Shifting from Individualism to Community Collaboration: Advancing Humanizing School Ecosystems through Emergent Strategies in Educatio

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Saturday 11:45 am
  In Poster Session: Foundations of Teaching and Teacher Education for Socio-Cultural, Racial, and Intersecting Minoritized Identities

Abstract

Ecological theories help us to understand schools as systems and to analyze how contexts influence how young people develop and navigate these systems. Despite teacher quality being consequential to student learning and development, there’s been less attention to the interdependence of teaching and learning within school ecologies, particularly within schools serving Black, Brown and Indigenous learners. Increased attention to teacher well-being has become even more critical as teachers continue to leave the profession due to dehumanization and deprofessionalization. We draw upon findings from our yearlong qualitative study of humanizing professional learning, nuanced through Indigenous notions of well-being and Black feminist perspectives of ecosystems to reconceptualize ecological frameworks that prioritize interdependence, humanization, and healthy intergenerational survival.

Authors

• Keisha McIntosh Allen, University of Maryland

• Kyla Thomas, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Sakeena Everett, University of Connecticut

• Kindel Turner Nash, Appalachian State University