straightforward causalities. (Chapter 14)

In summary, we take steps together on an unknown academic journey with earned and learned confidence as leaders. We have developed confidence through crossing cumbersome passages; ultimately, reaching our professional destinations, regardless of detours, bobbles, and missteps along the way (i.e., through leaning on each other when needed). Because of our shared academic treks, we have also learned from and with each other in building our leadership confidence to traverse formidable institutional terrains. We anticipate and welcome exploring new, exciting, previously undiscovered academic borders of discovery. We venture together, confident in our leading from our personal and professional learning along the way.

Conclusion Our progress is spurred by our learning and commitment to the profession, but equally impacted by how we approach uncertainty through collaboration as leaders. As evidenced in the book chapters, collaboration is strength. In accord with McDonald et al., Through Faculty Academy participation (as an identity-forming resource of support) and sharing our stories of struggle and success, we have learned to strategize, adapt, create meaning, and craft identities as constructive contributing members to our respective universities as well as each other. (Chapter 4)

We concur that the following McDonald et al. text reinforces our values of action to learn and lead: Our stories of learning to lead reveal initial trepidations that ultimately resulted in agency and autonomous actions of confidence. As developing leaders in academia, we share issues of self-doubt, a sense of isolation, and uncertainty in organizational environments, which pose a performative ethos within ambiguous standards, rigorous expectations, and a multitude of lofty, at times unrealistic, institutional goals (with little to no real guidance or support). We experience constraining pulls from our personal

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desire to be professionally authentic against the organizational demands of erroneous accountability. We also struggle with what we perceive as unnecessary conflicts or contradictions experienced in our institutional settings rooted in power imbalances. (Chapter 4)

In conclusion, according to Craig, “generous scholars play the long game; their eyes are fixed on end goals, not temporary skirmishes, wins, and losses” (Chapter 19). We, as individual members of the Faculty Academy, look forward to the long game, with confidence that our connections and collaborations optimize our contributions to the profession and make us stronger and more generous as academics, now and in the future.

References Bateson, M. C. (2011). Composing a further life: The age of active wisdom. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987/2002). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

Index

A Academia, 31, 32, 36, 48–53, 55, 58, 59, 64, 66, 69, 87, 90, 107, 115–117, 124, 125, 154, 155, 158–160, 163, 171, 172, 181, 189, 190, 192, 193, 197, 198, 205, 206, 209–211, 215, 216, 361, 368, 376, 379 Accelerators, 197, 198, 210, 212, 216, 376 Action, 10, 13, 30, 34, 53–55, 101, 159, 161, 164, 167, 169, 170, 267, 295, 300, 329, 352, 357, 359–361, 372, 374, 382 Adversities, 52, 201 Advocacy, 222, 231, 243, 299, 300 Ageism, 355 Agency, 46, 47, 49–51, 55, 68, 89, 118, 173, 295, 296, 306 Agents of change, 6, 7, 288, 298–300 Alien world, 123 Anxiety, 64, 67, 102, 232, 234 Art, 27, 34, 36, 38, 57, 345, 346

Autobiographical narrative inquiry, 97, 184, 355 B Best Loved Self, 100, 101 Betrayal, 356, 357, 379 Bullying, 54, 156, 157, 186 C Career changes, 131 Career development, 84, 300, 360 Career trajectory, 4, 213, 215, 355 Change agent, 232, 295, 296 Character, 5, 113, 128, 130, 138, 180, 187, 258, 265, 356 China, 4, 135–137, 139, 142–147 Choice, 14, 40, 100, 131, 157, 159, 169, 172, 297, 321, 328, 331, 341, 352, 354, 356, 358, 359, 361, 362, 378 Cochrane Academy, 11, 12, 17 Codified knowledge, 92

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 C. J. Craig et al. (eds.), Cross-Disciplinary, Cross-Institutional Collaboration in Teacher Education, Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56674-6

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INDEX

Collaboration, 2, 7, 10, 18, 19, 21, 22, 31, 37–41, 47, 48, 158, 184, 198, 216, 224, 231, 234, 263, 267, 274–276, 278, 280–282, 285, 287, 290, 298, 300, 307, 311, 324, 328, 332, 334–339, 343, 345–347, 367, 369, 375–379, 382, 383 Collaborative learning, 21, 370, 375 Collective professional development, 40, 43 Collegiality, 32, 49, 52, 66, 67, 115, 182, 197, 216, 377 Commitment, 7, 35, 37, 41, 48, 49, 51, 65, 160, 179, 189, 193, 230, 246, 254, 263, 276, 330, 334, 368, 373, 374, 377, 378 Communication, 10, 49, 101, 146, 147, 180, 182, 202, 204, 211, 212, 214–216, 228, 230, 234, 243, 342, 377 Conflicts, 69, 138, 151, 156, 383 Consistency, 162, 266, 308, 314, 321, 322 Conversations, 31, 36, 49, 58, 98, 108, 114, 215, 251, 260, 277, 288, 292, 298, 299, 310, 311, 314, 316, 320, 333, 335, 336, 339, 380 Co-Teaching, 242–250, 252, 253, 262, 379 Counternarrative, 7, 13, 355 Course loads, 115, 116 Creativity, 36, 296, 333, 343–346 Critical friends, 7, 19, 35, 38, 39, 242, 243, 249, 252, 369 Critical leaders, 329, 347 Critical pedagogy, 327, 331, 339, 340 Cross-content mentoring, 3

Cross-institutional mentorship, 3, 21 Cross-specialization mentoring, 21 Culturally responsive teaching, 36, 294 Culture of evidence, 7, 305, 307, 310, 313, 317, 320, 322–324, 370 Curriculum, 143, 328 commonplaces, 353 making/makers, 117, 329, 345, 346, 352, 353

D Democratic leadership, 331 Design research, 263, 266 Destiny High School, 11, 12 Developmental relationships, 85 Dialogue, 7, 18, 21, 49, 52, 69, 147, 168, 182, 183, 242, 297, 310, 323, 332, 337, 338, 340, 342, 370 Distributed leadership, 5, 233, 331 Dual language program, 15

E Eagle High School, 11–13, 17, 18 Efficacy, 49, 51, 55, 58, 63, 66, 153, 224, 281, 375, 378, 379 Emotional cost, 115 Emotions, 92, 113, 115–117, 122, 124, 213 Empowerment, 33, 49, 64, 179 Encouragement, 37, 39, 40, 43, 48, 61, 62, 183, 188, 191, 194, 216, 291, 297, 375, 377 Evaluations, 13, 15, 65, 115, 128, 166, 223, 297, 307, 317, 319, 322, 323, 330, 332

INDEX

Expectations, 4, 6, 13, 30, 46, 50, 56, 64, 65, 69, 99–101, 114, 116, 120, 123, 130, 155, 158, 161, 163, 173, 224, 226, 230, 253, 265, 267, 308, 309, 311, 314, 318–320, 323, 341, 344, 376 Experience, 3–5, 7, 8, 11, 15, 17, 21, 25, 27–32, 35, 36, 38, 43, 46, 49, 52, 53, 58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 68, 69, 88, 89, 91, 92, 99–102, 104, 106–109, 115–120, 122, 124, 128, 130, 135, 138, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 151–154, 157–161, 163, 165, 170, 172, 173, 181, 184, 188, 189, 192, 193, 198, 201, 206, 210, 211, 215, 222, 225, 226, 234, 244, 247, 248, 250–253, 258, 260, 261, 264, 268, 274, 276, 278, 282, 286, 290, 292–295, 297, 298, 300, 307, 309, 311, 315, 316, 320, 329–331, 334, 335, 337–342, 344–346, 352, 354, 355, 358, 359, 361, 368–370, 373, 381 Experiential learning, 136, 291, 368, 372

F Faculty academy (FA), 2–9, 11, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28–32, 34–41, 43, 46–49, 51, 52, 56–60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 84, 87, 89–93, 100, 102, 103, 106, 108, 130, 136, 141, 147, 151, 173, 184, 190–192, 194, 198, 216, 234, 254, 261, 266, 269, 278, 282, 288, 300, 306, 352, 361, 368–370, 373, 375, 376, 379, 380, 383 Fair measurement, 314

387

Fairness, 53, 55, 65, 153–156, 173, 331 Fear, 4, 37, 40, 64, 97, 99, 101, 123, 126–128, 168, 171, 252, 330, 351, 370 Feedback, 18, 19, 21, 33, 35, 38, 41, 49, 103, 166, 182–184, 190, 248, 297, 299, 308, 309, 329, 332, 342, 343, 345, 347 Female leadership, 5, 57 First-generation college graduate, 4 Fourth largest metropolis, 10 Future, 8, 15, 90, 120, 139, 173, 184, 276, 280, 306, 331, 335, 343–347, 356, 357, 362, 383 G Gender equity, 65 Gender issues, 355 Generous scholar/scholarship, 7, 352, 356, 359–362, 383 Goals, 26, 34, 39, 46–48, 63, 69, 158, 168, 197, 232, 252, 275, 289, 306, 332–334, 343, 347, 360 Growth, 18, 21, 25–27, 30, 31, 34, 35, 38, 39, 42, 49, 56, 64, 90, 114, 117, 139, 158, 172, 191, 250, 254, 263, 266, 308, 311, 317, 319, 321, 323, 334, 369, 370, 378 H Hardships, 46, 162, 291 Hardy Academy, 11, 12, 17 Heights Community Learning Center, 11, 12, 14, 17 Hesitations, 161 Higher education, 11, 26, 32, 38, 47, 48, 50, 52, 64, 66–68, 88, 103, 106, 116, 153, 163, 164, 180,

388

INDEX

188, 190, 200, 206, 207, 211, 221, 234, 235, 280, 288, 330, 375 Highlights, 46, 161, 242, 299, 337, 368 High stakes accountability, 13 Hindsight, 161, 162 Historical roots, 2 Homeplace, 4 Hostility, 201 Houston, 10, 62, 63, 67, 259 Houston Annenberg challenge (HAC), 2, 9–11, 13–15, 36

I Identity, 18, 40, 50, 60, 63, 66, 101, 104, 159, 172, 201, 222, 329, 333, 335, 338, 339, 346, 375 “I-It”, 7 Impostor syndrome, 4, 56–58, 65, 67, 68, 98, 100, 101, 104 In-between spaces, 5 Informal mentors, 50, 60, 233 Inquiry, 86, 101, 118, 135, 136, 141, 144, 147, 244, 249, 262, 306, 361 Insecurity, 43, 99, 190 Intersectionalities, 5 Introverts, 5, 180–182, 188, 194 “I–Thou”, 7

K Knowledge community, 2, 14, 17, 18, 21, 49, 51, 57, 102, 103, 183, 191, 370, 375, 380 Knowledge growth, 18, 19, 379

L Las chicas críticas (The Critical Girls), 7

Latinx, 4 Leaders among leaders, 5 Leadership encounters, 46 skills, 47, 64, 157, 163, 180–182, 184, 189, 191, 194, 222, 230, 233, 287, 297 stance, 2, 5 Learning, 4 community, 48, 63, 102, 243, 370, 375 through experience, 25, 145 to lead, 46, 47, 52, 60, 68, 157, 159, 367–369, 372, 380, 381 Lesson, 5, 7, 151, 161, 162, 165, 226, 249, 263–266, 297, 298, 312, 313, 332, 335, 338, 345, 373 Librarians, 5, 64, 221–223, 225, 230, 231, 234 Life, 21, 58–61, 66, 113–115, 118, 120, 126, 130, 136, 137, 147, 160, 167, 188, 221

M Male of color, 361 Master teacher, 247, 262, 274, 288, 289, 291 Mathematics partnership, 6 Maxwell, Joseph, 142 Meaning-making, 36, 159, 172 Mentoring, 2, 31, 50, 64, 83–85, 88, 90, 92, 153, 214, 234, 297, 299, 300, 375 Mentor-mentee faculty relationship, 3 Mentor/mentee relationship, 83, 90, 92 Merit raise, 115 Mutual trust, 88, 89, 91, 248, 379

INDEX

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O Outcomes, 32, 39, 100, 157, 160, 172, 203, 231, 281, 306, 342, 345, 358, 374, 378 Outsiders, 92, 153, 181, 207

244, 245, 258, 274, 282, 296, 328, 338, 354, 359, 361, 370 Policies and procedures, 126 Portfolio Group, 2, 9–11, 14–19, 21, 22, 352 Power, 3, 7, 36, 38, 39, 43, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60, 69, 101, 107, 117, 155, 166, 168, 171–173, 242, 246, 248, 252, 294, 379 Pressures, 56, 90, 130, 328, 330, 335, 377 Primacy of relationships, 90, 91 Probationary years, 113 Productivity, 3, 19, 38, 46, 47, 49, 90, 93, 103, 114, 154, 161, 168, 172, 374, 380, 381 Professional identity, 43, 109, 333, 379 Professional knowledge landscape, 14, 16, 85 Progress, 14, 35, 48, 67, 69, 88, 162, 169, 173, 306, 368, 369, 372, 377, 382 Propriety, 151, 169, 173

P Partnership, 6, 15, 26, 57, 89, 91, 226, 230, 242, 246, 253, 276, 278, 281, 287, 288, 299, 308, 354, 378 Persistence, 26, 43, 181, 187, 210, 261, 272 Personalities, 3, 151, 153, 156, 243, 371 Perspectives, 41, 46, 52, 135, 152, 170, 172, 244, 254, 258, 260, 261, 268, 269, 300, 307, 310, 320, 324, 329, 340, 342, 346, 368, 369, 372, 373, 378 Place, 5, 27, 29, 50, 55, 56, 58, 99, 101, 106, 109, 114–116, 122, 128, 131, 172, 181, 183, 200,

R Race relations, 91, 92 Racial identification, 65 Recalibrated leadership, 129 Reciprocal learning, 4, 84, 138, 139, 147, 352, 354, 370 Reciprocal mentorship, 93 Reflective practice, 14, 19, 40, 146, 248, 250, 252 Reflective teaching, 250 Relational bonds, 58, 368, 377–379 Relational pedagogy, 336 Relationships, 3, 5, 7, 19, 26, 31, 37, 40, 84, 85, 93, 104, 139, 216, 243, 247, 280, 297, 299, 313, 320, 322, 355, 356, 371, 372, 374, 377–379, 381

N Narratives, 46 inquiry, 29, 57, 86, 117, 118, 142, 143, 145, 146, 184, 244, 257, 268, 306, 354, 355 turn, 143 National Annenberg challenge, 10 National Science Foundation (NSF), 6, 91, 93, 140–142, 276, 278, 280, 290 National Science Foundation scholarship, 6 Networking, 35, 48, 182, 234, 287, 290, 299, 300 New Basic Education, 146 Non-tenure track, 26, 34, 62, 189–191

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INDEX

Resiliency, 7, 121, 200–202, 205, 212–216 Risks, 123, 152, 166, 170, 180, 202–204, 215, 321, 323, 336, 341, 370, 371 Role modeling, 50, 60 S Safe place, 30, 41, 252, 369, 379, 380 Scholarly identity, 51, 63 School isolation, 10 School librarian leadership, 5, 224, 226, 228, 230, 231, 233–235 School-university partnership, 6 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), 5, 7, 33, 87, 88, 141, 197–201, 205, 206, 210, 211, 213, 215, 216, 272, 275, 278, 282, 286, 293 Self-confidence, 62, 87, 184, 185, 187–189, 193 Self-facing, 358 Self-reflective narrative, 113 Self-study, 19, 243, 244, 253, 257, 268, 306, 307, 310–312, 328, 329 Serial interpretation, 102 Shadow leader, 158 Silenced stories, 164 Social connections, 191, 368, 375–377 Sociocultural support, 52 Standards, 69, 165, 166, 222, 224, 226, 229, 265, 308, 323, 330, 333 STEM teachers, 141, 274, 275, 278, 280, 282, 286, 287, 289, 291 Storied identity, 106, 107 Story Data, 306 Storying, 56, 355, 358 Storytelling, 52, 120, 143, 172

Story to live by, 109, 353, 358 Students of color, 6, 231, 293, 330 Student teacher performance assessment, 7, 307–309, 313, 317

T Table, 18, 49, 56, 58, 104, 110, 121, 129, 199, 208 Teacher change agents, 295, 296 education, 1, 3, 5–7, 21, 34, 41, 46, 91, 145, 245, 254, 274, 276–278, 281, 282, 288, 290, 300, 306–308, 311, 314, 317, 322, 324, 328, 330, 338, 346, 353, 368, 373 educator, 1, 26, 46, 67, 160, 226, 242, 258, 288, 307, 309, 327, 329, 332, 334, 339, 374 leaders/leadership, 289, 296 learning, 1, 10, 11, 93 professional development, 10, 17, 232 teachHOUSTON program, 6, 274, 275, 277, 287, 289, 291–293, 297–300 Technology integration, 225, 226, 228, 231 Tensions, 4, 85, 103, 124 Tenure, 21, 52, 59, 60, 64, 67, 68, 87, 92, 103, 113, 115, 123, 124, 126, 127, 184, 192, 210, 339 Tenured faculty, 60, 114, 191 Texas higher education coordinating board, 242, 245 Theory-practice chasms, 355 Threat, 113, 181, 201 Three-dimensional visualization, 262 T. P. Yaeger Middle School, 11, 12, 17 Transferability, 356

INDEX

Transformations, 25, 26, 31, 42, 60, 116, 159 Trust, 36, 37, 49, 88, 152, 157, 182, 243, 246, 250, 278, 322, 356, 357, 368, 379, 380 Truth, 56, 99, 106, 144, 172, 268, 356, 371 U Unrecognized leadership, 230 V Values, 7, 34, 51, 55, 60, 118, 152, 155, 163, 173, 194, 307, 320,

391

328, 329, 331–335, 337, 340, 343, 368, 370, 374, 377 Van Niekerk, Retha, 262, 269 Vulnerability, 56, 91, 92, 99, 100, 336, 344–346

W Woman of color, 4, 92, 106, 294 Women, 5, 50, 57, 58, 136, 171, 172, 181, 198–201, 205, 206, 208, 211, 214–216, 336 Women of color, 90, 106 Working conditions, 115, 191, 294