Understanding teacher collaboration processes from a complexity theory perspective: a case study of a Chinese secondary school

Although research on teacher collaboration has proliferated in the last few decades, scant attention has been paid to the development of teacher collaboration in school contexts. Informed by the perspective of complexity theory, this study investigates the complex process of teacher collaboration through qualitative interviews in an English teaching research group (TRG) in a secondary school in China. The findings reveal three distinct stages in the development of teacher collaboration, labeled as ‘breaking the ice’, ‘everything is out of control’ and ‘learning how to collaborate through collaboration’. The study shows that teacher collaboration is an adaptive, complex system that evolves through internal self-organization and interaction with external stakeholders and systems, such as school management and university researchers. The study provides useful insights into the ways of facilitating and sustaining teachers’ collaborative practices to enhance school effectiveness and improvement in specific educational contexts.     

Using cogenerative dialogues to improve coteaching for language learner (LL) students in an inclusion science classroom

This paper presents findings from a study conducted in an urban elementary school in the United States with an English language learner (ELL) student and two teachers engaged in collaborative teaching in an inclusion science classroom. This study examines the efficacy of utilising cogenerative dialogues between an ELL student and his science teacher and English as second language teacher to improve instructional practices enacted during coteaching. Drawing from field notes, teacher and student interviews, and video captured during cotaught science lessons and during cogenerative dialogues between the student and his coteachers, we examined the ways in which cogenerative dialogue expands teachers’ agency to adapt curriculum and implement instructional strategies that can better meet the needs of their students. At the same time, we examined the ways in which participation in cogenerative dialogues with his teachers expanded this student’s agency as a science learner and a language learner.     

Risky teachers: mitigating risk through high-stakes teacher evaluation in the USA

ABSTRACT

As a post-structural critique of US teacher evaluation policy, this paper aims to disrupt accepted conceptualizations of teachers by (1) identifying discursive constructions of teachers in political talk, action, and legislation; (2) unpacking the ways that these constructions operate to legitimize punitive accountability policies and practices; and (3) mapping the associated accountability practices used by one school district to understand how they function to manage teachers and shape teacher subjectivities. Drawing on data that include official federal- and state-level policy documents, policy supplemental materials, and local teacher evaluation materials, this analysis demonstrates how teachers have been discursively positioned as ‘risky’ subjects. By doing so, the means to mitigate such ‘risks’ are rationalized, insofar as high-stakes accountability policies and practices ‘make sense’ to protect the well-being of students and the country. This has enabled a set of intrusive and punitive mechanisms that assess and discipline teachers to behave as low-risk subjects.     

Right from the Start: Critical Classroom Practices for Building Teacher–Student Trust in the First 10 Weeks of Ninth Grade

Teacher–student trust is associated with the social and emotional development of students, their school connectedness and engagement, and their academic achievement. However, few studies have examined how trust develops between teachers and students in ninth grade, a critical year in high school for students to start off on-track. Even less research has examined how teacher–student trust develops from the perspective of students to help identify specific teacher classroom practices that are effective at doing so, particularly at the start of the school year when students’ relationships and connections to high school are just beginning to take shape. Drawing on data from a longitudinal, qualitative study of ninth-grade teacher–student relationships in one neighborhood public high school in Chicago, this study highlights three critical classroom practices that appear particularly effective for helping to build trusting teacher–student relationships during the first 10 weeks of high school. Highlighting the perspectives and insights of ninth grade students, this analysis finds that (1) the priority that teachers place on specific classroom practices, and (2) the timing of when these practices are used by teachers, are both critical in establishing teacher–student trust—an essential ingredient in helping ninth grade students gain important social and school connections during their transition to high school. By highlighting the voices of ninth grade youth, this study provides valuable insights for educators aiming to use specific classroom-based practices that are essential for helping ninth grade students make valuable school connections and get on-track right from the start of the year.

     

Beliefs, practices, and interactions of teachers in a Japanese high school English department

This study reveals the school culture and the teachers’ professional development activities in a Japanese high school learning environment. Furthermore, it documents the relationships among the context, teachers’ beliefs, practices, and interactions. Using multiple data sources including interviews, observations, and documents of teachers from an English department, this yearlong study revealed these English as a Foreign Language teachers lacked many teacher learning opportunities in their context. The study revealed that teacher collaboration only reinforced existing practices, eroding teachers’ motivation to learn to teach in this specific context. The study provides evidence to teacher educators about inservice teachers and their learning environment and the significance of the relationships between the two entities.     

What digital games and literacy have in common: a heuristic for understanding pupils' gaming literacy

This article argues that digital games and school‐based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts – ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games – can play in connecting pupils’ gaming literacy practices to ‘traditional’ school‐based literacies still needed for academic success. By including the reading, writing and design of digital game paratexts in the literacy curriculum, teachers can actively and legitimately include digital games in their literacy instruction. To help teachers understand pupils’ gaming literacy practices in relation to other forms of literacy practices, we present a heuristic for understanding gaming (HUG) literacy. We argue our heuristic can be used for effective teacher professional development because it assists teachers in identifying the elements of gameplay that would be appropriate for the demands of the literacy curriculum. The heuristic traces gaming literacy across the quadrants of actions, designs, situations and systems to provide teachers and practitioners with a knowledge of gameplay and a metalanguage for talking about digital games. We argue this knowledge will assist them in capitalising on pupils’ existing gaming literacy by connecting their out‐of‐school gaming literacy practices to the literacy and English curriculum.     

Crossing borders to teach English language learners

A teacher’s identity is thought to evolve in a continuous, situated fashion, amidst dynamic interaction between cognitive, affective, social, cultural and political factors. However, the literature provides little insight into the impact on the ongoing identity construction of class teachers when they encounter a few students with English as an additional language (EAL) in their mainstream classes. This paper reports on a year‐long study involving eight class teachers in four different New Zealand primary schools. Data from in‐class observations, interspersed by a series of individual reflective discussions, revealed how the presence of EAL students in the mainstream setting created tensions, the resolution of which shaped class teachers’ professional identities. Tensions surfaced in data on class teachers’ self‐efficacy perceptions, selection of teaching roles, relations with support teachers and professional development priorities. These findings thus provide fresh insights into how new situations may impact on class teachers’ self‐identities. In particular, this investigation suggests the need for schools, teacher educators and policy makers to assist teachers in challenging, and indeed moving outside of the socially prescribed borders that have traditionally defined their professional identities within the school, in order to build shared practices and more collaborative ways of solving problems.     

Seeding Writing Project principles and practices in a school community: a case study

This article reports on a small-scale case study involving all English teachers of junior classes in a rural high school in New Zealand. The Head of English had been involved in Writing Project professional learning, designed in accordance with principles and practices that can be found in a number of countries, especially the United States. The researcher was alerted to the Head’s instigation of a school-wide writing competition and the implementation across all classes of a poetry writing unit, and set out to explore the extent to which Writing Project practices had been ‘seeded’ in this context through the actions of the Head of English. All teachers were interviewed and the data thematically analysed using a social constructionist lens. Results showed that while some direct influence occurred, ‘seeding’ was actually a diffused phenomenon and likely to be facilitated by five factors: management structure, dissemination processes, leadership style, staff relationships and teacher disposition.     

Exploring teachers’ beliefs about teacher learning in professional learning communities and their influence on collegial activities in two departments

Factors leading to successful professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely discussed in the West, but little is known about how/whether teachers’ beliefs contribute to PLCs in the Chinese context. This qualitative case study aimed to investigate teachers’ beliefs about teacher learning in PLCs and their influence on collegial learning activities in two departments of a Hong Kong secondary school. Semi-structured interviews and observations were employed to collect data. The findings indicate that teachers in the Chinese Department believed that learning could be achieved in PLCs and their practices of collegial activities were conducive to teacher learning. Conversely, teachers in the English Department did not believe that interacting with colleagues would foster learning and their collegial activities yielded limited accomplishment in teacher growth. It is suggested that teachers’ beliefs play an important role in facilitating or impeding reform initiatives on teacher development. Implications for teacher education and further studies are discussed.     

Affordances of teacher professional learning in secondary schools

It is commonly understood that teachers in secondary school should develop throughout their career in order to stay as an essential factor in student learning. Schools can offer opportunities to link teachers’ professional learning to their school practice with a positive impact on teachers’ motivation to learn and the effectiveness of their learning. In this field study, teachers, school leaders, policy-makers, educational consultants and educational scholars were asked for their perceptions of conditions for teacher learning in school and of interventions in school to enhance teacher professional learning. These conditions and interventions were understood as affordances in schools that enable and support teacher professional learning. The main affordance in school these stakeholders mentioned was an open, but critical way in which teachers share their practices, collaborate and reflect upon their teaching practice. Collaborative practices seem to stimulate many interventions of teacher professional learning in school. Two implications of this finding are discussed. First, we suggest that the maximum teaching time should be reduced, team teaching should be more implemented or classes should be scheduled in such a way that teachers can meet. Second, distributed leadership approaches match with our findings about the role of school leaders in teacher professional learning.     

Teaching transformation under centralized curriculum and teacher learning community: Two Chinese chemistry teachers' experiences in developing inquiry-based instruction

The establishment of centralized curriculum standards and school-based teacher learning communities are presumably necessary to reform science teaching towards inquiry-based instruction in many countries. Drawing on interview, document, and unit plan data from two high school chemistry teachers in China, this study examines these assumptions. Findings indicated that both teachers developed different kinds of science teaching practices despite working under the centralized science curriculum and school-based teacher learning communities. Different teaching experiences of the two teachers and their school cultures of teaching interacted with the centralized curriculum and teacher teaching community to consequently shape their teaching practices in different ways.     

Historicising teachers’ learning: a case study of productive professional practice

This paper reveals the significant historical traces which informed the learning practices of teachers at one particular school site in a rural and regional educational district in Australia. Drawing upon recent theorising into professional practice, the paper argues that teacher learning practices are intrinsically ‘ecologically’ related to teachers’ practices at specific sites. However, extending beyond this theorising, the research also reveals how teacher learning – in the case presented, in relation to classroom dialogue – is also significantly influenced by earlier learning experiences of the teachers involved. In this way, teachers’ practices are revealed as not only influenced by present-day, site-specific, whole-school teacher learning, but also by particular events encountered by teachers at an earlier phase of their careers. The research argues for a conception of teachers’ learning which is not only site-informed and ecologically arranged, but also deeply temporally embedded.     

Korean EFL teachers’ perceptions of the impact of EFL teacher education upon their classroom teaching practices

This study employed qualitative data collection and analysis methods to investigate the influence of English as a foreign language teacher education programme on Korean teachers’ classroom teaching practices. Six in-service secondary-school teachers participated in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was applied to the data collected from these interviews. Findings from the analysis included that: a) most of the teachers were dissatisfied with the largely theory-oriented pre-service teacher education programmes that they attended; b) a major source of influence on their teaching was their experience of in-service teacher training programmes with practical curricula; c) observation of other fellow teachers’ teaching had the strongest impact upon the teachers’ teaching practices; and d) the teachers’ low English proficiency and the washback effect of the Korea Scholastic Aptitude Test hindered the maintenance of the changes brought about by in-service teacher education programmes. This study ends with a discussion of the implications of these findings.     

宜春城区小学英语教师专业素质现状调查及启示

小学英语教师专业素质是有效实施小学英语教育的关键。对江西宜春市中心城区小学英语教师专业素质的调查发现,教师数量严重不足,教师专业素质不够完善。教师虽然具有比较丰富的英语语言知识,然而在教学理念及教学方法等方面难以满足英语新课标关于小学英语的教学要求。导致目前教学实践中,忽略小学英语教学规律,挫伤小学生英语学习兴趣,难以实现小学英语教学效果。因此,必须尽快建设小学英语教育专业,以扩大教师培养规模;改革当前小学英语教师课程培养体系,不断完善其素质结构;建立健全专门的小学英语教师资格证书制度,规范素质要求,为教师专业发展创造条件。     

The intersection of school context and teachers’ data use practice: Implications for an integrated approach to capacity building

The current emphasis on data is a powerful force behind educational reform strategies. Administrators and teachers are inundated with data and increased expectations for data-driven practices in an effort to drive school reform. This mixed method study examined teachers’ experiences in a pilot professional development program to enhance data literacy and data use practices among nine grade-level elementary and middle school teacher teams in a single school district. Pre, post and follow-up surveys of the 28 teacher participants revealed promising outcomes of the professional development program. Significant increases in teachers’ reported data literacy, efficacy, and collaboration were evident. The study also examined school-level factors that supported data use practices and data cultures. Interviews with 15 school principals revealed how structural features such as district requirements, school expectations, and established policies and routines influenced teachers’ data use practice. Structural factors facilitating collaboration were associated with instructional goals and improvement cultures.     

‘This is my new normal’: teachers’ accounts of evaluation policy at local school board meetings

In this study, we seek to illuminate teachers’ constructions of US teacher evaluation policies through close analysis of the way teachers in one district describe these policies. We conducted a thematic discursive analysis of 60 teachers’ speeches, recorded during local school board meetings in a Tennessee school district. Using discursive psychology as a lens, analysis focuses on the teachers’ constructions of teacher accountability policies and their own positioning within the policies. We also attend to the linguistic resources teachers used in justifying their decision to speak during the meetings. Findings showed that while drawing upon repertoires of human capital and one-size-fits-all education, the teachers’ patterned participation involved the contestation of status quo practices of teacher evaluation and effectiveness by contrasting them with imagined possibilities of what evaluation could be instead. Implications for developing teacher evaluation are discussed.     

Collaboration to teach English language learners: opportunities for shared teacher learning

This study examines collaboration between English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teachers and content-area elementary school teachers, and makes the case for conceptualising teacher collaboration as an opportunity for shared teacher learning. Using a sociocultural theoretical lens, this study examines how three pairs of elementary teachers and ESOL specialists used and constructed tools for collaboration, which mediated and made visible teachers’ learning processes. Employing interpretive enquiry and cross-case analysis, we examined data from classroom observations, teacher co-planning sessions and interviews with teachers. Findings demonstrated that collaborating teachers used tools to articulate and reconceptualise teaching goals, co-construct knowledge and ultimately transform teaching practices to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. This study has implications for teacher education and ongoing professional development, by shedding light on the potential affordances of collaborative tools for teacher learning. Findings suggest that teacher education could harness these opportunities for learning by incorporating collaboration between ESOL specialists and content-area teachers as an integral part of preparing more qualified teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students.     

Investigating teachers' ‘take-up’ of reflective practice from an In-service professional development teacher education programme in South Africa

One of the key phases in ‘the action research cycle’ is reflection (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988; McNiff, 1988). The extension of teachers' reflective capabilities is one of the stated goals of the University of the Witwatersrand's teacher education programmes. In this article aspects of the findings of a 3-year research project, which investigated teachers' ‘take-up’ from a mixed-mode, inservice professional development programme initiated by the university in 1996 are discussed. The research team has described the overall project as ‘a practice-based case study of cases’. Data sources included classroom observations, videotapes of some of the lessons observed, interviews with teachers, written teacher narratives and questionnaires, and samples of learners' work- all obtained from working with the same sample of primary and secondary school teachers of English, Mathematics and Science for each of the 3 years of the project. The authors engage with what counts as ‘evidence’ of the reflective practices of teachers and consider what factors might enable or constrain the development of reflective capability by teachers working in underresourced, multi-lingual contexts. They reflect on their practices as teacher educators and outline some changes to the programme that could assist teachers to become more reflective practitioners in their classrooms and schools.     

Helping Pre-Service and Beginning Teachers Examine and Reframe Assumptions About Themselves as Teachers and Change Agents: “Who is Going to Listen to You Anyway?”

The focus of this article is how to ensure (beginning) teachers’ needs as practitioners are part of the discursive dialogue in physical education teacher education programs. We consider the relationship between ‘structure’ and ‘agency,’ teachers as ‘change agents’ and refer to ‘workplace learning’ as we examine the extent to which the social structure of the school and the teaching profession, and?/?or the capacity of the individual to act independently, ultimately determines a teacher's behaviour in reaction to teaching expectations. We are interested as physical education teacher education faculty in how we (1) strive to help pre-service teachers examine and reframe assumptions about themselves as teachers and change agents, and (2) examine taken-for-granted school practices and processes. We share ways that physical education teacher education programs could encourage pre-service teachers agency and the relationship between initial teacher education and induction.     

职前英语教师专业成长的另类途径——一项基于重构职前英语教师信念的行动研究

信念的研究是判断教师教育成效的一项重要指标,是当前教师教育中最有价值的一部分。职前教师信念由于受到先前经验和信念本身特质等因素的影响,不易改变,教师教育应该对职前英语教师的信念进行检视与再建构。在自我反思教学模式下发展起来的教育行动研究是近年来国外教育界探究和实践的一种教学理论,是一种非常适合没有接受过教育研究训练的职前教师的研究方法。开展行动研究有助于职前教师将理论学习与教学实践相结合,在教学实践过程中,充分利用有限的直接经验进行教学反思,不断检视、并重构教师信念,提升教学行为。