Reorienting toward complexity in teacher education

Abstract

We are teacher educators committed to reorienting toward complexity in teacher education, given the multiplex terrain of the education landscape that awaits teacher candidates (TCs) upon receiving their Bachelor of Education degree. Within our context, we are preparing teachers to work with a recently revised curriculum and many regional, national, and global challenges and mandates, especially the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Report of Canada (2015). By encouraging the agency of the TCs–the scholar-practitioners–with whom we work, we aspire to a reflective and deliberative approach of engaging with issues, needs, and problems as caring humans. This paper traces our journey of collaborative inquiry as we revisit, reframe and repurpose influential scholarship. This involves pedagogical conceptions of experience and reflective thinking, informing the mindful complexity of being and becoming in place, while foregrounding local Indigenous Ways of Knowing and experiential learning as illustrations of a scholar-practitioner stance. Through inquiry in community, recognising the importance of drawing upon individual Teacher Candidate identity, we articulate how we learn as teacher educators to address the complex, contemporary issues of: equity, diversity, inclusion; decolonisation; education in times of crisis; and the challenges of ecological well-being.