Together a Catalyst: Learning From Our Co-Creative Arts-Based Inquiry About Our Teacher Selves During the Transition to Online Teaching

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated many adjustments to everyday teaching at higher education institutions. While face-to-face lectures were the preferred teaching method of teacher educators prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to online teaching was heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper draws attention to the shifts we transitioned to as teacher educators teaching and researching via online platforms-specifically Zoom—in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explored how three teacher educators used co-creative arts-based inquiry to deepen their understanding of their shifting teacher ‘selves’ as online users. Object-inspired narratives and poetic inquiry were employed to co-flexively engage with our shifting teaching experiences and question our feelings of discomfort teaching online. Framed conceptually by an ethics of care and collaborative-creativity, we discuss the tensions and possibilities we experienced, and shared through our scholarly online conversations via Zoom to think through the shifts in our teacher selves and teaching. We highlight our online teaching experiences amidst the uncertainty and disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. We then share the methodological insight of collaborative arts-based inquiry and how it facilitated reflexive dialogues and deep conversations that ignited self-learning and collective insights into the potential and possibilities of online teaching. Findings highlighted that co-creative, online engagement enabled sharing of emotional experiences and offered possibilities for transforming teacher selves. In addition, co-creative, online engagement enabled the cultivation of relational scholarly thinking. The article highlights the methodological insight of co-creative arts-based research in productively disrupting instrumental university discourse of online teaching.