Situated Hope: Understanding Teacher Educators’ Sources of Hope

• In Event: Poster Session 2
  In Poster Session: Analyzing In-Service and Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge, Identities, and Agency

Abstract

Understanding the perspective of teacher educators regarding their notions of “educational hope” is timely both pedagogically and conceptually. While attacks on teacher preparation programs face would make it easy to understand why a sense of hopelessness could pervade teacher education, as findings from this study show, 78.8% of the 628 teacher educators who participated in this study, do have hope for the field.
Hope is situated in particular contexts, is connected to personal beliefs and attitudes, involves the activities of teaching, and is influenced by outside contexts including public, policy, departmental and other regulatory factors. In this presentation, the author will focus on teacher educators’ sources and detractors of hope, and how teacher educators draw upon their sources of hope.

Author

• Melissa B. Rivers, South Ridge High School