Reflective states associated with creating inquiry‐based mathematical discourse

A secondary school mathematics teacher and mathematics education researcher engaged in a collaborative professional development experience that focused the teacher’s reflection on videotapes of his instruction. The purpose was to document and explore the teacher’s experiences with respect to his reflections and classroom practice while trying to create inquiry‐based mathematical discourse. Data included videotaped classroom observations, audiotaped interviews, and audiotaped focused reflection sessions. Analysis of the data revealed that over the course of the semester‐long collaboration the teacher exhibited, at various times, four different reflective states (‘explain but not question’, ‘question but not explain’, ‘question and explore’, and ‘exploring’). The identification of these reflective states suggests a more complex relationship between reflection and changing teachers’ practice than previously thought. The results of this article suggest that the interaction of teachers’ reflective activities and reflective states contribute to various kinds of teacher change in the classroom.     

Design experiments in Japanese elementary science education with computer support for collaborative learning: hypothesis testing and collaborative construction

This paper reports design experiments on two Japanese elementary science lesson units in a sixth‐grade classroom supported by computer support for collaborative learning (CSCL) technology as a collaborative reflection tool. We took different approaches in the experiments depending on their instructional goals. In the unit ‘air and how things burn’, we designed the unit where groups of students engaged in building theories on ‘how a candle stops burning in a closed jar’. In the unit ‘characteristics of various solutions’, groups of students collaboratively constructed a pH scale as knowledge artefact. In both studies, the CSCL technology was implemented mainly for facilitating collaboration between groups. Results showed that: (1) students were more likely to engage in symmetric communication (i.e. between groups as well as within groups) in the second unit, and (2) they were also more idea‐centred and more frequently shared their ideas in the second unit. The results were discussed from the perspectives of the scientific practices students engaged in and task structure.     

Teachers’ enactment of policy in classrooms: making students accountable through inscriptions from the curriculum in classroom interactions

The purpose of this paper is to examine the complex relationships between educational policy and classroom practice. By employing a sociocultural perspective, we examine formulations inscribed in socio-material artifacts about what students should learn and how they should engage with knowledge. We explore how these formulations are mobilized in instructional work and the implications this activity has for student participation. To address this issue, we analyzed video data of how teachers invoke competence aims from the national curriculum in their instructional work in six classrooms. The analytical procedures were derived from interaction analysis. The analysis focuses on how such formulations explicitly mediate social interaction as it unfolds on a micro level. The findings show that competence aims gain different functions as they are mobilized in classroom practice; in other words, they serve different purposes in teachers’ instructional work and anticipate different modes of student participation. In this study, the competence aims were (a) invoked as a source of authority, (b) translated into instructions, and (c) mobilized to obtain social order in the classroom. More rarely, the competence aims were used in meta-level discussions, where they functioned to reach agreements on how to pursue work toward joint goals. We discuss the implications of these ways of invoking competence aims for student participation.

     

Project-based learning in post-WWII Japanese school curriculum: an analysis via curriculum orientations

In the 2000s, the new national curriculum, dubbed as the ‘yutori curriculum,’ introduced a new subject for project-based learning ‘Integrated Study’ as its prominent feature. Comparing curriculum orientations in project-based learning in three historical periods after the WWII including Integrated Study, this paper aims to offer a genealogy of postwar Japanese school curriculum primarily based on a critical reading of the national curriculum guidelines on project-based learning, which is emblematic of the extending power of postwar Japan's curriculum authorities. Although Integrated Study was purportedly child-centered and put emphasis on each child's personal relevance and each school's autonomy, the finding of this study shows that Integrated Study in the yutori curriculum was rather a technology that disciplined schools, teachers, and classroom processes to shape children into morally good and cognitively flexible Japanese nationals. Despite its rhetoric of child-centeredness and personal relevance, the introduction of Integrated Study as part of the yutori curriculum was ultimately part of the state's move to gain further control over schooling.     

Implementation eines wissenschaftlich erprobten,didaktischen Konzepts: Der Einfluss pädagogischer Autonomie auf die Wirksamkeit in der Praxis

There is growing interest in evidence-based interventions that can improve student teachers’ professional development. But how can these interventions be implemented into everyday teacher education practice by teacher educators themselves—without losing their initial, lab-tested effectiveness due to teacher educators’ practical educational autonomy? Through a quasi-experimental field study the following question is investigated: What is the impact of different degrees of educational autonomy (low/middle/high) that 19 teacher educa­tors are granted while implementing an experimentally proven concept into their teacher training courses on the development of the competence to diagnose classroom situations among 261 student teachers? ANCOVAs using planned contrasts indicate that the effectiveness of the concept can be sustained in ‘the real world’ of teacher education practice, even if practitioners—no longer researchers—are responsible for the concept realization; thereby, the highest increase in student teachers’ competence occurred when low educational autonomy was granted, i.e., the concept was implemented closely to the original.     

Using representations,decomposition, and approximations of practices to support prospective elementary mathematics teachers’ practice of organizing discussions

This paper examines a series of instructional activities that provide prospective elementary teachers with an opportunity to engage in one of the more difficult practices to learn within mathematics teaching—organizing a mathematical discussion. Within a mathematics methods course, representations and decomposition of practice built from the Five Practices framework (Smith and Stein in Five practices for orchestrating productive mathematics discussions. Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2011) were implemented and studied to examine how prospective elementary teachers set goals, selected and sequenced available student work, and planned questions within a mathematical discussion. We examined prospective elementary teachers’ strengths and weaknesses in these facets through an approximation of practice set in a lesson context familiar to the prospective elementary teachers. Our results demonstrated that although prospective elementary teachers set varying goals for a discussion, their pedagogical choices in planning their discussion tended to be consistent with the goals they have set. These results support the focused development of prospective elementary teachers’ goal setting as an implication for mathematics teacher educators.     

Teachers talking about teaching and school: collaboration and reflective practice via Critical Friends Groups

Reflective practice has potentially positive effects on an organization’s capacity to focus on student learning and teaching practices. In an effort to comply with policy and provide teachers with opportunities to reflect on their practice, districts, schools, and teachers have turned to various models that feature collaborative experiences. One such model is the Critical Friends Group (CFG), focusing on the improvement of practice and learning experiences for children, using protocol-driven structured conversations. This article examines the mechanisms that support and sustain reflective practice within a community of practice and utilizes Wenger’s three dimensions of practice – mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and shared repertoire. The study followed a CFG in an elementary school using ethnographic case study methods to conduct a close examination of CFG meetings, protocol use, and analysis of teacher interviews. The propensity to ‘look out’ at school-wide issues vs. looking in at classroom practices, perceptions about feedback on classroom practice, and using protocols to guide conversation emerged from the data as prominent mechanisms in communities of practice. CFG facilitators and coaches, as well as participants must be explicit about the purposes of their work and protocol use alone does not ensure a focus on student learning and teaching practices.     

Teachers talking: the role of collaboration in secondary schools in Bangladesh

Teacher collaboration and support given from one teacher to another, focused on improving teaching and learning in the classroom, are notable by their absence in secondary schools in Bangladesh. This article identifies a number of constraints to developing a collaborative culture including the difficulty of the curriculum, the perceived low ability of many students, the teachers' own educational background and contextual factors which influence teachers' motivation. It suggests that informal collaboration for mutual support has the potential to increase teacher motivation but that this will only be achieved through building more collaborative ways of working through formal programmes grounded in classroom observation. It questions the validity for Bangladesh teachers of the model of teacher development programmes focused on teacher collaboration which emphasise teaching the ‘perfect’ lesson and suggests that without attention to student learning such programmes are unlikely to lead to increased collaboration or improved teacher practice in schools.     

Japan's teacher acculturation: critical analysis through comparative ethnographic narrative

Cross‐cultural teaching and research in Canada and Japan is reported. Ethnographic narrative methods were used to examine Japan's teacher acculturation. Canada's teachers are largely required to work in isolation, to learn their practice through trial and error. There is little provision for mentorship and insufficient time to reflect. In contrast, Japan's teachers have opportunities for reflection, collegiality and collaboration. Moreover, effective induction practices have evolved gradually, becoming a tacit part of teaching culture. Japan's teacher acculturation is characterized by significant teacher relationships; leadership and guidance; and further cultivated through professional development. However, undeveloped pre‐service programmes, one‐way, ‘top–down’ pedagogical exchanges, and ineffective mentors are contentious issues, hampering teacher education reforms. Nevertheless, Japanese induction practices challenge us to ameliorate teacher education to focus more on the needs of beginning teachers.     

Changes in Elementary School Children's Achievement Goals for Reading and Writing: Results of a Longitudinal and an Intervention Study

An achievement goal framework was used to examine changes in students' motivation for reading and writing in the late elementary years and to evaluate a classroom intervention project. The longitudinal study involved 431 students in Grades 3 to 5. Results showed significant declines in task-mastery and performance goals within the school year and across grade levels. There were few sex differences in students' goals for reading and writing. The intervention project included 8 teachers and 187 students in Grade 3. This study showed how various instructional modifications can influence students' achievement goals, perceived competence, and strategy use in reading and writing. As teachers provided more opportunities for students to complete challenging, collaborative, and multiday assignments, students became less focused on performance goals, and low-achieving students reported less work avoidance. The educational implications of this research are discussed.     

Developing Summarization Skills through the Use of LSA-Based Feedback

This paper describes a series of classroom trials during which we developed Summary Street, an educational software system that uses Latent Semantic Analysis to support writing and revision activities. Summary Street provides various kinds of feedback, primarily about whether a student summary adequately covers important source content and fulfills other requirements, such as length. The feedback allows students to engage in extensive, independent practice in writing and revising without placing excessive demands on teachers for feedback. We first discuss the underlying educational rationale, then present some results of the trials conducted with the system. We describe the collaborative process among researchers and teachers which enabled the development of a viable and supportive educational tool and its integration into classroom instruction.     

School‐based restructuring and curriculum change: teachers’ and students’ contrasting perspectives

Abstract

This article is set within the context of a school‐based change initiative, where we studied a number of teachers and students in order to understand the ways in which they understood and experienced the complexities of the change process, and to add their voices to the ongoing discussions around restructuring and school‐based change. We found that although there were some commonalties between how teachers and students experienced the changes being implemented, there were also some profound differences between the curriculum as planned by teachers and the curriculum as experienced by students. For the teachers, the themes of caring for students’ lives, recasting themselves as classroom practitioners and of working as collaborative colleagues were identified; for students, the themes were those of getting used to the place, and of re‐establishing their preferred way of working in this new setting. In our discussion and analysis of these themes we look at the implications for future school‐based change initiatives, and at some of the complexities and difficulties which present themselves as schools take on increased authority and responsibility for self‐management and for the creation of improved learning environments for students and teachers. We suggest that future change efforts should give more importance to the perspectives of teachers and students, and to the interactive and programmatic exchanges of teachers and students. We suggest also that changed school structures should originate in a focus on the improvement of teaching and learning, and on the facilitation of teachers’ and students’ collaborative efforts to create a curriculum for the classroom and a learning community which is both enabling and transformative for both.     

From pre-service to practicing teacher: considering the stability of personal and classroom mastery and performance goals

Research shows that personal and classroom goals are important for pre-service and practicing teachers’ personal and professional outcomes; however, no research has examined changes to these types of motivation across the transition from student to teacher. This study followed pre-service teachers (n?=?47) into practise and assessed changes in self-reported personal and classroom goals using surveys and focus groups. Correlations, repeated measures analysis of covariance and reliable change indices were used to assess stability/change in the quantitative data. Qualitative data were analysed for themes and largely supported the quantitative results. The results showed that teachers were at least as personally oriented towards mastery-approach in their practice as they were during their pre-service education but less personally performance focused. In terms of classroom goals, performance practices increased whereas mastery practices decreased, particularly for secondary school teachers. Although practicing teachers are personally mastery-oriented in their teaching, their intentions to establish classroom mastery goals appear difficult to enact in practice.     

Evaluating a large-scale implementation of Assessment for Learning in Sweden

This study reports on a large-scale implementation of Assessment for Learning (AfL) in a Swedish municipality. The implementation was founded on two principles: (1) teaching should be informed by educational research; (2) to be successful teachers’ professional development needs to be based in everyday classroom practice. From these principles, AfL was chosen as a strand of educational research to inform teaching and ‘Teacher Learning Communities’ were chosen as a vehicle for professional development and for implementing AfL practices. Findings indicate that the project has been successful in bringing about a change in how teachers talk about teaching and learning and in changing teachers’ pedagogical practice towards AfL. Findings also suggest that AfL practices are mostly teacher-centred, which means that the teachers still take most of the responsibility for the assessment. This leads to high workload for the teachers and may also hinder students from taking responsibility for their learning.     

Teachers’ conceptualization and enactment of twenty-first century competences: exploring dimensions for new curricula

Despite the advocated importance of twenty-first century competences in education, it appears that they are not systematically integrated in national curricula, school curricula and classroom activities. Potential explanations can be found in the current ambiguity of definitions for twenty-first century competences and the absence of educational actors in curriculum development. Responding to both shortcomings, this study aims to explore how teachers’ conceptualization and enactment of twenty-first century competences constitute dimensions that can inform curricular guidelines. An exploratory factor analysis of teachers’ self-reported classroom activities that foster students’ twenty-first century competences was conducted. The data comprised responses of 2,804 primary- and secondary-school teachers to a web-survey about the perceived occurrence of specific classroom activities targeting twenty-first century competences. Results suggested six coherent dimensions of classroom activities that foster twenty-first century competences: digital literacy, innovative thinking, critical thinking and communication, (digital) citizenship, self-regulated learning, and (computer-supported) collaborative learning. Nevertheless, there were substantial interrelationships among the six dimensions. This demonstrated that teachers did not perceive twenty-first century competences to be fostered by disconnected classroom activities, but that they already have a more integrative conception of the curricular innovation. The implications of these findings for curricula, teaching practice and research are discussed.     

Powerful pedagogical strategies in initial teacher education

The development of beginning teachers’ practice during a school placement is a multiplicity of mediated interaction between university and school based systems. Both systems have the common aim of training effective teachers. However day‐to‐day internal institution matters can cause tension between the learning goals set out for the beginning teacher by the university and the schools’ drive to ensure maximum student performance in ‘high stake’ national tests. The aim of the intervention was to set up structures which might enable beginning teachers to develop the capacity to think about and reflect explicitly on their practice, through purposive activity in an authentic classroom environment. The context of the activity was a secondary science course which aimed to encourage new teachers to empathize with secondary school pupils (aged 11–16) and understand their conceptual difficulties in learning about science within the constraints of a ‘curriculum delivery’ lead culture. The dialogue engaged in as part of the intervention helped beginning teachers to think critically about practice during school placements.     

Pre-service English language teachers’ collaborative development: the emergence of research,rehearsal and reflection (3R) model from an activity theory perspective

This study aims to understand how pre-service teachers’ activities shape (and are shaped) by the norms of schooling embedded in the national educational system from an activity theory lens. The data are obtained from video-recordings and bi-weekly reflective journals in microteaching sessions, lesson plans, classroom observations, and post feedback sessions. The analysis points to the stages, micro- and macro-networking levels that lead to the collaborative teacher development, and the emergence of a model in the growth of pre-service teachers. Overall, it is found that the development of pre-service teachers depends largely on the norms of schooling embedded in the national curriculum and the nature of training they received at undergraduate level. The paper concludes by confirming Engeström’s statement that understanding the evolution and historical change of pre-service teacher education in a special context might help investigate how activities change, develop, and interconnect with social and material structures.     

Business as un-usual through dislocatory moments – change for sustainability and scope for subjectivity in classroom practice

This paper makes a contribution to the debate that has been described as a tension between instrumental and emancipatory educational objectives in environment and sustainability education. The contribution involves a methodological approach (introd-) using the concept ‘dislocatory moments’, to identify and analyse moments in classroom practice that address educational objectives relating to ‘change for sustainability’ and ‘thinking and acting independently’. A case of business education, when ‘sustainable development’ is integrated in a series of lessons, is used to exemplify the approach involving analysis of the emergence and closure of a dislocatory moment and the change of logics that occur. The illustrative case shows how room for subjectivity and change can be intertwined in educational practice. It is suggested that the methodological approach could be used in empirical research of classroom practice to further knowledge about the kind of situations that contribute to ‘business as un-usual’ without compromising emancipatory education ideals.     

Examining the Content of Preservice Teachers’ Reflections of Early Field Experiences

This paper describes an exploratory study that examined the content of preservice elementary teachers’ reflections of their documented early field experiences of science teaching in authentic contexts. The study used an early field experience model that was focused on the objective of profiling an elementary science teacher as the practical merit of reflection. Preservice elementary teachers individually and collaboratively reflected on their early field experiences and used the resulting reflections to construct profiles of an elementary science teacher respectively in synthesis papers. Data sources included journal entries and synthesis papers resulting from individual and collaborative reflections. Thematic analysis revealed that profiles of an elementary science teacher constructed from both individual and collaborative reflections were based on the roles of teacher as a guide and teacher as a mediator. Analysis further revealed that classroom management and discipline and safety were the key foci factored within individual reflections while what promotes learning and the difference between what is effective and ineffective scaffolding respectively, served as the foci within collaborative reflections. Also, collaborative reflection provided a structured approach to reflection as it drew preservice elementary teachers into collective dialogue and negotiation capturing the tensions they faced when trying to make sense of the practice of other teachers. Implications include the need to frame early field experiences with objectives that are understood by all parties involved in early field experiences; and, the need to instill the importance of observation, documentation, and reflection which collectively sum up preservice teachers’ early field experiences.     

Moving Beyond Collaboration: Re-describing research relationships with classroom teachers

Drawing on my own difficult experience as a well-intentioned educational researcher working in collaboration with an elementary school teacher, this article highlights some of the dilemmas and complexities of collaboration with classroom teachers. Specifically, I raise questions about a previously underexplored yet surprisingly powerful factor in collaborative educational research: the language we use to talk about research relationships. I offer an interpretation of a recent 'collaborative' study that positions our difficulties as a conceptual-language problem rooted in our severely limited vocabulary for discussing and understanding research relationships. I conclude the article with a call for the development of a richer, fuller range of terms to describe research currently labeled 'collaborative'.