Book Review: Navigating Teacher Education in Complex and Uncertain Times

Abstract

As I opened the pages of this book for the first time, I was tempted to reflect on how many works on teacher education published in 2019 might already be out of date. If it is true that the Covid-19 experience will be a watershed in our perception of schooling (a proposition that I am not entirely convinced by, although I’d like to be!), then we need a more profound rethinking of professional training than was envisaged by most authors writing even as recently as one year ago. It did not take many pages exploring this fascinating text, however, to dispel these thoughts. My preliminary distractions were quickly replaced by a kind of awe at what the author of this extremely personal narrative is trying to achieve. Professor Mercado’s purpose and methodology are evident from the first pages: indeed, they are revealed ahead of time in the Series Editor’s Foreword, where Peter Smagorinsky provides a background to her autoethnographic approach and to her career-long commitment as a literacy advocate working with bilingual, mainly Latinx, communities which comprise some of New York’s most vulnerable and underprivileged children. This is not a textbook – and it is certainly not a handbook with specific strategies for teacher education, although there are clear methodological implications in what Prof Mercado has to say. It is a deeply personal, passionate and self-analytical account of one professional life dedicated to helping children at risk by exploring strategies and training educators who can engage young people by activating their voluminous but often ignored community funds of knowledge. As such, this is a timeless and universal work, and while it is rooted in late 20th century and early 21st century educational contexts in a highly specific geographical location, Prof Mercado’s insights and reflections carry a message for teacher education and practising educators in many other venues, not least those in international schools that serve populations at the opposite end of the class system to those who were the focus of the author’s attention. Readers who are not familiar with autoethnography as a research tool may be surprised at the narrative style they encounter as Prof Mercado’s account shifts between different styles of writing. The book opens with an account of her early life and her family, describing relocation to New York from Puerto Rico in the last 1940’s and her perceptions as the family home moved across the city, exposing the young author to a range of school and social environments. These accounts are crucial 972832 JRI0010.1177/1475240920972832Journal of Research in International EducationBook Reviews book-review2020