Stitched Together: Quilting Our Teacher Educator Identities Across Roles, Contexts, and Time

Professional identity for teacher educators is a complex construction both within and across nations. This self-study examines how three US educators – two school-based teacher educators enrolled in a doctoral program and one veteran university-based teacher educator – explored the development of their identities across their educational journeys, from PK-12 student to teacher-to-teacher educator, reasoning a long view of their experience in schools might reveal deeper insights related to their current teacher educator personas. Employing the polyvocal discussion group methodology of ‘quilting and vulnerability’, participants met across four sessions, each anchored to a distinct time in their educational histories and facilitated through the sharing of personal artifacts. Findings suggest that teacher educator identity may begin forming long before formal doctoral preparation, emerging gradually through lived experiences, meaningful relationships, and subtle shifts in professional roles and responsibilities. The study also demonstrates the distinctive value of cross-hierarchical polyvocal discussion groups as sites for professional learning, offering emerging and experienced teacher educators an opportunity to practice skills like relationship-building, reflexivity, and role negotiation, capacities central to modern teacher education both within the US and internationally. In an era of mounting political pressure on education across the PK–20 spectrum in a variety of nations, structured opportunities for identity examination and cross-hierarchical collaboration may serve not only as professional learning but as a form of collective resistance and professional sustenance.