Confronting the Falsehoods of Teacher Education: Hacking Our Own Practice

• In Event: 35.042 - "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing": Narratives of Teacher Educators Transforming Practices for Social Justice

Abstract

Objectives
The purpose of this paper is to present an experience of collective critical inquiry and transformation in teacher education resulting from an immersive professional development project. We, as four teacher educators, committed to a year-long critical inquiry into our own pedagogies and practices. We identified falsehoods within our individual practices – what we had come to believe – and sought to trouble our own routine practices. This paper presents the story of how we supported one another in the systematic re-thinking and hacking of our teacher education coursework.

Theoretical Framework
We drew from Baker-Doyle’s (2017) theoretical framework of the ‘hacker ethos’. While the term ‘hacking’ sometimes refers to malicious computer programmers, Baker-Doyle described it as the creative and collaborative transformation of a system using critical understandings of power structures and vulnerabilities. Baker-Doyle noted that hackers develop and use ‘agentive tools’ to facilitate collaboration. In our instance, the systems we sought to hack were the dominant narratives guiding our syllabi, and the agentive tools we built were the avenues through which we offered critical support to each other.

Methods and Data Sources
Beginning with eight days together in an immersive professional development context, we initiated the use of self-study methodology (Loughran, Hamilton, LaBoskey, & Russell, 2004; Loughran, 2007; Dinkelman, 2003; Samaras, 2002) to research our individual and collective pedagogies to 1) “illuminate” (Bullough & Pinegar, 2001, p. 20) and 2) hack the taken-for-granted practices in our work as teacher educators. In both phases, our data sources included our course syllabi (past and revised), related course artifacts (e.g. course assignments and activities) and instructor reflections.

We analyzed our data at the individual case level and then across cases, recognizing the significance of building collaborative knowledge of teacher education across diverse sites (Zeichner, 2007). Using narrative analysis, we examined the stories we articulated through and in our teaching artifacts. We first discerned the dominant narratives that guided our teaching. Resulting findings led to hacking our practices. We then conducted similar analysis to determine narrative shifts. In what ways did hacking our pedagogies change our shared narratives of teacher education?

Results
Within the immersive professional development context, our relationships with one another transformed from strangers to collaborators and critical friends. That relational transformation was accompanied by commensurate transformations in our thinking about our teacher education practices. We committed to hacking our most entrenched and unexamined pedagogies, curricula, and guiding frameworks; making explicit and collective efforts to reveal falsehoods, fragmentations, and treasures in our teaching routines. This work began with changes to our syllabi, and continued in our teaching and ongoing co-reflective efforts.

Significance
Our work presents experiences of collaborative critical inquiry as a means to surface and transform educational discourses of domination. Our study is illustrative of the transformation that can occur in practice when teacher educators collectively seek to hack dominant narratives. Reaching beyond the significance for the individuals involved, Dinkleman (2003) reminds us that teacher educators involved in critical reflective practice create understandings that can inform teacher education programs.

Authors

• Kristin Reimer, Monash University

• Jocelyn A. Glazier, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Kira J. Baker-Doyle, Arcadia University

• Carey E. Andrzejewski, Auburn University