Abstract
As “discussants” of this journal issue, we are impressed and inspired by these authors’ energy, dedication, and commitment to improving their practice as teacher educators by studying their practice. When we teach action research to preservice and practicing educators in our respective universities, we situate it as a form of professional development. We have seen that taking an inquiry stance on one’s own teaching can have a profound effect on that practice. Reading the work of these educational leaders, we see how practitioner research can also be an important form of professional development for Jewish educational leaders. The articles in this issue are a case of educational leaders taking a new stance as practitioner researchers, engaging in the opportunities, dilemmas, and challenges that this stance requires and elicits. The practitioner research presented here is grounded in the identification and documentation of daily dilemmas and contradictions of practice that then become grist for developing new interpretive frameworks and theories. In turn, these new concepts and frameworks guide new understandings and improvements in local practice. By going “public” with their work in this journal (as well as in an oral presentation at the 2017NRJE conference) the authors also offer the field of Jewish education new insights into theory and practice