Becoming teacher educators in new international contexts: challenging knowledge, practices and identities

In this on-going self-study, we examine our experiences of working in new international contexts as teacher educators. Mandi and Nathan gained positions in different countries and moved to their new locations to live and work as teacher educators, with Mandi moving from Australia to The Netherlands and Nathan moving from the United States to Australia. Judy worked in a different international context in the Cook Islands supervising a practicum as part of her Australian university's program, for three consecutive weeks a year for two years. Judy and Mandi had previously worked in the same institution in Australia. While working for the first time as teacher educators in different countries, we found that we negotiated many boundaries - external to ourselves like national, cultural, social, and linguistic, as well as internal boundaries concerning our personal and professional beliefs and values. In this paper, we explore our boundary crossing experiences and implications for our knowledge, identities, and practices as teacher educators.