Session Information
01 SES 09 B, Complexity and Certification in Teacher Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Recognizing social and cultural diversity in educational research requires a shift from perceiving phenomena as simple linear processes to complex and unique assemblages of diverse actors (see Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). For example, the concept of intersectionality—that interacting sociocultural factors shape identity and experiences—reflects complexity (Hill Collins and Bilge, 2016). If teachers are to support students’ complex, intersectional identities they must learn to see and accept this complexity rather than generalize students by gender, race, ethnicity, social class, or other characteristics. In other words, shifting perspectives towards complexity enables space for diversity. In this paper, I describe a case study of teacher professional development (PD) that highlights the difficulties teachers have in perceiving and accepting a specific aspect of complexity: indeterminacy. The findings have implications for the skills and support teachers need to be successful in diverse classrooms.
In the study presented here, I considered interactions with complexity from a design lens. As a designer, a teacher learns and practices in a classroom amidst complex nested systems. Design calls for seeing beyond traditional, linear practice, experimenting with new approaches, and adjusting those approaches in response to feedback.
Theoretical Background
Scholars have called for considering teaching practice from a complexity lens (e.g., Clarke & Dempster, 2020; Sherman & Teemant, 2021; Strom & Viesca, 2021). Instead of simplifying teaching practice in an effort to find “best practices” or implement an intervention “with fidelity,” complexity demands a recognition of the multitude of factors that interact and affect teaching and learning. Rather than standardizing practice to serve the majority, complexity highlights difference, including working with intersectional identities of teachers and students (Warr & Wakefield, 2022). Working effectively amidst complexity requires accepting that it is impossible to obtain complete information on a situation and that there is no “right solution” or “right action” to take: the situation is “indeterminate” (Buchanan, 1992). Design hinges on this indeterminacy.
Many scholars have turned to design as a way to frame the type of learning and practice teachers are asked to engage in (see Warr & Mishra, 2021). Designers thrive in complexity because of the responsive nature of their work; a designer develops their practice in response to a particular situation, adapting as it changes (Schön, 1983). They operate in complexity through cycles of action and reflection which Donald Schön described as “reflection-in-action.” Designers “construct a theory of a unique case” (Schön, 1983, p. 68) and place the theory on the situation, beginning a “conversation with the situation”. The situation consists of “a system of actants in interaction that is experienced by the subject as a unique and inseparable whole” (Clarà, 2013, p. 119) akin to Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) assemblage. As a system of agentic entities, the situation “talks back” to the designer, providing feedback that informs future moves. This type of experimentation becomes a kind of inquiry where thinking, doing, and learning come together. A similar perspective can be seen in Jahnke’s (2011, 2013) critical hermeneutics, where design is seen as an act of interpretation and meaning making. Jahnke’s view emphasizes the dynamic relationship between the designer and the situation as well as a consideration of how the designer is changed in the process.
Method
The theoretical concepts described in the previous section will be illustrated through an analysis of data collected in a design-based professional development (PD) program. In the program, four middle school teachers collaborated to address self-selected problems of practice. I applied an explanatory case study approach (Yin 2017) to understand the program dynamics. The case, the PD workshops conducted with teachers from January 2020 to July 2020, is a revelatory case: the unexpected interruption of the PD program from COVID-19 and rapidly changing contexts highlighted the distinct challenges of designing amidst complexity. Data sources included recordings of PD sessions, pre- and post-interviews, work samples, and researcher reflections. Analysis consisted of iterative cycles of construction and revision of patterns. Steps included: 1. Reviewing all data, writing analytic memos, and constructing tables to compare participant interview and reflection responses 2. Constructing a pattern that might explain individual teacher outcomes of the program and how those outcomes were supported, and documenting plausible rival explanations 3. Reviewing the data from the perspective of a single participant, comparing their experience with the proposed pattern, and looking for evidence for and against rival explanations 4. Synthesizing the experiences of a single participant into a case description of that participant 5. Comparing the case description of each participant to the proposed pattern and to the experiences of the other participants 6. Constructing a new pattern that better models the data I completed cycles of pattern construction, review, and revision from each participant’s perspective. I identified parts of the pattern that were unclear and returned to the data to find more evidence for and against these elements. Finally, I wrote a case summary that reflected the pattern developed through the analysis. In this paper, I focus on one part of that pattern, the difficulty teachers had in seeing and acting in indeterminacy.
Expected Outcomes
Analysis of the case suggested that the teachers’ work had to shift to a changing context, and they began to see their practice differently. It highlighted the challenge and importance seeing complexity and indeterminacy: teachers needed support to think outside of traditional, linear practices as well as listen to the feedback from the situation. For example, one teacher commented that the most important thing she learned from the program was “being able to look at things differently . . . being able to analyze not only why we did the activity, but what the activity produced.” In other words, this teacher learned to put new frames on a situation and then to listen for not only what was expected to happen (“why we did the activity”), but also unexpected feedback (“what the activity produced”). As teachers work in an increasingly complex and diverse context, there is an increasing need to not only tolerate complexity but to capitalize on it. This paper highlights the role perceiving indeterminacy plays in teachers’ abilities to practice in complex and diverse contexts.
References
Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked problems in design thinking. Design Issues, 8(2), 5–21. Clarà, M. (2013). The concept of situation and the microgenesis of the conscious purpose in cultural psychology. Human Development, 56(2), 113–127. Clarke, S., & Dempster, N. (2020). Leadership learning: The pessimism of complexity and the optimism of personal agency. Professional Development in Education, 46(4), 711–727. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.; Vol. 19, p. 657). University of Minnesota Press. Hill Collins, P., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Polity Press. Jahnke, M. (2011). Towards a hermeneutic perspective on design practice. 27th Colloquium of the European Group for Organizational Studies, EGOS. http://www.designfakulteten.kth.se/sites/default/files/towardsahermeneuticperspectiveondesignpractice_finalversion_jahnke.pdf Jahnke, M. (2013). Meaning in the making: Introducing a hermeneutic perspective on the contribution of design practice to innovation [PhD]. University of Gothenburg. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books, Inc. Sherman, B., & Teemant, A. (2021). Unravelling effective professional development: a rhizomatic inquiry into coaching and the active ingredients of teacher learning. Professional Development in Education, 47(2–3), 363–376. Strom, K. J., & Viesca, K. M. (2021). Towards a complex framework of teacher learning-practice. Professional Development in Education, 47(2–3), 209–224. Warr, M., & Mishra, P. (2021). Integrating the discourse on teachers and design: An analysis of ten years of scholarship. Journal of Teaching and Teacher Education, 99(March 2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2020.103274 Warr, M., & Wakefield, W. (2022). Supporting teachers in designing for intersectionality. In H. B, M. Exter, M. Schmidt, & A. Tawfik (Eds.), Toward Inclusive Learning Design: Social Justice, Equity, and Community. Springer-Verlag.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.