Notes on Contributors
Linda Fitzgerald
is an emerita professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Northern Iowa. In retirement she is an active member of the campus advisory board for the Iowa Regents’ Center for Early Developmental Education at UNI. In her teaching career, she prepared preservice teachers to accept into their early childhood classroom communities a wide variety of children, with a focus on the inclusion of individuals with disabilities. She took particular delight in working with practitioners who were becoming teachers of teachers in the EdD program. She also supervised practicing teachers as they found problems in their practice to research for their master’s degrees. In both programs she taught self-study methods such as those in proceedings and books she has co-edited and to which she has contributed, such as Research Methods for the Self-Study of Practice, Learning Communities in Practice, both self-study handbooks, and the Self-Study and Diversity series, for which this is the third volume.
Karen Rut Gísladóttir
is a professor at the School of Education at the University of Iceland. She is a former elementary teacher. Her PhD thesis was a teacher research where she explored her own practice to understand how she could base students’ learning on their linguistic and cultural resources. Karen’s research interest is in sociocultural and critical perspectives on language and literacy and multicultural education. Her research methodology is teacher research, qualitative and art-based research methods, and self-study. She is one of the authors of the book Collaboration, Narrative, and Inquiry That Honor the Complexity of Teacher Education published by Information Age Publishing.
Anita Hiralaal
is a lecturer in Accounting at the School of Education, Indumiso Campus, Durban University of Technology. She has a PhD in Teacher Development Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Anita has been involved in teacher education for many years and enjoys teaching Accounting. As part of her doctoral studies, she adopted an arts-based self-study methodological approach and used many arts-based research approaches in her study. This prompted her to incorporate the arts into her Accounting Pedagogy teaching with excellent results. She has also co-authored book chapters and has written a few journal articles on narrative self-study and arts-based self-study. Anita has some novel, exciting and non-conventional ideas to share about the arts in education.
Jinhee Kim
(PhD) is an associate professor in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA. She received her PhD in early childhood education from the University of Georgia. Her intertwined research areas include immigrant children and families, children in poverty (especially, children experiencing homelessness), marginalized children’s voices in the curriculum, and culturally relevant qualitative research methods. Her works have been published in several journals, such as Qualitative Inquiry, Studying Teacher Education, Early Childhood Education Journal, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Journal of Research in Childhood Education, and Journal of Early Childhood Research.
Julian Kitchen
is a professor in the faculty of education at Brock University. He is the lead editor of International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (Second Edition); Writing as a Method for the Self-Study of Practice; Mindful and Relational Approaches to Social Justice, Equity and Diversity in Teacher Education; Narrative Inquiries into Curriculum-making in Teacher Education; Self-Study and Diversity II; and Canadian Perspectives on the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices. In addition, he is the author of Relational Teacher Education and lead author of Professionalism, Law and the Ontario Educator. Professor Kitchen is co-editor of Studying Teacher Education journal and editor for Springer’s Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices series.
Makie Kortjass
is a lecturer in the Early Childhood Education discipline in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her areas of expertise include an integrated learning approach in early childhood mathematics teacher education, arts-based self-study, and playing games for understanding mathematics. Makie’s current work involves lecturing in the early childhood undergraduate programme and supervising postgraduate students. She has been instrumental in developing the Bachelor of Education Early Childhood Care and Education (B.ED. ECCE) programme at UKZN. She is also involved in nationwide programmes initiated by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in partnership with the European Union (EU), in which universities work on essential common standards and materials to prepare teachers of mathematics in primary schools.
Jennifer Markides
(PhD) is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta and an assistant professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on the holistic wellbeing of youth and Indigenous education. She values community-based partnerships that prioritize ethical relationships and reciprocity. Reconciliation is at the heart of her work, where understanding colonial legacies and truths predicates readiness for responsible action-taking and respectful relationship-building towards systemic and societal change.
Lungile Masinga
is a senior lecturer in Curriculum and Education Studies and has also worked in the Gender and Education discipline at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in South Africa. Her academic work focuses on gender and sexuality education. Methodologically, her work has contributed to the scholarship on collaborative memory-work, oral storytelling with teachers, and self-study research inquiry. She is also a member of the Self-Reflexive Methodologies Special Interest Group of the South African Educational Research Association. She is one of the guest editors in a special issue of Alternation on “Narratives of Social Cohesion and Academic Identities in Higher Education.”
Nosipho Mbatha
is an academic in the Creative Arts discipline at the School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She is also a doctoral student, who is at an advanced stage of her analysis. In her doctoral project she researches the integration of playful pedagogy for learning at higher education, for teacher-educators and preservice teachers. Her research interests extend collaborative work with other emerging scholars using arts-based self-reflexive methodologies to understand themselves better as academics and improve their professional practice. She is currently a candidate in the Accelerated Academic Leadership Development Program (AALDP), which awarded her the opportunity to attend Teachers College, Columbia University as a visiting scholar.
Shuaib J. Meacham
is an associate professor of Literacy Education at the University of Northern Iowa whose work examines the intersections of Literacy, race, and popular culture, specifically the learning dynamics of Hip Hop Culture. He is the co-director and founder of Hip Hop Literacy 319, a program that uses enthusiasm for Hip Hop Culture to improve their literacy skills and to prepare them for professional work environments. Hip Hop Literacy began in the early 2000s at the University of Delaware wherein high school graduates in the program boasted a 100% college attendance rate. Dr. Meacham originates from Canton, Ohio and carries out a family legacy of educational accomplishment with his wife Dr. Soh Meacham and his children, Aisha, Karis, Sabina, and James Jr. More can be learned about Dr. Meacham and his work at www.Hiphopliteracy319.com
Megumi Nishida
is a practitioner of the Icelandic early childhood pedagogical approach Hjallastefnan (The Hjalli model) and PhD candidate at the University of Iceland. Originally coming from Japan, her doctoral study explores her professional identity transformation from an immigrant educator to hybrid educator though self-study of her practice. In the chapter she contributed to the International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (2nd ed.), Megumi investigated the latest self-study movement in Japan which positioned herself as a critical friend to Japanese educators for an educational change. With her hybridity, she connects S-STEP and Japanese teacher educators’ community.
Gunnhildur Óskarsdóttir
is a professor of Education at the School of Education, University of Iceland. She was the Head of Faculty of Teacher Education from 2013–2017. She did her master’s degree from Aberdeen University, Scotland and her PhD from University of Iceland. Her research interests include children′s learning and concept development, classroom research and teacher education and professional development. She has presented papers and research results on these issues. In recent years her interest and research focus has been on multicultural issues in teacher eucation and on how self-study can support teacher educators to generate change in their own teaching.
Manu Sharma
is an assistant professor at Thompson Rivers University in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, where she teaches foundational courses in the Masters of Education program. Dr. Sharma has previously taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses and supported field placements at University of Wisconsin-River Falls, Brock University, University of Toronto, and University of Windsor; in addition, she worked for the Toronto District School Board and in international settings as a public educator. She recently published a co-authored book, Educators for Diverse Classrooms: A Case Study Approach to Equity and Inclusion in Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).
Leanne Taylor
is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University, Canada. Her teaching is situated in the area of social justice, equity and activism in education and spans undergraduate, teacher education, and graduate levels. Her teaching and research explore the interrelationship between pedagogy, race, and identity and offers insight into the theoretical, social, and political tensions that inform equity education in K-12 and in postsecondary contexts.
Deborah Tidwell
is an emerita professor of Literacy Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Northern Iowa. Dr. Tidwell’s work focuses on assessment and evaluation of literacy, the implementation of effective instructional practices and interventions, and bilingual education methods and appropriate instructional practice for English language learners. Dr. Tidwell is active in the self-study research community where she has published books and articles related to self-study research and has served as the chair for the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices SIG of the American Educational Research Association. At the university, she has served as the coordinator for the Literacy Education Program, director of the UNI Reading Clinic, director of the Jacobson Center for Comprehensive Literacy, department head for Curriculum and Instruction, and Associate Dean for the College of Education. Dr. Tidwell has been involved in federal, state, and privately funded projects for the preparation of bilingual classroom teachers for the state of Iowa, and professional development in comprehensive literacy instruction for in-service teachers working with children with significant disabilities.