ABSTRACT
I am a teacher educator. With a background in secondary teaching, I have been working in teacher education in universities in Australia, New Zealand and Canada for almost 20 years. I identify myself primarily as a teacher educator responsible (with colleagues both in universities and in schools) for the preparation and support of beginning teachers. In today’s terms, I would no longer be considered a secondary teacher, as I have not taught in a secondary classroom in New Zealand since the curriculum reforms of the late 1980s. I am one of those people to whom student teachers (and some classroom teachers) are referring when they say “some of the professors wouldn’t know what hit them if they actually had to go back and teach in a secondary classroom!” I do continue to spend time in classrooms and work with teachers, but this is now done predominantly in my capacity of a researcher and sometimes as a partner in the supervision of student teachers during school-based practicum.
