Tag Archives: constructivism

Creating Collaborative Relationships of Power in Literacy Teaching-Learning

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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.