What Happens in Vegas Doesn’t Always Stay in Vegas: Negotiating the Curriculum Leads to Agency and Change

Through a self-study methodology, six doctoral students and a professor examine how our semester long doctoral level class became a transformative space for all participants. We investigate how each individual was able to participate in the construction of a powerful and meaningful learning community, which led to a re-visioning of ourselves as women and teacher educators. Feminist pedagogy and positioning theory provide a guiding framework for both the class and our own reflective research. Our findings include, but are not limited to, showing how negotiating the curriculum led to a doctoral class becoming a safe space and how this negotiation led to transferring democratic practices to our teaching and the tensions associated with that. This work contributes to the field of teacher education as it focuses on the importance of fostering classroom and school cultures where knowledge production is facilitated through democratized practices. Our study highlights the value of creating a learning community where all members, both students and teacher, share power, privilege, and voice. It is in these types of positive educational environments that true meaning making and change can occur.