Learning from Lessons: Studying the structure and construction of teacher knowledge

Author(s):

David Clarke(presenting / submitting)Man Ching Esther Chan(presenting)Doug Clarke Anne Roche

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 10 B, Professional Learning and the Development of Knowledge (Part 2)

Paper Session continued from 01 SES 10 A

Time:

2016-08-25

15:30-17:00

Room:

OB-E2.18

Chair:

Kristin Helstad

Contribution

The focus of this paper is the premise that teachers learn from the act of teaching a lesson. This inverts a prioritisation that has dominated recent research into improving teacher practice. Rather than ask, “What must a teacher already know in order to practice effectively?” this paper asks “What might a teacher learn in the course of their practice and how might this learning be optimized?” This paper reviews existing literature on teacher learning, highlighting the gaps and embedded beliefs in existing approaches, and then proposes a theoretical model and a research design that may help to advance research in teaching expertise and practice. Findings from a pilot project involving multiple countries are presented to illustrate the viability of the research design and the theoretical model.

The literature on teacher learning is dominated by the assumption that this learning must occur through organized programs of teacher professional development (e.g., Bell, Wilson, Higgins, & McCoach, 2010). This is a consequence of the understandable emphasis accorded to what a teacher already knows that equips them to teach well (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008). Consistent with Shulman (1987), we contend that teachers engage in significant learning through their daily practice, and that this offers the most fruitful opportunity for the investigation and large-scale advancement of teacher knowledge and improved practice.

The review by Blömeke and Delaney (2012) traces the evolution of research into teacher knowledge from apprenticeship models, through reflective practice, to the current emphasis on forms of teacher knowledge underlying teacher classroom practice. The approach to teacher professional development proposed in this paper places priority on the development of knowledge through practice, rather than the dependence of practice on existing knowledge. In addition, the proposed research approach focuses on the process of teacher in situ learning and how this might be optimized in the teacher’s daily classroom practice.

Both our theoretical model and the associated research design take two premises as central:

(i) When teaching a lesson, teachers learn from those things to which they attend;

(ii) The objects of a teacher’s attention when teaching a lesson and the significance accorded to those objects (their salience) are determined by the teacher’s existing knowledge and beliefs, the nature and goals of the lesson, and the context in which the lesson occurs.

We contend that both of these propositions are plausible and consistent with contemporary learning theory and research (Gibson, 1986; Kolb, 1984; Marton & Booth, 1997; Mason, 1998; van Es & Sherin, 2002).

Taking “salient outcomes” (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002) as our conceptual point of entry in the development of a model of teacher in situ learning, we propose “teacher selective attention” as a critical determinant of teacher learning. The focus on “teacher selective attention” emphasizes the potentially purposeful nature of teacher attention, where the practical utilization of the targets of the teacher’s selective attention makes visible the teacher’s judgments of salience. By connecting teacher selective attention to the idea of salience, we give practical acknowledgement to the need to know not just what a teacher attends to, but also the significance accorded by the teacher to the object or event.

In addition, we posit that teacher attention and learning are culturally-situated, reflective of the values of the school system in which the teacher operates. Any study of teacher practice therefore needs to take into consideration the curricular, organizational and cultural affordances that facilitate and constrain the objects and events to which a teacher attends, but which also determine the meaning they hold for the teacher.

Method

Based on the above theoretical framework, our proposed research design aims to create conditions conducive to the enactment of teacher inference and the learning arising from their selective attention. One innovation in the research design is the use of purposefully-designed experimental mathematics lessons as catalysts to create conditions conducive to teacher activity making visible both their selective attention and its learning consequences. Teachers are asked to adapt a pre-designed lesson, teach the lesson, reflect on the lesson, and then plan and deliver a second lesson themselves based on what they have learned from teaching the first lesson. An additional design feature employs international comparison to reveal the distinctive features of a community’s teaching practice (Clarke, Emanuelsson, Jablonka, & Mok, 2006) and the cultural specificity of teacher instructional choices (Leong & Chick, 2011; Lepik, Pipere & Hannula, 2013). Rather than relying solely on teachers' self-reports of their object of attention and learning, the research design generates multiple data sources, including the filming of the teacher-adapted (Lesson 1) and teacher-designed (Lesson 2) lessons; video-stimulated pre- and post-lesson interviews for both the teacher-adapted and teacher-designed lessons; and the assessment of teacher beliefs, teacher content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (e.g., TEDS-M; Tatto et al., 2012). The research design has been piloted in three countries with three mathematics teachers in Australia (Grades 5, 6, and 7), one Grade 7 teacher in the USA, and one Grade 5 teacher Portugal. Analysis of teacher interview data categorised teachers' objects of attention as related to: Mathematics (i.e., curricular content); Students (i.e., student knowledge, behaviour or needs); Instruction (i.e., instructional actions or considerations); and Teachers (i.e., self-referential statements). Teacher consequent learning was operationalised as teacher epistemic stance (use of “I know” or “I think” or some form of new knowledge claim) and evidence of adaptive practice (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986). Although the focus of the pilot was on mathematics teaching, the research design is sufficiently flexible to study the knowledge construction process of teachers of other academic disciplines. Key research questions include: To what classroom objects, actions and events do teachers attend and with what consequence for their learning? How is teacher selective attention influenced by: (a) existing teacher knowledge and beliefs; (b) the lesson’s content and structure (c) contextual characteristics of school and classroom? Do teachers in different countries/cultures attend to different classroom events and consequently derive different learning benefits from teaching a lesson?

Expected Outcomes

The analysis conducted in the pilot study focused primarily on the teacher interviews and revealed interesting and important differences in both the objects of the teachers’ attention and the teachers’ consequent learning. A feature was each teacher’s idiosyncratic use in interviews of similar general terms, such as “engagement” and “summary phase” to refer to things that were related but conceptually distinct. These differences were clearly important, since they connected teacher reported attention to current language usage, while demonstrating that the actual pedagogical significance of one teacher’s use of the term could be very different from that of another teacher. Teacher epistemic claims took several forms – using verbs like “realise” or nouns such as “idea” or stating propositions that were identified as representing new knowledge. Adaptive practice similarly took different forms – reflecting negatively on past practice, reporting new approaches, and statements emphasising action. In addition, the teacher’s personal attributes of knowledge and belief, as documented through the TEDS-M instruments and the teacher interviews, gave insight into the possible origins or principles underlying the teacher’s selective attention and the form taken by any consequent learning. Preliminary findings aligned well with the hypothesised connection between teacher knowledge, beliefs and values, teacher selective attention, and teacher learning. The pilot study also suggested that a particular type of lesson, including its curricular focus, may shape teacher attention and consequent learning. While the pilot study demonstrated the viability of the research design in different cultural settings, the variety of cases was not sufficient to sustain meaningful cross-cultural comparison. We are confident that the research design can be scaled-up to enable the cross-cultural comparative investigation of teacher learning as a situated practice mediated by teacher selective attention with the ultimate goal of facilitating the evidence-based optimization of teacher in-class learning.

References

Ball, D. L., Thames, M. H., & Phelps, G. (2008). Content knowledge for teaching: What makes it special? Journal of Teacher Education, 59, 389-407. Bell, C. A., Wilson, S. M., Higgins, T., & McCoach, D. B. (2010). Measuring the effects of professional development on teacher knowledge: The case of Developing Mathematical Ideas. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 41(5), 479-512. Blömeke, S., & Delaney, S. (2012). Assessment of teacher knowledge across countries: A review of the state of research. Zentralblatt für Didaktik der Mathematik: The International Journal in Mathematics Education, 44(3), 223-247. doi:10.1007/s11858-012-0429-7 Clarke, D. J., Emanuelsson, J., Jablonka, E., & Mok, I.A.C. (Eds.). (2006). Making connections: Comparing mathematics classrooms around the world. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Clarke, D. J., & Hollingsworth, H. (2002). Elaborating a model of teacher professional growth. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 947-967. Gibson, J. (1986). The ecological approach to visual perception. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Hatano, G., & Inagaki, K. (1986). Two courses of expertise. In H. Stevenson, H. Azuma, & K. Hakuta (Eds.), Child development and education in Japan (pp. 262-272). New York: W. H. Freeman and Company. Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc. Leong, Y.H, & Chick, H.L. (2011). Time pressure and instructional choices when teaching mathematics. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 23(3), 347-362. Lepik, M., Pipere, A., & Hannula, M. S. (2013) Comparing mathematics teachers’ beliefs about good teaching: The cases of Estonia, Latvia and Finland. Nordic Studies in Mathematics Education, 17(3-4), 177-198. Marton, F., & Booth, S. (1997). Learning and awareness. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Mason, J. (1998). Enabling teachers to be real teachers: Necessary levels of awareness and structure of attention. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 1, 243-267. Shulman, L. (1987). The wisdom of practice: Managing complexity in medicine and teaching. In D. C. Berliner & B. V. Rosenshine (Eds.), Talks to teachers: A festschrift for N. L. Gage (pp. Tatto, M. T., Peck, R., Schwille, J., Bankov, K., Senk, S. L., Rodriguez, M., Ingvarson, L., Reckase, M., & Rowley, G. (2012). Policy, practice, and the readiness to teach primary and secondary mathematics in 17 countries: Findings from the IEA Teacher education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M). Amsterdam, Netherlands: IEA. van Es, E., & Sherin, M. (2002). Learning to notice: Scaffolding new teachers’ interpretations of classroom interactions. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 10(4), 571-596.

Author Information

David Clarke (presenting / submitting)

University of Melbourne, Australia

Man Ching Esther Chan (presenting)

University of Melbourne, Australia

Doug Clarke

Australian Catholic University, Australia

Anne Roche