Session Information
99 ERC SES 03 F, Teacher Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Teaching in today’s dynamic landscape is marked by complexity (Parsons, 2012). With evolving curricula, emerging organisational systems, and escalating demands for continuous adaptation, educators are compelled to constantly assess their professional growth in the realms of learning, teaching, and knowledge (Hammond & Bransford, 2007). Consequently, adaptive expertise has become fundamental to effective teaching (Hatano & Iganaki, 1988; Vogt & Rogalla, 2009). Pedagogical adaptivity entails tailoring lesson assignments to match learners' cognitive levels, facilitating their progression within their zone of proximal development (König et al., 2020), achieved through preplanned or spontaneous adjustments (Beltramo, 2017).
Adaptive teachers are exemplary in their teaching (Soslau, 2012) and possess pedagogical content knowledge that is flexible and creatively employed in instruction (Hattie, 2012). Within this construct teachers use a range of cognitive, motivational strategies, and identity components to adapt their practice (Crawford et al., 2005). However, classrooms present unpredictable landscapes, with students from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and experiences, as well as varying proficiencies, interests, and abilities (Parsons et al., 2018). Adaptive experts prioritise the impact of their methods on these students, seeking new skills and knowledge when their routines prove ineffective (Timperley, 2011), thereby selecting innovative strategies to accommodate diverse contexts (Vagle, 2016). Consequently, pedagogical adaptability is an ongoing, contextual, and multifaceted process (ibid.).
During periods of change, external factors like curricular reform can disrupt a teacher’s pedagogical adaptivity. In such swiftly evolving environments, adaptivity—characterised by flexibility, reflexivity, and innovation—is pivotal for navigating change (Tan et al., 2017).
The scholarly literature suggests that a teacher's disposition is fundamental to their pedagogical adaptivity. The capacity for effective and thoughtful adaptivity is closely intertwined with teachers' beliefs, vision, sense of belonging, and identity (Fairbanks et al., 2010). Fairbanks et al. (2010) delineate a thoughtful adaptive teacher as one possessing both declarative and procedural knowledge, as well as conditional knowledge. They comprehend not only the what and how of teaching but also possess a profound understanding of the most efficacious instructional approaches tailored to the intricate needs of their students (Ankrum et al., 2020; König et al., 2020). When teachers possess a clear awareness of their beliefs, a guiding vision for their practice, a sense of belonging, and can envision identities for both themselves and their students, they are more likely to exhibit thoughtful adaptivity and thereby become more effective educators (Fairbanks et al., 2010).
Through this lens this study adopts an interpretive epistemological stance to investigate the impact of curricular reform at the lower secondary level in Ireland on teachers' vision, beliefs, sense of belonging, and identity, and consequently, how this affects their agentic capacity to use pedagogical adaptivity within a classroom. The research specifically focuses on in-service teachers working within immersive Irish language contexts across the Republic of Ireland. The objective is to explore the pedagogical adaptivity of these teachers, examining their characteristics and assessing how intrinsic and extrinsic factors influence their ability to address the diverse needs of their students during periods of change.
Method
The researcher aimed to investigate the impact of curricular change on teacher characteristics such as belief, vision, belonging, and identity, and how these factors influenced teacher pedagogical adaptivity through a case study approach. Employing an interpretive epistemological stance, this PhD study embraced a social constructivist ontological paradigm. Loxley and Seery (2008) argue that knowledge is not merely a collection of facts but rather an engagement with the world that yields culturally, historically, and temporally bound meanings and understandings. Through interpretivism, the focus is on studying individuals and their interactions—how they perceive the world and construct their realities (Thomas, 2017). According to Creswell et al. (2016), the objective of research is to rely heavily on participants' perspectives on the situation. They suggest that in practice, questions should be broad and open-ended so that participants can construct the meaning of a situation, often achieved through discussions or interactions with others. Given the researcher's intent to explore teachers' experiences and perceptions qualitatively, it was logical to incorporate both an interpretive and constructivist viewpoint into this research project. To achieve this, the researcher utilised a case study approach for data collection. Creswell et al. (2016) define case study research as a qualitative method in which the investigator examines a real-life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple bounded systems over time. In this instance, Irish language teachers within immersive Irish language secondary schools outside the Gaeltacht area were selected as the bounded system. Qualitative data played a central role in the data collection process, with semi-structured interviews serving as the primary method. Seventeen teachers from these contexts were interviewed, focusing on their adaptive characteristics during a period of curricular change. The data collected from the interviews was analysed using the QDA package NVIVO. Cohen et al. (2011) suggest that qualitative data analysis is inherently interpretive and rarely provides a completely accurate representation of a reflexive, reactive interaction. They explain that qualitative data analysis involves organising, accounting for, and interpreting the data, identifying patterns, themes, categories, and regularities. Consequently, the researcher employed ethnomethodology when analysing the data (Cohen et al., 2011), in conjunction with the constant comparative method (Thomas, 2017), which entails repeatedly comparing each element, phrase, or paragraph with all others.
Expected Outcomes
Thematic analysis of 17 semi-structured interviews across 10 schools was conducted. Teachers spoke about the varying strategies which they employed in their classroom to motivate and encourage students to develop their Irish language skills. They described the diverse methods which they used to cater to the increasingly diverse student population and recounted the challenges and opportunities of recent curricular change. Uncertainty was prevalent throughout the data. Teachers conveyed a pervasive sense of ambiguity regarding their identity, role, and ability to adequately support all students during the reform phase. A noticeable decrease in confidence was observed among most coupled with a questioning of their professional competence. Although teachers’ beliefs and vision centred on student language proficiency and cultivating a love for the Irish language, the interviews uncovered prevalent concerns regarding performativity. The ambiguity surrounding mandated state examinations added to confusion and apprehension among teachers, hindering capacity to tailor pedagogical strategies to meet students' needs. Teacher belonging and identity emerged as pivotal factors influencing in relation to pedagogical adaptivity during this time. Where teacher identity, and predominantly language identity, was robust, educators were less likely to be impacted by this ambiguity and regained confidence in their capacity to cater to all students' needs more swiftly. Similarly, teachers who described a strong sense of belonging within their educational context, reported more heightened levels of pedagogical adaptivity and indicated that curricular changes had a lesser impact on their instructional practices. Curricular change created a noticeable decline in teachers' confidence regarding pedagogical adaptivity. Many grappled with this uncertainty, relying on their beliefs, vision, belonging, and identity as guiding principles during this period. However, in instances where these characteristics were fragile and lacked reinforcement, teachers exhibited a slower recovery and struggled to regain their pre-change levels of pedagogical adaptivity and agency in the classroom.
References
Ankrum, J. W., Morewood, A. L., Parsons, S. A., Vaughn, M., Parsons, A. W., & Hawkins, P. M. (2020). Documenting Adaptive Literacy Instruction: The Adaptive Teaching Observation Protocol (ATOP). Reading Psychology, 41(2), 71-86. Beltramo, J. L. (2017). Developing adaptive teaching practices through participation in cogenerative dialogues. Teaching and Teacher Education, 63, 326-337. Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2011). Research methods in education. Routledge. Crawford, V. M., Schlager, M., Toyama, Y., Riel, M., & Vahey, P. (2005, April). Characterizing adaptive expertise in science teaching. In Annual meeting of the american educational research association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (pp. 1-26). Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2016). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage publications. Darling-Hammond, L., & Bransford, J. (Eds.). (2007). Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. John Wiley & Sons. Fairbanks, C. M., Duffy, G. G., Faircloth, B. S., He, Y., Levin, B. B., Rohr, J., & Stein, C. (2010). Beyond knowledge: Exploring why some teachers are more thoughtfully adaptive than others. Journal of Teacher Education, 61, 161–171. Doi: 10.1177/0022487109347874 Hatano, G., & Inagaki, K. (1984). Two courses of expertise. 乳幼児発達臨床センター年報, 6, 27-36. Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. Routledge. König, J., Bremerich-Vos, A., Buchholtz, C., & Glutsch, N. (2020). General pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical adaptivity in written lesson plans, and instructional practice among preservice teachers. Journal of curriculum studies, 52(6), 800-822. Parsons, S. A. (2012). Adaptive teaching in literacy instruction: Case studies of two teachers. Journal of Literacy Research, 44(2), 149-170. Parsons, S. A., Vaughn, M., Scales, R. Q., Gallagher, M. A., Parsons, A. W., Davis, S. G., ... & Allen, M. (2018). Teachers’ instructional adaptations: A research synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 88(2), 205-242. Soslau, E. (2012). Opportunities to develop adaptive teaching expertise during supervisory conferences. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(5), 768-779. Tan, L.S., Ponnusamy, L.D., Tan, C.K.K., & Koh, K.B.L. (2017). Cultures and Leverages for Nurturing Adaptive Capacities through Curriculum Innovation. Singapore: National Institute of Education. Thomas, G. (2017). How to do your research project: A guide for students. Sage. Vagle, M. D. (2016). Making pedagogical adaptability less obvious. Theory Into Practice, 55(3), 207-216. Vogt, F., & Rogalla, M. (2009). Developing adaptive teaching competency through coaching. Teaching and teacher education, 25(8), 1051-1060.
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