Researcher subjectivity influences knowledge generation, which necessitates reflexivity. This paper inquires into how a researcher’s worldview(s) shape their positionality concerning research topics, contexts, and participants. I examine my sociocultural encounters as a Global South (Ugandan) doctoral researcher in the Global North (Sweden) and demonstrate how my epistemic disposition becomes intersubjective and shapes my research and researcher identity development. Two epistemologies coalesce: obundu, a worldview from my upbringing in Uganda; and praxis, a concept from European experience that influences my research environment. A key conclusion is that researching across contexts entails transcending epistemic boundaries in an intersectional rather than polarising way, resulting in an inbetweener rather than an outsider or insider researcher positionality. Because my experience is hardly peculiar, this conclusion is potentially relevant for other Global South researchers in the Global North and, hopefully, vice versa.

This configurative review explores how nurturing and enacting a community-oriented praxis (COP) in teacher education can enhance teacher candidates’ preparedness for teaching roles whilst addressing some broader educational and societal concerns. Here, CoP is defined as practices that consider, connect with, and draw on local community strengths, needs, and aspirations for the good of individuals, communities, and society more broadly. We review 31 cases in 37 articles on explicitly community-oriented teacher education (COTE) initiatives from nine country contexts where teacher educators, school-based mentors, and members of local communities collaboratively facilitate the learning experiences of participants in teacher education (i.e., teacher candidates). An analysis of the motivations, processes, and outcomes of the initiatives in the COTE cases highlights benefits such as developing teacher candidates’ pedagogical content knowledge and research competence; fostering social justice consciousness and critical action; and facilitating the sustainable recruitment and retention of teachers especially in marginalised contexts. Implications and possible directions for teacher education are discussed.

Academia is a metacommunity encompassing a wide diversity of sub-communities. Emerging researchers often feel a sense of liminal belonging to such communities: not quite yet inside and at the same time not wholly outside of academia. This chapter uses autoethnographic vignettes (personal accounts) in which members of a fledging research group reflect on the dynamics of establishing a community of practice (CoP), as they transition out of a master's degree programme at a university in Sweden. The group began working together during coursework within the master's programme and continues to ‘hang together’ as a CoP, undertaking collective research projects. An analysis of the vignettes reflects the group members' individual and collective understandings of the notions of ‘community’ and ‘participation’ in research practice. The vignettes demonstrate: (a) that the group members, who felt they each had the agency to legitimately participate, have come to actively learn that educational research is an endeavour of mutual engagement (b) that sustaining a community involves navigating multiple identities, often with associated vulnerabilities and (c) that peripheral participation in research communities can be understood in terms of both responsibility (at the group level) and structure (in relation to academia as a metacommunity). Their experience flips the normative positionalities of ‘novices at the periphery’ and ‘experts at the nucleus’. Overarchingly, the authors encourage practices of ‘inviting in’ and supporting new researchers coming to academia.

This chapter is a case study which describes and reflects on the first steps into research practice for a group of international Masters students who were soon to embark on writing educational research theses when the COVID-19 pandemic started in early 2020. Because of a sudden transition to online learning and cancellation of in-person fieldwork opportunities, this group of fledgling researchers conducted a small research project that sought answers to the question—What does it mean to live well in a world worth living in? The purpose of the project was to find out how this particular group of people, in a certain time and place, would respond to this question. Four themes emerged: political engagement; connection and basic needs; social stratification and access; living slow and in ‘flow’. This chapter outlines this project from the perspective of a research student and the teacher, and illumi-nates the various student groups’ understandings of what it means to live well in a world worth living in. Using the theories of ‘communities of practice’ and ‘practice architectures’, the chapter reflects on the dynamics and processes through which the research student groups engaged with the subject; and what their experience might mean for educational researcher training.

Initial teacher education through higher education courses and school-based practicums has been criticised for being decontextualised and insufficiently preparing teacher candidates to address the complexity and needs of the classroom, school, and local communities. An alternative, practice-intensive initial ‘teacher training’ uncritically offers a curriculum-scripted approach aimed at increasing standardised test scores but attends much less if at all to students’ experiences and community needs. An emerging third approach, community-oriented teacher education (CoTE), combines learning in higher education, school-based practicums, as well as experiential learning and civic participation in community life. An unresolved question remains: what kinds of professional knowledge do CoTE practices and activities develop among teacher candidates? This literature review analyses the process phases of CoTE activities in 12 contexts and identifies that CoTE develops teacher candidates’ theoretical, technical, practical, and critical-emancipatory knowledge.

This chapter underscores the urgency of critical reflections towards the decolonization of educational curricula in Uganda and Congo. Departing from highlighting the sociopolitical contexts and the colonial impact on the education systems in both countries, the chapter utilizes theories in critical literacy to point out absences and insufficiencies regarding critical self-consciousness. It invites scholars in and from both countries—as well as other ex-colonies—to stimulate emancipatory critical literacy among young and adult learners as a means of filling these gaps. Thereby, such countries can draw on their own ways of knowing, doing, and being to equitably influence endogenous and global development processes. The chapter makes recommendations, including the creation of an African critical literacies scholars’ network to coordinate studies and efforts in this regard.