View
214
Download
0
Category
Tags:
Preview:
Citation preview
Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Lorraine Males, Michigan State University
Professional Development
2Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
• “ticket to reform” (Wilson & Berne, 1999, p. 173)
• little empirical evidence of the effects of PD on practice or on student learning (Elmore, 2002)
Professional Development
3Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
We still do not know how teachers learn from professional
development
Professional Development
4Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
• Common thread in “highly regarded” projects was the “privileging of teachers’ interaction with one another” (Wilson & Berne, 1999, p. 195).
• learning is a collaborative activity and “educators learn more powerfully in concert with others who are struggling with the same problems” (Elmore, 2002, p. 8).
• Highly regarded projects all had similar conceptions of professional development and were “aiming for the development of something akin to Lord’s (1994) ‘critical colleagueship’” (p. 195).
Research Questions
5Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Is it possible to identify aspects of critical colleagueship exhibited by mathematics teachers by observation (or listening to their talk)?
What are some of the waysthat critical colleagueship is exhibited by the teachers in this study group?
Theoretical Framework
6Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Critical Colleagueship
“For a broader transformation, collegiality will need to support a critical stance toward teaching. This means more than simply sharing ideas or supporting one’s colleagues in the change process. It means confronting traditional practice – the teacher’s own and that of his or her colleagues – with an eye toward wholesale revision” (Lord, 1994, p. 192).
Theoretical Framework
7Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Critical Colleagueship
“For a broader transformation, collegiality will need to support a critical stance toward teaching. This means more than simply sharing ideas or supporting one’s colleagues in the change process. It means confronting traditional practice – the teacher’s own and that of his or her colleagues – with an eye toward wholesale revision” (Lord, 1994, p. 192).
Critical Colleagueship
8Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Creating and sustaining productive disequilibrium through self reflection, collegial dialogue, and on-going critique.
Critical Colleagueship
9Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Creating and sustaining productive disequilibrium through self reflection, collegial dialogue, and on-going critique.
Critical Colleagueship
10Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Embracing fundamental intellectual virtues. Among these are openness to new ideas, willingness to reject weak practices or flimsy reasoning when faced with countervailing evidence and sound arguments, accepting responsibility for acquiring and using relevant information in the construction of technical arguments, willingness to seek out the best ideas or the best knowledge from within the subject-matter communities, greater reliance on organized and deliberate investigations rather than learning by accident, and assuming collective responsibility for creating a professional record of teachers' research and experimentation.
Critical Colleagueship
11Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Embracing fundamental intellectual virtues. Among these are openness to new ideas, willingness to reject weak practices or flimsy reasoning when faced with countervailing evidence and sound arguments, accepting responsibility for acquiring and using relevant information in the construction of technical arguments, willingness to seek out the best ideas or the best knowledge from within the subject-matter communities, greater reliance on organized and deliberate investigations rather than learning by accident, and assuming collective responsibility for creating a professional record of teachers' research and experimentation.
Critical Colleagueship
12Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Increasing the capacity for empathetic understanding (placing oneself in a colleague's shoes). That is, understanding a colleague's dilemma in the terms he or she understands it.
Critical Colleagueship
13Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Increasing the capacity for empathetic understanding (placing oneself in a colleague's shoes). That is, understanding a colleague's dilemma in the terms he or she understands it.
Critical Colleagueship
14Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Developing and honing the skills and attributes associated with negotiation, improved communication, and the resolution of competing interests.
Critical Colleagueship
15Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Increasing teachers' comfort with high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty, which will be regular features of teaching for understanding.
Critical Colleagueship
16Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Achieving collective generativity – "knowing how to go on" (Wittgenstein, 1958) as a goal of successful inquiry and practice.
Participants
17Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Two university researchers (one faculty member and one graduate student other than myself)
Eight middle-grades (grades 6 – 10) mathematics teacher-researchers from seven different schools in one Midwestern state who all volunteered to be part of this professional development project
Participants
18Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
TR Gr School Setting Certification Yrs Teach Curriculum
Cara 6 Rural, MS Elem 21 NSF reform
Robert 6 Urban, MS Elem 7 Trad
Stacey 7 Rural, MS Elem/MAT 17 NSF reform
Gwen 8 Urban, Title I, MS Sec 18 Trad
Kate 8 Suburban, MS Sec/MS 14 NSF reform
Holly 8 Urban, Gifted, HS Sec 9 Trad
Mike 8 Urban, MS Sec/MSM 14 Trad
Owen 10 Suburban, HS Sec/MAT 2 Trad
Context
19Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
All teachers and the university researchers engaged in a long-term NSF-funded project (PI: Herbel-Eisenmann) that involved studying teachers engaged in action research to improve middle-grades mathematics classroom discourse.
Project Timeline
20Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Baseline Data Collection
Aug. 2005 – May 2006 Aug. 2006 – May 2007
Study Group
Aug. 2007 – May 2008 Aug. 2008
Mapping & Reflecting on Personal Beliefs
Identifying & Reflecting on Performance Gaps
Pilot Study Cycles of Action Research A.R. cont…
Report onActivity Structures
& Turn Length AnalyticMemos
Phase II Phase III Phase IV Phase V
Data Analysis
21Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Transcripts from all action research meetings (19 in total) were reviewed and summarized in broad terms using codes to reflect the topic of discourse
Data Analysis
22Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Ten meetings were chosen to be analyzed•meetings came from the beginning, middle, and end of this phase
•meetings involved the teachers sharing their own work with each other
Data Analysis
23Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Each of these meetings was then:•Broken into episodes by topic or theme of the talk
These episodes where the:•broken up into question/advice blocks
Data Analysis
24Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Finally each question/advice block was coded for:• the initiator and receiver• the nature of the question/advice• aspects of critical colleagueship
Findings
25Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
First, it was possible to identify aspects of critical colleagueship by examining transcripts form these project meetings.
Findings
26Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
First, it was possible to identify aspects of critical colleagueship in the talk by reading transcripts of the meetings
Some aspects may have been more difficult than others.
Interaction Patterns
27Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Three interaction patterns emerged in the data:
• praising colleague• advising colleague• challenging colleague
Interaction Patterns
28Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Interaction Pattern
Characteristics Examples
Praising
(frequent)
Expressed praise;Involved little questioning; usually directed at the teacher-researcher presenting
“I really like…”
“… a really neat strategy”
advising
(frequent)
Offer solicited or unsolicited advice; involved little questioning;often in the form of a story about their own experience;
“One of the things I used to do…”
“Can you try….”
Interaction Patterns
29Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Interaction Pattern
Characteristics Examples
challenging
(not frequent)
Involved elaboration, probing, and challenging questions
Occurred over multiple turns
“How are you going to...”
“What do you mean….”
“So, you never actually…”
Challenging Colleague Example
30Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Gwen: When you are teaching them distance, you just taught as Pythagorean theorem. So, you never actually gave them a
problem where they did this?
Owen: Oh no, we did, there are homework problems like this.
Gwen: In class, did you show them using Pythagorean theorem to solve the problem?
Owen: Yes. That's the way we did them.
Gwen: So you couldn't say, that a kid said, oh this is how you did it, so that's how I'm supposed to do it. So how is that different than, I know the distance formula, so that's how I’m going to do it?
Challenging Colleague Example
31Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Gwen: When you are teaching them distance, you just taught as Pythagorean theorem. So, you never actually gave them a
problem where they did this?
Owen: Oh no, we did, there are homework problems like this.
Gwen: In class, did you show them using Pythagorean theorem to solve the problem?
Owen: Yes. That's the way we did them.
Gwen: So you couldn't say, that a kid said, oh this is how you did it, so that's how I'm supposed to do it. So how is that different than, I know the distance formula, so that's how I’m going to do it?
Challenging Colleague Example
32Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Gwen: When you are teaching them distance, you just taught as Pythagorean theorem. So, you never actually gave them a
problem where they did this?
Owen: Oh no, we did, there are homework problems like this.
Gwen: In class, did you show them using Pythagorean theorem to solve the problem?
Owen: Yes. That's the way we did them.
Gwen: So you couldn't say, that a kid said, oh this is how you did it, so that's how I'm supposed to do it. So how is that different than, I know the distance formula, so that's how I’m going to do it?
Challenging Colleague Example
33Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Gwen: When you are teaching them distance, you just taught as Pythagorean theorem. So, you never actually gave them a
problem where they did this?
Owen: Oh no, we did, there are homework problems like this.
Gwen: In class, did you show them using Pythagorean theorem to solve the problem?
Owen: Yes. That's the way we did them.
Gwen: So you couldn't say, that a kid said, oh this is how you did it, so that's how I'm supposed to do it. So how is that different than, I know the distance formula, so that's how I’m going to do it?
Critical Colleagueship within the Interaction Patterns
34Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Interaction Pattern
Critical Colleagueship Examples
Praising&
Advising
Openness to new ideas “neat strategy and one I’m gonna take”“I’m willing to try them now…”
Empathetic Understanding “I guess I relate to…that’s the exact concepts I work with”
Self-reflection “and just using materials… and I was able to understand”
Critical Colleagueship within the Interaction Patterns
35Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Interaction Pattern
Critical Colleagueship Examples
Challenging
Rejecting flimsy reasoning by providing countervailing evidence
“it is hard to justify that…”
“So how can you...”
“So you couldn’t …”
Questions
36Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Is it possible that other aspects of critical colleagueship were being enacted by the group, but these were just difficult to observe?
It seemed that the teacher-researchers engaged as critical colleagues mostly around one teacher-researchers work. Why is this?
How do issues of status impact this development?
Questions
37Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
How does the context of talk around mathematics allow for this development?
How do different professional development contexts allow for this development?
Future Directions
38Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Expanding the analysis to examine both the action research phase and the and reading group phase that came before it
Looking more critically at the university-researchers and their role in this development
Possibility of examining other populations – such as preservice teachers
Acknowledgements
39Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
I’d like to thank all the teacher-researchers and university-researchers who participated in the project and my colleagues at Michigan State University
Thank You
40Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group
Questions?
Lorraine MalesMichigan State University
maleslor@msu.edu
Recommended