Research Symposium

BIO

Hi, my name is Caroline Glock. I am a biological science major on a pre-med track. I am a second year student at Florida State University. I have a passion for medicine, biology, and chemistry. I am part of FSU Medical Response Unit and a proud UROP leader. I love learning and being introduced to new knowledge. I am a very dedicated and compassionate person, who hopes to become a physician.

Exploring Preservice STEM Teachers' Vulnerability

Abstract

Teaching is a relational act, and authentic relationships (rooted in honesty, vulnerability, trust) are important in K-12 classrooms (Noddings, 1988; Suárez & Krist, 2023); however, building such relationships is not straightforward for preservice science teachers (PSTs). Our hope is that providing PSTs with opportunities to engage in vulnerability and relationship-building in their own teacher preparation courses can develop a sense of comfort with relationality in their future classrooms. Such relationality goes beyond simply striving to build positive relationships; rather, it’s about learning and growing alongside one another in connected, interdependent, contextually-situated ways (Suárez & Krist, 2023). These relational stances can play out in micro-level interactions, in which they can express vulnerabilities (Krist, 2024). We are interested in how PSTs express and respond to vulnerability in these micro-level interactions as bids toward relationality. Toward this end, in this study we use multimodal discourse analysis to name and describe PSTs’ efforts toward relationality by exploring how they vulnerably engaged with one another during a conversation about teacher expectations and racial biases in a learning theory course. This effort could support teacher educators to notice and cultivate these efforts toward relationality in their teacher preparation courses.

Keywords: STEM preservice teachers vulnerability