Q&A — Rachel Patrick

Thanks go to Rachel Patrick, new lecturer in teacher education, for agreeing to be this month’s Q&A subject.

What are your teaching/research interests?

Teaching interests:

• Anything to do with teacher education – the core subjects
• Social justice, difference and equity in education
• Indigenous education
• Socio-cultural contexts in education, and how education works (or doesn’t)
• Professional responsibilities and teaching ethics

Research interests

• Anything to do with teacher education – pre-service and early career teachers
• Teacher knowledge and identity formation (how teachers learn, how they make sense of their professional encounters and how professional identity forms)
• The roles and responsibilities of teacher educators in relation to (student) teacher knowledge and identity formation
• Equity, difference and social justice, how teachers negotiate the minefields, and how to challenge (student) teachers’ assumptions without alienating them
• Educational policy, in particular how (student) teachers negotiate educational reform in practice
• Post-structural and feminist approaches to research.

A favourite educationalist/author/theorist and why.

Multiple favourites – here are some:

• Brian Davis and Dennis Sumara on complexity in teacher education (as opposed to trying to simplify it)
• Ian Stronach and Deborah Britzman’s discussions of teacher identity formation as a negotiation of contradictory discourses, policies and practice
• Maggie MacLure for her deconstructions of “identity” and of “discourse”
• Laurel Richardson’s “writing as nomadic inquiry” as a process of data analysis
• Russell Bishop’s deconstruction and challenging of deficit theorizing of Indigenous students
• Paulo Freire for shaking up the status quo and challenging teachers to think beyond the “banking” method of teaching/learning.

Where do you do most of your teaching preparation/research?

At home

How do you find out about newly published research?

Journal and book alerts and colleagues.

Are professional networks important to your research/teaching? How?

Extremely important. I like to sort out my thoughts by talking, so I find professional conversations invaluable for exchanging ideas about teaching and research, and for getting creative inspiration (as well as having a good laugh at times). I find that all kinds of networks trigger off research and teaching ideas, and expand my knowledge of what other research/teaching is going on. I find it’s the best way to find out about similar (and different) interests and opens up avenues for getting my ideas out there and building collaborative relationships. One of the wonderful things about living in a big city like Melbourne is that there are so many opportunities to attend all sorts of lectures and workshops on current educational issues and thought.

Describe your personal library.
Very depleted at the moment, having just moved country, but … lots of fiction (my escape) and feminist SF. I’m exploring Australian authors at the moment and filling up my shelves again. I also have some biography and some favourite educational publications, as well as a great collection of books about music.

Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica?

Wikipedia

Something you’d like your students to know and understand about the Library?

Librarians are great at tracking down hard-to-find stuff, so ASK if you get stuck.

Favourite journal?

Don’t have one – I draw on lots of different ones, mostly to do with teacher education.

Something you’d like to change about the Library?

I’ve only been here a short time, so I’ll get back to you on that one.