Being in Community with Communities: A Reimagined Model of Teacher Education

• In Event: Teaching and Learning in Community

Abstract

As teacher-educators committed personally and professionally to true community-engaged scholarship, we have reflected on our individual and shared commitments to community engagement, racial justice, and educational equity in our work. Because we (humbly) discovered that we did not always live up to our commitments like we thought we were, we collaborated with a community-engagement scholar, local principal, and community elder to (re)imagine an equity-based and community-centered model for teacher education. Utilizing a transformative learning theoretical framework (Sykes, 2014) and drawing upon bell hook’s (1994) understanding of theory as liberatory practice, we recognize the process of theorizing as a way to “imagine possible futures” (p. 61). This paper argues for the need to activate our social imagination and collectively build a reimagined model of teacher education alongside community partners, preparing our teacher-candidates to truly be in community with the communities they are working with.

Authors

• Jennifer Doyle, University of Kentucky

• Toni Williams, University of South Carolina

• Theresa Michelle Harrison, University of South Carolina