Working toward equity and engagement in an online course for future K-12 teachers

ABSTRACT

In a multi-ethnography, three teacher educators explore how they intentionally enhanced equity in their online course for teacher candidates (TCs) learning to support English learners from K to 12 during the shift to virtual classrooms due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings suggest that using various digital apps and various multimodal creations was a powerful way to increase engagement and afford TCs experience with equitable practices in their learning. Taking part in this course allowed TCs to imagine ways to make their work with K-12 English learners more equitable. Making ourselves vulnerable as teacher educators had the most powerful impact on teacher-learners as we unpacked our own experiences with oppression and discrimination during the COVID-19 crisis. We address our experiences using the Racial Literacy Development Model (Sealey-Ruiz, 2020) as a lens. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021. All rights reserved.