Virtual Exchange: A Medium for Building Sustaining Faculty Development Partnerships

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Co-Constructing Spaces for Reimagining Learning in Glocal Partnerships for Teacher Development

Proposal

“There is a potential, but no guarantee, that an encounter with what is unfamiliar or unknown will arouse your interest because, at the same time, it places you at risk in terms of your own self-identity and habits (Wahlström, 2016, 36)

Our shifting global context demands that teachers be prepared to be culturally, linguistically, and pedagogically competent to create equitable and inclusive learning environments for all students (Cushner et al., 2019; Goren & Yemini, 2017). Experiential learning through intercultural virtual exchange is one approach to meet this teacher education demand (Arndt et al., 2021; Helm, 2013). Virtual exchange “engage[s] groups of learners in extended periods of online intercultural interaction and collaboration with partners from other cultural contexts or geographical locations as an integrated part of their educational programmes and under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators” (O’Dowd, 2018 p. 5). In such facilitated global partnerships individuals may acquire skills in effective communication, critical thinking and problem-solving necessary to address issues of equity worldwide (Andreotti, 2014; Byker, 2016). Cultivating such global values and competencies depends heavily on how teaching is designed and implemented (Tichnor-Wagner et al., 2019). Yet, virtual exchange is a new pedagogical approach for many teacher educators and necessitates a willingness to learn in a technological, transnational context.

This research extends prior work on virtual exchange with its emphasis on faculty development. Specifically, it addresses the question of how participating in virtual exchange partnerships affords teacher educators an affirming and sustaining learning space for on-going and collaborative professional development to support their critical global learning? Using Kerkhoff and Cloud’s (2020) model of teaching for global readiness as a theoretical framework, the study examines the shifts in faculty’s understanding of their teaching and their partnership. Data derived from a self-study (Loughran, 2007) of five semesters of virtual exchange in undergraduate US teacher education classes (2018-2021) with three different faculty partners (from Morocco, Italy and Japan). Findings related to faculty development are organized around Cobb and Sharma (2015) three-steps of co-teaching: (1) co-planning, (2) co-facilitating, and (3) co-assessing and co-reflecting. When co-planning faculty regularly revisited their common learning objectives and how content was situated in each local and global contexts. Faculty’s approaches to a) facilitating synchronous and asynchronous communication evolved to engage all participants in an inclusive and linguistically affirming manner and b) working together authentically to design learning address global challenges. In building their working relationship, faculty attended to establishing habits of reflexivity personally and together as co-teachers to critically understand the pedagogy of virtual exchange and their roles in the partnership (Brookfield, 2017, Radford Arrow, 2020). Moving beyond the logistics of how to facilitate a virtual exchange into how to grow as a critical reflective practitioner allowed partnerships to sustain within and across semesters in ways that allowed faculty to take risks when encountering the unfamiliar and the unknown (Wahlström, 2016). Implications for virtual exchange as a means of faculty development will be discussed in relation to mutual mentoring and co-teaching (Cordie, Brecke, Lin & Wooten, 2020).

Author

• Laura Boynton Hauerwas, Providence College