Seeking Emergence Through Temporal Analysis of Collaborative-Group Discourse: A Complex-Systems Approach

Abstract

Research around problem solving in collaborative groups has made progress, but several conceptual and methodological issues remain. These issues include the appropriate choices of units of analysis; the ability of current theoretical sets of macrocognition codes to capture group dynamics; detection and identification of potentially emergent phenomena within groups; and the extent to which multiple dynamics are integral to understanding groups. Using data from a complex engineering challenge, we applied methods drawn from complex-systems analysis to offer insight into each of these issues, showing the need for multiple dimensions when studying group dynamics and highlighting methodological difficulties when dealing with emergent phenomena. We suggest future research to improve the understanding of the complex dynamics of collaborative groups.     

Educating force multipliers: constructing terrorism in a US public high school

ABSTRACT

This article ethnographically explores a specialized Homeland Security program at a US public high school, paying careful attention to the program’s discursive constructions of terrorism and national security. In particular, this analysis examines how the Homeland Security program framed its study of national security as both anti-racist and objective. I contend that the invocation of anti-racism and objectivity can advance Orientalist discourses in the classroom. Critical education scholars need to address how teachers and students rely on liberal precepts like anti-racism to maintain dominant understandings of war, terror, and security.     

Formatively assessing prospective teachers’ skills in leading mathematics discussions

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Mathematics discussions are important for helping students to develop conceptual understanding and to learn disciplinary norms and practices. In recent years,...     

Teaching Through Collaboration: Flexibility and Diversity in Caregiver–Child Interaction Across Cultures

Teaching supports the high-fidelity transmission of knowledge and skills. This study examined similarities and differences in caregiver teaching practices in the United States and Vanuatu (N = 125 caregiver and 3- to 8-year-old child pairs) during a collaborative problem-solving task. Caregivers used diverse verbal and nonverbal teaching practices and adjusted their behaviors in response to task difficulty and child age in both populations. U.S. caregivers used practices consistent with a direct active teaching style typical of formal education, including guiding children’s participation, frequent praise, and facilitation. In contrast, Ni-Vanuatu caregivers used practices associated with informal education and divided tasks with children based on difficulty. The implications of these findings for claims about the universality and diversity of caregiver teaching are discussed.     

“It was smart when:” Supporting prospective teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical strengths

Learning to name and notice students’ mathematical strengths is a challenging process requiring time and multiple iterations of practice for prospective teachers (PTs) to adopt. Mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) can approximate and decompose the complex practice of naming and noticing students’ mathematical strengths so PTs learn to teach mathematics while emphasizing what students know and can do. This study uses two tools MTEs can use to support PTs as they learn to name and notice students’ mathematical strengths: A LessonSketch experience, a digital platform with comic-based storyboards showing children engaged in a mathematics task, and a strengths-based sentence frame. Our study presents the findings from the 111 noticing statements from 18 PTs as they engaged in the LessonSketch digital experience and practiced making noticing statements about what children know about mathematics. The study found that after a sentence-frame intervention, the PTs are more likely to use strengths-based language and more likely to identify mathematical evidence in their noticing statements. Uncommitted language (statements that do not align with a strength- or deficit-based coding scheme), suggests a fruitful, yet complex space for supporting more PTs as they learn to name and notice students’ mathematical strengths. The paper concludes with implications for future research in teacher education.

     

Connecting the Classroom and the Community: Exploring the Collective Impact of One District–Community Partnership

This study explored how one district–community partnership, comprised of seven nonprofit community partners that serve five elementary schools in a single urban school district, improved community literacy. This collective case study used semi-structured interviews to investigate the perspectives of 17 partners and analyzed student assessment data. Results revealed greatest benefits for first grade students and a need for consistent district leadership. This research is viewed through Hanleybrown, Kania, and Kramer’s (2012) collective impact framework.     

Gone viral: Content characteristics and relative quality of highly shared school psychology‐related content on Pinterest

Educational professionals, including school psychologists, are utilizing extant social media platforms to gather ideas, strategies, and resources to serve students with a variety of needs. The concern about the quality of resources remains a consistent reservation by proponents of adherence to best practices and evidence‐based programs. The present study examined a sample (n = 444) of the most highly shared pins in a random sample of content from followers of the National Association of School Psychologists Pinterest account. The research team conducted content‐coding for tool type, content type, the original source of the materials, and functionality and user‐friendliness. Results indicated that there was a high representation of social‐emotional, autism‐related, and intervention‐related material. Allied professionals (such as teachers) disseminated much of the content that was highly shared. Inferential analysis revealed that there were differential patterns of utility, functionality and content types across various original sources from the internet.     

Telephone Testing and Teacher Assessment of Reading Skills in 7-year-olds: I. Substantial Correspondence for a Sample of 5544 Children and for Extremes

Many research questions require the assessment of reading in large samples of children. We compared two nonconventional procedures for early reading assessment: test administration by telephone, and teacher assessment. Five thousand five hundred and forty four children participating in a longitudinal twin study were assessed by telephone using the Test of Early Word Reading Efficiency, and by their teachers using the UK National Curriculum criteria. A correlation of 0.69 was obtained between the TOWRE and Teacher Assessment for Reading. There was also good agreement between the two procedures for identification of children at the lower extreme. Both appear to be practical and valid for research studies.     

Culture and ideology in mathematics teacher noticing

This paper responds to the burgeoning literature on mathematics teacher noticing, arguing that its cognitive orientation misses the cultural and ideological dimensions of what and how teachers notice. The author highlights Goodwin’s concept of professional vision as a way of bringing analyses of culture and power into studies of teacher noticing. The case of a high school algebra teacher who learned to notice the mathematical strengths of students from marginalized groups is used to illustrate how this might be done. The teacher’s noticing involved not only cognitive processes like attending to, interpreting, and deciding how to respond to students’ thinking, but also managing dominant ideologies that position students—especially students from non-dominant communities—as mathematically deficient rather than as sense-makers whose ideas should form the basis for further learning. The paper advances the field’s capacity for understanding the challenges that teachers face as they attempt to notice in ways that are ambitious as well as equitable.