More about the conference…

idea

Dr Noga Hermon discussed the use of cognitive mapping to represent “ideational knowledge” visually. Although her paper discussed mathematics education, I was reminded of the use of mapping and I have been playing around with ideas how to include it in my work with teachers. A map of “ideational knowledge” is similar to a semantic map but uses 13-16 concepts which were carefully chosen ahead of time. A sentence must join two concepts, not a single word. In Dr Hermon’s research, the map is created in the framework of a closed interview. The map portrays far more knowledge on each concept than pure definitions.

Dr Leah Shagrir of Levinsky discussed the importance and contribution of self study in teacher education. She discussed the use of autoethnographic research methods.

I enjoyed the comparison made between the portrait painted in oil paints by the artist and the self portrait portrayed by the qualitative researcher. The artist produces a peice which can be significant for others. An artist will produce different self portraits at different times  – he or she sees himself differently at different crossroads. The portrait is an interpretation, the figure is created differently each time.

The researcher should be aware of the reader and what he or she can learn from the text. There should be space for the reader to bring his or her own experience to the reading. The researcher should remember that it is not only his or her text, it is the story of all those involved.

An interesting point stressed was that teacher education should be seen as a profession and that the teacher educator must therefore be an expert. He or she must possess excellent teaching skills as there must be an additional level, one of modelling teaching and reflection. This is of course in contrast with lecturers in other fields.

In the same session on self study in teacher education, the paper which captured my attention most was presented by Dr Rina Brenner, of The Kibbutzim College of Education. This paper was about encouraging personal growth through written response.

Dr Brenner pointed out that today many people think of “response” as a quick reply in a chat or blog. Brenner discussed the written responses she shares with her students as a teacher educator and researcher. Her study examines her own teaching practice, in particular the written responses to student writing in online reading logs. 

Questions Brenner asks herself are similar to the questions I pose when examining my own role in the online campus when teachers post their teacher narratives: In which role am I writing these remarks? As a lecturer? a teacher? a researcher?

An article by Robinson & MacMillan, 2006 was cited here. I found: The ethnography of empowerment : the transformative power of classroom interaction/ Heljä Antola Robinsonin the Monash Library and another article on the web about Professional Development.

Brenner instructs her 3rd year students to choose a childrens’ book, read it and respond periodically in an online reading log. This task is similar to the reading logs I used to run with my primary students. Each student writes 6-8 chapters in the reading log. Each chapter is responded to by Dr Brenner and often there is a chain discussion as a result.

Brenner makes a distinction  betweeen  feedback and response. Feedback is seen as an organisational tool which reflects a pedagogic dialogue according to specific professional  conventions. This feedback is aimed at strengthening or improving specific teaching practices. A response is different, it echoes and answers a particular text and its ideas. The response has no predetermined goals, it is a journey, a search. The response is viewed as an teaching practice which stimulates learning. This is a text which is directed at a specific reader.

An intimate circle of participants is formed.  Brenner describes several circles: the inner circle, the interpersonal circle (dialogue), the group circle and the public circle (publishing the research).

I was surprised to realize how close Dr Brenner’s work with these students is to my work with in service teachers. The way I respond to teacher narratives on the virtual campus, in a closed online environment is very similar. As I always try to do, Brenner looks for “what there IS” in a text and not what is missing or problematic. There is a constant search for what touched me in a student’s writing which will help me touch someone else. Brenner opens her response with a personal greeting, a description of how she read the text, in what context, a reflection of the topics covered in the chapter,  and discussion on one of the issues raised. The text ends personally. The response often involves personal memories, aspects Brenner especially likes and points to opportunities which arise from the text.

There are three aspects covered here: cognitive, emotional and dialogic. The response reflects, represents , reinforces and empowers everything the text brings with it. This written dialogue is a process of building interpersonal relationships.

I spoke to Dr Brenner after the session and will continue my discussion with her by email – I feel that we are doing similar work and that I have a lot to learn from her. In general, I came away from the conference with a feeling of community, that there are indeed researchers in Israel doing the kind of research I am, people who can understand my work and even be partners in professional dialogue.

RF pic:  http://www.images.com/

Incredible Teacher Narrative

The course at Z is going extremely well. I feel as though the 26 teachers participating are involved and eager to try to change things in their writing instruction and that many are thinking about their own learning and really taking ideas and thoughts back to their classrooms.

Last week we had a virtual session and the task I gave was to write a professional narrative connected to the teaching of writing and/or writing with students. Beforehand we discussed the rational of the task and I even brought an example from last year’s group. Many of the participants in this group are not too computer confident and I was worried that they wouldn’t manage finding the virtual campus, posting their stories and responding to others. All in all my worries were unwarranted and most of the teachers wrote and posted narratives. At the moment they are reading and responding to other stories.

The night before this week’s session, I was busy collecting the stories (for future use…) and responding. I respond to each and every narrative and try to be involved in the responses too. Many of my responses at this stage are questions which will help in the revision process to come.

One story made my heart race and brought tears to my eyes. I read it again and again before I wrote a detailed response. Immediately I wrote an email to the teacher author and asked her permission to bring her narrative to the group session. She readily agreed.

O wrote that at our last session she wasn’t able to concentrate – not in my lecture, not on the PowerPoint presentation that went with it and not on the workshop we did together. She said that concentrating on the writing process wasn’t possible for her. O told that that morning she had been on a hike with her class and that at one stage an eight year old boy fell off a cliff. He was extremely lucky that he wasn’t killed and that he was only injured fairly lightly. She told of her experience, of the phone call from the principal telling her that the incident was already reported on the Internet, of the terror, the helplessness and the frustration of not being able to protect her student.

O went home after our session and didn’t sleep all night. She was terrified of walking into the classroom the next morning and facing this reality. The injured child was in hospital and she had a whole classroom of traumatized children to deal with. After hours of deliberation, O remembered what we had been talking about in the course session and decided, at 4 am when she finally got out of bed, to devote the day to writing with her pupils. She decided to spend the day writing with her students to different audiences with different goals.

Lacking confidence, O entered the classroom and after a brief discussion, explained to the pupils what they could do. Some wrote to their injured friend in hospital, some wrote to the people responsible for the hiking trail, some wrote thank you letters to the parents who helped on the hike and helped deal with the complex situation and some wrote rules for behavior on trips outside school. During the writing time, O was free to move between the pupils and talk privately to each and every one of them. She could hear how they were coping and how they were feeling.

The pupils wrote and wrote. O was surprised that even her weakest students, those that usually refrain from writing, were creating important texts. She wrote that she sensed that the act of writing was helping these children process the experience and regain confidence and control. She admitted that the classroom interactions, the writing and the activity helped her regain her self confidence as a teacher. The pupils were so involved in this process that they asked to continue the next day, they had discovered that they enjoyed writing for real purposes and for real audiences. They had experienced writing as a means of sincere self expression.

A few days later O decided to tell this story as her narrative about writing. She told her story bravely and as a result received a lot of positive and supportive feedback from the other teachers. This event has changed the way O sees writing instruction and has changed the way many of her pupils view writing tasks.

One of the questions I asked O was whether she had told her principal about the way she decided to cope in the classroom. She replied that she hadn’t . I suggested she show the principal (if not all the other staff) her narrative – they can all learn from it as we did in the group.

Since reading  O’s story she is with me all the time. I am thinking about her terrifying experience, about her coming to my course after such a traumatic event and not telling anyone and about how she used writing to help her students recover.

Apart from receiving a lot of satisfaction that the materials we discuss in the course are making a real difference in the professional lives of teachers and their pupils, I was excited to see the process of writing itself encouraging the creation of new texts. O described how the writing done by her pupils encouraged her and stimulated her to write and I told her that her narrative had stimulated me to write a narrative of my own. I have no doubt that the writing of many teachers in the course will be enriched by the sharing of O’s story.

In a reflective discussion in her classroom, O told her pupils that she too had written a story after the traumatic event. Her pupils were very curious to hear that their teacher enjoyed the benefits of  writing too.

I still have a lot of thinking to do about the links between O’s story and the learning in our course and about professional narratives being links in a chain, a chain which strengthens and supports both writers and readers.

I am waiting to read the responses on the online forum, to see O’s text revised and to see the influence of O’s story on other narratives being created by teachers in the group.

amud

The location of the hike.

Picture: http://tiyulim.blogspot.com/2007/10/blog-post_19.html

15 Minutes Freewriting – An Idea from Borko

“… To foster such discussions, professional development leaders must help teachers to establish trust, develop communication norms that enable critical dialogue, and maintain a balance between respecting individual community members and critically analyzing issues in their teaching (Frykholm, 1998; Seago, 2004).  

This week I ran a workshop for my group at K. I was pleasantly surprised beforehand that so many of the participants did writing activities in their classrooms and sent me examples of student texts.

After thanking those that made the effort to send me material for the workshop, I explained that our aim is to learn from the students’ writing and to experience examining texts looking through “positive glasses” and not through the “groan, spelling mistake, terrible writing…” glasses. Our aim was to look at what the students KNOW about writing, rather than point out heir problems. I asked the teachers to treat the work of their colleagues with sensitivity and respect.

The workshop wasn’t bad and I had plenty of positive feedback from the participants but after reading the article by Borko, yesterday, I understood something that is starkly missing in the course – a real feeling of being a learning community. I can’t really blame the size of the group or the participants because in N the same situation exists (though less so).

I must spend a lot of time and energy at the beginning of the course forming a group, gaining trust from the teachers, hearing far more from them about what happens in their classrooms. I must also think hard to determine ways that the online section of the course (which incidentally has more discussion between the teachers themselves on their practice – through the use of teaching narratives) can help foster trust and security within the group.

I am worried that one of the teachers felt badly about the way questions were asked and the way others saw the work of her students. I have made a note to talk to her. I read here yesterday that if teachers come to a course sure that their practice is perfect, no learning will take place. It is my responsibility to help those teachers on their road to questioning and learning.

I used to give one teacher 15 minutes or so of each meeting to present something she does in her classroom. This was always popular with the participants but the time given was really was only to share ideas. I never dared use the time for the teacher to raise dilemmas or share difficulties or for the participants and I to critically evaluate the ideas or practices for the benefit of everyone’s learning.

This is an area which definitely deserves more thought and discussion.

That’s it for now…

Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain [Electronic version]. Educational Researcher, 33(3), 3-15.