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 do we know about PD? According to the “consensus view” on professional development should be be designed to develop the capacity of teachers to work collectively on problems of practice, within their own schools and with practitioners in other settings, as much as to support the knowledge and skill development of individual educators. (Elmore, 2002, p. 8). 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 Although collegiality is rare, there is a growing body of research that focuses on “collaborative work” collaborative work is built on the assumption that learning is a social activity and that communication among professionals is key to developing common language to ask questions and reflect on teaching (Loucks-Horsley, 2003 ). 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. Herbel-Eisenmann & Cirillo, 2009; Crespo, 2006; Arbaugh, 2003) action research (e.g., Jaworski, 1998, 2006; Atweh, 2004; Zack & Graves, 2001). Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Collegiality in Professional Development Despite the focus on collaboration these groups just like more traditional professional development groups have had difficulty building “trust and community while aiming for a professional discourse that includes and does not avoid critique” (Wilson & Berne, p. 195). Issues include power and authority, conflicting values, and teachers not knowing how to provide critical feedback to their colleagues (Atweh, 2004, Jaworski, 2006). 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 teacher 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 Two university researchers and eight middle-grades (grades 6 – 10) mathematics teacher-researchers from seven different schools in one mid-western state 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 3 hours each) Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis – Step #1 Reading Group Action Research Beginning Middle End Beginning Middle End Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis – Step #2 All transcripts were coded in Transana (Fassnacht & Woods, 2005) for interaction patterns – praising, advising, challenging (Males, 2009) and relating. http://www.transana.org/ Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis – Step #3 Data reduction (Miles & Huberman, 1994) Challenging • I hypothesized that I may be able to gain insight into critical colleagueship (i.e., intellectual virtues) • literature (Little, 1990) described the difficulties teachers have in engaging in these ways Relating • I hypothesized that I may be able to gain insight into critical colleagueship (i.e., empathetic understanding) • Seemed to be the most unlike challenging (alignment vs. opposition) Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis – Step #4 Challenging and Relating interactions within each phase were further coded for the following: a) who initiated the interaction b) who received the initiation c) the primary content of the interaction d) the linguistic nature of the interaction e) the aspects of critical colleagueship exhibited Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis – Step #4 For the linguistic nature I imported the challenging and relating transcript excerpts into Wordsmith Tools (Oxford University Press, 2008) and created a wordlist – this will find the most frequent words in the text. http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/ Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Data Collection & Analysis – Step #5 I created the following types of representations for my data: a) a pictorial representation boxes for the participants and arrows going from the initiator to the receiver b) a matrix representation the initiators were represented in the columns and the receivers in the rows; each cell contained the number of challenges occurring between two participants Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

RESULTS

Challenging Colleague Example 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 (very few “why” questions) push receivers to think more deeply or think about things in different ways use of classroom experience for reasoning would or if could Confronting Practice: Critical Colleagueship in a Mathematics Teacher Study Group

Challenging Interaction within the Different Phases Far 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 Example #1 Helen: 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 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

Presentation Agenda