#67: Beyond “Across Time and Settings”: Situating Teacher Learning in the Multiple Rhythms of Teacher Learning Ecologies

In this conceptual paper, we consider how the multiple rhythms of teacher learning ecologies shape the ways teachers experience change, portraying a framework for understanding teacher professional learning with its multiscale complexity. In earlier work, we used the idea of adaptive cycles (Gunderson & Holling, 2002) to conceptualize the temporal dimension of teacher learning. We take that work further by extending our prior single-adaptive-cycle lens into a multiscale view (sometimes called Panarchy). We illustrate this idea with three studies: experienced teachers in video-based professional development, pre-service teachers’ learning between university settings, and teachers in provisional schools for displaced students. We show how teacher learning in all cases was influenced by interwoven rhythms. We argue that teacher educators and researchers can better develop their responsiveness to teacher learning when they pay attention to these multilayered temporalities, beyond more typical linear models or additive notions of learning across time and contexts.