45a teacher/educator led to new perspectives on what it means to learn to become a
teacher, Williams appears to be representing a concept similar to that theorised by
Bhabha, that is, that her ‘third space’ of professional practice emerged out of the
tensions she felt as a teacher transitioning to the academic work and identity of a
teacher educator. Williams’ self-study revealed that working in the so-called third
space created many challenges and rewards, including shifting identities between
related but distinct professional selves (classroom teacher and teacher educator),
changing perspectives on learning to become a teacher and negotiating relationships
with mentors and preservice teachers. Williams concluded that:
... the boundary practices of the third space require a delicate balancing act of acknowledg-
ing and respecting the personal and professional identities of all involved ...The challenges
and tensions involved in developing these boundary practices are essential elements of my
evolving identity and practice as a teacher educator. (p. 128)
In another self-study, McDonough ( 2014 ) explored her experiences within an
intentionally created third space (Soja), in which she ‘developed and implemented
a partnership between an independent P-12 school and a regional university to cre-
ate a third space for teacher education focused on exploring new opportunities for
mentoring of pre-service teachers and working with supervising teachers’ (p. 213).
In recounting her experiences as both a university-based teacher educator and a
secondary teacher providing support for preservice teachers during professional
experience, McDonough found that her work ‘was characterized by navigating ten-
sions of loyalty, advocacy and obligation in my relationships with pre-service and
supervising teachers’ (p. 211). As both a practicing school teacher and employed by
the university to work in practicum supervision, McDonough faced tensions around
her sense of loyalty, advocacy and obligation to the different stakeholders involved
in the practicum—preservice teachers, teachers in schools, students in schools,
teacher educator colleagues and the regulatory bodies that provide the framework in
which professional experience takes place. Early on in this work, McDonough
found that she was ‘bound by issues of who to speak for as I found my hybrid iden-
tity as teacher, university mentor and teacher caused me to experience shifting, and
at times, conflicting emotions about who I was loyal to, who I would advocate for,
and who I was obliged to act with or for’ (p. 215). As she became more involved in
the work of this third space, McDonough began to understand herself and her hybrid
role more deeply. She concluded that she ‘needed to begin to rewrite the script of
what it means to be a mentor in these kinds of spaces through processes of transla-
tion and mediation’ (p. 218). Although McDonough was working in an intentionally
created third space, which aligns with Soja’s conceptualisation, she also encoun-
tered the tensions that Bhabha referred to when people assume hybrid identities,
that is, when they are neither one (teacher) nor the other (teacher educator) but both.
3 Theorising the Third Space of Professional Experience Partnerships