21st Century Teacher Educator Collectives: Cultivating Humanizing Systems for Cross-Context Collaboration

• In Event: Who's Teaching the Teachers? Teacher Educator Identity and Experiences

Abstract

Like other educators, COVID-19 forced us to grapple with radical changes in our teaching as we transitioned to virtual learning in the fall of 2020. As relational pedagogues, we saw the changes precipitated by COVID-19 as both a challenge and an opportunity to translate our practices for an online space. Acknowledging the difficulty of engaging in humanizing pedagogies that teach, theorize, and promote educational equity in a virtual learning environment, we designed a study to reinforce, support, and enhance our equitable educational commitments. In this paper, we share three core components of our process of engaging as a teacher educator collective that enriched and honored our full humanity through structured flexibility, generative vulnerability, and action-oriented accountability.

Authors

• Megan McDonald Van Deventer, Weber State University

• Sara K. Sterner, Humboldt State University

• Laura Lemanski, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities