thesisthoughts

This book describes another example of university-school collaboration project aimed at teacher learning.

A unique feature here is that the teachers determined the direction of inquiry and not the academic researchers.

The term collaborative here is used to describe the way the teacher researchers learned to work with the uni researchers AND how they learned to involve their students more in their whole language classrooms.

The authors discuss the production of knowledge about teaching and quote Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993, who explain that often knowledge about teaching is formulated in academic frameworks and then transmitted to teachers.

Pappas and Zecker also cite Gitlin (1990) who points out that most in most educational research, issues studied are almost never initiated by teachers. This balance of power in research implies that teachers have nothing to contribute from their professional knowledge.

“Teacher research promotes a new, distinctive way of knowledge of teaching because it privileges teachers as those with the authority to know about teaching” (p. 4).  

“Showing and talking about particular features of their teaching that were working well gave the teachers feelings of accomplishment and demonstrated strategies that others might try… On the other hand, airing difficulties or vulnerabilities in inquiries afforded opportunities to obtain new ideas or directions to consider” (p. 6).

The theory that all humans construct knowledge through social interactions = “socioconstructivist perspective on literacy” (p. 7).

• Wells, 1994b
• Wells & Chang-Wells, 1992

Vygotsky – 1962, 1978

• Gutierrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995
• Moll, 1990
• Newman, Griffin, & Cole, 1989
• Wells, 1994a, 1994b, 1998
• Wertsch, 1985, 1989, 1991

Pappas, C. C., & Zecker, L. B. (2001). Introduction: Creating collaborative relations of power in literacy teaching-learning. In C. C. Pappas, & L. B. Zecker (Eds.), Teacher inquiries in literacy teaching-learning: Learning to collaborate in elementary urban classrooms (pp. 1-13). Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum Associates.

In this letter to the new president of the US, Lieberman and Pointer Mace call for a move from traditional PD for teachers to a model of PD based on the collaborative learning  from teacher experience and knowledge. The authors explain that “Teachers work in isolation and only rarely have a chance to observe their colleagues or talk about their teaching work” (p. 226).

“But professional development, though well intentioned, is often perceived by teachers as fragmented, disconnected, and irrelevant to the real problems of classroom practice” (p. 226).

The authors claim that traditional top down forms of PD do not recognize the particular needs of classes, the teacher’s own knowledge and that there are varied ways of achieving successful learning in schools. (p. 227).

“Instead of creating the conditions for teachers to teach each other, support their peers, and deepen their knowledge about their students, teachers are being given a “one size fits all” set of professional development workshops that deny the variability of how teachers teach, and how they and their students learn” (p. 227). 

The article also explains the social aspect of learning, that people learn through interaction with others. “They learn through practice (learning as doing), through meaning (learning as intentional), through community (learning as participating and being with others), and through identity ( learning as changing who we are). Professional learning so constructed is rooted in the human need to feel a sense of belonging and of making a contribution to a community where experience and knowledge function as part of community property. Teachers’ professional development should be refocused on the building of learning communities” (p. 227).

  The NWP is quoted as a successful model of PD through teacher collaboration (of course the teacher as writer is also involved here).

Another example is the networked communities in the UK (studied by Jackson, 2006; Jackson & Temperley, 2007). “The school networks helped to create practitioner knowledge (from teachers’ experience), public knowledge (from research and theory), and new knowledge (from what was created together). (p. 229).

“These networks of teachers from different schools managed to raise achievement for students, taught the participants how to work collaboratively linked yo “rigorous and challenging joint work”, and managed to build trust in helping make teaching public as they developed and distributed leadership among the teachers (Earl, Katz, et al., 2006)” (p. 229). 

 See: Networked Communities

http://www.ncsl.org.uk/networked/networked-leo-search.cfm

http://www.nlcexchange.org.uk

Gallery of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

http://gallery.carnegiefoundation.org

 ”Living archive” of teaching practice

http://gallery.carnegiefoundation.org/insideteaching/

“The teacher communities described here exhibit the best we know so far about effective professional development. They focus on instruction; are sustained and continuous, rather than short term and episodic; provide opportunities for teachers to lern from one another both inside and outside the school; make it possible for teachers to influence how and what they learn; and engage teachers in thinking about what they need to know (Hawley & Valli, 2007)” (p. 233).

 Lieberman, A., & Pointer Mace, D. H. (2008). Teacher learning: The key to educational reform. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(3), 226-234. Retrieved from http://jte.sagepub.com  

 Information from the Israeli Macam center

Why didn’t I listen to Vygotsky before I embarked on this isolated study venture?

I am finding it difficult talking to myself about all of this all the time -  The brilliant Russian psychologist knew that I would needs heaps of significant social dialogue in order to finish this thesis (and this degree)successfully. Why wasn’t I paying attention?  

Image from: http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/2000/scheepers_md/images/vygotsky.jpg

 The work of this group of teachers is based on the premise that “inquiry is central to the work of teaching, that it requires community, and that communities of practice can take  a myriad of forms” (p. 596). These teachers have formed a community of learning, despite the geographical distance between them.

An interesting point made is that the teachers searched for this kind of professional support group despite the fact that they were seasoned teachers. They mention feeling disappointed and secluded in their classrooms.

The authors, teacher educators, are concerned with two problems:

1. Teachers are expected to teach “in dialogic ways” but have never been taught anything in this manner.
2. They “rarely have the opportunity to experience sustained exploration of a complex idea, let alone through dialogic practices” (p. 598).

The authors cite Gavalek and Raphael (1996) who described learning as “as a complex, iterative process of social engagement, reflection, and transformation” (p. 602).

The authors argue that teachers are detached from their colleagues in their work and that their professional lives are dictated by others. “Missing from the lives of teachers is the opportunity to articulate and investigate with others the means for improving our practice and the learning of those with whom we work.” (p. 606). Learning communities are suggested as an appropriate solution.

The authors base these understandings on the theories of learning suggested by Vygotsky (1978). “Individuals learn, but that learning begins, and is based in, social activity or the social plane. This social plane is reflected in the public and shared discourse of the teacher study groups as ideas are appropriated and transformed” (p. 606).

The work of Swales (1990) and Gee (1992), also helped the authors understand the significance of social communication. “Knowledge of the language practices within a discourse community provides access to that community and defines who the community members are. Language is a key factor in the development of our identities-as professionals, as educators, as literacy educators, and as teacher researchers.

Understanding the importance of the discourse community helps us to create opportunities for access and opportunities to harness the power of conversation to move beyond the immediate setting and effect important changes in practice” (p. 606).

I like the balanced statement appearing at the end of the article:

“Thus, while we are not naive about the historical privileging of academic research in which teachers serve as “subjects” or “informants”, we are also not sanguine about such work. We underscore teacher research as another powerful, but-like university-driven research-also limited genre for the study of education” (p. 606).

Raphael, T. E., Florio-Ruane, S., Kehus, M. J., George, M. A., Levorn Hasty, N., & Highfield, K. (2001). Thinking for ourselves: Literacy learning in a diverse teacher inquiry network. The Reading Teacher, 54(6), 596-607.

Found this map on the “leadingfromtheheart” blog:

http://leadingfromtheheart.org/2008/03/31/constructivism-mind-map/

The content of this mind map is taken directly from Marcy Driscoll’s map, found on p. 384 of Psychology of learning for Instruction (2005).