Presentation Agenda

Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Lorraine Males, Michigan State University

Presentation Agenda

2Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

• Background/Literature• Theoretical Framework• Method• Results• Discussion

BACKGROUND

Why study professional development?


Teacher

PD

improved practice and

student learning

?

Why study professional development?


decontexualized • contrived • unsatisfying • fragmented •

superficial • disconnected • non-cumulative

(Ball & Cohen, 1999;Lord, 1994; Wilson & Berne, 1999; Little, 1994)

What do we know about PD?


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).

a common thread in highly regardedprojects was the “privileging of teachers’ interaction with one another” (Wilson & Berne, 1999, p. 195).

What do we know about PD?


According to the “consensus view” on professional development should be

be designed to develop the capacity of teachers to work collectively on problems of practice, within

their own schools and with practitioners in other settings, as much as to support the knowledge and skill development of individual educators. (Elmore, 2002, p. 8).

What does collegiality look like?


According to Little (1990) two things that describe schools in which the teachers work collaboratively• Teachers are not working in isolation - they talk

to each other about teaching on practical and theoretical levels

• Teachers learn from each other “abandoning a perspective that teaching is ‘just a matter of styles’ in favor of a perspective that favors scrutiny of practices and their consequences” (p. 451).

Collegiality in Professional Development


Although collegiality is rare, there is a growing body of research that focuses on “collaborative work”

collaborative work is built on the assumption that learning is a social activity and that communication among professionals is key to developing common language to ask questions and reflect on teaching (Loucks-Horsley, 2003 ).



This work includes the growing body of research on: mathematics teacher study groups (e.g. Herbel-Eisenmann & Cirillo, 2009;

Crespo, 2006; Arbaugh, 2003)action research (e.g., Jaworski, 1998, 2006; Atweh, 2004; Zack

& Graves, 2001).



Despite the focus on collaboration these groups just like more traditional professional development groups have had difficulty building “trust and community while aiming for a professional discourse that includes and does not avoid critique” (Wilson & Berne, p. 195).

Issues include power and authority, conflicting values, and teachers not knowing how to provide critical feedback to their colleagues (Atweh, 2004, Jaworski, 2006).

Unanswered Questions about Professional Development


We still do not know how teachers learn from professional

development or how collegiality may help

or hinder learning

One possible hypothesis


According to Wilson and Berne(1999), the most successful professional development projects were “aiming for the development of something akin to

Lord’s (1994) ‘critical colleagueship’” (p. 195)

They hypothesize that this type of critical collegiality may help to explain how teacher learn

in professional development contexts.

Theoretical Framework


“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


Creating and sustaining productive disequilibrium through self reflection, collegial dialogue, and on-going critique.



Creating and sustaining productive disequilibrium through self reflection, collegial dialogue, and on-going critique.



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.



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.



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.



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.

Research Questions


How can the aspects of critical colleagueship exhibited by mathematics teachers participating in a teacher study group be identified?

How are the first three aspects of critical colleagueship exhibited by mathematics teachers participating in a teacher study group?

METHOD

Context


Baseline Data Collection

Aug. 2005 – May 2006 Aug. 2006 – May 2007

Reading 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

Participants


Two university researchers and eight middle-grades (grades 6 – 10) mathematics teacher-researchers

from seven different schools in one mid-western state

Participants


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

Data Collection & Analysis


Pre-existing data includedtranscripts and videos from project meetings (41 meetings approximately 3 hours each)

Data Collection & Analysis – Step #1

Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Reading GroupBeginning EndMiddle

Action ResearchBeginning EndMiddle



All transcripts were coded in Transana (Fassnacht & Woods, 2005) for interaction patterns – praising, advising, challenging (Males, 2009) and relating.

http://www.transana.org/



Data reduction (Miles & Huberman, 1994)

Challenging• I hypothesized that I may be able to gain insight into critical

colleagueship (i.e., intellectual virtues)• literature (Little, 1990) described the difficulties teachers

have in engaging in these waysRelating

• I hypothesized that I may be able to gain insight into critical colleagueship (i.e., empathetic understanding)

• Seemed to be the most unlike challenging (alignment vs. opposition)



Challenging and Relating interactions within each phase were further coded for the following:

a) who initiated the interactionb) who received the initiationc) the primary content of the interaction d) the linguistic nature of the interaction e) the aspects of critical colleagueship exhibited



For the linguistic nature I imported the challenging and relating transcript excerpts into Wordsmith Tools (Oxford University Press, 2008) and created a wordlist – this will find the most frequent words in the text.

http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/



I created the following types of representations for my data:a) a pictorial representation

boxes for the participants and arrows going from the initiator to the receiver

b) a matrix representationthe initiators were represented in the columns

and the receivers in the rows; each cell contained the number of challenges occurring between two participants

RESULTS

Challenging Colleague Example


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?

Owen: Because the distance formula is an exterior entity which they have no actual understanding of. All they have is their memorization of what

the distance formula is as opposed to having them draw a triangle, which connects a problem they are presented with back to something else they are already familiar with.

Gwen: I understand that, but you taught it that way.









































Challenging Interaction – The nature


stretched over multiple turns

questions were mostly “what” or “how” questions (very few “why” questions)

push receivers to think more deeply or think about things in different ways

use of classroom experience for reasoning

ifcould

would

but

or

Challenging Interaction within the Different Phases


Far more challenges in the reading group phase than the action research phase

Phase # of Challenges

Most Frequent Initiators

Most Frequent Receivers

Reading Group

215 Kate (56) Owen(43)Helen (32)

art/idea (86)Owen (28)Kate (26)

Action Research

86 Helen (25) Owen(14)Claire (13)

Owen (14)

Challenging Interaction within the Different Phases


Reading Group• authors ’ writing styles• general instructional strategies (e.g., problems to pose,

proof-styles to incorporate)• abstract notions rather than particular practices of

individuals

Action Research• mostly directed towards teacher-researchers presenting• approach to the action research project (e.g., research

questions, ways of collecting data)

Challenging Interaction – Critical Colleagueship


Rejecting weak practices• recognizing alternative explanations for

phenomena• often initiated because of the receivers making

claims based on lack of evidence

Openness to new ideas• as a result of challenges often teachers would

express their openness to an alternative suggested by others

Relating Colleague Example #1


Helen: I'm wondering on page seventy-four, where they talk about functions or purposes for revoicing…. And I'm wondering, like if you think aboutwhat you do in your classroom do you feel like you do those about the same or do you feel like you do one more than the other? Or do you feel like you do one and not the other?

Kate: I don't think I create the alignments. I think probably what would happen is someone would make a conjecture and other people would react to it rather than having several at the same time. I don't see that happen very much. I see pursuing one of them or I ask for multiple explanations, but I'm not sure we investigate why one might be better than another assuming they are all correct, very often. I wonder how much I do that's truly revoicing as opposed to repeating.

Gwen: I would agree with that. I would say I probably do more just repeating.


















The following takes place way after Mike shares the difficulty he is having with the heightened awareness of his discourse practices

Kate: It's a lot of responsibility just being aware. Heaven only knows we don't want any of that [responsibility]. And what I think Mike, not only is it harder that it's also that I'm less satisfied with what I've done.

Stacey: Cause you just think that after teaching for so long there's some day you're going to get to a point where you really feel like you're doing it the way you want to be doing it. And I've come a long, long way but it's exciting that there's still so much more to know and to try to do. But it's just never feeling like it's good enough.

Cara: And it's exhausting.





Stacey: Cause you just think that after teaching for so long there's some day you're going to get to a point where you really feel like you're doing it the way you want to be doing it. And I've come a long, long way but it's exciting that there's still so much

more to know and to try to do. But it's just never feeling like it's good enough.














Relating Interaction – The nature


Two types of relating:• initiator related to the receiver to

acknowledge agreement• initiator related to receiver

because of an emotional response triggered by the receiver

varied from quick responses to more elaborate stories

use of classroom experiences

identify with

resonate with

relate to

As Kate mentioned

…

Relating Interaction within the Different Phases


More relating in the reading group phase than the action research phase

Phase # of Relating

Most Frequent Initiators

Most Frequent Receivers

Reading Group

58 Stacey (16)Cara (15)Kate (13)

art/idea (14)Mike (14)

Action Research

36 Mike (9)Stacey (6)Kate (6)

Kate (13)Mike (7)Cara (5)

Relating Interaction – Content


Reading Group• often prompted by Helen (university-researcher)• general feelings about carrying out daily practices with new

awareness of their classroom discourse • student behaviors and attitudes• contained some direct connections to particular classroom

practices

Action Research• often facilitated by Helen (e.g., “Well, you use did something like

this in your class, Holly or Gwen, right…”)• General feelings about the overwhelming nature of collecting

the “perfect” data

Relating Interaction – Critical Colleagueship


Empathetic understanding• particularly when the relating was prompted by

an emotional response

Self-reflection• To express agreement or understanding teacher-

researchers often referred back to their own experience and reflected on these experiences

DISCUSSION

Identifying the Aspects of Critical Colleagueship


It was possible to identify some of the aspects of critical colleagueship in the discourse – particularly it was useful to identify these aspects within particular interaction patterns and by focusing on the linguistic nature of the talk (i.e., use of particular words)

Challenging and Relating


Teachers challenged more than they related (in 5 out of 6 mtgs)

Challenging,

RG - July

Relating, RG - July

Teachers as Critical Colleagues?


Although the teachers did exhibit some of the aspects of critical colleagueship, this study points to the difficulties that the teachers have in confronting practices.

Most of the challenging and relating where the aspects were exhibited occurred in the reading group phase where the focus was not on particular teacher-researchers practice.

Even when the focus of the meetings was more on what teachers were doing, the challenges and relating where not often connected to actual practices occurring in teachers classrooms.

To challenge or to relate to who and why?


Frequently Challenged

Frequently Related to

Owen Kate

MikeKate

This study leaves me with questions related to why particular teachers where challenged or related to and how this may affect their taking up of the aspects of critical colleagueship

least experienced, confident, unhedged language, more “challengeable”

very experienced, confident, well-respected seemed to be further along in

her development – TRs wanted to align with her

Limitations


Studying critical colleagueship by identifying interaction patterns may limit the aspects I could identify

I was the sole-coder of the data for the relating interaction

Limited generalizability of critical colleagueship to PD since I studied an atypical group and only a limited number of the aspects

Contributions


Adds to the growing body of research on teacher study groups, action research, and how collegiality may manifest in these PD contexts

Outlines a method for analyzing teacher interactions using the framework

of critical colleagueship

Current study

Future Directions


examine additional

aspects of CC

Future Directions


Current study

examine more critically the role of the facilitator

examine additional

aspects of CC

Future Directions


Current study

examine additional

aspects of CC

connections between CC and teacher knowledge and teacher

practice


Future Directions


Current study

examine additional

aspects of CC

development of CC with pre-service

teachers

Current study

connections between CC and teacher knowledge and teacher

practice


Future Directions


examine additional

aspects of CC

Acknowledgements


all the participants in this project

Everyone here today!

my committee: Jack Smith, Beth Herbel-Eisenmann, Kosze Lee & Sandra Crespo (honorary member )

my writing group: Aaron Brackionecki, Aaron Mosier, & Sam Otten

Thank You


Questions?

Lorraine MalesMichigan State University

[email protected]

Documents

Presentation Agenda