Bec Buchanan

Bec approaches education as a creative, embodied, and relational practice, and is interested in how people learn, make meaning, and imagine new possibilities together. Her teaching and scholarship explore teacher learning and identity, educational equity and social justice, and the ways that context shapes how educators understand themselves and their work. Bec’s scholarship draws on ecological, critical, and post-structural theories alongside more holistic and nonlinear approaches to learning. Her recent work has increasingly explored creativity and arts-based methodologies as ways of opening new possibilities for reflection, sense-making, and transformation.

Before joining College of the Atlantic, Bec was an Associate Professor at the University of Maine from 2017-2026. She began her career as an elementary school teacher and literacy educator in San Jose, California, and received her PhD in Education from the University of California Santa Cruz in 2017. When she isn’t teaching, Bec is an avid runner, hiker, paddler, and knitter.

• PhD, Education, University of California Santa Cruz, 2017
• MA, Education, University of California Santa Cruz, 2014
• BA, Communications and Political Sciences, University of Alabama, 2007

• Herakova, L., Buchanan, R., Chien, M., Pelletreau, K., & Roberge, K. (2025). Syllabus unfinishing(s)/unfinished syllabus-ing as multi-sited feminist mentoring. In J. Pauly, S. Munz., & L. Hernandez (Eds.) Queer, Women of Color, and Critical Approaches to Feminist Mentorship and Pedagogy (pp. 195-215). University of Illinois Press.
• Buchanan, R., Mills, T., Edward, B., Mathieu, E., Snyder, M., Weitman, M., … & Thurman, K. (2023). Teacher leadership collaborative: boundary-crossing spaces for teacher empowerment. Professional Development in Education, 49(6), 1152-1166.
• Buchanan, R. & Clark, M. (2023). Beyond Critical Reflection: Breaking Old Habits and Shifting Pedagogical Values. In A. Cameron-Standerford, B. Bergh, & C. Edge (Eds.), Pausing at the Threshold. Equity Press. https://equitypress.org/pausing_at_the_thres/DJijUyjw
• Mills, T., Buchanan, R., & Roberge, K. (2023). Ungrading: A Collaborative Self-Study Into the Intersection of Vulnerability and Assessment Practices. In A. Cameron-Standerford, B. Bergh, & C. Edge (Eds.), Pausing at the Threshold. Equity Press. https://equitypress.org/pausing_at_the_thres/PzuesiNw
• Buchanan, R. & Mooney, E. (2022). Unpacking moments of success in teacher education: Discovery of nuance through Collaborative Self-Study. Studying Teacher Education, 19(1), 5-23.
• Buchanan, R., Scott, J. A., Pease-Alvarez, L., & Clark, M. (2022). Common ground is not enough: The situated and dynamic process of collaboration in a multiagency teacher professional development project. Teaching and Teacher Education, 117, 103764.
• Buchanan, R., Herakova, L., Hakkola, L., & Ruben, M. (2022). Breathing in, breathing out: the structure of conversational sense-making around equity in higher education teaching. Teaching in Higher Education, 29(4), 876–895.