Exploring the edges of collegiality: a cross-case analysis toward humanizing teachers’ connected learning

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article provides a comparative case study of two connected learning experiences in teacher education that vary in scope, participants, time, and design to consider the questions: 1) What characterizes humanizing engagement across varied experiences of connected learning in teacher education? and 2) What repertoires of practice become shared through discourses of collegiality in educators’ connected learning experiences? Back-tracing from educators’ written reflections to their digitally networked activity in Twitter chats, processual case analysis involved rounds of inductive coding and exploratory data visualization. We identified repertoires of practice across three continua of preservice and inservice educators’ practices–sharing, care, and experimentation–which together characterize a range of more and less humanizing discourses of collegiality. Participants in both cases reflected on experiences across the spectrum of each continua, highlighting the limits of these connected learning designs in fostering humanizing learning experience in teacher education. We provide implications for teacher educators regarding fostering more critical and reflexive humanizing connected learning in teacher education as well as for the design of such experiences.