Coming full circle: from teacher reflection to classroom action and places in‐between

The article shows the experience of professional development over the course of a decade of one teacher’s career nested against the backdrop of one reforming middle‐school context in the USA. Through the use of four fine‐grained narrative exemplars, the campus professional development trajectory is examined from the vantage point of Daryl Wilson, an eighth‐grade literacy teacher who participated in the research study for 10 years. By using narrative inquiry as both a method and a form to feature Daryl’s and some of his colleagues’ experiences of teacher learning within the context of school reform, the strengths and challenges of the various iterations of professional development are discussed. In the final analysis, the narrative exemplars show Daryl Wilson’s meaning‐making as he moves from an isolated form of teacher reflection to full‐blown classroom action where his students’ learning and his colleagues’ professional development are also implicated. However, before coming full circle, Daryl experiences some less‐than‐satisfying teacher learning situations in‐between.     

Teacher expectations and student literacy engagement and achievement

Notwithstanding the complex and dynamic nature of teaching and learning in schools, over four decades of research findings have consistently revealed a correlation between teacher expectations and student achievement. Focusing on teacher expectations for the narrative structures created by young children, this article features a discussion of data gathered during a multifaceted study with 7‐ and 8‐year‐old students. The overall purpose of the case study research was to explore the development of student understanding of elements of visual art and design and diverse narrative structures in picturebooks. For the culminating activity of the research, the students had opportunities to apply and transform their knowledge of the instructional foci when they composed their own multimodal print texts. Analysis of the students' narrative structures revealed the multiple forms of metalepsis, the purposeful breaking of storyworld/narrative boundaries, evident in their writing and artwork. In addition to a discussion about the socially situated nature of the children's multimodal text‐making, the article includes a consideration of the importance of teacher expectations with respect to student literacy engagement and achievement.     

Embodied meaning-making: using literacy-as-event to explore a young child's small world play

This article uses the concept of literacy-as-event to explore the embodied meaning-making of a young child during small world play. Recent developments in literacy research, influenced by relational thinking, have led to a reconsideration of how meaning-making unfolds in home and school settings. The concept of literacy-as-event suggests that meaning-making is unpredictable and dynamic, responding to novel socio-material interactions between texts, people, objects and moments. This view suggests that there is a need to ensure children have opportunities to engage with embodied and material meaning-making beyond shared reading events. In this article, small world play after a shared reading event is positioned as enabling socio-material meaning-making through embodied and material encounters with people and objects. A single episode of small world play is presented for analysis. A multimodal analytical approach is used, drawing attention to the embodied interactions between a child, her adult and objects. Analysis of the data shows that the young child's meaning-making involved moments of physical and material almost-hiatus, followed by erratic movements. These often unexpected fluctuations, between stillness and motion, created generative tensions between the child and her adult, enabling creative swerves in engagement between narrative action, character traits and story themes.     

Journey around Leadership

Ideas about leadership in education, as in other areas of professional practice, increasingly borrow from management and business thinking. In this article I provide a commentary and critique of contemporary leadership in the form of a narrative of my own experience as an educator in a business school. My experience as a woman teacher of largely male, adult management students has underscored my learning about and critique of leadership theory and my own aspirations as teacher and leader. Personal experience is interwoven with theoretical commentary to highlight the limitations of leadership discourses—too often disembodied, de‐gendered and de‐sexualized. By inserting my responses and feelings I also seek to subvert, or at least to add some different dimensions to, intellectualized and inert critiques of leadership. Learning about leadership, including engagement, reaction and contestation, is not just a cerebral undertaking, but emotion laden and thoroughly embodied. I sought to reflect these qualities in this article.     

Towards collaborative professional learning in the first year early childhood teacher education practicum: issues in negotiating the multiple interests of stakeholder feedback

This paper analyses data from two sources of stakeholder feedback – first year pre‐service teachers and supervising teachers/centre directors – about the issues involved in creating more collaborative approaches to the first year early childhood teacher education practicum at an Australian regional university. The collection of this feedback was part of a broader participatory action research project directed at maximising both the effectiveness of the pre‐service teachers' knowledge acquisition and meaning‐making and the sustainability of the partnership underpinning the practicum. The paper provides new insights into a hitherto under‐researched area, that of pre‐service early childhood teachers' professional learning experiences in child care contexts. It uses, as a basis, the work of Cardini. The main findings are that there are multiple viewpoints and competing interests, resulting in asymmetries, dissonance and the potential for conflict.     

Teacher–child interaction in Chinese kindergartens: an observational analysis

The goals of this research were to describe the daily life of children and teachers in Chinese kindergarten programmes, to better understand how teacher–child interactions affect both teachers and children. The main assumption guiding this research was that teacher–child interaction is one of the most important processes in early childhood education. A clear understanding of typical teacher–child interactions may help to improve teachers’ support of children’s learning and development. In‐depth field observations of 12 Chinese teachers in six classrooms were conducted using a participant‐observer approach. Five hundred and eighty‐nine teacher–child interaction cases were observed and described. An inductive content analysis of the cases resulted in the creation of nine functional categories for teacher‐initiated interactive behaviours and nine functional categories for child‐initiated interactive behaviours. In this paper, we describe these functional interaction categories and report on their relative frequency in the Chinese kindergarten classrooms involved in this study. Teacher and child interactive behaviours are complementary, depending on the shared meaning of the interaction. Some differences were found in the interactive behaviours of older and younger children with their teachers. We discuss the results in the cultural context of China and conclude that careful and systematic observation and analysis of early childhood classroom interaction is essential for better understanding and improvement of teaching practices.     

The development of learning patterns of student teachers: a cross-sectional and longitudinal study

Research on learning pattern development during pre-service teacher education is scarce. In a cross-sectional (study 1) and longitudinal study (study 2) the development of learning patterns of student teachers is analysed. Participants in study 1 were 646 first-year and 350 third-year student teachers enrolled in an initial pre-service teacher education programme. 236 student teachers participated in study 2. Vermunt’s’ Inventory of Learning Styles was used to assess differences in learning patterns. By examining intra-individual changes in learning patterns we expected to find developmental trends within learning patterns. Results show that meaning oriented learning increases over time and undirected learning decreases. Some learning patterns are however more subject to change than others. The development of learning patterns was found to be relative and dependent on the learning pattern which students have already mastered in the first-year of a teacher education programme.     

Talk,planning and decision‐making in interdisciplinary teacher teams: a case study

A diverse range of social structures, for instance teacher teams, professional communities and teacher learning communities, are established to advance collaboration among teachers. In Norway, Interdisciplinary Teacher Teams (ITTs) have become a common way of organising teachers in schools, recommended in a national curriculum reform in 1997. This study explores the internal structure, social meaning and potential resources for learning and development inherent in the planning and coordination of work in ITT meetings. Most studies of teacher teams as well as teacher learning communities are based on teachers’ experiences, expressed in interviews or surveys. The focus of this study is not on what teachers say about teams, but on what teachers say in teams. While most studies have addressed within‐department, subject‐specific teams, this study focuses on interdisciplinary teams. Team‐talk in two ITTs in two different lower secondary schools in Norway has been videotaped and analysed. Four patterns of interaction have been identified – preserving individualism: renegotiating individual autonomy and personal responsibility; coordination: assuring the social organisation of work; cooperation: creating a shared object or enterprise; and sharing: clarifying pedagogical motives. The study illustrates patterns in team‐talk, conceptualises the processes of decision‐making that take place in these ITTs and identifies resources for learning and development inherent in certain forms of interaction. The study contributes to the research literature by both focusing on the details of the interaction in team meetings and analysing the dynamics of the group interaction in the perspective of the situatedness and the object‐orientation of team‐talk.     

A Vygotskian perspective on parent–child talk during iPad story sharing

This study explores the themes in the talk of two mothers and daughters as they share a self‐created story with an iPad app. Vygotsky's theory of learning is applied to inform a thematic analysis and help interpret the learning potential within the observed parent–child exchanges. A deductive–inductive thematic analysis identified three recurring themes in the parent–child talk: realistic fiction, scaffolding variations, and engaged players and objects of ‘play’. The themes suggested that Vygotsky's theory has particular relevance in exploring the learning processes facilitated by the iPad app. In addition, however, post‐Vygotskian theoretical frameworks were helpful in capturing the dynamic co‐construction of the authentic and multimedia stories parents and children shared.     

Disruptive design in pre-service teacher education: uptake,participation, and resistance

This paper begins the exploration of disruption as an analytical construct that allows for the investigation of how individual learning and changes in local practice mutually influence the other within a purposefully designed learning context. We seek to describe the types of learning experiences that emerged using disruptive pedagogies and tools within a series of methods courses in an undergraduate elementary teacher education program. The intent of the designed context was to disrupt the traditional practices of teacher education courses by creating a participatory environment where students participated in the creation of course content through their engagement with social media and each other. We define disruption as an innovation that requires students to challenge or change their epistemologies and participation in their learning. This paper addresses a designed disruption that was created in the context of an elementary methods course. The results demonstrated diverse consequences for participants, their activity, and our understanding of their learning. These findings provide a starting point for examining the implications of disruptive practices within pre-service teacher education programs.     

Play in the primary school classroom? The experience of teachers supporting children’s learning through a new pedagogy

In Scotland in recent years there has been growing interest in a more play‐based pedagogy commonly described as Active Learning. The research reported in this article is an exploration of moves towards creating an active play‐based learning environment in six Primary 1 classrooms in Scotland and is concerned with (i) the children’s experiences in such a play‐based active learning environment in school and (ii) their teachers’ perspectives on this pedagogical innovation and their roles in supporting the learners. This study examined experiences and perspectives within and across each of the six child‐centred and play‐focused classes. The main findings suggest that the role of the teacher varies between what could be considered as teacher‐intensive and teacher‐initiated activities. ‘Active’ or ‘play‐based’ learning was interpreted differently by teachers; play in some classrooms was peripheral rather than integral to the learning process and curriculum‐embedded.     

Quality of teacher–child interactions and its relations to children’s classroom engagement and disaffection in Vietnamese kindergartens

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the quality of teacher–child interaction and its effects on children’s classroom engagement and disaffection in Vietnamese kindergartens. The quality of teacher–child interaction was measured using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. Children’s classroom engagement and disaffection were assessed by Engagement versus Disaffection in Learning. There were 1474 kindergarten children and 60 teachers from 12 kindergartens in three cities in Vietnam participating in the study. The results indicated that classrooms in Vietnam kindergartens had a moderate quality of teacher–child interaction. Compared to the results from other countries published previously, teacher sensitivity and regard for student perspectives of Vietnamese samples were lower than those of Finland, Germany, the United States, and China. Productivity and the instructional learning format in Vietnamese kindergarten classrooms were higher than those of all the other countries except Finland. The results of fixed-effects and random-effects modelling suggested that children in better organised classrooms were more engaged in learning. Emotional support had a negative effect on children’s classroom engagement. Children’s classroom disaffection was not significantly affected by the quality of the teacher–child interaction.     

Questioning as thinking: a metacognitive framework to improve comprehension of expository text

Despite a push to develop high levels of active engagement in learning by helping students reflect, refine and extend their ideas through effective questioning strategies, evidence suggests that teacher‐dominated interaction patterns permeate classroom instruction. This Initiate, Respond and Evaluate process leads students to maintain a passive stance towards learning and non‐engagement with text. As a result students fail to develop the strategies to solve comprehension problems and monitor their own learning with text. In contrast, effective, active instructional patterns provide students with opportunities to negotiate textual meaning. Through the use of the Question as Thinking framework we provide teachers with tools to enable pupils to reflect on their reading and understanding of expository texts. This article describes a framework for questioning designed to assist in the development of an active instructional pattern promoting the joint negotiation of meaning.     

Mentoring among high school teachers: a dynamic and reciprocal group process

In education, mentoring is typically understood as a one‐on‐one relationship between a novice teacher and a more experienced, competent colleague. Through the mentoring relationship, the veteran teacher guides the new teacher into the profession. In this article, the author supports an alternative conception of mentoring by describing how a group of new and experienced high school teachers, committed to changing their teaching practices toward a pedagogy of intellectual engagement, together created the conditions and relationships within their collaborative inquiry group to mentor one another. In the group, novice teachers modeled risk‐taking and vulnerability for their more experienced colleagues. Veteran teachers guided their newer colleagues toward learner‐centered pedagogical possibilities and inquiry practices. Additionally, the group itself, with its norms of open questioning and doubt, trust, collegiality, and a shared purpose, created a collaborative space of mentoring that was dynamic and reciprocal.     

Editorial

This paper analyses the experience of a teacher and her Year 6 class (10–11 year‐olds) over a school year, while participating in a pilot project introducing Personal Digital Assistants as a learning tool. The intervention was initiated and supported by the local City Learning Centre, which was concerned with how best to use technologies for learning, and the teacher was prepared to take risks to learn how to use the technology and apply it within the national curriculum. This paper focuses on the roles the teacher played in designing, managing and mediating multi‐modal approaches to teaching and learning, while meeting the curriculum requirements. Her creative approach was rewarded with high levels of student engagement, motivation and autonomy across the class, and higher than expected results in the national tests.     

To Disagree,We Must Also Agree: How Intersubjectivity Structures and Perpetuates Discourse in a Mathematics Classroom

Learning in a socially mediated context like a classroom places emphasis on the ability of learners to communicate their ideas to others, and for members of a class to achieve shared meaning or intersubjectivity (IS). We take a participatory view of IS, where both consensual agreement and disagreement are regarded as aspects of a common set of processes that mediate collective activity. Interlocutors need not demonstrate convergence toward a common idea or solution to exhibit IS and, indeed, they appear to need a shared understanding to express substantive disagreement through divergent views. Multilevel, multimodal analyses of videotape of a middle school mathematics classroom, including speech, gestures, drawing, and object use, reveal a discourse that is organized into recurrent sequences of event triads. The dynamics toward and away from convergent ideas appears to be instrumental in fostering sustained and engaging discourse and influencing the representations that students propose during problem solving. Participants frequently exhibited IS, but, as allowed for in the participatory view, the interactions did not seem to convert many students from their initial interpretations. Instead, disagreements and a desire to establish common understanding appeared to lead participants to express their divergent views in more refined and accessible ways. Advancement of our understanding of the role that IS serves in socially mediated learning has the potential to inform both educational theory and emerging areas in embodied cognition and cognitive neuroscience that addresses imitation and empathy, and thus help to bridge research between brain function and social cognition.     

The relationships between social participatory roles and cognitive engagement levels in online discussions

Understanding the relationship between social interaction patterns and cognitive engagement levels has critical implications on collaborative learning theory, pedagogy, and technology. This study used a multi-method approach to examine the relationship between students' social participatory roles and cognitive engagement levels within asynchronous online discussions. Results showed that students' social participatory role was a critical indicator of cognitive engagement level. Socially active students made more cognitive contributions to knowledge inquiry and knowledge construction. But there were exceptions: after taking leadership roles (i.e., discussion designers and facilitators), some students moved from peripheral participation to active participation. Second, there was a progressive development process: individual students' deep-level knowledge inquiry could trigger peer interaction, which could further advance group knowledge construction. Third, students had a tendency to keeping social-cognitive engagement patterns throughout discussions. Based on the result, this study proposed implications for collaborative learning theory, pedagogy support, and tool development.     

Critical inquiry into emergent‐oriented curriculum practice

Abstract

This theoretical paper characterizes and explores emergent‐oriented curriculum practice through the experiences of an early childhood education (ECE) prospective teacher, in the context of the U.S., as she co‐constructs the meaning of emergent‐oriented curriculum with culturally diverse pre‐K (4–5‐year‐old) children during her field experience. The paper examines how the prospective teacher understood emergent learning, how she and the children created and shaped their curriculum, and what critical aspects pertain to emergent‐oriented curriculum work from the perspective of developmentally meaningful and culturally responsive practice.     

参与式教师培训效果的评价研究

参与式教师培训是当前国际上普遍认可的教师培训模式,自2001年我国启动新一轮基础教育课程改革以来,也运用该模式开展了大规模的教师培训。本研究对2所小学54名教师进行了以“合作学习”为主题的参与式教师培训并评价了培训效果,结果表明:(1)培训提高了教师对合作学习有关知识的掌握水平;(2)教师组织合作学习的教学行为有了显著的改善;(3)教师对培训的整体感受比较好,乐于在教学中尝试运用培训中学到方法、理念等。     

Intervening or Ignoring: Learning about teaching in new times

In response to the rise of collaborative learning within education, two teacher educators redesigned their courses to explore the complexities of pedagogy within a New Learning framework. Multi‐age grouping provided opportunities for pre‐service teachers to work with others from different year levels on an interdisciplinary assessment task. As a result of this approach to teaching and learning, pre‐service teachers were challenged and resistance arose. These acts of student resistance provided opportunities for examining the dynamics and complexity of collaborative learning and the implications this has for teachers in new times. In particular, it explores the tension around intervening and ignoring students' resistances created by engaging in new learning pedagogy.