Modeling Vulnerability in the Preparation of Teacher Educators

• In Event: 47.047 - Examining the Role of Teacher Education as Identity-Forming Site: Democratizing Our Work as Teacher Educators

Abstract

Objectives
In recent years, scholars have called for more attention to the preparation of teacher educators, noting that teacher educators’ preparation should include formal, organized study that cultivates teaching skills or pedagogies relating to teacher educating (Goodwin et al., 2014; Lunenberg, 2002; Zeichner, 2005). In this paper, the author considers a doctoral course focused on the pedagogy of teacher education and how this course shaped novice teacher educators’ learning and practice. In particular, this paper explores the value of modeling vulnerability to novice teacher educators preparing for critical, justice-oriented teacher education, drawing on empirical data as well as literature on vulnerability in teaching and teacher education.

Theoretical framework
The doctoral course considered here emphasized helping novice teacher educators learn both conceptual and practical tools (Grossman et al., 1999) for the pedagogy of teacher education, centered around a vision of modeling compassionate, critical, justice-oriented teacher education practice (Author, 2008). This vision brings together Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s (1987, 1993) notions of compassion, bell hooks’ (1994, 2003) feminist perspectives on teaching relationships, modeling as pedagogy (Loughran & Berry, 2005; Lunenberg, Korthagen, & Swennen, 2007), and McDonald and Zeichner’s (2009) conception of justice-oriented teacher education.

Methods and data sources
This paper draws on empirical data from a small case study in conjunction with a conceptual analysis of the research literature on the role of vulnerability in teaching and teacher education. The empirical data includes surveys, interviews, observations of classroom practice, and document collection (e.g., sample assignments) from four novice teacher educators five years after they participated in a doctoral course focused on the pedagogy of teacher education that the author taught. The goal of examining the data was to gain insight into novice teacher educators’ course learning and subsequent teacher education practice as it related to justice-oriented aims. For this paper, a portion of this empirical data has been examined in light of an analysis of existing research on the role of vulnerability in teaching and teacher education.

Results and significance
The empirical data indicated that the novice teacher educators learned a range of conceptual and practical tools that the instructor deliberately built into the doctoral course. Simultaneously, the data revealed that the author’s willingness as an instructor to model pedagogical risk-taking and vulnerability—a practice that was not a deliberate course goal—was also salient. The novice teacher educators noted that they appreciated the instructor sharing “insecurities about [using] certain pedagogies” and found it powerful when the instructor modeled a practice unsuccessfully and reflected on it out loud with the class. These empirical findings resonate with the growing research literature on the value of modeling vulnerability and risk-taking in teaching and teacher education (cf., Allen & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2004; Authors, 2016; Berry & Russell, 2016; Dale & Frye, 2009; hooks, 2003).
This paper offers insights into the potential value of modeling vulnerability among novice teacher educators and suggests that modeling vulnerability may be an important conceptual and practical tool to add to the repertoire of pedagogies for preparing justice-oriented teacher educators.

Author

• Hilary Gehlbach Conklin, DePaul University