This study explores opportunities for collective meaning-making in collegial conversations. It aims to gain insight into how an interdisciplinary group of teacher educators at a Norwegian teacher training institution co-construct meaning about academic writing instruction in collegial conversations.

A considerable amount of research literature is dedicated to the implications of group interaction and collegial conversations for teachers’ personal learning and professional development. However, the potential of collegial conversations for professional learning and development in teacher collaboration is debated (Vescio, Ross & Adams, 2008). While many studies highlight the possibilities these activities offer for shared meaning-making, critical reflection and examination of beliefs and practices as conducive to teachers’ knowledge construction and professional development (Helstad & Lund, 2012; Liu, 2019; Matre & Solheim, 2016; Selkrig & Keamy; 2015; So, 2013), others argue that the learning potential of such conversations is often not realized (Crespo, 2006; Kvam, 2018; Ohlsson, 2013). This begs more research into how knowledge is actually constructed within collaborative contexts, and the study presented here aims to contribute in that respect. Analyzing 22 episodes from four collegial conversations conducted in an interdisciplinary group of teacher educators, this study seeks to answer the following research question: How do teacher educators co-construct meaning in collegial conversations about academic writing instruction practices? The study focuses in particular on how the teacher educators shape their discourse, and how the different types of talk they employ in the conversations offer possibilities for co-constructing knowledge about academic writing instruction in different forms. Moreover, it explores the potential of collegial conversations as sites or spaces offering opportunities for various forms of meaning-making and professional learning with regards to academic writing instructions in teacher education.

The study is grounded in sociocultural theory of learning which deems language, thought and social interaction as key components in learning (Vygotsky, 1986). In this perspective, knowledge construction is understood as a joint endeavor embodying both individual and social processes, negotiated and maintained in collaborative interplays (Linell, 1998; Markovà et al., 2007). Within this perspective, dialogical thinking is considered crucial in the process of collective meaning-making. It follows that meaning is in itself considered dialogic, existing in the relationship between utterances in a dialogue and the context in which it takes place (Matre & Solheim, 2016). Thus, dialogues can be understood as interactive arenas, providing “dialogic spaces” (Wegerif, 2013) where multiple meanings can be explored, and knowledge developed in the meeting between the participants’ voices. Moreover, in this dialogic process of constructing meaning and knowledge spoken language comes to inhabit a crucial role as a social mode of thinking. In the context of the collegial conversations, it becomes a tool for “inter-thinking” which the teachers employ for sharing understanding, tackling problems and collectively constructing knowledge (Johnson & Mercer, 2019) about aspects related to academic writing instruction. 

In order to get a better understanding of how meaning is co-constructed in the collegial conversations, it becomes important to study the interaction closely, focusing on how the teacher educator shape their discourse for meaning-making purposes. In this respect, dialogues may have different characteristics. According to Mercer (2000), they may be cumulative, in which a shared, intersubjective perspective is sought; or disputational, in which interlocutors are unwilling to take on  the other person’s point of view; or exploratory talk, which often includes elements of the former two, and in which the interlocutors engage constructively with each other’s ideas. 

Six teacher educators from five disciplines within the humanities and the arts, working at a Norwegian teacher training institution, participated in the study. Five collegial conversations conducted between August 2019 and April 2020 comprise the empirical foundation of the study. Each conversation lasted approx. 100 minutes and was recorded and transcribed by me. Cochran-Smith & Lytle (2009) describes collegial conversations as involving honest talk, a level of risk-taking and requiring trust between the parties involved “in order for the professional learning to be situated and complex” (cited in Selkrig & Keamy, 2015, p. 432). The collegial conversations in this study were initiated by me, the researcher, for a specific scientific purpose; in that sense, they share similarities with a focus group interview. However, overall they have more in common with semi-formal colleague mentoring groups, as the teacher educators to a large degree were in charge of both content and direction of the conversations; moreover, I also based my plans for each conversation largely on issues which arose in the previous conversations, and I often used artifacts provided by the teachers as starting points for the conversations. From these conversations, 21 episodes were selected for close analysis. Linell (1998) defines episodes as bounded sequences or discourse events which “are focused on, attend to or move within some kind of topic” (p. 187). The episodes were chosen because they appeared to provide rich examples of how the interplay between the teachers may provide opportunities for co-constructing knowledge about academic writing instruction practices. A social construction discourse analysis approach, which considers language as a ‘cultural tool’ for learning and is concerned with the ways shared understanding is developed in social context over time (Mercer, Littleton & Wegerif, 2004), constitute the analytical framework of this study. Keeping this in mind, I conducted a qualitative analysis in which I identified and analyzed the communicative projects in the episodes, using open coding to compare and conceptualize the data into categories. Simultaneously, I identified the communicative acts the teachers employed in the communicative projects to achieve the intended purpose and, using Mercer’s (2000) categories, I identified the different types of talk in the conversations. These analytic processes were closely intertwined and went on simultaneously.

The findings suggest that the teacher educators’ talk in the collegial conversations was predominantly cumulative and descriptive. However, the analysis points to a more precise understanding of the function of descriptive talk in knowledge construction contexts: In these conversations, such talk does not simply describe but also functions as a tool for them verbalize and make explicit their potentially tacit knowledge about academic writing instruction, identify similar experiences, and have their experiences and beliefs recognized by their colleagues. Thus, this study argues that in these conversations, the descriptive talk also seems to carry the potential to be transformative in the sense that it functions as a tool through which the teachers can expand their knowledge and gain a deeper understanding of their own as well as their colleagues perspectives and practices with regards to academic writing instruction. Similarly, this study also finds that the interdisciplinary collegial conversations provide valuable opportunities for joint meaning-making about academic writing instruction in teacher education as they constitute a space in which the voices, perspectives and experiences of teachers from different disciplines meet and interact. Taking the opportunities presented in the collegial conversations to sensitize themselves and each other to the beliefs and perspectives existing within the group in this manner may help expand and deepen the group’s shared knowledge of the multiple understandings and beliefs of academic writing instruction practices in teacher education. Thus, this study argues, interdisciplinary collegial conversations in teacher educations seem to carry the potential to add to knowledge about writing in teacher education in general and constitute a way to increase a greater “collective awareness” across disciplines.

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