Teachers are digikids too: the digital histories and digital lives of young teachers in English primary schools

In this article I consider the digital lives of a number of young teachers. Some are confident, competent movers in digital worlds, some are not. I wonder why, and look back at the teachers' digital histories to see whether ways in which they learned about digital worlds affects their lives now. I identify three different routes to learning about digital worlds, and describe these with representative stories. Two are serious solitary journeys, one self‐taught the other school‐taught. Most teachers in these groups use digital technologies for work and for the business of life. The third route is playful social. Teachers in this group have experienced learning about digital worlds with fellow enthusiasts and in playful contexts. These teachers use digital technologies for pleasure as well as the business of life and work. I argue that it is important that young teachers and student teachers be given time on courses to think about and discuss their own digital literacy histories.     

Unfolding lives in digital worlds: digikid teachers revisited

In this paper, I describe ongoing research exploring ways in which young teachers’ digital lives unfold inside and outside classrooms. I first interviewed teachers in 2006, and identified three different routes into digital worlds: serious solitary self‐taught, serious solitary school‐taught and playful social. A number of teachers agreed to be interviewed again in 2010. I outline ways in which I compare and contrast interviews over time, using analytic markers developed in ‘Inventing Adulthoods’, a Qualitative Longitudinal Research project. I also describe ways in which I set my analysis in Adam's concepts of time: ‘biographical time, generational time and historical time’. Case studies are outlined of three teachers, one serious solitary and two playful social. All three were language coordinators in 2006, and already experienced, innovative teachers of literacy. I argue that in 2010, the serious solitary teacher is able to bring new competences to the classroom, but fitting existing ways of teaching. In contrast, the playful social teachers bring new ways of knowing about digital worlds into classrooms, but these new ways are realised only if competences are recognised, communities are supportive and traditional ways of knowing about teaching and the curriculum do not block new ways of thinking.     

Learning to teach: enhancing pre‐service teachers’ awareness of the complexity of teaching–learning processes

Abstract

Interest in story in teaching has been linked to teacher research (Carter, 1993; Elbaz, 1991), to teacher education (Connelly &; Clandinin, 1994), to curriculum (Britz‐man, 1989; Gudmundsdottir, 1991c), and to school change (Giltin, 1990). I wish to argue here for a link between story and one form of teacher reflection, for portfolio construction, unlike more conventional forms of teacher development, encourages teachers to tell the story of their classrooms and to frame that story in particular ways. I wish to argue here for a view that constructing a portfolio shifts the ownership of learning to the portfolio‐maker and that in this constructing, we can trace a teacher's developing understanding of pedagogy. Specifically, my aim is to illustrate the narrative dimensions of a self‐generated portfolio question — its interpretations, the reflections upon its meaning, and its transformations of pedagogical understanding — as this text becomes pedagogy and pedagogy becomes text. This interpretive process is illustrated through a case study of Ellen Nicol, a secondary English as a Second Language teacher, in her graduate teacher education year and her first 2 years of classroom teaching. Ellen's pedagogical text, her question, is reinterpreted with major changes each time she comes to understand more completely the richness and complexity of her classroom. Each new transformation and reinterpretation serve as guide for selection of materials, for selection of pedagogy, and for assessment of success. Each new collection of pedagogical information serves as impetus for possible reframing and transformation of the text.     

Teacher–writer–crafter–maker: an exploration of how making mattered for one writing teacher

This qualitative case study documents a secondary English teacher's making, writing and teaching. The focal teacher engaged in diverse making practices – including composing, crafting and digital fabrication. She also participated in a National Writing Project (NWP) Summer Institute that focused on both teacher writing and digital composing. Data include observations at this NWP Project Summer Institute and in the focal teacher's English classroom, as well as interviews and artefact collection related to her making practices. The findings describe how this teacher's making mattered for her understandings of writing and for her teaching (or not). The case offers insights into why it may be important to cultivate educator making, as well as potential tensions between experiencing making and incorporating it into writing pedagogy. Ultimately, it contributes to writing research interested in examining how various forms of production and making are enmeshed.     

Beyond the ‘good teacher’: guiding pre-service teacher reflections on culturally diverse students

This article explores how reflective practice may be facilitated among pre-service teachers preparing to teach in culturally diverse classrooms. The significance of the mentor teacher’s ability to reveal her/himself as a reflective practitioner in order to promote student reflection is well documented. The article specifically addresses one teacher educator’s approach to offering mentor support with a focus on reflective practices related to cultural diversity. She explores how her ethnographic doctoral study on the classroom participation of adult South Sudanese students in different Australian learning environments has informed her own practice as a teacher, and ways in which her teaching philosophy and values were influenced by the sustained reflection needed to complete the study. By making explicit an aspect of her reflective practice, she aims to add to the growing body of literature on how to engage pre-service teachers meaningfully in reflection on their own classroom practice, especially in relation to teaching to diversity.     

Classroom stories of multicultural teaching and learning

This is the second of three papers based on a 20-month study of teaching and learning in a diverse classroom in a downtown community school in Toronto, Canada. The purpose of the research was to describe the details of teaching and learning in a multicultural classroom and to document successful strategies in working with immigrant and minority students. The three papers detail the process by which this focus on classroom life led to a critique of the literature and to a new way to think about multicultural teaching and learning, which I call 'narrative multiculturalism'. In this paper, I provide a sampling of stories that illustrate what contributed to my changing thinking about multiculturalism. Four short stories focus on a participant teacher in her school, in her classroom and in interaction with her students. The stories illuminate the complexity of multicultural teaching and qualities of narrative multiculturalism. In the analysis of the stories I explore multicultural understandings that developed from the experience of being in the classroom, being in relationship with a teacher participant, and our on-going dialogue.     

Inferring teacher epistemological framing from local patterns in teacher noticing

In this work we use research from science education on teacher framing and work from mathematics education on teacher noticing to develop new approaches to modeling teacher cognition. The framing literature proposes a dynamic cognitive model of teaching in which teacher epistemological framing, or moment‐to‐moment understanding of what is going on with respect to knowledge and learning in the classroom, drives much of teacher practice. The teacher noticing literature documents patterns and trends in teachers' attention during instruction. We suggest first that noticing patterns, particularly local noticing patterns, can be leveraged to make inferences about teacher framing that maintain sensitivity to its dynamics but are also more reliable than existing analytic approaches. Second, we suggest that understanding noticing as driven by framing requires researchers to anticipate, allow for, and capitalize on the fact that teachers are capable of multiple, internally consistent variations in noticing at any given time. To illustrate these claims we present an analysis of one high school biology teacher who implemented a new digital recording technology in her classroom. Using the data from that implementation we identify two distinct local patterns in the teacher's noticing and from those patterns infer two different epistemological frames, one that she adopts during lab work and another during class discussions. We also discuss implications of these multiple framings for the study and training of teacher noticing more broadly. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50:284–314, 2013     

Putting the child first how one student teacher negotiated the moral landscape of teaching

Abstract

One student teacher's moral development process is uncovered, using a case study approach to capture the participant's internal processes and the constructed social context. The participant was in the first eight‐week placement of her semester‐long student teaching assignment, a kindergarten classroom in a rural public elementary school with a diverse student body. The participant believed that her professional moral responsibility was to “put the child first.” She believed this included protecting the child's dignity and autonomy, creating a close classroom community, establishing trust between teacher and child, fostering productive communication among all adults in the child's life, and safeguarding the child's health and safety. The participant maintained these priorities in her daily teaching practice and used them in her decision‐making process. However, the decisions that she was required to make during her early weeks of student teaching led to a modified understanding of her values. Democratic discourse and professional autonomy were associated with the process of moral development in this case. Theoretical and practical implications are described.     

The Dynamics of Interaction During Post‐lesson Conferences and the Development of Professional Activity: Study of a pre‐service physical education teacher and her co‐operating teacher

The purpose of this study was to characterise the development of a preservice physical education teacher's professional activity over the course of training interactions with her co‐operating teacher. The student teacher's professional development was studied using a hermeneutic and inductive approach based on the analysis of data from observation and self‐confrontation interviews. The results showed that the preservice teacher's conceptions regarding her teaching developed despite communication difficulties with her co‐operating teacher and that she constructed new knowledge—at times without her co‐operating teacher's awareness—even when she disagreed with him. However, the student teacher's classroom activity did not always change as a result of this new knowledge. The self‐confrontation interviews revealed her construction of knowledge, as well as the reasons for disagreement and her resistance to changing her classroom action.     

Hidden Currents in the STEM Pipeline: Insights From the Dyschronous Life Episodes of a Minority Female STEM Teacher

In this article, I use the idea of dyschrony to describe the multiple disjunctures experienced in a Hispanic woman's life as she struggled to gain full membership in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) community. Despite having earned a doctoral degree in chemistry and a teaching position in a STEM school, she was cognizant of how gender and race had marginalized her and her minority female students, making them feel like border members of the STEM community. She had formed a solidarity group within the STEM school. As I apply the construct of dyschrony to analyze the in-depth interviews with the teacher, I illuminate tensions in the STEM pipeline and suggest that one should be critical about the promise of social mobility. The forming of solidarity groups may contribute to positive experiences of minority girls in STEM schools. Dyschrony may be used as a helpful analytic construct to unpack the forces contributing to minority women's struggles in STEM fields and understand why they might leave.     

Classroom-to-Home Connections: Young Children's Experiences With a Technology-Based Parent Involvement Tool

Research Findings: DVD classroom newsletters are one proposed technology tool to promote classroom-to-home connections. The present study explored the experiences of prekindergarten children from predominantly Spanish-speaking homes with bilingual (English and Spanish) DVD classroom newsletters. On average, parents reported that children watched each DVD nearly 3 times. Interviews with children and other sources, including parent logs, teacher logs, and a teacher focus group, also captured children's experiences. Findings indicate that children have overall positive experiences with watching DVD classroom newsletters at home. Practice or Policy: Overall the findings support the use of DVD newsletters in prekindergarten programs as a way to create an opportunity to empower children, strengthen their digital literacy, extend the learning environment, and provide opportunities for meaningful conversations in the classroom and home.     

Powerful pedagogy: Learning from and about teaching in an elementary literacy course

Pedagogy is an important aspect of teacher education, and the teacher educator's pedagogy can help the preservice teacher understand the complexities inherent in teaching. This study examined one elementary literacy course in a master's level teacher education program. Data collection involved classroom observation and interviews with the professor and two students. In this course, the professor models good teaching and designs valuable projects and experiences for her students. Her thoughtful and continual consideration of pedagogy serves to make this an exemplary teacher education course and highlights the powerful role that pedagogy can play in teacher education.     

Figured World of History Learning in a Social Studies Methods Classroom

This paper considers how one teacher educator, Dr. Gomez, took up revisionist history and inquiry in her social studies methods classroom. The concepts of figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998) [Holland, D., Lachicotte, W. Jr., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], and artifacts and mediation (Holland & Cole, 1995; Vygotsky 1978, 1986) [Holland, D., & Cole, M. (1995). Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 26(4), 465–490; Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and language. Boston: The MIT Press] are used to present a case study. The study focuses on the artifacts that made up the figured world of history learning in Dr. Gomez’s social studies methods class and the learner identities afforded by this context. The purpose of this study is two-fold: (a) explore how teacher education classes can recruit primarily white, middle class students into a figured world of history learning that is culturally congruent with urban settings, and (b) demonstrate the application of the figured worlds framework to the study of learning in a teacher preparation program. Cecil Robinson is an assistant professor of educational psychology at The University of Alabama. His research focuses on social studies teaching and learning, technology, democracy, and hope. Address correspondence to Cecil Robinson, Campus Box 870231, Department of Educational Studies in Psychology, Research and Counseling, College of Education, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0231, USA; e-mail: crobinso@bamaed.ua.edu     

Community and inquiry: journey of a science teacher

In this case study, we examine a teacher’s journey, including reflections on teaching science, everyday classroom interaction, and their intertwined relationship. The teacher’s reflections include an awareness of being “a White middle-class born and raised teacher teaching other peoples’ children.” This awareness was enacted in the science classroom and emerges through approaches to inquiry. Our interest in Ms. Cook’s journey grew out of discussions, including both informal and semi-structured interviews, in two research projects over a three-year period. Our interest was further piqued as we analyzed videotaped classroom interaction during science lessons and discovered connections between Ms. Cook’s reflections and classroom interaction. In this article, we illustrate ways that her journey emerges as a conscientization. This, at least in part, shapes classroom interaction, which then again shapes her conscientization in a recursive, dynamic relationship. We examine her reflections on her “hegemonic (cultural and socio–economic) practices” and consider how these reflections help her reconsider such practices through analysis of classroom interaction. Analyses lead us to considering the importance of inquiry within this classroom community.

Consultation outcome as a result of in-service resource teacher training

The effects of learning disabilities teacher training for consultation with classroom teachers were investigated. Twelve learning disabilities resource teachers and 60 elementary school classroom teachers within one school system served as subjects. Four learning disabilities resource teachers received communication skills training, and four resource teachers received conceptual assumptions training. In addition, four resource teachers served as a control group for the study. Each resource teacher conducted three 20- to 30-minute conferences with each of five elementary school teachers. Following the third conference, information was collected concerning: (a) classroom teacher ratings of satisfaction with services, (b) joint ratings of the child's progress toward goals set during the first conferences, (c) the percentage of recommendations implemented, and (d) classroom teacher ratings of joint responsibility, and of resource teacher respect, empathy, and congruence. There were three findings in this study. First, no differences resulting from either type of training were found at posttest for classroom teacher respect, resource teacher congruence, joint responsibility, or joint ratings of the child's progress. Second, training resource teachers in communication skills resulted in significantly higher classroom teacher ratings of resource teacher empathy. Finally, significant differences due to resource teacher experiences prior to this study were noted with classroom teacher ratings of the child's progress, and the number of recommendations implemented.     

Pink ... with shades of grey: mediating moments of diversity in urban secondary classrooms

In this paper, the authors trace the policy documents and legislation in Canada that have set, over the last twenty years, the context for ‘inclusion’ in Ontario's public schools. The authors then enliven this historical account of multicultural policy innovation by turning to a particular critical episode in a secondary classroom wherein they consider the pedagogical strategies of a teacher in a drama classroom who deftly navigates the unsettled terrain of race and power. Using a provocative monologue set in South Africa's apartheid, the teacher opens up a space for dialogue and whole‐group interaction with her class of Grade 11 (16‐ 17‐year‐old) students. Serving as an illustrative episode from a larger ethnographic study of four school sites (2 Canadian, 2 American), the analysis here, of one teacher's interactions with her students, and the students’ engagement with one another, points to many of the features of drama pedagogy that elucidate the study's broader interests in understanding the problems of social cohesion in richly diverse urban schools. In this discussion, the aims of inclusion and the possibilities of interactive pedagogy are clear, as are their limits, in the charged public space of an urban classroom.     

Assisting Performance: A case study from a primary science classroom

The interactions of a primary school teacher with her class during two sessions of science are analysed to find the extent to which the teacher can be considered to be assisting the performance of her class. The qualitative analysis is in terms of both Tharp and Gallimore's six assisting behaviours and Coulthard's 'initiation-response-feedback' pattern for typical classroom discourse. The teaching shows features which suggest children's science concepts are being developed and features which are consistent with assisted performance, though it is not possible to show a causal relationship between these two aspects. It is suggested that there would be potential for exploring assisted performance further as a framework for teaching for conceptual development in primary science.     

Development of professional knowledge in learning to teach elementary science

The purpose of this research was to understand how preservice elementary teacher experiences within the context of reflective science teacher education influence the development of professional knowledge. We conducted a case analysis to investigate one preservice teacher's beliefs about science teaching and learning, identify the tensions with which she grappled in learning to teach elementary science, understand the frames from which she identified problems of practice, and discern how her experiences played a role in framing and reframing problems of practice. The teacher, Barbara, encountered tensions in thinking about science teaching and learning as a result of inconsistencies between her vision of science teaching and her practice. Confronting these tensions between ideals and realities prompted Barbara to rethink the connections between her classroom actions and students' learning and create new perspectives for viewing her practice. Through reframing, she was able to consider and begin implementing alternative practices more resonant with her beliefs. Barbara's case illustrates the value of understanding prospective teachers' beliefs, their experiences, and the relationship between beliefs and classroom actions. Furthermore, the findings underscore the significance of offering reflective experience as professionals early in the careers of prospective teachers. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 36: 121–139, 1999     

Early Childhood Teachers' Curriculum Beliefs: Are They Consistent With Observed Classroom Practices?

Research Findings: This study examined the consistency between early childhood teachers' self-reported curriculum beliefs and observations of their actual interactive behaviors with children in classrooms. Also tested was the hypothesized moderation by teacher and classroom characteristics of the association between beliefs and practices. A total of 58 preschool teachers completed a survey describing their professional backgrounds and curriculum beliefs. Their classroom practices were observed using a newly developed instrument that documented teacher interactions with children. Most teachers in this sample strongly endorsed child-initiated learning beliefs, although their beliefs about teacher-directed learning varied considerably. The most frequently observed teacher behaviors in the classroom were giving directions to children, responding to children's initiations, and engaging in non-interactive classroom management activities. Overall, teachers' curriculum beliefs and observed classroom practices were weakly correlated. However, there were moderation effects. Stronger congruence between teacher-directed learning beliefs and observed teaching behaviors was found among teachers who had more professional training and more years of teaching experience. Practice or Policy: These results support the importance of early childhood teacher professional development. They suggest that teacher preparation and professional development programs should focus on the intellectual transformation between teacher knowledge and teacher practice, promoting both aspects of development.