AACTE Teacher as Researcher

59th AACTE Annual Meeting & Exhibits
(American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education)

FROM VISION TO ACTION        

February 24-27, 2007        
Hilton New York

Had a great time at AACTE this year. This was my second time presenting at this conference! Last year was in California, this year New York and boy was it cold! I even got to drive in  a snow storm on the way home. Lots of over turned cars on the highway and in the ditch.

Before presenting, I attended the Teacher Leaders Network's presentation. I sat on the original steering board for this organization and currently serve as a Senior Teacher Leader Fellow.
It was delightful to finally meet Renee Moore and Ariel Sacks. I had been collaborating with them online and know their ideas well, but had never met them f2f. Ariel confirmed my belief that teacher leadership potential can be nurtured and developed from the preservice experience. She is a three year novice and was incredible. Nancy who also presented is a long time friend and collaborator, it was good to see her again.

Today I got this in a newsletter from CTQ, the parent organization of TLN.

Teacher Leaders Forecast the Future of the Profession

TLN members Nancy Flanagan, Renee Moore, and Ariel Sacks recently shared their expertise with the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). Presenting at the AACTE annual conference in New York City alongside Center for Teaching Quality founder and president Barnett Berry, the teachers engaged an audience of education school deans, administrators, and faculty in a conversation regarding possibilities for the teaching profession in a digital world. Specifically, Nancy, Renee, and Ariel explored the potential of virtual educational communities like TLN to share best classroom practices, analyze current research, strengthen induction and mentoring processes, and facilitate high-needs instruction.

Review their AACTE presentation (PDF) here.

The session was awesome. Barnett included Dr. Gail Ritchie (also a TLN member) and me as part of the discussion being led by the three featured teacher leaders and the conversations were lively and engaging. I was even thrilled to hear myself mentioned in each of the three teacher's presentations. How humbling. Many of the professors there were very supportive of teacher leadership.

ENDAPT- Electroncially Networking to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers

My paper presentation was on the research that Dr. Christopher Gareis and I did around online mentoring. Our paper is still under review, however, below is our slideshow sharing the result for our descriptive, quantitative study we did using a content analysis methodology. The mentoring took place in a virtual learning community. We are replicating the study this year. And I will expand the study to include various virtual learning community environments with a different a priori design for my dissertation in the fall. If you would like to see the small photo set I took in NY, here is the Flickr stream.