Teacher Educator Knowledge, Practice, and S-STTEP Research

This chapter is about what can be known by and about teacher educators and teacher education through Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices or S-STTEP research. It reviews how teacher educator knowledge is defined in and through the process of S-STTEP. Of particular interest is the shape and form that teacher educator knowledge takes in S-STTEP; how S-STTEP allows us to uncover, articulate, develop, and represent teacher educator knowledge; and how this knowledge is justified. One main distinction guides this review: a view of teacher educator knowledge as a stable quality that individual teacher educators acquire, possess, and perform, in contrast to a view of teacher educator knowledge as that which manifests itself and constantly develops in and through practice. This distinction, as will become apparent, is critical to understanding self-studies of teacher educator knowledge because it represents two different ways of seeing teacher educator knowledge that shape and define who is the "knower" about teacher education and what justifies claims to know something about teacher education (including more conventional conceptions and methods of science and what is often framed as "alternative" research approaches, such as S-STTEP methodology).