Supporting Teachers’ Equity-Oriented Learning and Identities: A Resource-Centered Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 119 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Nicole L. Louie
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Learning ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Teacher Interviews ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Equity In Education ◽  
School Based ◽  
Diverse Student ◽  
Learning And Collaboration

Background/Context Despite calls for equity in education, the dominant mode of schooling reproduces hierarchies, positioning some students as bright, gifted, or fast learners and others as lazy, in need of remediation, or slow. A number of studies have shown that teachers’ professional communities and networks can address this problem and enhance outcomes for all students. However, more research is needed not only to show the structure of supportive networks but also to explain the mechanisms through which they foster teacher learning. Research Questions This paper addresses three questions: (a) Where do teachers encounter resources that support their engagement with nondominant, equity-oriented teaching practice? (b) What kinds of resources support teachers’ engagement with nondominant teaching practice? and (c) How do different kinds of resources come together to support teachers’ patterns of engagement with communities of nondominant teaching practice? Research Design A multisite case study was conducted over the course of an academic year. The study involved extensive observations in routine teacher meetings and professional development settings, as well as classroom observations and teacher interviews. Participants Participants included 18 mathematics teachers from two diverse urban high schools. The mathematics departments at both schools expressed commitments to professional learning and collaboration in order to better serve their diverse student bodies, in particular, to support students who had previously been unsuccessful. Six teachers were selected as focal teachers for more in-depth observation and interviewing. This paper describes the contrasting cases of four teachers. Findings Two of the focal teachers maintained close engagement with nondominant, equity-oriented practice throughout the period of the study, while two did not. A comparison of teachers’ professional support networks showed that their patterns of engagement were related to their connections to sources outside their school-based communities and the access that these connections provided to four distinct types of resources. The two teachers who maintained their engagement with reforms were found to have abundant and personally significant identity resources, which were critical for their ongoing learning. Although the other two teachers had technical resources for engaging with reforms, they did not have such identity resources. Conclusions/Recommendations Research and practice have tended to focus on technical aspects of teacher learning in service of reform. This paper suggests that teachers need not only more resources, but also more kinds of resources in order to sustain the learning that student-centered, equity-oriented reforms require.

scholarly journals Socio-Cultural Development Approach to Investigate Teacher Learning across Two Contexts

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Hee-Jeong Kim
Keyword(s):  
Learning Community ◽  
Teacher Learning ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Development Framework ◽  
Teacher Professional ◽  
Development Approach

Teacher professional learning occurs across various contexts. Previous studies on teacher learning and changes in practice have focused on either classroom contexts or learning communities outside of school, but have rarely investigated teacher learning across multiple contexts. Investigating teacher learning across the double contexts of classroom and learning community has presented methodological challenges. In response, this paper proposes the suitability of adopting a socio-cultural development framework to further the analytical approach to such challenges. Using the framework, this paper considers the case study of a middle school mathematics teacher who resolved a problem of teaching practice through interacting with other members of the community of practice where they build shared goals and knowledge. This paper contributes to the field by expanding the scope of research on teacher learning across these two contexts, in which problem of practice becomes conceptual resources that the teacher uses in her teaching practice.

scholarly journals Restructuring mathematics teaching | learning: Co-teaching as a designed approach to teachers' collaborative inquiry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Raewyn Eden
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Learning ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Mathematics Teaching ◽  
Participatory Design ◽  
Collaborative Inquiry ◽  
Mathematics Learning ◽  
Student Thinking ◽  
Teacher Interviews ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Teaching Inquiry

<p>This study explores how participation in collaborative inquiry opens space for an expanded set of understandings and practices for mathematics teaching | learning. It examines the affordances of collaborative inquiry to promote, or constrain, teacher learning in the context of teachers’ day to day work.  Sociocultural perspectives underpin the study whereby professional learning is presumed to be situated in the social and cultural contexts of teachers’ work. A survey of the literature supports the assumption that persistent underachievement in mathematics for some groups of learners requires shifts in what teachers know and can do and reveals the importance of collaboration and inquiry for teacher learning.  The study involved a participatory, design-based approach underpinned by an authentic and appreciative inquiry stance. Design-based research was chosen for its proximity to practice and its focus on connections between the enactment of learning designs and outcomes of interest. The research was iterative and cyclical whereby the researcher worked with a group of four teachers in one New Zealand primary school to design, implement and refine an approach to teachers’ collaborative inquiry. A range of data were gathered during a 6-month collaboration, including from teacher interviews, classroom observations and three-weekly group meetings. The analysis took a pragmatic and multi-theoretical approach to examine what it meant to design and enact teachers’ collaborative inquiry. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) was employed to capture the complexity of the teachers’ collaborative inquiry activity and to analyse and interpret the contradictions that arose.  A key finding was that a co-teaching inquiry approach fostered conditions that afforded teachers’ expanded access to and depth of engagement with new, and often dissonant, practice ideas. Through co-teaching, mathematics teaching | learning was restructured within three interconnected fields of practice: the teachers’ enacted practice, their talk about practice, and their noticing of student thinking within practice. The co-teaching inquiry activity was increasingly directed at a collective purpose; involved an interplay of risk and trust; supported shifts in teachers’ roles and responsibilities; and allowed teachers to constantly renegotiate the goals of their shared activity. The co-teaching arrangement disrupted practice whereby teachers’ actions served as minor interruptions to each other’s practice and thus became a resource for teacher learning. Opportunities to engage deeply with one another’s practice opened space for an expanded set of actions for each of the teachers in their own practice.  This thesis adds nuanced understandings of the interrelated roles of collaboration and inquiry in improving teaching. It contributes to the growing body of literature exploring co-teaching arrangements for teacher learning, in this case in the previously under-examined context of teachers’ collaborative inquiry for their ongoing professional learning. It offers insights into how co-teaching might support teachers to enact new and challenging pedagogies aimed at addressing the persistent and considerable challenges posed by an ethical imperative to promote mathematics learning for diverse (all) students. Participating in the co-construction of a design for their collaborative inquiry enabled teachers to restructure their work and expand the possibilities for their individual and collective practice. It allowed teachers to reconstruct their identities from the lone operator whose professional reputation needs protection from exposure of any weaknesses in their mathematics knowledge or practice, to a learner whose naïve questions and gaps in practice served as a resource for all in their learning.</p>

scholarly journals Restructuring mathematics teaching | learning: Co-teaching as a designed approach to teachers' collaborative inquiry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Raewyn Eden
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Learning ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Mathematics Teaching ◽  
Participatory Design ◽  
Collaborative Inquiry ◽  
Mathematics Learning ◽  
Student Thinking ◽  
Teacher Interviews ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
Teaching Inquiry

<p>This study explores how participation in collaborative inquiry opens space for an expanded set of understandings and practices for mathematics teaching | learning. It examines the affordances of collaborative inquiry to promote, or constrain, teacher learning in the context of teachers’ day to day work.  Sociocultural perspectives underpin the study whereby professional learning is presumed to be situated in the social and cultural contexts of teachers’ work. A survey of the literature supports the assumption that persistent underachievement in mathematics for some groups of learners requires shifts in what teachers know and can do and reveals the importance of collaboration and inquiry for teacher learning.  The study involved a participatory, design-based approach underpinned by an authentic and appreciative inquiry stance. Design-based research was chosen for its proximity to practice and its focus on connections between the enactment of learning designs and outcomes of interest. The research was iterative and cyclical whereby the researcher worked with a group of four teachers in one New Zealand primary school to design, implement and refine an approach to teachers’ collaborative inquiry. A range of data were gathered during a 6-month collaboration, including from teacher interviews, classroom observations and three-weekly group meetings. The analysis took a pragmatic and multi-theoretical approach to examine what it meant to design and enact teachers’ collaborative inquiry. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) was employed to capture the complexity of the teachers’ collaborative inquiry activity and to analyse and interpret the contradictions that arose.  A key finding was that a co-teaching inquiry approach fostered conditions that afforded teachers’ expanded access to and depth of engagement with new, and often dissonant, practice ideas. Through co-teaching, mathematics teaching | learning was restructured within three interconnected fields of practice: the teachers’ enacted practice, their talk about practice, and their noticing of student thinking within practice. The co-teaching inquiry activity was increasingly directed at a collective purpose; involved an interplay of risk and trust; supported shifts in teachers’ roles and responsibilities; and allowed teachers to constantly renegotiate the goals of their shared activity. The co-teaching arrangement disrupted practice whereby teachers’ actions served as minor interruptions to each other’s practice and thus became a resource for teacher learning. Opportunities to engage deeply with one another’s practice opened space for an expanded set of actions for each of the teachers in their own practice.  This thesis adds nuanced understandings of the interrelated roles of collaboration and inquiry in improving teaching. It contributes to the growing body of literature exploring co-teaching arrangements for teacher learning, in this case in the previously under-examined context of teachers’ collaborative inquiry for their ongoing professional learning. It offers insights into how co-teaching might support teachers to enact new and challenging pedagogies aimed at addressing the persistent and considerable challenges posed by an ethical imperative to promote mathematics learning for diverse (all) students. Participating in the co-construction of a design for their collaborative inquiry enabled teachers to restructure their work and expand the possibilities for their individual and collective practice. It allowed teachers to reconstruct their identities from the lone operator whose professional reputation needs protection from exposure of any weaknesses in their mathematics knowledge or practice, to a learner whose naïve questions and gaps in practice served as a resource for all in their learning.</p>

scholarly journals Communities of Practice and the Mediation ofTeachers' Responses to Standards-based Reform

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chrysan Gallucci
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Teacher Learning ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
High Poverty ◽  
High Poverty Schools ◽  
Standards Based Reform ◽  
Sociocultural Approach

This paper evaluates the usefulness of a sociocultural approach for analyzing teachers’ responses to the professional learning demands of standards-based reform policies. A policy-oriented case study of the practice of six elementary teachers who worked in two high poverty schools in a demographically changing district in the state of Washington is summarized. Key findings of that study conclude that communities of teaching practice are sites for teacher learning and are mediators of teachers’ responses to standards-based reform. Characteristics of the communities of practice, including their relative strength and openness (to learning), influence the degree to which teachers work out negotiated and thoughtful responses to policy demands. The present paper discusses the efficacy of Wenger’s (1998) theory of learning for the study of policy to practice connections.

Becoming Globally Competent Through Inter-School Reciprocal Learning Partnerships: An Inquiry Into Canadian and Chinese Teachers’ Narratives

2021 ◽  
pp. 002248712110423
Author(s):  
Yishin Khoo
Keyword(s):  
Professional Learning ◽  
Global Competence ◽  
Chinese Teachers ◽  
Reciprocal Learning ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Learning Partnerships ◽  
School Based ◽  
School Network ◽  
Learning And Collaboration ◽  
Supporting Teachers

This study explores how a Canada–China Sister School Network provides school-based professional learning opportunities for in-service teachers to grow their knowledge and capacity to educate for global competence and citizenship (GCC). In particular, it presents the story of a Canadian teacher and a Chinese teacher who had found ways of educating for GCC through carrying out intercultural and international reciprocal learning in a researcher-supported inter-school reciprocal learning partnership. By inquiring into the Canadian and Chinese teachers’ growth narratives, this study highlights four lessons teachers, educators/researchers, and policy makers may learn from the two teachers. It concludes by highlighting the potential of a relationship-oriented, open-ended, and non-hierarchical international school network in supporting teachers to become more globally competent, foregrounding reciprocal learning and collaboration among school practitioners and researchers.

Professional Development to Promote Online Communication, Collaboration and Learning Among Faculty

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-224
Author(s):  
Mayela Coto ◽  
Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Theory Model ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Practice Approach

Based on a critical re-reading of a study of a community of practice approach to professional development, this chapter uses Engeström's activity theory model to highlight the tensions that arise in a professional development program oriented to change teaching practice through the introduction of ICT and a student-centered pedagogical approach. Despite the community of practice potential, there are many tensions that inhibit this type of professional learning. These tensions can be summarized in four broad categories: institutional structures (division of work), the institutional culture (rules), levels of engagement (differentiations within the community), and faculty readiness (in the appropriation of tools and new pedagogy). By analyzing, in greater depth, the tensions, our goal is to reflect again in the design principles and to further elaborate on developing a professional development strategy based on a community of practice approach that can be used in broader contexts.

Professional Development to Promote Online Communication, Collaboration and Learning Among Faculty

2020 ◽  
pp. 103-136
Author(s):  
Mayela Coto ◽  
Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Online Communication ◽  
Development Program ◽  
Theory Model ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Practice Approach

Based on a critical re-reading of a study of a community of practice approach to professional development, this chapter uses Engeström's activity theory model to highlight the tensions that arise in a professional development program oriented to change teaching practice through the introduction of ICT and a student-centered pedagogical approach. Despite the community of practice potential, there are many tensions that inhibit this type of professional learning. These tensions can be summarized in four broad categories: institutional structures (division of work), the institutional culture (rules), levels of engagement (differentiations within the community), and faculty readiness (in the appropriation of tools and new pedagogy). By analyzing, in greater depth, the tensions, our goal is to reflect again in the design principles and to further elaborate on developing a professional development strategy based on a community of practice approach that can be used in broader contexts.

scholarly journals Exploring Teachers’ Experiences of Participating in Teacher Inquiry as Professional Learning

in education ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-33
Author(s):  
Eleanor Gillis ◽  
Jennifer Mitton-Kukner
Keyword(s):  
Middle School Teachers ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Teacher Inquiry ◽  
School Based ◽  
Teachers Experiences ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Emic Perspective ◽  
Learning Plans ◽  
Study Participants

Teacher inquiry is the intentional and methodical reflection on one’s praxis that leads to action, and the resulting adjustments to one’s teaching practice. While scholars identify the importance of supports to be in place to sustain engagement in teacher inquiry, the specifics of the supports have remained somewhat unidentified, and there is little documentation about what teachers experience as they engage in teacher inquiry as part of a school-wide professional learning initiative. This paper explores the experiences of three middle school teachers participating in a year-long, guided teacher inquiry as part of a school’s professional learning plans. It is approached from an ethnographic, emic perspective. The challenges and supports teachers experienced when engaging in the inquiry process, as well as what they felt allowed honest dialogue, emerged as important aspects informing the results of this study. Participants identified that feeling safe influenced their ability to engage in teacher inquiry, and their willingness to address challenges associated with conducting research.            Keywords: teacher inquiry; teachers as researchers; school-based professional learning

Opportunities to Respond for Students With Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in Inclusive Classrooms

2021 ◽  
pp. 105345122110249
Author(s):  
Todd Whitney ◽  
Kera B. Ackerman ◽  
Justin T. Cooper ◽  
Terrance M. Scott
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Student Engagement ◽  
Behavior Problems ◽  
Effective Teaching ◽  
Behavioral Disorders ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Emotional And Behavioral Disorders ◽  
Inclusive Classrooms ◽  
Opportunities To Respond ◽  
School Based

Students who are actively engaged in learning have a higher probability of academic and behavioral success in the classroom. One effective teaching practice that increases student engagement is providing students with frequent opportunities to respond (OTR). This article provides practitioners with a range of OTR strategies that include verbal, non-verbal, and partner responses. In addition, recommendations are provided on how these strategies can be effectively implemented in inclusive classrooms to increase engagement of students with school-based behavior problems, including those with and at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders.

scholarly journals Physical Activity Recommendations in the Context of New Calls for Change in Physical Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 1177
Author(s):  
Karel Frömel ◽  
Jana Vašíčková ◽  
Krzysztof Skalik ◽  
Zbyněk Svozil ◽  
Dorota Groffik ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Physical Education ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Social Health ◽  
Physical Strain ◽  
School Practice ◽  
School Based ◽  
Adequate Response ◽  
Physical Activity Recommendations ◽  
Activity Recommendations

The current social, health, and educational changes in society require an adequate response in school-based physical activity (PA), including physical education (PE) lessons. The objective of this study was to identify the real average step counts of Czech and Polish adolescents during PE lessons, and propose recommendations for improving PE programs. This research was carried out in 143 Czech and 99 Polish schools. In the research, a total of 4911 adolescents aged 12–18 years were analyzed as part of teaching practice and 1827 in the context of habitual school practice. Steps were monitored using pedometers. The average step count per PE lesson was 2390 in Czech and Polish boys, while girls achieved 1851 steps. In both countries, boys were subject to greater physical strain in PE lessons compared to girls, both in teaching practice (F(4088,3) = 154.49, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.102) and school practice (F(1552,3) = 70.66, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.103). Therefore, the priority in PE lessons is to increase the amount of PA for girls, achieve the objectives of PE during PA, and use wearables to improve awareness of PA and improve physical literacy, as well as to support hybrid and online PE as a complement to traditional PE.

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