What Is Missing In Our Teacher Education Practices: A Collaborative Self-Study Of Teacher Educators With Children During The Covid-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT This self-study explores the experiences and challenges that we as mothers of young children and teacher educators have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. While describing what our children experienced through remote learning and how we tried to support their learning, we reflect on their former school experiences and our teacher education practices. To do this, we address the following two research questions: (1) What were our children’s experiences in remote learning during the pandemic?; and (2) What were our experiences as mothers and teacher educators in supporting our children’s remote learning during the pandemic? Adopting a collaborative self-study methodology, we collected stories of our experiences as mothers and teacher educators during our children’s remote learning. Our data were collected through participant observations, field notes, and artifacts that our children created, as well as learning materials received from their teachers and schools during the period. In addition, we recorded virtual conferences and wrote reflective journals. The suda approach, which was developed as a research method by the authors was used for data analysis. Originally from Korean culture, suda in simple English is ‘chatting extensively.’ It is different from small talk or chit-chat, though, as it can take a large amount of time, covering several stories in depth. The findings provide several implications for teacher education, school policy, and educational research.