Teacher Educators Using Cogenerative Dialogue to Reclaim Professionalism

Abstract

Teacher education is a space that is constantly in flux as it responds to the increasing requirements of governments to improve the quality of teachers and teaching in specific and measurable ways. The burden of this work falls to academic staff who then must balance their engagement with research, teaching and service within a higher education sector that has a different set of measures and requirements. Against this background, we (authors) have aimed to identify ways to work together to reclaim our professionalism as teacher educators. This chapter recounts one of our experiences as three teacher educators from different parts of Australia and our use of cogenerative dialogue (interactive social space for dialogic exchange) that included material objects to support our collaboration. Vygotsky’s conception of individual cognition being connected to social interactions and speech provided a theoretical context for our explorations. Using metalogue as our methodological approach, we document how using material objects during cogenerative dialogue allowed us to reflexively consider possible ways to improve our practice of research and teaching. The implications of this self-study identify the importance of cogenerative dialogue to support teacher educators to reclaim their identity and academic agency as professionals in an era of measurement.