Walking the Talk: Engendering a “Community of Teachers” in an Educator Preparation Program in the Southern United States

Abstract

In this article, the Education Studies Department (ESD) at Berea College shares lessons learned while becoming an inclusive, justice-focused, and democratic Education Preparation Program (EPP) together with its “Community of Teachers” (CoT). ESD values diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI+B) and democratic relationships. These values influence how we do our work. We begin by sharing how the theoretical framework of Community of Practice (CoP) frames our case study. After explaining how a CoP applies to ESD’s approach to educator preparation, we give an overview of Berea College. We share some of its history and its eight Great Commitments. We detail how ESD is a unique EPP compared with other more traditional EPPs. Next, we chronicle the story of how ESD “walks its talk” and invests in the teacher profession. We detail the participants of the case study, outline our methodology of the case study, and share the data we analyzed for this article. Data were analyzed and three emergent themes were discovered about the praxis of ESD: (a) community-engaged and justice-focused teacher preparation, (b) community building within teacher preparation programs, and (c) diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. The article concludes by sharing implications for EPPs and a conclusion.