"Figuring Out My End Game": Supporting Novice Teachers' Agency and Identity Development in "Safe Spaces"

• In Event: Teachers' Identities: Intersections Between Content, Self, and Professional Roles

Abstract

Responding to this year’s call to accept educational responsibility by “unit[ing] with practitioners,” this participatory design project explores how teacher induction can be humanized for early career teachers (ECTs) of multilingual youth by bringing ECTs together in what they identify as “safe spaces” with other practitioners. Specifically, we explore how the particular needs and strengths of ECTs are bolstered when they are part of a supportive collective, using prior work on teacher identity development and teacher agency as the lens through which to consider teachers’ growth. Better understanding how to offer such opportunities for ECTs has implications for their satisfaction, well-being, success, and retention, which affect possibilities for enacting humanizing pedagogy with their students.

Authors

• Megan Madigan Peercy, University of Maryland - College Park

• Danielle Gervais Sodani, American University