Presentation Agenda

Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study GroupLorraine Males, Michigan State University

Presentation Agenda • Background/Literature • Theoretical Framework • Method • Results • Discussion Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

BACKGROUND

Why study professional development? ? Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Why study professional development? decontexualized • contrived • unsatisfying • fragmented • superficial • disconnected • non-cumulative (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Lord, 1994; Wilson & Berne, 1999; Little, 1994) Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

What do we know about PD? learning is a collaborative activity and “educators learn more powerfully in concert with others who are struggling with the same problems” (Elmore, 2002, p. 8). a common thread in highly regarded projects was the “privileging of teachers’ interaction with one another” (Wilson & Berne, 1999, p. 195). Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

What does collegiality look like? According to Little (1990) two things that describe schools in which the teachers work collaboratively • Teachers are not working in isolation - they talk to each other about teaching on practical and theoretical levels • Teachers learn from each other “abandoning a perspective that teaching is ‘just a matter of styles’ in favor of a perspective that favors scrutiny of practices and their consequences” (p. 451). Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Collegiality in Professional Development This work includes the growing body of research on: mathematics teacher study groups (e.g., Arbaugh, 2003; Crespo, 2006; Herbel- Eisenmann, Drake & Cirillo, 2009; Slavit & Nelson, 2009) action research (e.g., Jaworski, 1998, 2006; Atweh, 2004; Zack & Graves, 2001). Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Unanswered Questions about Professional Development We still do not know how teachers learn from professional development or how collegiality may help or hinder learning Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

One possible hypothesis According to Wilson and Berne(1999), the most successful professional development projects were “aiming for the development of something akin to Lord’s (1994) ‘critical colleagueship’”(p. 195) They hypothesize that this type of critical collegiality may help to explain how teachers learn in professional development contexts. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Theoretical Framework “For a broader transformation, collegiality will need to support a critical stance toward teaching. This means more than simply sharing ideas or supporting one’s colleagues in the change process. It means confronting traditional practice – the teacher’s own and that of his or her colleagues – with an eye toward wholesale revision” (Lord, 1994, p. 192). Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Critical Colleagueship Creating and sustaining productive disequilibrium through self reflection, collegial dialogue, and on-going critique. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Critical Colleagueship Embracing fundamental intellectual virtues. Among these are openness to new ideas, willingness to reject weak practices or flimsy reasoning when faced with countervailing evidence and sound arguments, accepting responsibility for acquiring and using relevant information in the construction of technical arguments, willingness to seek out the best ideas or the best knowledge from within the subject-matter communities, greater reliance on organized and deliberate investigations rather than learning by accident, and assuming collective responsibility for creating a professional record of teachers' research and experimentation. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Critical Colleagueship Increasing the capacity for empathetic understanding (placing oneself in a colleague's shoes). That is, understanding a colleague's dilemma in the terms he or she understands it. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Critical Colleagueship Increasing the capacity for empathetic understanding(placing oneself in a colleague's shoes). That is, understanding a colleague's dilemma in the terms he or she understands it. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Research Questions How can the aspects of critical colleagueship exhibited by mathematics teachers participating in a teacher study group be identified? How are the first three aspects of critical colleagueship exhibited by mathematics teachers participating in a teacher study group? Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

METHOD

Context Report on Activity Structures & Turn Length Analytic Memos Identifying & Reflecting on Performance Gaps Mapping & Reflecting on Personal Beliefs Baseline Data Collection Reading Group Pilot Study Cycles of Action Research A.R. cont… Aug. 2005 – May 2006 Aug. 2006 – May 2007 Aug. 2007 – May 2008 Aug. 2008 Phase II Phase III Phase IV Phase V Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Participants Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis Pre-existing data included transcripts and videos from project meetings (41 meetings approximately 1.5 - 3 hours each) Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis Reading Group Action Research Beginning Middle End Beginning Middle End Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis All transcripts were coded in Transana for interaction patterns – praising, advising, challenging and relating (Males, 2009). Challenging and Relating interactions within each phase were further coded for the following: • Initiator/receiver of the interaction • the primary content of the interaction • the linguistic nature of the interaction (using Wordsmith Tools) • the aspects of critical colleagueship exhibited Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis I created the following types of representations for my data: a) a pictorial representation b) a matrix representation Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

RESULTS

Challenging Colleague Excerpt Gwen: In class, did you show them using Pythagorean theorem to solve the problem? Owen: Yes. That's the way we did them. Gwen: So you couldn't say, that a kid said, oh this is how you did it, so that's how I'm supposed to do it. So how is that different than, I know the distance formula, so that's how I’m going to do it? Owen: Because the distance formula is an exterior entity which they have no actual understanding of. All they have is their memorization of what the distance formula is as opposed to having them draw a triangle, which connects a problem they are presented with back to something else they are already familiar with. Gwen: I understand that, but you taught it that way. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Challenging Interaction – The nature but stretched over multiple turns questions were mostly “what” or “how” questions push receivers to think more deeply or think about things in different ways use of classroom experience for reasoning would or if could wonder Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Challenging Interaction within the Different Phases More challenges in the reading group phase than the action research phase Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Challenging Interaction within the Different Phases Reading Group • authors ’ writing styles • general instructional strategies (e.g., problems to pose, proof-styles to incorporate) • abstract notions rather than particular practices of individuals Action Research • mostly directed towards teacher-researchers presenting • approach to the action research project (e.g., research questions, ways of collecting data) Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Challenging Interaction – Critical Colleagueship Rejecting weak practices • recognizing alternative explanations for phenomena • often initiated because of the receivers making claims based on lack of evidence Openness to new ideas • as a result of challenges often teachers would express their openness to an alternative suggested by others Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Relating Colleague Excerpt #1 UR: I'm wondering on page seventy-four, where they talk about functions or purposes for revoicing…. And I'm wondering, like if you think about what you do in your classroom do you feel like you do those about the same or do you feel like you do one more than the other? Or do you feel like you do one and not the other? Kate: I don't think I create the alignments. I think probably what would happen is someone would make a conjecture and other people would react to it rather than having several at the same time. I don't see that happen very much. I see pursuing one of them or I ask for multiple explanations, but I'm not sure we investigate why one might be better than another assuming they are all correct, very often. I wonder how much I do that's truly revoicing as opposed to repeating. Gwen: I would agree with that. I would say I probably do more just repeating. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Relating Colleague Excerpt #2 The following takes place way after Mike shares the difficulty he is having with the heightened awareness of his discourse practices Kate: It's a lot of responsibility just being aware. Heaven only knows we don't want any of that [responsibility]. And what I think Mike, not only is it harder that it's also that I'm less satisfied with what I've done. Stacey: Cause you just think that after teaching for so long there's some day you're going to get to a point where you really feel like you're doing it the way you want to be doing it. And I've come a long, long way but it's exciting that there's still so much more to know and to try to do. But it's just never feeling like it's good enough. Cara: And it's exhausting. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Relating Colleague Example #2 The following takes place way after Mike shares the difficulty he is having with the heightened awareness of his discourse practices Kate: It's a lot of responsibility just being aware. Heaven only knows we don't want any of that [responsibility]. And what I think Mike, not only is it harder that it's also that I'm less satisfied with what I've done. Stacey: Cause you just think that after teaching for so long there's some day you're going to get to a point where you really feel like you're doing it the way you want to be doing it. And I've come a long, long way but it's exciting that there's still so much more to know and to try to do. But it's just never feeling like it's good enough. Cara: And it's exhausting. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Relating Colleague Excerpt #2 The following takes place way after Mike shares the difficulty he is having with the heightened awareness of his discourse practices Kate: It's a lot of responsibility just being aware. Heaven only knows we don't want any of that [responsibility]. And what I think Mike, not only is it harder that it's also that I'm less satisfied with what I've done. Stacey: Cause you just think that after teaching for so long there's some day you're going to get to a point where you really feel like you're doing it the way you want to be doing it. And I've come a long, long way but it's exciting that there's still so much more to know and to try to do. But it's just never feeling like it's good enough. Cara: And it's exhausting. Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Relating Interaction – The nature Two types of relating: • to acknowledge agreement • As part of an emotional response triggered by the receiver varied from quick responses to more elaborate stories use of classroom experiences As Kate mentioned… resonate with relate to identify with Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Relating Interaction within the Different Phases More relating in the action research phase than in the reading group phase Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Relating Interaction – Content Reading Group • often prompted by the university-researcher • general feelings about carrying out daily practices with new awareness of their classroom discourse • student behaviors and attitudes • contained some direct connections to particular classroom practices Action Research • often facilitated by the university-researcher (e.g., “Well, you use did something like this in your class, Holly or Gwen, right…”) • General feelings about the overwhelming nature of collecting the “perfect” data Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Relating Interaction – Critical Colleagueship Empathetic understanding • particularly when the relating was prompted by an emotional response Self-reflection • To express agreement or understanding teacher-researchers often referred back to their own experience and reflected on these experiences Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

DISCUSSION

Presentation Agenda