About this Research Topic

Background

Internationally, most educators in early grades of schooling are women, while men comprise the majority of educators in higher education (OECD, 2019). Moreover, research shaping knowledge and practice is most commonly supported at or in affiliation with institutions for tertiary levels of education. Only 30% of corresponding authors are women (Bello and Galindo-Rueda, 2020). This not only suggests that female researchers may have less opportunity to both enter and advance in their fields but more critically, that much research, including research on curriculum and instruction and on teacher education, may be developed by men to be utilized by and for a majority workforce of women. Higher education is understood to be the site of knowledge production (Savage, 2003) and knowledge validation (Hill Collins, 2003). In order to challenge and change traditional knowledge and practice in teacher education and teaching, attending to gendered stories of teaching, learning, and teacher education is of prime significance.

We are delighted to present the inaugural 'Women in Education” series of article collections. This Research Topic of Frontiers in Education: Teacher Education provides a venue to scaffold work by women researchers as a means of building equitable professional environments worldwide. The work presented within this special collection will highlight the diversity of research performed across the entire breadth of teacher education research. Accepted articles will present advances in theory, experiment, and/or methodology with applications to compelling problems or literature reviews related to the topic of this issue. This special collection invites articles that make use of all forms of research methods, including research texts that highlight traditionally female forms of expression such as narrative, arts-based, and biographical/ autobiographical research. To be considered for this collection, the first or last author should be a researcher who identifies as a woman.
This Research Topic welcomes a variety of articles surrounding the topic of women in teacher education, including the following:

• women in teaching, learning, and teacher education;

• women and educator professional development;

• the multiple roles and layered identities of women who are teachers and/or teacher educators;

• cross-cultural and intra-cultural teaching and learning experiences through a woman’s lens;

• women and leadership in education; and the realization of a good balance between private and family life and professional development for women.

• research that actively honors feminist teaching practices and/or curriculum development;

• deliberations over how national and international movements for equity, social justice, liberation, and freedom align with feminisms and feminist praxis;

• research on teacher education focusing on teaching STEAM subjects to empower women;

• research that actively redresses long-standing biases and gender stereotypes that discourage girls and women away from science-related fields and from pursuing a career in academia and in different professional environments;

• research that recognizes science and gender equality as a means to ensure sustainable development in all disciplines;

• studies aimed at changing traditional mindsets, promoting gender equality, defeating stereotypes and encouraging girls and women to pursue academic careers.

This call for papers will be disseminated through AERA Narrative Research SIG, teachers Lives SIG and the Self-Study of teacher education practices SIGs.

Keywords: teachers identity, gender equality in education, women in academia

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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