Seeking serendipity: teacher educators as adaptive experts during COVID

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted and dismantled conventional models of teaching and learning within teacher education programmes across British Columbia, Canada. Along with the challenges encountered by teacher education programmes, these circumstances have also catalysed long-overdue changes to traditional and colonial educational structures, policies, pedagogies, and practices. Through the analysis of conversations with eight diverse teacher educators and leaders from five universities, this study investigated change and continuity within the landscapes of teacher education during the first 2 years of the pandemic, including substantive systemic changes made to institutional policies, pedagogical approaches, and professional learning models as an intentional response to the challenges brought forward by Covid-19. Informed by the scholarship on serendipity and zemblanity, we explored surprising discoveries, as well as unfortunate outcomes that resulted by design during the pandemic response. Reframing the current crisis as an opportunity to re-vision teacher education, we examine the fundamental importance of becoming adaptive experts; educators who have the capacity to respond effectively to unpredictable, complex, and ever-evolving educational environments.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher education
• COVID
• serendipity
• adaptive experts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics Approval

Prior to starting the study, ethical approval was obtained for all protocols from the Simon Fraser University Research Ethics Board-approval # 30000533

Consent

Informed written consent was obtained prior to the commencement of the study

Notes

1. Etymology of serendipity: https://www.etymonline.com/word/serendipity

2. Definition of serendipity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity