9‘ 1. v .:: . . . . ‘ ~ ll . . . . . . . ....¢¢.....v 54333. 3.5;... V ‘ . _ . _ , , .n‘ . : .. u .31.: :vl. . .z: o: .u.. x. a 5‘}... SF . -9.u.v.t.0. 2.. ‘ . ‘ 3:34:11 .1. . . x. .. :13: . a.£.....:... ..x “.1... a. :I. 2.. I . I...‘ 8.1..“ Olfit THESIS 51ml 3....lEZEARY Michigan State Unlversity This is to certify that the dissertation entitled Connected Teacher Learning: an Examination of a Teacher Learning Network presented by Jennifer Irene Berne has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Doctorfl degree in Educgt ion jwMj/MIE «flax/XL Major professor Date Augusti 2001 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 042771 PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. To AVOID FINES return on or before date due. MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DATE DUE DATE DUE lm DATE DUE 'll. 1' EDEN JAN; 0 8 2007 ,. 0 g 2008 .~--uz 6/01 o'JCIFiC/DateDuepss-sz A\ l X \U CONNECTED TEACHER LEARNING: AN EXAMINATION OF A TEACHER LEARNING NETWORK By Jennifer Irene Berne A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Teacher Education 2001 _x\ E Because 0: 5* tdards. aehiex e: increased pressure or her students. no i educational agenda attention to their cc This Slbj‘b a tin“ ~ ' ,chented literac‘. 4L. ' . ul3.IlCiS in \iiefiér- A i ' t") \ . ‘5‘. Sega} r‘ i;~o. if- “n: A 0.115 Ofstmuu'm Ire-Va. r-rsented bx ti- n'c I: ABSTRACT CONNECTED TEACHER LEARNING: AN EXAMINATION OF A TEACHER LEARNING NETWORK By Jennifer Irene Berne Because of the American education system’s current infatuation with higher standards, achievement benchmarks, and rigorous national testing, students are under increased pressure to achieve. Where there was once an image of a teacher alone with his or her students, now there is a constant swirl of external voices pressuring for their educational agendas. This isn’t all bad. The belief that all children can achieve is a powerfiil frame for a democratic system of education. However, without a corresponding urgency toward increasing competency for teachers, we cannot hope to accelerate the learning for youngsters. We cannot expect our teachers to maintain a level of professionalism necessary for the complicated tasks of our times if we do not pay close attention to their continual learning. This study analyzes learning in a teacher development network comprised of experienced literacy teachers (K — 8) from economically and culturally diverse school districts in Michigan. As participant observer in this network, I documented teachers’ sociolinguistic practices as they tackled a key problem of practice: how to accelerate the learning of struggling readers. This problem crossed the borders of the districts represented by the teachers in the network although the policy environments in the diszricts varied i3} 5‘" and face-Io-face. 11",;- inmction tailed Bo and found that the :3 marathon and a Itu' exanpies ofthe ; ~r sexings and also tr. '. teachers negotiated : profession de'. g; ., a; that in~serxice edge; WIN,“ Of Short [jg-f".- 9 i. wistful pedauez‘v learning as, well as x' i " ‘5 1w": districts varied by socioeconomic circumstance. Working for two years, electronically and face-to-face, the teachers designed and field-tested a flexible framework for instruction called Book Club Plus. I followed six of the teachers into their classrooms and found that the framework fiinctioned as both a heuristic for classroom literacy instruction and a tool for professional development. My study illustrates this finding with examples of the coordination of teachers’ knowledge and practice across diverse school settings and also in the relationship of classroom teaching to the learning experiences the teachers negotiated for themselves in the network. Heretofore the pedagogy of professional development has not acknowledged that possibility that its forms and fiinctions are powerfiil interventions in their own right. Instead, the conventional view is that in-service education is aimed at transmission of content, usually in an expert/novice activity of short duration. Finding that over time this diverse network constructed a powerful pedagogy transcending differences of local context and influenced teacher learning as well as student learning suggests that the social organization of professional development is as important as its content. DEDICATION This work is dedicated to my children and their teachers. iv I “Quid ILA his refusal to. befzex patience of m} £31: weekend where rt: supp-on be} and the and friends ll ho n e. Important, lam I‘OITUTIJ‘ lie to thank my my behalf It was Saw: PET-iig attention to I? “Oi'liras a miter. It Still 10 Dr Suzanne 0:: many lessons. 18L ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the support of my husband, Jon Ginsberg. Without his refusal to believe I could fail, I most certainly would have. I also appreciate the patience of my children who have flourished despite the fact that they haven’t known a weekend where mommy wasn’t working. For emotional, intellectual, and physical support beyond the call of duty I thank my extended family: parents, in-laws, siblings, and fiiends who were there to prop me up and remind me what is and is not really important. I am fortunate to have had some gified teachers on my side. In particular, I would like to thank my committee chair, Susan F lorio-Ruane for her continuous efforts on my behalf. It was Susan’s guidance that helped me see that working with teachers and paying attention to their learning should be of the utmost importance. I take Susan’s own work—as a writer, teacher, and thinker—as a sign of what is possible. I also owe a great debt to Dr. Suzanne Wilson. Suzanne apprenticed me in the art of research and among her many lessons, taught me about the nature of an academic life. It is my honor to count her as a friend. I thank also my committee members: Jenny Denyer, David Pearson, and Taffy Raphael. Each contributed important theoretical and practical perspectives to this work and other texts I produced as a doctoral student. In addition, David, Taffy, Susan and Suzanne all supported me in research assistantships that provided both an education and a forum for entrance into various important communities of practice. Dr. Aaron Stander, a mentor in my “other life” first introduced me to the idea of disciplined inquiry as art. Without him, I would have never made that first drive up to , - ..; and ere» 70““ Miran Beil. was. valued E much as anj‘or Eiseie. Susan I Heitrnan Kati". \lei’} Reed. E \l'ison thank ; 02W] East Lansing. 1 also thank the administration of Oakland Community College for supporting me financially through many years of graduate studies. Though I was a commuting student, I was fortunate to “hang-out” both physically and electronically with special fellow students. In particular, I owe debts of gratitude to Kathryn Bell, Cindy Carver, Jo Lesser, Ebony Roberts, and Dara Sandow. Finally, I was lucky to do research in an environment where everyone’s learning was valued. Because of this, the TLC network became a learning environment for me as much as anyone else. To the TLC members, (listed alphabetically): Dara Bacher, Karen Eisele, Susan Florio-Ruane, MariAnne George, Kristin Grattan, Nina Hasty, Amy Heitman, Kathy Highfield, Jacqueline J ones-Frederick, Marcella Kehus, Taffy Raphael, Molly Reed, Earlene Richardson, Jennifer Szlachta, Andrew Topper, and LaToya Wilson, thank you for letting me in on your learning as you helped me understand my own. CHAPTER 1 . [\TRODL'CTR Teaching and L: The C omens t1 Professional D: Problems of Pr. Ovenien oft, Chapter Oven- CHAPTER 2 TiEOREIIC. Theoretical 1?; Teach: Teach:- HO‘A 13 Of Prax Teach:- and Se TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Teaching and Learning Today The Contexts for Teacher Learning Professional Development Problems and Promise Problems of Practice: Situating Teacher Learning Overview of this Study Chapter Overview CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL FRANIEWORK AND RESEARCH DESIGN Theoretical Framework Teacher Learning as Mature Learning Teacher Learning as Inquiry How Paradigms Shift Professional Development as the Development of Communities of Practice Teacher Development as Leaming New Speech Genres and Secondary Discourses Teacher Learning as Cultural Praxis Professional Development as Cognitive Flexibility Theory Research Design The Setting: Teacher Learning Collaborative TLC Teachers in their Classroom Setting Data Collection and Analysis vii 10 13 15 15 IS 19 20 21 23 27 29 29 31 33 \l'orkiT-E in Managing E Tfianglllaiio Testing lie. CHAPTER 3 . COMING TOGEII Setting the Scene 11' The Initial Meeting A Community Men; How We Talked Arializ'ng the Lang. Stones in the TLC Early Storie~ The Beginnir Later Storiet 10ml WWI in Pro: The Power of Alike ACase oroiscong, 566mg the Wat er 6mg Back ”Ome- MOHS in the TU i 4" easing as PIOCesx COUCIUSlOn l Working in the Field Managing Data Triangulation and Constant Comparison Testing Ideas: Working Hypotheses CHAPTER 3 COMING TOGETHER TO STUDY PRACTICE Setting the Scene for TLC The Initial Meeting of TLC A Community Mended Together How We Talked Analyzing the Language and Activities of the TLC Stories in the TLC Early Stories: Maria’s The Beginnings of Connections Later Stories: Lena’s Joint Inquiry in Professional Development Discourse The Power of Alike and Apart A Case of Disconfirrning Evidence Seeing the Water Going Back Home: The Rice Literacy Circle Questions in the TLC Teaching as Process Conclusion viii 36 38 41 43 45 50 55 56 63 64 66 72 74 77 82 85 88 9O 94 95 99 (HIPTER 4 mgritiILi'R ‘ modudion Intersedion of C it: laetner'sCl ‘ Stones and Liter . SraclBreal ail ' Book C luh Diset Stones and Liter .llneraqiessc .. Bonk C 10h Discr Building L'ndersr .. .lnnther 300k C ‘ Sociallt'Construi - le'Resetha -, Conclusion CHlPTER s ACROSS coxr bliOdUCtion Sll SChOOls l Flathenork IDOlS fOr kpal‘ ‘ y'SlS who A! e the TLC “he are [he CONN CHAPTER 4 THE FAMILY RESEMBLANCES OF TWO CLASSROOMS Introduction Intersection of Classrooms Ms. Laetner’s Class at Harlan Elementary Stories and Literacy Learning at Harlan Snack Break at Harlan Book Club Discussions at Harlan Stories and Literacy Learning at Rice A Literacy Lesson at Rice Book Club Discussions at Rice Building Understandings of A Chair for My Mother at Rice Another Book Club: Harlan Students work on Chicken Sunday Socially Constructed and Narrative Ways of Knowing Family Resemblances Conclusion CHAPTER 5 ACROSS CONTEXTS AND DOWN THE HALL Introduction Six Schools A Framework Tools for Analysis Who are the TLC Teachers? Who are the Control Teachers? ix 101 103 106 108 111 113 116 119 122 124 128 131 l32 134 137 138 139 142 144 145 Time Spent on L: Classroom Set u; Classroom Libra: Craid'ed Reading t Independent Rea: Student—Lead Bo; Literacy as lnterpr Literatjv Instructzo Conclusions‘wh‘. COrteet w: Distributed 6700133 are TraCklng C; Teachers an. Cml’TER 6 THE \TTAL ROLE Time”. Time Spent on Literacy Classroom Set up Classroom Library Guided Reading in TLC Classrooms Independent Reading in TLC Classrooms Student-Lead Book Discussions Literacy as Interpretive Power in TLC Classrooms Literacy Instruction in the Control Classrooms Conclusions—What Makes TLC a Learning Community? Correct without Consensual Distributed Knowledge Groups are Flexible Tools for Teaching and Learning Tracking Classroom Behavior with Network Behavior Teachers and Students Manage Meaning CHAPTER 6 THE VITAL ROLE OF SPACES FOR TEACHER LEARNING A Third Space Teacher Learning in the Third Space Toward Complexity Key Linkages Narrative Groups Alike and Apart Learning as Process Theoretical Positioning of Convergent Learning 146 147 151 152 155 156 157 158 162 163 164 166 168 169 170 174 178 179 180 182 184 186 Expanding the S Teachef Lear-.17- meg at Clas: (all for Reseatcl APPE.\D1CE S fixflfiA.AN Appendix B Ma; Appendix C TL( Appendix D: Star Appendix E Liter; Appendix F Tran: AppendirG Ma;- Appendixli Map Ai‘l‘t‘ndixl Contrt‘ Appendix J. Centre-t fithK Chm: Rfiffences _ Expanding the Spaces and Contexts for Professional Development Teacher Learning Networks Looking at Classroom Behavior Call for Research APPENDICES Appendix A: Area of Michigan Encompassing the TLC Network Appendix B: Map of Participants’ Incoming Interests Appendix C: TLC Meeting Number 1 Map Appendix D: Standards Survey Appendix E: Literacy Logs Appendix F: Transcript of Standards Discussion Appendix G: Map of Ms. Laetner’s Room Appendix H: Map of Ms. Ham's’ Room Appendix 1: Control Classroom Appendix J: Control Classroom Appendix K: Children’s Literature Cited References: xi 186 187 189 190 193 194 195 196 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 206 labial Teacher D- _ l lhlel School C .2. lair} Meeting lahlet Control Te lthlei TLC tea.“ lt‘t‘et Control : Ithle'. TLC teat lthleS Comm} ‘ Idblt’o Sump} r- lut LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Teacher Demographics Table 2 School Characteristics Table 3 Meeting Characteristics Table 4 Control Teachers Table 5 TLC teachers’ hours per day on literacy instruction Table 6 Control teachers’ hours per day on literacy instruction Table 7 TLC teachers’ comparisons across three categories Table 8 Control teachers’ comparisons across three categories Table 9 Summary of Activities in the TLC classrooms Table 10 Summary of activies in the control classrooms xii 30 33 34 146 147 147 148 148 161 162 Figure 1 Act a :gnre . I63 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Accelerated Multi-plane learning 85 Figure 2: Teacher Classroom Behavior and Network Behavior 180 xiii :esporsihihtjt t access to only underst nd the clearly holds 0 she does shoal. Mani :: opportunities It intoiatii‘e tech: third I. titling h‘x'estigation (C u “33% reforms are lit rice Moment; eitnesth manx' con. annulment. etpe' lith others Teach .1 ' ., r ' 33171105 tor life the itdtelerant CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Only C onnectI Teachigg and Learning Today Teachers are easy scapegoats. It has become common practice to place the responsibility for many societal ills on their shoulders. Despite the fact that teachers have access to only part of the life of any child, the public expects that teachers will understand their potential for vast influence and rise to that challenge. While the teacher clearly holds only some of the power and responsibility to solve society’s problems, he or she does shoulder many of the problems associated with the practice of education. Many teachers have taken it upon themselves to forge better kinds of learning opportunities for their students. Teachers and teacher researchers have devised innovative techniques in education geared to foster in students higher order reasoning and critical thinking: 6. g. integrated mathematics (Lampert & Ball, 1998), scientific investigation (Cunningham, 1998) and process writing ( Calkins, 1994; Graves, 1983). These reforms are innovative but they also have a lineage in progressive education. In the face of contemporary social and educational problems, the work of Dewey (193 8) echoes in many contemporary classrooms where children, by dint of their teachers’ commitment, experience education and see learning as a process of living and working with others. Teachers, politicians, and parents alike are recognizing the new paradigm of learning for life and consequently lauding much from their classrooms that is productive and relevant. ' From Howard’s End (1910) EM. Forster 2"" ll Sgt/'7 l :7le OUT 7 L "3 stile 00' interacters .nterahlt‘ ul Seton tun artist on 4,7 l u» finned hi it hr in J ttlrtnllilld out Why then do American children seem to be learning less from school than their predecessors? The standards movement and the drive for more and more comprehensive testing are obvious political responses to the frustration that many of us feel about apparent lowering of achievement in America’s schools. But is achievement declining or are we instead romanticizing a past that never was and failing to acknowledge the challenges we have set for our current educational system in the twenty-first century? Are we continuing to raise the bar on our expectations for public education? There are several responses. One is to note that never have we had such a large and complex population to educate. Today, classrooms are rich in diversity of tongue, of culture, and of economic status. In this, one-size-fits-all teaching methods that are premised on the strengths of a European Caucasian Male firnd of knowledge are dismissive of the rich gifts of people of color, of varied ethnic backgrounds, and of women. Goodlad argues “Part of the national awakening, then, must be to the realization that our schools do not educate well. They never did, in part because they left too many people out” (1990, p. 111, emphasis in the original). Techniques that “worked” to teach youngsters who came from similar home lives—largely upper class and European-- fail miserably when intended to catch all of the children that appear in schools of today. Second, we have never had so many forces imposing so many standards in so many ways on teachers and students. Students are required to know certain things determined by many stakeholders in the educational process: states, districts, buildings, professional organizations, and employers. Though these elements may have always existed, they currently push on the curriculum from all different angles in the honest attempt to prepare children as they see fit. There is a current sense of urgency to write '7...) [u . lT‘d p: at. Fritters ll tie image 0ft l t the teach. lift-lat pant/i e. titties because little 1975) Prospecting more and tougher standards and to test at every opportunity. Children and teachers are far from left alone to do their own work. Third, while the curriculum for children has garnered academic and political attention and energies, teacher learning has been left largely unexamined and undervalued. It is only recently that standards and tests for teachers have been an agenda item in political and academic circles. We cannot expect our teachers to maintain a level of professionalism necessary for the complicated tasks of our times if we do not pay close attention to their continual learning. It is to this issue that I now turn. The Contexts for Teacher Learning Lortie (1975) argues that teacher education is a process of unleaming the view of school that is developed from so many years as a student. This “apprenticeship of observation” is a problematic learning frame for teachers in part because this learning is intuitive and imitative rather than explicit and analytical; it is based on individual personalities rather than pedagogical principles. Imaging how the teacher feels and playing the role of the teacher are different experiences” (p.62). Professors in schools of education are often fiustrated by their students’ inability to shake the image of schooling acquired during their years as a student. In addition, Lortie found that the teaching population, largely comprised of middle-class, white women had, as pupils, positive experiences in school. They tend to be accepting of educational practices because their experiences as students were so positive (Lanier & Little, 1986; Lortie 1975). Prospective teachers often cite experiences of nurturing children like parenthood, teaching Sunday School, and acting as a camp counselor as primary motivations for ‘0':th rill/0.05 Ill grime/I ~ ,"n' ului; C’LOIIICH- {999600000 ll tntenatiieoftle mi l i ‘ i ’ ll. Ullll’ 1'”)th l0 5 electing teaching as a profession. Like the apprenticeship of observation these experiences are tied more to instinct than to rigorous intellectualism (Lanier and Little, 1986). These early indicators that it will be difficult for prospective teachers to move to seeing teaching as a labor of mind as well as a labor of love is made even more difficult because the sheer numbers of individuals needed to educate a nation’s worth of children guarantee that there will be some of high, some of average, and some of low intellectual capacity (Ibid). This is why Broudy (1980) argues that to put an “inspirational teacher in every classroom is one of the great mischievous illusions of our time” (p.448). Other scholars (see Au, 1998; Florio-Ruane & deTar, 2001) have noted that the often monolithic characteristics of the profession and its dominance by a white, middle-class, female teaching force have made it difficult for teachers to understand the needs of their increasingly diverse students. Banks’ (1991) statistics paint a picture of one population gaining diversity while the other remains much as it always has been. He reports: Even if we are successful in increasing the percentage of teachers of color from the projected 5 percent in 2000 to 15 percent, 85 percent of the nation’s teachers will still be white, mainstream and largely female working with students who differ from them racially, culturally, and in social class status (pp. 135-136). Programs of teacher education have been criticized for not being powerful enough interventions into the intellectual frames of prospective teachers. The criticisms range from the content of the courses as too theoretical and intellectually thin (Ball and Cohen, 1999; Goodlad, 1990; Lanier and Little, 1986) to the teacher educators as too conservative of the previous norms of the profession ( Duchanne and Agne,1983; Lanier and Little 1986) to a mismatch between the lessons learned in field experience and those w.“ 1m 0-" tab . $.95 . lbw ‘ p; "3" 1‘.er 5 (‘3‘ ' ptt'i:\5l\ Ru; 3-- lbl A/ it!) Q m- " (n the llllii, Math I good. one that v tl'tlfilh.‘ng brief not 50 l ,. -,' Hill)“, duh l discussed in school of education coursework ( Lortie 1975). Defenders of teacher education cite the inherent problems of educating teachers outside of the actual context of teaching and while authentic experience can only go on in practice as a teacher is faced with an actual class for which he or she is responsible (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Tillema and Imants, 1995 ). Given these difficulties, teacher education may begin in pre-service work, but that work is incomplete. Teacher learning must sustain itself through the lifespan as teachers work in a classroom. Professional development (also called in-service teacher learning) has the potential to contextualize problems of education because it inserts itself in the midst of a teaching career. Though there are certainly classes of problems that all teachers must manage (how to plan effectively, how to account for the needs of all learners, how to do formative and summative assessments for example), particular teachers will find the “dilemmas” (Lampert, 1985) that most plague them and, professional development can be geared to help teachers with the tools to manage those dilemmas. Professional Development Problems am Promise In the forward to Profession_al Development in Education: Paradigms &Mices (1995), Matthew Miles writes: A good deal of what passes for ‘professional’ development in schools is a joke— one that we would laugh at if we weren’t trying to keep from crying. It’s everything that a learning environment should not be: radically under resourced, brief, not sustained, designed for ‘one size fits all,’ imposed rather than owned, lacking any intellectual coherence, treated as a special add-on event rather than as n: Hub 0e; e33: tease All 30131.. 3 teachers. 8 tt- nah for; teachers and: Hart it researchers. pri INS? ill? l'i'lill i‘V-ti, ‘ . A” ‘ inter: .7 0e» 0" part of a natural process . . . In short, it’s pedagogically naive, a demeaning exercise that often leaves its participants more cynical and no more knowledgeable, skilled, or committed than before (p. vii). Though Miles may be among the most vociferous in his criticism, he is not alone in his sentiments. Many scholars of education ( Ball and Cohen, 1999; Guskey 1995; Lanier And Little, 1986; Wilson and Berne 1999;) concur that teacher professional development is “happenstance, random and unpredictable” (Wilson and Berne, 1999). Guskey (1995) argues that we need to seek out “the optimal mix” of teacher professional development activities that attend to the issues most resonant for today’s teachers. He goes on to claim that this is difiicult because at present we know so much more about professional development activities that fail than we know about those that succeed (Ibid). Though Guskey notes the lack of research base for high quality professional development, in the field of teacher education there is a growing consensus about the characteristics of professional development that would address the issues Miles asserts in his work and might thereby occasion “powerfirl learning” on the part of experienced teachers( Borko and Putnam, 1997; Hawley and Valli, 1999). This consensus derives not so much form empirical research but from the folk pedagogies and local knowledge of teachers and teacher education Hawley and Valli argue “an almost unprecedented consensus is emerging among researchers, professional development specialists and key policymakers on ways to increase the knowledge and skills of educators substantially” (1999, p. 127). These include staff development opportunities that reflect what we have learned from research ELIE-L3 is 'C {WES-l: it the: QUE ether/9.? education. 1 title lust teeth or u. l 1 AW ‘-kl\ . t of? .I. A”, “I One 07 - r? l " sung it uh: Ii . l l f 1' H in lent/t rm on effective teaching of children. Good learning experiences are: collaborative, participatory, problem-focused, sufficiently lengthy, and congruent with norms of collegiality and experimentation (Little, 1988). Elmore and Burney (1999) echo this sentiment and argue that we know a good deal about what counts as successfirl professional development: It focuses on concrete classroom applications of general ideas; it exposes teachers to actual practice rather than to descriptions of practice; it offers opportunities for observation, critique, and reflection; it provides opportunities for group support and collaboration; and it involves deliberate evaluation and feedback by skilled practioners with expertise about good teaching (p.263). Given such consensus, why does professional development remain relatively unchanged from the didactic models of previous decades? Perhaps, then, the issue is not lack of knowledge but lack of research to test this folk wisdom and research on the complexity of execution of thoughtful professional development. If there truly is little controversy over what qualifies as high quality, effective professional development, than the professional education of teachers should not be as problem-laden as it is. As in lots of problems in education, however, the distance between the written down vision and the practice is wide. Just because we have coherent goals does not mean we have tested them in research or understand how to achieve them. Problems of Practice: Situating Teacher Learning One of the first problems of execution in professional development is the activity setting in which it occurs. Do we learn best “on the job,” or do we learn best away from the chaotic environment of the classroom? Do we need experts to teach us new skills and f D ‘\I I l.“ .'... .. [ll-13).); Ll I. ~-’1 NY {leaflet trailers" u ~l‘végrttns" lord 1,00; 550070 "rt 1 fillings n “Wildly“ ItiQ concepts, or do we need time and space to ask (and perhaps answer) our own questions? In 1983, Feiman-Nemser concluded “With few exceptions, the existing research tells us very little about the actual conduct of teacher preparation . . .(or) about the job of learning (p. 151). Though this was in a discussion of pre—service programs, the same is true and still today of teacher professional development opportunities. Smylie (1989) studied the attitudes of a large group of teachers toward their own learning. He found that “direct classroom experience” was their most highly ranked site for professional development. However, researchers believe that “Direct experience can be a limited and restricting source of new learning” (Smylie p. 554). Jackson (1990) concurs and problematizes direct classroom experience even more. He believes that teachers get so caught up in present behavior and in psychological and emotional ties with students that they adopt an intuitive rather than scientific stance toward their work. Neither Smylie nor Jackson see classroom experience as having an ability to “engage teachers in the pursuit of genuine questions, problems, and curiosities”(Little, 1993, p. 133). If direct classroom experience isn’t the answer, then external professional development that takes place outside the instructional space must be an integral part of teachers’ work. (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Lord, 1994 ) It has been argued that most “programs” of professional development have been arbitrary and non-programmatic. (Lord, 1994; Wilson & Berne, 1999) Huberman (1995) cites this as the “lone wolf scenario”—a model where teachers rely mostly on their own motivation to seek out opportunities to improve their practice and rely on their own assessment of strengths and weaknesses to determine their needs. Since professional development is often seen as an “appendix” (Wineburg & Grossman, 1998) or adjunct to the work of teachers rather than C: 'h ~D;-.1’; \ Jab» . 15“.?" .1. . In)“ f L 4. learn let's. a central part of what professionals do, (Ball & Cohen, 1999) instances of transformative experiences because of professional development may be rare. If it is an option to continue learning rather than a necessity, professional development will never receive the sustained commitment and attention necessary for it to influence the entire profession rather than a select few teachers. Teacher learning is complex and multi-faceted, yet it is often not valued enough so that the field embraces that complexity. In this, a few experiences are thought to be “enough” to sustain a teacher throughout a career. These experiences are nearly always isolated and fragmented from one another and there is little opportunity to pursue their interaction. The problems of professional development will not be easily solved. The field calls for an attention to the ways that professional development makes a difference in student learning in order to develop good heuristics for the consideration of any given professional development experience. Professional development is usually served up in the following ways: 1. District or Building Based: Participants work after school or on union- sanctioned “in-service” days often where a new “research-based” instructional program is introduced (Gusky, 1992). 2. Professional Organization or Conference Based: Participants leave school To attend gatherings of other educators and experts in the particular field 3. Graduate Courses: Sometimes funded sometimes not 4. Learning Experiences: Usually in the summer or spanning several Years, these focus on the increasing knowledge-base for teachers €0.13: CGI2 and the Bay Area Writing Project3 are two high-profile examples 5. Teacher Learning Networks: Groups of teachers gather together to work on issues in teaching. Of all these forms of professional development, networks may be the most informal and least researched. Lieberman and Grolnick (1999) believe “ Although many educators have observed and participated in educational reform networks for some time, little is known about how such networks are formed, what they focus on, and how they are sustained” (p. 292). I chose to study this kind of professional development activity for several reasons. First, in a previous review of research on professional development I was intrigued by both its generative possibilities and by the lack of research on them—the way the networks operate and their impact of teacher thought and activity (Wilson & Berne, 1999). Second, networks for teacher learning are intriguing because they have been so little examined, because their characteristics (Lieberman & Grolnick 1999; Lieberman & McLaughlin, 1992) potentially offer some of the features of effective professional development cited by scholars to support complex learning. Further, as a professional development activity that is intended to be teacher-driven, studying a teacher network might offer a vantage point to observe processes in professional development as they are integrated into the practice of teaching. Finally, and most pragmatically, I chose to study them because I had access to one: The Teacher Learning Collaborative (TLC). Founded by researchers and teacher educators at the Center for the 2 Cognitive Guided Instruction. Please see Fennema. Carpenter, Franke & Carey (1992); Fennema, Carpenter, Franke, Levi, Jacobs & Empson (1996); Fennema & Franke (1992) 3 Please see Goldberg (1998); Smith (1996); Gray, & Myers, (1978) for discussions of the impact of the Bay Area Writing Project. 10 Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA). I will describe TLC as a strategic research site in the following chapters. Overview of this 8“le As a teacher, a teacher educator, and a researcher in teacher education, I am concerned about how teacher education happens in the context of in-service teacher learning. Additionally, I am wary of learning that is disconnected from classroom practice and ultimately, student learning. In order to inquire firrther into these issues, I was able to study in and study with teachers who were participating in a small, voluntary teacher network in lower Michigan. The Teacher Learning Collaborative (TLC) was the site in which I collected data from June of 1999 until May of 2000. The stated purpose of the network was to support teachers from varied school contexts as they inquired into their own teaching practices. Based on a sociocultural conception of learning, this network offered teachers a place to work and think through their goals and dilemmas in the company of other teachers and teacher educators. However, TLC didn’t appear out of nowhere in this time and place. It was the amalgamation and transformation of several different groups that had met and worked together for a variety of purposes and in a variety of places over the previous five years (Raphael et a1. 2000 p.). The group was initially brought together by a mutual interest in teaching literacy within the Book Club curricular framework, (for more on Book Club see Florio-Ruane, Hasty and Beasley, 1998; McMahon, Raphael, Goately and Pardo 1997; Raphael et al. 2000), in learning to teach responsively via participation in their own adult book clubs (FIorio-Ruane with deTar, 01) and in problem solving within teacher directed study groups (Florio-Ruane, Berne, & Raphael, 2001). In this network, about a dozen teachers 11 “I .0; I“ from urban, rural and suburban schools came together outside the regular teaching day and away from any school buildings to work with one another on their common concerns within and in terms of their own local classrooms and districts. They were joined by university-based teacher educators and researchers interested in researching their learning among teachers in the network. This professional development activity was both integrated into their school day and separate from it in its physical position and its psychic purpose. Thus, it was voluntary and different from building-based, conference- type or academic professional development. Building on their work in teacher and pupil book clubs to which the teachers had belonged prior to TLC, the network was founded to link these groups in support of diverse teachers’ development of literacy pedagogy that would help all youngsters to learn to read independently by grade three by providing 1. Instructional level guided reading and 2.Age appropriate literature studied in heterogeneous groups within an integrated, thematic curriculum (Raphael, George & Florio-Ruane, in press). Ijoined the network as a research assistant, serving as a participant in TLC activities and, to the extent that TLC members also worked over time and distance by email and collaborative writing projects, as an analyst of participants’ oral and written communication . As such, I focused my attention on the ways in which the teachers in this network built understandings about teaching practices vis a vis their participation in the group. As I worked with the teachers, in addition to my assigned research on the network, I became interested in the ways that this interaction might influence classroom practice. Therefore, in designing my dissertation, I also participated as a classroom visitor in their rooms to seek out information about how TLC might influence their 12 P5515; 30mm 50ml? inert-53? blunt mi (1116. ll": Clllpr in“ slike a lhsnenr 1401'“ i I, ' ill’lé l'fl ol‘i'iltlli d‘ practice. I began my study with three broad questions which served to focus my inquiry, guide my development of a theoretical framework, and conduct my data analysis. The questions were the following: l.What do teachers learn in a professional development context? 2. How does that learning manifest itself in classroom practice? 3. How can we track and record these points of change? The remainder of the dissertation is previewed below. Chapter Overview Chapter Two begins by overviewing theory as background for the study. In particular it reviews that which can help us analyze the dynamics of teacher communication as learning within communities of practices. I describe sociocultural and sociolinguistic theory that reconceptualizes teacher learning contexts as sites for the interplay and overlay of personal historical belief and present interactive processes. Following, I discuss my data collection procedures, my data set, and the development of my questions, working hypothesis and interpretations as I undertook grounded theory development related to teacher learning in the network. Chapter Three presents the history of the network as well as its present characteristics. In this chapter, I explore the evolution of the network as a community of practice and as a generative, mobile place that also serves as a part of a teaching life. This network began more than 15 years ago with mainly heterogeneous participants working in a small number of communities. At the time of this study, it was comprised of wildly different teachers from far different teaching contexts with respect to class, 13 EC WC; 'W hurl. lti't lift: race, ethnicity, location and resources. The evolution of this group is part of its story and an important part of this study. Chapter Four uses a sociocultural lens to look closely at two different classrooms and two different teachers. This perspective allows a researcher to examine classroom practice as evidence of teacher learning. One teacher worked in a rural location that she traveled to from her suburban home. The other worked in an inner-city school that she drove to from her home in a more affluent comer of the same city. The children and teachers in these two schools couldn’t look more different or have more different demographic characteristics. The examination of the classrooms reveals a “family resemblance” in manners and philosophies that is used as evidence for a claim about the intervention of TLC into teacher classroom practice. Chapter Five builds on the analyses of two classroom teachers to test and refine the assertions made in chapter four by applying them to four other classroom teachers in the network. It also looks at six corresponding “control” classrooms in the same school as each of the six cases of network teachers. From this analysis, the clustering of TLC teachers practice becomes further suggestion that teachers were converging on a philosophy of literacy instruction that had similarities in form and content to the teacher network learning practices. Chapter Six explores the implications of this teacher professional development model and begins to define it as teacher learning in “A Third Space, “ and important space between the pedagogies of traditional professional development and the activities of daily classroom life. 14 '11 b CHAPTER TWO THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND RESEARCH DESIGN Teacher Learning_as Mature Learning Dewey writes in The Chichand The Curriculum: The fundamental factors in the educative process are an immature, undeveloped being; and certain social aims, meanings, values incarnate in the matured experience of the adult. The educative process is the due interaction of these forces (1936, p. 182). Although all learners, mature adults and youngsters, are “immature” in that they might be novice in particular fields of knowledge, we might be tempted to read Dewey’s comments to mean that any learner as “immature” needs to be “filled” by others with information needed to attain mature, expert knowledge. This is akin to what Freire calls the “banking” metaphor of education where learners are the inert “receptacles” of pre-existing knowledge. (Freire, 1970). However, note that Dewey uses the term “interaction” to describe the process by which knowers move from less to more mature in their experiences via education. Read this way, the learner actively participates in the process of his or her coming to know in transactions with others who are more experienced. In this, the learner comes to acquire knowledge and also to shape the knowledge acquired. Learning in this model is dynamic and negotiable as learners use knowledge flexibly and in a relationship with other knowledge sources. It is also sociocultural in nature in that it is a process of 15 t" '9 i¥ COR: thlC. ,. lynx! 111m.» lll'ifi F“ ,1 t ICC. 2.x: transformation of both the novice and the community into which he or she is apprenticed (Gee, 1992; Lave & Wegner, 1991). We often do not think of or practice teacher education in this latter, dynamic and sociocultural way. When we think about in-service education, we often default to the reading in which learning is the one way flow of expert knowledge into learner receptacles. Perhaps we do this because we assume that the learner is already “mature” and needs only briefing on the latest new techniques. Or perhaps we see her as a lone wolf, rather than a member of a professional community of discourse. Perhaps time constrains the kind and amount of dialogue that can be sustained in professional development. Whatever the reason, didactic models of continuing education are of limited use when our aim is the continued learning of mature professionals. Like the children they educate, teacher learners are far from “receptacles to be filled.” (Freire, 1970). And, unlike children, they are not “immature”. Instead, they often have wide-ranging experiences both in classrooms and in other parts of their lives. All have studied pedagogy, subject matter and, even novice teachers, have had some experiences using these tools in the service of children. These experiences help them shape their current practices. Many, it can be argued, are comfortable with the tools they have previously acquired. For this large number of teachers, in-service education can feel like the process of “shopping” or augmenting existing ideas rather than replacing old ideas with new. While “shopping” is far from“ banking,” neither is the appropriate model if we wish teachers to learn with complexity, “from” and “in” their own practices (Ball & Cohen, 1999, p. 10). This kind of model is at best inefficient and, according to 16 rr' 1". ul 1' Freire (1973) is at worst dangerous, as it offers a view of learners as having no previous schemas from which to build ideas. In conventional professional development, the learning process is usually characterized as comfortably additive (Jackson 1990; Lortie, 1975). Courses are of short duration, ask for minimal discussion or writing on the part of learners, and often take the form of lectures or demonstrations by non-teacher “experts.” This process is efficient and minimizes dissonance, but it also precludes powerful change in perspective. Despite the lack of powerfiil change, these kinds of professional development are comfortable, especially when teachers are stressed, responsible for many tasks and activities, and have little time to think. The adage “ignorance is bliss” though perhaps wrong in spirit reflects the understandable desire to filter out that which causes us to reconsider past practice as short-sighted or ignorant. Nevertheless, adult learners do confront moments in their lives when they must integrate new, contrary information with often tightly held beliefs. Sometimes these are uninvited moments of crisis, change, loss, or opportunity. Occasionally these moments are provoked, as when professional development becomes a process not of consuming but of engaging with others and with new knowledge. The literature on adult learners converges on the Deweyian (193 8) sentiment that “educative” experiences are those that help us forge new understandings. As such, they can potentially educate. But as I will show in my data analysis, they also need to have particular features in order to be educative including connections to local meaning and problems, duration, and authentic communication. (see chapters 3, 4, and 5). 17 PTO-£85585 learning a“ When con Srnjtlie's ri- Bftitirj' Ball 1 Useful to 3m dc’flopment lp “l Xosi; k-Glh T1115 )5 ll Scholars of adult learning (Brookfield, 1991; Schein, 1988) firrther define the learning process as one which changes the base understandings of an individual who already has certain understandings about an event or phenomenon. Schein (1988) uses the term “unfreezing” to indicate an altering of existing cognitive-psychological attitude. Adult learning, to Schein, is a series of these unfreezing-s in which conceptual frameworks are broken down and merged with other conceptual frameworks to arrive at new, tentative paradigms that then go through the same process recursively over a lifetime. Smylie (1995) offers several propositions about learning. First, adult learning can go on throughout a life. Second, adult learning occurs across places and problems. Third, adults enter learning situation with baggage gathered from previous learning experiences. Forth, adult learning is often pragmatically related to situations that the adult finds confrontational. Finally, adults are actively involved in their own learning processes (pp. 95-96). These propositions are usefirl because they help us position adult learning and assess adult learning situations that would or would not honor these tenets. When considering learning opportunities for adults in my study, I tracked back to Smylie’s five tenets to gather information on the potential for learning within TLC activity. Teacher Learning as Inguig Ball and Cohen (1999) offer a rubric that echoes Smylie’s propositions and is useful to apply to the design and analysis of educative experiences in teacher professional development. They assert that teacher learning should further “a disposition of inquiry” (p.11). No single learning experience will be appropriate to the complexity of teacher’s work. This is why Ball and Cohen provoke the field to consider the content of 18 . mgr professional ain'hai teachers shot result that disconnet relative in preparzl Talents in their that tamper but it may education curriculur‘. teachers existing lo; a grounded inquiry let 0nn classroen' One ot’the .- iithout careful 00;. llgether is a uholc Work and Circumst. does not mean all ' pa'adigm shifts as nptuaches to a p' assume that those 'itsd0m. He assui more their thinkir. professional development as a systematized learning experience that has both a defined pedagogy and a coherent curriculum. These elements would add a depth and breadth to teacher professional development that currently lacks and thus results in a shallow model of what teachers should learn and how that learning should proceed. This is the very reason that disconnected, decontextualized professional development activities are ineffective in preparing teachers for the challenging task of managing learning for all students in their charge. In short, inquiry may be time-consuming, indeterminate and complex, but it may more closely approximate powerful leaning than does a teacher education curriculum that offers only strategies, maxims, and materials to add to a teachers’ existing basket of practical know-how. I used the idea of teacher development as grounded inquiry to analyze the conversations TLC members held about practice in their own classrooms (see chapter 3). How Paradigms Shift One of the dangers of isolated practice is the perpetuation of extant practices without careful consideration of their value. However, it is not always true that working together is a wholesale replacement for the individual consideration of his or her own work and circumstances. In other words, just because we are in a social circumstances does not mean all is proceeding swimmingly. Kuhn (1970 ) talks about scientific paradigm shifts as changes in perspective that not only serve to illuminate new approaches to a problem, but also operate successfully because those buying into it assume that those problems have solutions that can be figured through this new collective wisdom. He assumes a collection of thinkers around the shift that somehow, over time, move their thinking along a similar plane. While it may be helpful for scientists to see 19 If. ti"? 3, n1. '-‘ Lb; 5“”f‘ ,. 7"“; .‘Y.’ \i ‘f “1‘5 -A‘s Ur - b ' 1 ERIC-Cl. U m '3'!\ 3313.2”; Pratessror As Culture {ha 1’af. a ' I-“w auto: Ems Panic the emergence of new paradigms of thought, and comforting to draw on the notion of a large number of people in thought together, teaching is not a field in which clean questions are asked and simple answers sought. In fact, Cohen and Garet (1975) argue that empirical research in social policy (like education) has never proven itself to be more authoritative than anecdotal stories or intuitive impressions. Because of this, teachers can’t hope to align themselves to instructional paradigms that certify answers. This fact warns against the tendency for knowledge claims to ebb and flow in their popularity as large groups begin to hang on and attach to them. However, if it isn’t teachers learning alone that brings the most thoughtful moments of change and it isn’t teacher learning together, then what is it? I hoped to understand the interplay of both of these components in my analysis of TLC in the chapters to follow. Professional Development as the Development of Communities of Practice As we are learning in social relationships with others, we are establishing a sub- culture that has its own integrated practices and specialized discourse (Gee, 1992). Vygotsky (1978), Bruner (1996), and Harre,(]984) offer a model for teacher learning that demands experiences inside of a social context. This implies that there will be an interaction among participants at various levels of experience and competency. Within this participation framework we arrive at a defining “community of practice” (Wenger, 1998) that has its own set of norms, discourses and social practices. Practice is special in that it exists in the interaction of participants in a joint venture. Wenger defines it in the following way: Practice resides in a community of people and the relations of mutual engagement by which they can do whatever they do. Membership in a community of 20 its SCH“ \Vnert ‘ 7313?? a com: 51) ’5 _ ae pant-tip. Lii'tilles in \ practice is therefore a matter of mutual engagement. That is what defines the community. A community of practice is not just an aggregate of people defined by some characteristic (pp. 73-74). When teachers learn together, then, in Wenger’s definition, they are not placed in a room because of mandate or externally defined mission, but rather, they intentionally gather together to work on a mutually constructed vision of their work. In this work we may have dilemmas, risks, celebrations, common problems, narratives of incidents, and debate over difference. It is not the work of the practice that must be held in common, but rather a commitment to the form of the participation, what Lave and Wegner (1991) call “the participation framework, ” that must be shared. This can also be thought of as the activities in which the practitioner engages with others as a part of learning and teaching. In my study, I used this construct to look at teacher leaming in discourse. I wanted to see if TLC was a community and if so, if it fostered learning among its teachers. In addition, since each teacher also worked in a classroom, I wondered if she would be an ambassador bringing back to that community ideas about literacy and learning from TLC. In chapters 3 and 4, I offer my analyses of these nested processes. Both the classroom and sites for professional development can be thought of as communities of practice if the participants are there to support the activities of one another as participants in a community. If we understand learning and knowledge as both the gathering of information from more knowledgeable others in a scaffolded relationship (Vygotsky, 1981) and meaningful activity with that information and our own schemas (Wenger, 1998) then we can imagine ways that classrooms and professional 21 V7332 :nl‘; “fin‘mm HKU ~\K:.- A“ 'fi'4gr" u‘ - kudsu.§ 15 f. Student-tea 373C‘tice 311i Tin: itaci'ier PTO inten- rhe l: 50‘ What u, development activities might interact in mutually dependent participant relationships of learning. Teacher Development as Learning New Speech Genres and SecondarL Discourses Within communities of practice, particular ways of thinking, problem solving, behaving and presenting oneself are negotiated and sustained within members’ interactions. Calling these sociolinguistic “identity kits,” Gee (1992) reminds us that all discourse communities have specialized manners, methods, and materials. Thus identity and community are reflexive processes. The practice of field work for teacher education students is an acknowledgement of this reflexivity (Denyer and F lorio-Ruane, 1995 ) It is only by participating within a community of practice that the newcomer can become a full-fledged member of the discourse of that practice (Lave & Wegner, 1991). In these apprenticeship experiences, teachers talk and listen to students, use communication tools (e. g. chalkboards), interact with colleagues and custodians and the like as apprentice members of the discourse community of teaching. All of these experiences assist the student-teacher as he or she wades further and further into firll participation in the practice and moves nearer the central knowledge of the teacher role. This process does not stop with certification. In my study, I wondered whether teacher professional development should also be thought of as a chance to experience anew the intellectual tools, dispositions and behaviors common to the participants and if so, what was the discourse community to which their participation provided entry. This is difficult in part because it involves what Erickson (1986) called “making the familiar strange.” In my analysis, one way this shift in consciousness from knower to inquirer occurred was by shifting our participation framework in TLC from an “expert/novice” 22 .~~ 7‘" £30 Shells. h‘ 5.13396 and 31m 6? CES. 5U [.3 traje lhe C ‘Wch gen? “’t‘idlllt’ti I commit} piece rrtssir issonance enzzrely set one to a “community of inquiry” one. I found that this was difficult, but as my analysis also shows, helpfirlly so. Teacher learners had a big shift to make in this regard as the language and tools they regularly employ in the classroom seemed initially at odds with the tools necessary for their own learning. In the classroom, often, they are question- answerers, supporter of learning, evaluators, maintainer of standards, etc. It is not easy to trade the disposition of knowledge/expert for one of inquirer/leamer. One way of thinking of the discursive shift TLC teachers made is that they learned in TLC a new “speech genre.” (Bahktin, 1986). As my analysis shows, the speech genres of inquiry- oriented teacher education are much different from those of didactic classroom teaching of the sort described by Cazden (1986) as “the default model” of teacher initiator/student respondent/ teacher evaluator. Bahktin argues that each sphere of activity devises its own speech genre in which the language lexicons, phrases and grammatical patterns are “relatively stable ” (1986, p. 60, emphasis in the original). This stability helps to define a community of practice and establish its boundaries and memberships. An important piece missing from the study of teacher professional development opportunities is the dissonance caused by seeing this activity, speech genre, and community of practice as entirely separate from or transformative of the classroom. Yet, it is precisely in the engagement of the two spheres that new knowledge and practices might arise for use in the classroom in support of more complex and transformative student learning. This possibility is described in my data analysis in chapter 3. Teacher Learning as Cultural Praxis Sociocultural theorists (Vygotsky, 1981) have stressed the social and cultural nature of complex learning. In this model, learning occurs as an interaction between 23 1.4 4 «eiiOtiSli he"; L v1 .‘ . \\ Ci Elatit'm' n6 'r'lfi Olle “hf: r-vJ atczher \Vlk’fé‘ le arr-ierstardin? Rehaelt In m.‘ 1 rate understar skinned in m} c and thoughtful kt inetslea'ge ln te Teacher learning W3. their own cl. tonpiet trays l;- at'ners, but rather learners engage t. liestion lladlilor the Way 10 help It at understandir‘.‘ (I'a unit understandir there. importantl unaersrandinu it ' ~0P€t50n single rt Th previously held claims and relationships with others in social situations. In these situations, new claims are integrated with old conceptions as learners move along two planes: one where learning moves from private understanding to public presentation and another where learning moves from individual knowledge to socially constructed understandings. (See Gavelek & Raphael, 1996, Harre, 1984 cited in Gavelek & Raphael). In my. study, teachers began to create new understandings as they integrated private understandings with public conventions explicated in TLC. This process is examined in my data analysis in chapter 3. This analysis reveals that the most complex and thoughtfirl knowledge is an amalgamated interaction of social and individual knowledge. In teacher education, the implications for sociocultural theory are vast. Teacher learning that is socially constructed demands a model in which teachers interact with their own classroom contexts, with ideas, and with one another in increasingly complex ways. In this view of learning, ideas cannot be purchased wholesale from others, but rather involve interaction, integration, and transformation of knowledge as learners engage with the ideas of others and previously held claims. This model calls into question traditional forms of professional development that take on a delivery model as the way to help teachers reach new understandings. As a teacher confronts a new piece of understanding, a reading of Vygotsky argues, that information is filtered through their own understandings via a process where learners move from unknowing to knowing, but where, importantly, that knowledge gets transformed in the very act of a teacher understanding it. This is crucial because knowledge does not get passed on from person to person single mindedly. The Vygotsky space is a rich heuristic for conceptualizing how 24 r - ' w' Tef'btt‘ ~‘Ij-,;-".D’ 4‘ “bf-y.) anu ! -' 12338523113? haunting a" ““3332 an L; 51?; .' Wmdtlhe lj Btu Individuals apprOpriate and transform that which they experience in The public/social realm. The model highlights the public and social roles of discourse; it is in public and social domains that meanings are ‘out in the open’ so they may be appropriated and transformed within individuals . . .(Brock & Gavelek, 1998). These last two words are the most crucial. It is within individuals that knowledge changes and becomes something living and malleable. Learning may begin on a social plane, but it is not simply a matter of appropriating what is in that space, not only a matter of being enveloped in a normative atmosphere where deep, complex learning occurs. Rather, it is as an individual processes external data and attaches it to internal understandings where practice is transformed and transformative. This is why it is possible and probable for novices to complicate existing understandings of large or small groups in which they firnction. If not for this meeting of social and individual pieces of knowing, all people would be pressed toward a collective understanding instead of forging an understanding that can then be put back into the public sphere as an additive or alternative hypothesis. Bruner (1996) cites four activities involved in this kind of powerfirl, complex learning: agency, reflection, collaboration, and culture (p. 86) as principles guiding education. He asserts that these have been overlooked, yet are most important in all forms of learning. Bruner lauds programs that concern themselves with these ideas as innovative and tough-minded. He warns that they demand “different skills, different sensibility, and more courage, for consideration of the human condition around contrary passions” (p. 87.) I add that they too take into account the dual planes of learning. 25 the focus 0 the creatior mails m} zine in the r Age 1'13 to transt learning at u Man} find n Without reflection, collaboration becomes co-option of the lesser experienced individual by the more experienced one. Without a culture upon which to hook past practices, the most stunning agency will fall decontextualized and flat. While contrary passions may be desirable for Bruner, they are often dissonant and difficult for teachers who already are busily managing the daily difficulties of teaching. It isn’t a wonder, then, that they shy away from the complex. In short, the addition of movement from individual to social and back again is emotionally and cognitively difficult. It is no wonder that teachers often select a single plane and live comfortably within it. However, if teaching is as Sykes (1999) argues, “The Learning Profession”, then local concerns and discourse with ideas are both needed to afford a sense of agency. This kind of agency, as Bruner describes (1996) needs collaboration and happens within cultural settings. Sociocultural theory adds conceptual teeth to the common sense idea that teachers learn best when they are able to establish their own individual agendas as they forge their own communities. This network is a site where the traditional isolation of teachers and the focus only on local problems that it can engender (Sykes, 1999) may be challenged by the creation of a multi-voiced professional learning community. For this reason, I analyze my data with a focus on talk, text, and context in TLC as these emerged over time in the network and as it echoed in members’ classrooms. Agency can only come if teachers have opportunities to be educated, to inquire, and to transcend their individual notions of truth. Schon’s (1983) work on professionals learning at work warns of this: Many practioners, locked into a view of themselves as technical experts, find nothing in the world of practice to occasion reflection. They have 26 {hit 5 become too skillful at techniques of selective inattention, junk categories, and situational control, techniques which they use to preserve the constancy of their knowledge in practice. For them, uncertainty is a threat; its admission is a sign of weakness (p. 69). When this occurs agency is subordinated as the past perpetually becomes the present, and teachers become technical practioners acting out someone else’s vision. Bruner argues that it is in the integration of self and others that the greatest opportunity for creative and practical thought arises (1996). Professional Development as Cognitive Flexibility Theory In exploring the learning of complex practices, Jacobson & Spiro (1993) argue for a model they call “cognitive flexibility theory.” This theory considers that learning in or about ill-structured, complex domains requires that learners traverse different perspectives, different views of reality in order to complicate understandings and displace comfort with monolithic theory. This theory recognizes that learning in ill-structured domains like teaching involves: (Overcoming) . . . a constructive orientation that emphasizes the retrieval from memory of intact preexisting knowledge to an alternative constructivist stance which stresses the flexible reassembly of preexisting knowledge to adaptively fit the needs of a new situation (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson & Coulson, 1995,p.2) These researchers worry about the oversimplification of theory and practices that inevitably leads to “learning failures that take common, predictable forms. These forms are characterized by conceptual oversimplifications and the inability to apply knowledge 27 to next cases tfailur: :acher professional to. new each learnir complicate and exp. tithe it much ofth natter hon resonar professional dei e'ic 56358 other \ieiss als: help a teacher he craft This idea s' possibilities that at. till: leaning ghoul, hath". we um CC till underCut the ’— iith nets informa: ln alteringT reduce complexit; “her. Simpiifi SOme elk. millage dallV “ l” “336553). I \K or I to new cases (failures of transfer)” (Spiro et al, 1995, p.6). Placed in the context of teacher professional development models, cognitive flexibility theory might offer a way to view each learning experience as both a piece of data that needs other pieces to complicate and expand and as a bit of complexity worth looking at closely as it contains within it much of the complexity of teaching. Following the argument of Spiro et al, no matter how resonant an experience a teacher might have through the learning in a professional development opportunity, it will lead to “learning failure” if not placed beside other views and perspectives of teaching or the work of teachers and if it does not also help a teacher to look again at what is taken for granted in the everyday practice of the craft. This idea speaks both to the form of professional development and the possibilities that dialogue can enhance complex learning and to the content. If we believe that learning should be reducible to compartments of knowledge that satisfy us in their “truth”, we will continue to bar ourselves from flexible, transferable thought patterns. We will undercut the potential of The Vygotsky Space to challenge extant understandings with new information. In another text, Spiro et al, (1995) dispute the idea that the point of learning is to reduce complexity and argue for the generative nature of adding complexity to learning when that learning is of the advanced kind. While it may be reasonable then, to try to simplify some elements of teaching for new teachers, once new teachers have learned to manage daily work and have some confidence in their ability to teach hamrlessly, it is important to begin usurping those simplifications in the way that Spiro et al. argue is necessary. I wondered if the context of the work of the TLC , the very complicated 28 "‘1‘ li‘ pascal pruhie . rather than prema: example of the em" In part one are to think about 1. Teache J 1.. Teache Pli‘i‘t’n go) 100: 4. PlOl‘CSS Discou '. I! Prufess To study TLC in: trans required a r nurses. and anal} including data col The Tea! i l a; eathers across \ practical problems it aimed to solve, might foster the layering of complex knowledge rather than premature foreclosures or simple solutions. My analysis is chapter 3 offers an example of the embodiment of this question. Research Design In part one of this chapter, I have laid out several theoretical concepts that helped me to think about ways to frame and answer my research question: 1. Teacher learning as Inquiry (Ball and Cohen, 1999) 2. Teacher Learning as Cultural Praxis (Vygotsky, 1981, 1984) 3. Professional Development as Development of Communities of Practice (Gee, 1992 ; Lave and Wegner, 1991; Wegner, 1998 ) 4. Professional Development as Learning of New Speech Genres and Secondary Discourses (Bahktin, 1986 ; Gee, 1992 ). 5. Professional Development as Cognitive Flexibility (Spiro, et al, 1995a,]995b) To study TLC with an eye toward culture, social organization, discursive inquiry and praxis required a research plan featuring: multiple qualitative methods, triangulation of sources, and analytic induction. In what follows, I describe my research design including data collection, analysis, and discovery of grounded theory. .The Setting : Teacher Leamflg Collaflrative The Teacher Learning Collaborative was a group of suburban, rural, and urban teachers across Michigan who gathered to work with one another and university based researchers from colleges of teacher education on a curricular framework from 1998 to 2000. Their purpose in working together was inquiry into ways to accelerate the learning of struggling readers. Although the TLC had nearly 30 members (K-8 teachers plus 29 wagginsbased the Remark tea: :iassroorn ex?“i ohsener in their panicigation Tl :‘lfi‘l‘Olh as it res tasraems rezlec chance in coma Ms (3) The Table on: Chapters 3. 4, an. thereachers in pe one can see that t' experience and ec‘ h} .. with i'k Lafitner Rift lnri m» \ J ’5 Catsrnan university-based folks) from across Southeast Michigan, I focused my research on six of the network teachers who were diverse with respect to age, teaching context, and years of classroom experience. I chose the particular teachers I did because, as a participant observer in their classrooms, I had access to their teaching as well as to their network participation. This access allowed me to study three things: (1) Their participation in the network as it reverberated in their classroom activities; (2) The ways that TLC members’ classrooms reflected and refracted topics studied in the network; and, because I also had a chance to compare the six TLC classrooms to similar “buddy” classrooms in the same six buildings, (3) The distinctive features of TLC teachers’ practice. Table One offers a thumbnail sketch of the six teachers1 who will be discussed in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. Each piece of demographic data was gathered from interviews with the teachers in person, by phone contact, or by follow-up emails. Glancing at the table, one can see that these teachers work in variety of communities and vary in years of experience and education. , TablelTeacherDemographlcs_. . ........ Twenties Ms. Harris Inner-City Mid-Twenties Three MAT Second Ms. Paul Suburban Mid-Forties Twenty Plus MA Doctoral Third Coursework Ms. Bassie Urban Mid-Twenties Two lBSEE Third Ms. Tott Rural Late-Forties Twenty Plus MAT Second Ms. Catsman Suburban Late-Thirties Fifteen PhD Eighth ‘ All names of teachers are pseudonyms 3O teacher.- present teacher because, predict t As part of my research assistantship in the wider research project I had responsibility not only for documenting teacher participation in TLC and the classroom activities of the six TLC teachers above, but also for collecting data on student learning. Because this was a collaborative research project where teachers and university-based researchers shared much of the inquiry process, I was also to be a “critical colleague” (Lord, 1994) to the teacher members. In this role, I would be available for support as they worked through the inevitable struggles of enacting an evolving curriculum. As part of this role, I followed six of the teachings into their classrooms to watch their teaching, and I also documented their participation in TLC’s meetings, activities, and written communications. And, in this way, I gained access to their work in an open, collegial way that was based on joint inquiry and interpretive dialogue as well as more traditional forms of data collection and analysis. The next chapter describes in more detail the data I collected and the ways I analyzed them by means of constant comparison to test, revise, and reject working hypotheses in an iterative way so as to build grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) about teacher learning in TLC. TLC Teachers in Their Classrooms Table 2 gives an overview of the school contexts within which my six focal TLC teachers worked These are descriptive features which contextualize the schools and present them in relation to one another. The descriptions derive from a combination of teacher report and participant observation. ll chose to include only some of those features because, as subsequent chapters will show, these are features on the basis of which to predict that teaching would look very different from setting to setting. Yet, as my 31 gatherir. Neerba school. F least m i. tideo. a: CidSSTOQr .l - in shag. \n~ will Of g analysis will also show, despite important differences, these classrooms held much in common. One of the schools2 had far less resources than the others. This Table 2: School Cha ° ' Harlan S 1/2 Caucasian English ' Madison Semi- 2 $8 26 Caucasian English Med Small Rural River Run Subur- 3 $35 25 Mixed Mixed High Large ban Las Almas Semi- 3 $ 13 Very Mixed Mixed Med Large Urban Low Rice Urban 2 '/2$ 29 African English Low Med American Beaverstone Subur- 8 $8 1/2 23 Mixed English Med Med ban school—referred to as Rice elementary in this text—was physically dilapidated as well as overcrowded. The teachers often had to work as the only adult with more than thirty youngsters. Additionally, they had fewer resources, and so, the usual struggles of gathering enough books or assembling paper together in journals was greatly exacerbated. Because of the obvious need, I spent one day a week working in the urban school, Rice from September 1999 through May 2000. I visited the other classrooms at least twice during the winter and spring of 2000. In these classrooms, I took field notes, video, and/or audio tapes. In addition, as a piece of a larger study, I visited a “buddy” classroom in the same building or district and the same grade level as the one I was 2 All school names are pseudonyms 3 Span of student abilities is a mark of the range of reading levels within a single classroom 32 r'octlSCd '3th comm taillél leamlris m‘f'flel the :13 4 ; (rl lea-rung and 10 methods includ- 5} teachers and compare across same schools 0.: inthe uin'er prc rider project ’5 In addi: meetings. I had gmhlflg impres attention to hm how this experit ”BdmCOppgn had copies rrun ilailahle to me welehfildinjL. focused upon. This view gave me a counterpoint vision of literacy instruction in a similar context. DataCollection and Analysis My study’s design contained several methods. Because I wanted to investigate teacher learning I engaged in recording and analyzing of discourse in the TLC to interpret the nature of its” participation structure” (Erickson, I986).I also used ethnographic methods to document the TLC as a discourse community for teaching and learning and to gather information about the classrooms. Additionally, I used case study methods including interview, field notes, and collection and analyses of texts produced by teachers and students to document teachers’ classroom thought-in-action and to compare across the six focal classrooms and across six “buddy” classrooms within the same schools or districts. My study depended on data collection as a participant observer in the wider project but also reflected choices I made to reduce as well as to add to the wider project’s data set for my own study of teacher participation within it. In addition to field notes and audio and/or video tapes from all of the network meetings, I had analytical memos written after each one. These memos focused on my growing impressions of the interactions and reflected my shifting interests from an initial attention to how the language of the group members changed to a growing question about how this experience might be see in the classroom. Because in my research assistantship I had the opportunity to do some preliminary analyses of the network meetings, I already had c0pies transcribed in key places and summarized in portions elsewhere. These were available to me for re-analyses and for triangulation of other data sources. The meetings were held in June, August, September, October, and November of 1999, and in January, 33 . ‘31!’ "'V' ".- -‘P’,~a.w.' . CL“. 04x r E Nat crab; the curricul lithlahon, February and March of 2000. Table 3 notes the dates and locations of the meetings and underscores the mobile nature of the group as the location of the meetings shifted among the homes of teacher educators, teachers and researchers. The table also summarizes the initial purpose for that meeting as determined by the group. In both cases we can see the group as criss-crossing borders, risking opening their homes and classrooms to others, and working to build common ground for inquiry into improvement of literacy education, ._Table?:...N¢tW9rk..M¢sti.ngs I M ,1 A__ , DATE LOCATION TOPICS ” ” " June 1999 Teacher Educator Introductions and “A” Home Dilemmas of practice September 1999 Teacher “A” Home Wide-Ranging 6/6 October 1999 Teacher Educator Assessment 6/6 “B” Home November 1999 Researcher “A” Problems of practice 6/6 Home January 2000 Researcher “A” Standards 6/6 Home February 2000 Teacher “B” Home Wide-Ranging 6/6 In addition to collecting data in the field, I also collected and analyzed a number of documents produced by or about TLC. These included documents written, read, or referenced by the TLC as members went about their work such as published accounts of the curricular framework in process. (see Florio-Ruane, Hasty & Beasley, I997; McMahon, Raphael, Goatley and Pardo, 1997; Raphael, Florio-Ruane, Kehus, George, Hasty & Highfield, 2001.), and also documents in the public domain referenced by the participants (e. g. district, state, and national standards). I used them as another data set with which to triangulate other data as I developed and tested inferences and as I wrote up analyses. 34 “HE 110’ teachers qualitatix l .. . seated a “'53? is ar I asked all TLC teachers to record the use of their time for two single week periods, one in winter and one in spring. (A copy of these “literacy logs” 4 is in appendix E.). I also asked this of the buddy teachers paired with them in their schools. These logs gave a snapshot of the kinds of particular activities occurring during reading/language arts time. These allowed for comparisons of time spent on literacy tasks and also for comparisons of how that time ways used. In addition, I asked TLC teachers to respond to a survey about standards (see Appendix D for a copy of this survey). In this survey, I asked them to look at a cross-section of standards documents for K-12 teachers of English Language Arts and to rank order them in reference to the importance they played in their own classroom work. I then asked them to omit those standards that they felt weren’t important enough to be included on a short list of standards and add that which were not included in our original list. These surveys provided detail on what TLC teachers valued as the skills, dispositions, and concepts of good literacy instruction. To help to analyze and reduce the large data set, I read widely in the literature on qualitative research. I reviewed key theoretical pieces by scholars like Eisner (1992) and learned about the link between self and truth, by Atkinson and Hammersley (1994) on what is and is not a “construction” of research, by Shulman (1988) around the concept of “disciplined inquiry”, by Firestone (1993) on the meaning of qualitative generalizability and by Maxwell (1992) on various threats to validity in qualitative research. I also read more practical works by qualitative researchers like Geertz (1972) who models and discusses “thick description. With Geertz’ model in mind, I created narratives of the classrooms in which I studied. I was bolstered in my attention to these thick descriptions as narratives from analytic work by Riessman (1993) and Florio-Ruane & deTar (2001). " These adapted with the permission of Barbara Taylor 35 v: .At.‘ 0L». ~ kHQL Ill: Once I had these narratives, I used concepts from Miles & Huberrnan (1984) to think about different ways to visually display the data. Glaser & Strauss (1967) were influential in the highlighting of “sensitive concepts” in my field notes and narrative episodes. Finally, Geer (1969) was key in my active pursuit of “working hypotheses” and their framing and refinement during fieldwork. I also read ethnographies that colleagues and teachers suggested might be rich in form as well as content.5 Reading these as a researcher and a writer helped me to reduce and analyze my materials as a data set and to see my text as emerging, grounded theory. Various methods helped me to organize my analysis and manage my data. I initially grouped the fruits of my research work into four categories in order to indicate that the research process had different pieces where I prioritized particular activities. These activities were “Working in the Field”; “Managing Data”; “Building Understandings” and “Testing Ideas”. Contrary to a visual representation of the process, this list was in no way linear. The process was, and is, for me, recursive and in no way did I proceed through it systematically. Issues that came up from one portion of the activity influenced other portions and had me retreating back to parts I thought I had completed. I found that there is no completion in the linear sense. Triangulating sources, for instance, often took me back to transcribe other pieces of tapes. Developing data displays forced me into new analytic categories and so it went. Finally, the process of writing and the process of analysis were iterative and informed one another. Below I describe my work in each area 5 Work by Brice Heath (1983 ), Geertz (1972); Kozol (1991, 1989 ): Lareau (1989); Behar (1993 ); Peshkin (1986) and Purcell Gates (1995 ) were particularly influential. 36 8"." WorkLng in the Field 1 audio and video-taped in the classrooms twice during the duration of the project. On the days that I was not recording, I wrote field notes in the classroom when I could (the students often asked me to read them my journal) and always followed the classroom experience with two pronged field notes. Ann Berthoff (1981 ) calls this a dialogic notebook. She argues“ The double-entry notebook, by offering the chance to practice interpreting in such a way that whatever is learned about reading is something learned about writing, can teach that how we construe is how we construct. Languaging, as some like to say, is our means of making meaning” (45). In it, one side is a place to record objective information, the who, what, where, when of the day. On the other side, one reflects upon understandings of the events. This configuration allowed me to go back to the nitty gritty events without having to separate out the editorializing that inevitably comes when reflecting upon actions. It also allowed me to track the way questions and interpretations evolved over the space of the months I worked in the classroom. Following the dialogic notebook entries, I wrote an analytical memo about the day. In this I attempted to bring out themes that crossed my notebook entries to help focus my attention for the next visit. I sometimes shared these with others who were working with me. Once I asked a teacher to reflect upon what I saw as a growing theme that was gathering momentum for me. Other times, I filed them together in my computer and let them “weather” in the way that writers season drafts. When I taped, I went through the tapes to catalogue the main events. (See Denyer, Florio-Ruane & Raphael, 01) In this, I made charts of the landscape of each tape, referring to key episodes by highlighting them on the chart and using different 37 .‘fij .3. T5 5 'V and pr confer: import had :0: with cc underst friends. confere: returning ago \‘3'Virtin ”\i-u-m COmparar UfidETSlar Pitces car Plefient 3b ”56 is an it comparallh colors to indicate where a theme I had heard or seen before occurred. Ultimately, the themes became too cumbersome and l abandoned that practice in favor of outlining what was on each tape. I also did selective transcribing of portions of the tapes to fill in detail of the data landscapes that were important in my analysis-in-progress. Finally, I prepared and presented several preliminary analyses in work-in-progress reports given at conferences. Presenting at several conferences on pieces of this work became an important part of the research process. Though I had been used to presenting work that I had concluded, I found it most helpfirl to share data analysis and growing understandings with colleagues as their thoughtfirl questions inevitable prompted me to rethink my own understandings. While I see much in the literature about testing understandings on friends, colleagues and classmates (Lareau, 1989), I haven’t see a recommendation for conference presentations at this stage. These experiences were scary and difficult, but looking back I see how inordinately helpful they were in sharpening my focus. I am still returning to a note I made about a question an audience member asked of me over a year ago. Managing Data I was fortunate to have the experience of reading widely in the field of comparative education. This discipline (along with cultural anthropology) allowed me to understand that layered descriptions of events can make arguments in ways that summary pieces cannot. I had always thought of “thick description” (Geertz, 1972) as ways to present audiences with data, almost as a replacement for being there. I still feel that this use is an important one when placed in the hands of a skilled writer. However, comparative scholars like Mary Catherine Bateson (1994) showed me by their example 38 at ’haI \\ ' A comm; ' r ‘10. .‘L. - nut \ ‘. saliem ‘ clus'tet' ‘ as {BUS had alre was abi: skills an 1113' IlélC found tr 10$] 03 llrl‘t't' he St'l'l'lt t’fi tuft-mm! It it'h .llh readers. writing girls fir around dream/7 bots H it reading artnrltcr ll t’ hell} hound a rmm " return It Meaning Means .V learn }_ ”18", but [07 ”OI L that writing out thick descriptions can be a way to forge understandings of events, not just communicate events. In short, in descriptive research, the writing and re-writing of data rich vignettes is a very important part of the process of discovering key linkages, or salient vignettes from fieldwork around which many kinds of data and good questions cluster (Erickson, 1986). After writing descriptions of key classroom moments I was able to analyze them as texts in their own rights to see what they could teach me about events that I thought I had already interpreted. For instance, after analyzing my field notes from October 1, I was able to put together a story about a group of students working together on literacy skills and learn something from the process. The following illustrates with excerpt from my field notes, a piece from the subsequent narrative and the emerging understandings found much later as I reread both: 10:10: Ms. F ’s Room. Ms. F has only half her class there as about ten of the children have been pulled out to go to Sylvan learning Center (on contract to deliver reading services to children). The emergent readers are working with her reading an informational text about pigs. Some other students (also low skilled I think) are working with Ms. L the intern placed in the room. A group of three girls (the independent readers, they tell me) and two boys are sitting at tables separated by gender. They are working with pencils and papers answering questions about the pig story. I sit with the girls first and ask them about the answers to the questions. Though my questions seem to expand their answers they are reluctant to change the numbering of their questions to accommodate expanding answers. We talk some about the story and then I move to the boys who have written out the questions but not really answered them. We go back to reading the text to work through one of the answers. They read aloud to me helping one another with words. They think “the pig counts on his nose etc. ” is related to counting. We have a long discussion about this. I am troubled about giving examples that might be bound culturally. Like your mom counts on you to clean your room. Do they have a room? do they live with their moms? After I try to get them to expand their answers I return to the girls. We work on matching some “pig ” vocabulary words with their meanings. The children look at the answers but can ’t translate A is 2 to pigheaded means stubborn. I ask them why it is important to get the correct answers rather than learn. But, this vocabulary is rather specialized and not important to them. The only one they have even heard of is pigtails. I haven’t ever used many, so it is hard to blame them for not caring” (Field notes, October 23, 1999) 39 H’sz‘l tart .1! mum. U}; UT: ‘ timr a: they u t Slic’pt'lu air/11433! u with; this are the 8.1;”; that "pr" em rem Can I" , an] haw i see fror. interpreza From an it groupings. ICfifled m} to a sex of: ”7." data in a him to I'm] 200]) Am, ullh a begin“ ”Willa _ ) From that text, I created this one which, in vignette form, makes assertions and uses descriptive details to support and instantiate them in narrative: Children sit in a circle: two boys and three girls. They are “independent readers ” they tell me proudly. When I ask them to read to me, they put their eyes to the text and tell me that they have just finished reading. I apologize, fi‘ustrated that I didn ’t understand my own instructions as a classroom assistant: I thought I was to be the ears of the group as they read. Feeling odd, feeling that I won’t be doing MY job if they sit their and poke each other and draw monster pictures, I ask them about the activities that they were to complete. These too, they tell me, are done. This time I decide to remain skeptical. I know that they have been working only a short time, I [mow that they couldn ’t have finished so quickly. In the midst of the retelling of how they did their workbook activities I realize how inane, how really inane they are and further, that these kids are bright enough to know this. I can see it in their eyes. They have no more use for the expression “in a pig ’s eye " than I do. Further, it isn’t meaningful to teach children that “pigheaded ” means stubborn when they have no context for the lesson. Will they ever remember that? Can they relate to pigs as stubborn never having lived on a farm? Can I? So I am torn between having them do something that is clearly not “authentic ” and having them fool around until the teacher is ready. . .(Vignette, November 8, 1999) I see from this reinterpretation of my field notes that I was drawing close to an interpretation of an event that forwards issues of instruction, of relevance, of hegemony. From an initial read of my field notes I thought the exchange was thematically about groupings, and perhaps it was. As I dug deeper and began to fill in the story, I reread and refined my interpretation. Following this transformation from a set of mostly field notes to a set of field notes with narratives attached to many of them, I learned to pare down my data in a reasonable, methodical, and theoretically grounded manner. To do this, I began to think of the data in narrative portions (Riessman, 1993 ; Florio-Ruane & deTar, 2001). Aristotle (cited in Riessman, 1993) defined a narrative sequence as something with a beginning, middle and end. Riessman (1993) offers this convenient heuristic “a narrative . . . is always responding to the question ‘and then what happened’” (17). Like other researchers analyzing learning in conversation, I divided data into individual 40 ’ ,f‘. 4 Hull" anal} sis ends-nee intertmn as often a by locatio TLC meet Classroom Connectior abaur the 1; Ofcategorj. 10 divide m immferatit being Comp, narrative episodes (Florio-Ruane & deTar, 2001; Marshall, Smagorinsky & Smith, 1995) with the understanding that narratives are artifacts of interpretation, that they do not speak for themselves, and do not represent reality as it is, but as I construct it. Further, I believe that the disconnecting of narrative episodes from one another portrays an image of quietness that isn’t accurate. Clifford and Marcus (1986) argue “Our subjects do not hold still for their portraits” (15). Still with all these weaknesses there was a strength to holding up narratives that made it effective for my work. TriangulatiomConstht Comparison In interpretive work, narrative descriptions are the embodiment of the researcher’s analysis. As such, they are tested by cross-checking across diverse data sets to seek both evidence and examples. Thus, the analysis and writing of reports are ultimately intertwined. I proceeded by placing these narratives in analytic categories that changed as often as I introduced a new piece. First, I divided them up into two categories bound by location. One category were of narratives that occurred about teaching within the TLC meetings. The other were narratives that occurred by teachers or students in classrooms. These categories were easily separable but they didn’t help me make connections that I knew I needed to make to think harder about what this data suggested about the link between professional development and classroom behavior. My second set of categories sought to mix TLC interaction with classroom interaction. This time I tried to divide moments in my data into productive and non-productive as defined by my interpretation of the satisfaction of the person who initiated the conversation. Besides being completely unreliable in my ability to discern this, I found that classroom conversation is often unfinished and picked up later, so that even binding the episodes 41 (Gordon the \\ 335 - ”lament.- As mifed 0n .. ”gflmenr ; to ”3' I0 d: was helped [hrOUgh eli‘, was difficult. Though this was frustrating, I found that it helped me see my data in all sorts of ways, so that ideas about categorization did wander in my head. Finally, after several more attempts, I decided on three categories that did cross both meetings and classrooms. My categories ended up being important touch points in my analysis chapters: “Stories as units of teaching and learning”, “Groups alike and apart”, and “Teaching as Process/Literacy as Process.” Once I had the categories I began to separate my data into pieces that seemed to say something about each heading. I began to see that these were the “key linkages” (Erickson, 1986) that would hold my argument together. From these three moments, I began to build outward to imagine what a theory of professional development that linked classroom practice in its forms might look like. Following this conceptual breakthrough, I depicted the relationships between the classroom in the network in as many visual manners as I could come up with. This figuring and re-configuring of information into “data displays” (Miles and Huberrnan, 1984) as a test of emerging assertion in multiple kinds of data know as “triangulation” (Gordon, 1980) assisted me in testing and refining my arguments and tweaking further the ways that the narrative examples served to instantiate and provide evidence for those arguments. As writing, analyzing data is also a recursive process. As I continued to analyze I relied on “constant comparisons” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) to help me fortify my argument and see where it was weak. My assertions kept sending me back into my data to try to disqualify my own ideas before I could envelope them into my analysis. I also was helped tremendously by going back through notes on, notes about, and skims back through ethnographies that I have admired. Though this may have been an odd place to 42 9- ‘ I‘ introduce the technique of others, I found it helpfiil to ground myself in work that I knew had been done to a productive end before. When I felt myself doubting my processes, I went back and read concluding chapters of work that I felt had a methodological resemblance to my own. Some of the texts I looked at: Kozol (1989,1991); Brice Heath (1983); Rose (1990, 1995); Behar (1993); Lareau (1989). I remembered my qualitative methods professor reminding us that all the methodology in the world won’t help you if you don’t have a vision of what qualitative methods can ultimately produce. This turned out to be very good advice, as going back to work I admired humbled me as it simultaneously energized me. Testi:ng Ideas: Working Hypotheses As I became more and more familiar with my data, I came to a working hypothesis (Geer, 1969) that there was a “family resemblance” between the work of the teachers in the network that was data-driven, could be isolated and proven through classroom evidence. Family resemblance is both an ordinary term and idea useful to me as a metaphor for the similarities I sensed among individual teachers and classrooms despite their apparent differences. Wittgenstein (1953) used this metaphor in describing some of the differences that may or may not make a difference when we are looking at and across examples of local knowledge practices. I played Elbow’s “doubting game” (1981) once I began to see that the family resemblances I suspected between classrooms was not as rich as I would have hoped. In this game, you assume that your hypothesis is incorrect, and thus, search for alternate explanations. Once I did this, I began to see that the strongest resemblances were between the network practices and the classroom practices. Because I was operating with a hypothesis that wasn’t quite panning out, I 43 1 . a — a . .i A.” i a . L a... .9. . .4 h.g‘\~. 9'. found a new hypothesis that connected disparate understandings for myself in significant ways. Finally, the intrigue of the idea of family resemblances brought me inside those likenesses to understand that what I was really providing evidence for was a way of teaching , learning, and arguing that was narrative in nature and similar in form, that spanned both classroom contexts and the common site for professional development that these teachers all shared. 44 Ur. ngrn Mk . pEJJ,',izg it! til: runs El tinned b) Mahatma mil-gm; m overlm ni'i III gathered/i LIT-{mild a It hifiil Qf ht Pro 3W1? lOge exail‘iir‘ing l alld CBS in Rhine. cam “hm auto't help ff‘Qm is dftailed disc CHAPTER 3 COMING TOGETHER TO STUDY PRACTICE Setting the Scene for TLC On a warm Saturday in June, I was invited to a meeting of a teacher learning network. I understood that this was a group that came together around concerns about reading instruction for struggling students. In particular, they had a common interest in the ways that teachers can assist in re-engaging struggling readers in literacy. I was invited by university teacher educators who had an interest in the professional development of teachers, particularly those teachers working with low achieving reading students in the primary grades. Men I walked into the living room of an apartment overlooking the Detroit River and Windsor beyond, I might have been joining a group gathered for any number of social or professional purposes. Small groups gathered around a low coffee table, sets of two ’s chatted in the kitchen, singles lingered around a buflet of bagels and muffins. Professors of teacher education from large universities in the area had brought this group together for a variety of reasons. One of the professors had a particular interest in examining how culture and autobiography might help teachers to explore issues of race and class in their own teaching and in their own lives. This professor, Susan Florio- Ruane, came from a recent research experience where white, middle class teachers read ethnic autobiographies and discussed them in a casual, book club experience in order to help front issues of race and class and gain introspection into their own cultures. (For a detailed discussion of this group see Florio-Ruane, 1994; Florio-Ruane with deTar, 2001) Another teacher educator, Dr. Taffy Raphael, had recently published a book about a 45 it.» ~ tierests in exp. negated \Nithi.’ assemblage 01‘s: mania-based m u their xx 0 soup. then. “a: tducazors expla: little. l 9.] WW. The pan hmeuork aimer acceptance Ola s “'33 acceptance ( med teiiCl‘lel' ed pmfeSSi Onajs method of literature-based reading instruction in which students were placed in heterogeneous book club discussion groups in order to increase their comfort and competence with texts. This curriculum was innovative in that it insisted on children’s engagement with high quality literature as the basis for building skills and strategies for increased reading competence. (For a discussion of this work, please see McMahon, Raphael, Goatley & Pardo, 1997). Various research assistants present that day had interests in exploring assessments of literacy and how standards were enacted and evaluated within a literacy unit. This three-pronged interest collection brought an assemblage of similarly interested teachers drawn from various associations of the university-based professors. The teachers agreed to be inquirers into their own practice, even as their work would be the subject of inquiry by the researchers from CIERA. This group, then, was posited as a work-in-progress, a place where one of the teacher educators explained “we can all support one another as we are supported”(Field notes, June, 19,1999). The participants held in common a task: to create and field-test a curricular framework aimed at re-engaging struggling youngsters in literacy learning. Their acceptance of a small stipend (just a few hundred dollars) from a university collaborative was acceptance of this premise. In addition, they would collaborate in the university- based teacher educators’ research on their own learning, together and individually, as professionals. The group was comprised of teachers from varied school backgrounds and varied experiences but all with a cogent commitment to innovative literacy instruction in the service of teaching all learners. Because the teachers in the group were drawn together 46 These 153* “Uh: :iiSi E513“ no groups :0 rteptual n nearest corn jump. for var educators) as me think abet been parts of; like to make rl Continents emf Professional bu mueh time in rl from varied, though intersecting interests, they too came from different theoretical and practical positions as well as from different parts of southeast lower Michigan. (see geographic map in Appendix A). The group from the west of the state had a primary interest in autobiography and how it might influence children’s experience of culture. These teachers resided in rural and urban schools. The rural schools were found in middle class neighborhoods within a smallish city. The urban school was located in a middle- class section of the state capital. The teachers that came from the northern part of the area taught in suburban and rural schools and were interested in children’s book club discussions particularly how they related to increasing literacy in struggling readers. For the most part, the schools in which these teachers worked had more resources and were demographically richer areas. The inner city teachers who resided midway between these two groups were interested in accountability, assessment and student achievement (see conceptual map in Appendix B). These teachers taught in a single school in one of the poorest corners of the large city where all found themselves for the initial meeting. . In addition to their academic interests, the practioners chose to participate in this group for varied reasons. Maria said “I came because Susan (one of the teacher educators) asked me to. She said the relationships here might help me with my kids, help me think about instructing my kids” (Field notes, June 19, 1999). Angie had “always been parts of groups of teachers. Maybe it comes from being a part of a big family. I like to make these kinds of associations ”(E-mail correspondence, May 5, 2000). These comments embody Lortie’s (1972) claim that an important reason for teacher professional bum-out is the isolated nature of their work. Because teachers spend so much time in the exclusive company of children, they are often starved for adult 47 Comma COIl'VérS cm in u Colleen» “1min 1h Hargrea\e companionship and collaboration. It also is the beginnings of the analysis of the TLC as a community where teachers come together for various reasons to work in a forum with one another. Others named teacher-research projects they were pursuing as part of advanced degrees, interest in learning more about the current instructional paradigm that this one might relate to, and good-natured pressures fiom colleagues. “She made me,” Marcy said as she pointed to Kate and laughed (Field notes, June 19, 1999). It is an appropriate question to ask why the teachers would travel to this community from the other ones that they inhabit daily. Even those like Angie, who seek out opportunities to interact with other teachers, could certainly do it much closer to home and with far less long term commitment. The participants here were asked to commit to a process that included day-long “retreats” as well as phone and E-mail contact. Far from replacing classroom time as professional development so often must do, these retreats were held on Saturdays and lasted through at least two meals. For women with full-time jobs, families, and home responsibilities this was no small time commitment. The teachers in this network were already experienced in some forms of conversation based learning. One group—those from west and north of the large urban city in which the first meeting was held—were used to adult book club work and work on collective curriculum writing. The other—the group that worked in the same school within the city limits—had a shorter experience of learning together by reading texts and discussing them within their school building after the end of the official school day. Clearly, something was going on in these groups that sustained their interest to this point. Hargreaves (1987) has argued that much that passes for innovative professional 48 ‘ _’;.' ‘1' fifty”? In: at. a; r : ’;. 33.1% DO.“ efii“ practice in j phjtsical tthc around litera M} a the key com; makes inside . from other pa; manlwne ki Oi‘iillS group ( particularly in development is a series of “contrived collegialities” in which teachers are “empowered” by an administration who patronizes them by insisting that they create a product that administrators can show-off as teacher created. Grant and Murray (1999) speak powerfully of the need for a real collaborative set-up where “The culture emerges from and are primarily sustained by teachers themselves. They are voluntary associations, focused on developing initiatives that teachers support, and are deeply entwined in the daily work of teachers. Such relationships require constant effort to develop and sustain. This depth of collaborative work is found infrequently in school” (p. 187). This speaks to the great need for teachers to join together and talk about their practice in places and ways that they construct together. These teachers crossed both Physical (they often drove long distances) and psychological borders to draw together around literacy teaching and learning. My analysis suggested that, in fact, psychological and social distance was one of the key components that held the group together. Because the associations that one makes inside a building may be thought of as supportive of existing practice, associations from other parts of the world force teachers to confront their own situation as one among man)’~—one kind of context, one kind of student, one administrative set-up. The diversity Of this group offered a counterpoint to the often heterogeneous colleagues, heterogeneous particularly in the kinds of concerns present because of similar teaching situations that necessarily are present when one works in the same building. Spiro et al (1995) argue that advanced learning must have a component that moves learners along from context to ConteXt. It is in the confrontation of these complications, complications that arise from 49 titre autr 52-37155 i0 siriiarlyt the} had e. allotted {ht perspectite :hs process multi-faceted consideration of issues where new ideas can emerge. Spiro et al offer a literary example where information from a text is complicated by information from other sources. In this technologically innovative manner of studying texts, learners can move around from various points in order to view angles that may remain hidden if viewed only fi'om a traditional, linear model. Learning proceeded similarly in TLC. Teachers were automatically forced into a new cognitive space as they heard their classroom stories told to folks who had experiences so different from their own. They were similarly transported as they heard stories of education practiced very differently than they had experienced as a student or experience currently in their professional lives. This allowed them a more flexible manner of thinking and a more complicated and layered perspective on the politics and practice of literacy teaching. Full analytic examples of this process are to follow in this chapter. The Initial Meeting of TLC At the very first meeting of this group of about 20 teachers, researchers, and teacher educators, all members of the teaching group began by going around and talking about their work, especially about tensions and difficult choices, what Lampert has called “dilemmas” (1986) in their teaching. Lampert discusses teaching as a matter of managing dilemmas in that she believes that teaching is so complex as to exclude the ease of solutions. Dilemmas are thus, the brick and mortar of a teacher’s day. Instead of looking for solutions to the challenges that they face, Lampert sees teacher’s work as comprised of coming to alternatives that are accommodating to the greatest needs. After a brief introduction to this way of thinking about teaching (provided as a conversation- starter by the CEERA stafi), participants were invited to share their classroom dilemmas. 50 C("Item Dilemmas were something to be savored, here, not something to be feared. In fact, in presentation of the idea a research assistant noted “Dilemmas are what we look for, right? Who wants to be settled and smug that they know it all?” (Field notes, June 19, 2000.) This activity was intended to begin conversations about teaching and learning rather than to stop them. Right away, then, the form of this experience suggested something about how this group of practioners would work together over the year. Because dilemmas assume that there is work to be done, participants were setting the stage for the opportunity to learn together in a community. As discussed in chapter two, traditional forms of professional development position teachers as receptacles rather than co-creators of knowledge. Because this group had an emphasis and charge that required they build understandings of literacy learning and literacy learners, this paradigm was disrupted. The group of teachers that was present to kick off the TLC in June of 1999 were themselves the content of the experience. In other words, it was their contributions that would allow for their own learning and the potential for creation of an instructional framework that would assist in their own pursuit of accelerated and engaging literacy learning in their classrooms. If we think of this group as a potential community of learners (Lave and Wegner, 1991) then we can see that these prior academic and research interests offered a portion of the infrastructure of the group. Like roads and bridges, they allowed for the interactions of the community members to emerge, yet they were only the structure; they were merely the shell of the community and it was up to the practioners to fill out the landscape. This would not be a didactic experience where participants operated under the conventional process/product model of learning. This is a predictive model, not an 51 interaaion emerge that am ot‘lea he Stud} of and sf; ling 't :lit'erset and materials ort inertial empl shit from the SOUP The re mutual interes N0. tradition; (illiteracy inst 0n the decodi all stu. at lllt': sure Il there: their f explanatory one. Cole (1996) reminds us that “strict cause-effect relationships do not explain development which entails the emergence of novel forms and function of interaction among people and their worlds” (p. 178). Clearly some other model needs to emerge that descriptively accounts for the dynamics of innovation and change within the realm of leaming experiences. This teacher study group had the potential to be a site for the study of the dynamics of diverse learners in context because of its purposes, (multiple and shifting) design, (bottom-up rather than top-down) membership,(voluntary and diverse) and duration (over a year). To move from an external emphasis on new materials or techniques that are the traditional curriculums of in-service experience to an internal emphasis on the teacher’s own definitions of problems and concerns suggests a shift from the conventional to the innovative and served as a defining characteristic of the group The teachers were brought together, to this community rather than another, by a mutual interest and a reasonably articulated commitment to literacy instruction that does two, traditionally contrary things. Raphael et al, (2001) describe these “dual obligations” of literacy instruction as follows: On the one hand, we are obligated to make sure all students have decoding skills sufficient to read independently. Thus it is vital for all students to have sufficient practice using reading materials that are at their instructional level. On the other hand, it is a crucial goal to make sure that students learn to think as readers and writers. Students must therefore also have access to age-appropriate material that challenges their thinking and writing about text (p. 4). 52 the ‘. lite: expe tL- . ‘ulg.',. IeaCi’zt teaché and in: pTOEle; Site, ~ . Their p . ‘ll 1‘ In the service of this goal, the group had a common interest in the creation of a curricular framework that honored these two commitments. A portion of their time in this network would be spent designing this common framework. Another portion would be adapting it to the teachers’ local context. A third would be to share with others in the network individual dilemmas that arose alongside or as part of piloting the framework in their own classrooms. Finally, the group would weave the pilot experiences back into both the fiamework’s emergent design and also into participants’ understanding of ways to address the dual obligations to which they had committed. One of the exciting parts of teacher networks is that they often don’t have prescribed agendas. The questions that arise come out of the interests and experiences of the members in interaction with the interests with other members. This in no way makes them “soft” learning, or experiences that don’t matter. In fact, teacher learning experiences have probably suffered greatly because of an over concern with the what of them, these behavioral objectives of teacher education curriculum state in advance what is to be learned and often focus solely on that goal. Preset agendas often disregard the context of teachers’ work and allow the material to become more important than the teacher-learner. They are typically devised by outside experts in advance of eliciting teachers’ prior knowledge and concerns, based on limited contact with teacher-learners, and insensitive to local adaptation. Alternate models include the one described here, one that is grounded in teachers’ problems of practice and also developed in response to local adaptation. Other models stress inquiry learning less focused on immediate problems of practice. For example, In The Having of Wonderful Ideas and other Essays on TeachirLg_and LearnLng, Eleanor 53 m av, Duckworth (1996) talks about a teacher study group in which she worked where she asked teachers to study the phases of the moon as a way to introduce to them the concept of science as inquiry. In this experience, she did not worryI about the application of the particular brand of knowledge to their teaching life. Instead, she wished for them an experience of learning for the sake of learning and the generative nature of real inquiry. She also wished them to work alongside other Ieamers in similar positions so that the discussions might fortify one another. Duckworth writes, My view of teaching suggests an analogy to the work of a psychotherapist with a research interest. She is both practioner and researcher. . . It is only because she knows how to do her job as a practioner that she is in a position to pursue her questions as a researcher. . . one is in a position through teaching to pursue questions about the development of understanding that one could not pursue in any other way ( 1996, p. 162). Duckworth sees that so much of teaching has to do with understanding what it feels like to be a learner. She would go on to argue that knowing something well might be the largest hindrance to teaching it. It is those teachers who go back to “school” in the sense that they take on new learning experiences who are the ones who are most fit as teachers. Other researchers and teacher educators have gone about attempting to design authentic learning experiences for teachers that, too, don’t worry about how the learning experiences translate to actual learning experiences for students (see Florio-Ruane, 1994, Florio-Ruane and deTar, 2001; Wineburg & Grossman, 1998) I began to wonder then, if the content of the curricular fi'amework that the TLC was creating might be an important Piece of the learning that might be done. Like the energetic matter of Duckworth’s 54 pp ft: inquiries or F lorio-Ruane and deTar’s adult book clubs, these teachers were now applying their participant effort to design, revision, and testing of ways to re-engage struggling readers and teach all Ieamers. In spirit, the manifest content was treated not as content to be mastered (in an expert/novice instructional model) , but as a site for inquiry, much like the moon or mirrors in Duckworth’s teacher learning activities. A Community Mended Together This Saturday meeting was pivotal in that it was the beginning of the expansion of a fairly heterogeneous group of teachers to one that was far more culturally diverse. Like the communities of practice described by Wenger (1998), the beginnings of this community were gradual and not clear-cut. The network that became TLC wasn’t exactly born that day in the Detroit apartment so much as a process was begun to mend together from various other collaboratives a network sharing common ground, a common practice, and a common discourse. This is described by Raphael et al (01) as follows: In the beginning of what became TLC, Florio-Ruane adapted the Book Club instructional framework developed by Raphael and her associates to teachers’ learning about culture. . . Florio-Ruane modified it to apply to adults and to develop the cultural theme in a Master’s-level course she then taught. . . Course members remained together, meeting monthly to form the literary circle (p. 4). This group was brought together with two others so there were piece of three groups: The Literacy Circle, (residing from the west) The Book Club Plus study group, (from the northern portion of the region) and the Detroit Literacy Circle. (from the city) Each had met previously as individual groups to work on issues of literacy, issues of culture, issues of instruction and at times all three.(For a further discussion of The 55 Literao“ (if fora furtht’ Raphael. in An I expenencea range socit aged in nu articular dc these teache: ETD-Up memb unlikely that mothers cor became pan Others. who i “B reliant u] The s Sflmeone ma. hinted l0 Obs i0” WOUld c. llOm me “Or mbre Sllllllal Literacy Circle group see F lorio-Ruane and deTar, 1995, 2001, and Florio-Ruane, 1994. For a further discussion of the Detroit Literacy Circle see Florio-Ruane, Berne & Raphael, in press). As Table 1 shows, the teachers were diverse with respect to age, years of experience and teaching contexts. As Table 2 shows, the schools in which they worked ranged socio-economically from very poor to quite affluent. Their teaching contexts ranged in number of students per classroom, in autonomy of the teacher with respect to curricular decision-making, and in span of abilities. The communities represented by these teachers were rural, urban, and suburban. In order to gather together, some of the group members had to drive for over an hour. (see map in Appendix A) In this, it was unlikely that they would have ever met, much less decided to work for over a year in one another’s company had it not been for a group such as this one. This border-crossing became part of the story of the TLC. Teachers interacted with others, in the homes of others, who were clearly “the other”. The learning that I argue occurred in this network, was reliant upon these very differences. How We Talked The smaller groups were drawn together because they were drawn apart. Someone made a comment that “the MSU folks are in the dining room (graduate students invited to observe the meeting), the Detroit folks in one comer, the Book Club teachers in another, and the professors in the kitchen” (Field notes, June 19, 1999). It wasn’t what you would call an easy mingling. For ease of analysis, I put two of the groups (those from the north and west) together in a single category. I did this because they were far more similar to one another than they were to the third group. The groups who had met 56 H207: exan I83” least a lie] She I "0“) i It 15 [min “a; ~1r: tj 32cm {Kim to read ethnic autobiographies and those who had gathered to work on bringing a book club experience to children overlapped in significant ways. They were exclusively white teachers, all with Master’s degrees and close affiliations to universities either because they worked near them, or because they were currently taking classes. These teachers also had previous experiences together as some of the group affiliations had crossed memberships into both groups. The other group I define as one because they all worked in the same building. These teachers were all African American and two were closely tied to a major urban university.1 At that first meeting it was clear that some of the TLC member’s previous alliances had prepared them to talk in this group in particular ways, ways that were even more specialized than just similar academic or cultural backgrounds would support. For example, Kate2 and Leora, both teachers who had worked together in previous teacher research groups used the term “hunch” when asked to introduce something about their teaching dilemmas. Kate said", “I hunched4 that this was a kid who really couldn’t write a lick”(Field notes, June 19, 1999). Several moments later, Leora told a story in which she went with “a hunch that they would really like the idea of reading to me” (Field notes, June 19, 1999). To many members of the group, this would have been a familiar ‘ It is of note that in this chapter I take instances, examples, and quotations from all TLC members. This included 8 teachers from the rural/suburban group, 5 teachers from the urban group and a handful of researchers and teacher education professors. In Chapters 4 and 5, I concentrate on 6 focal teachers that I Evas able to study more closely because I acted as participant observer in their classrooms. In this chapter, teachers are referred to by their first names as was the practice in network interactions. In Ishalpters 4 and 5, teachers are referred to by surname as this is how they are referred to inside the school ui dings. 3 Throughout, quotations are from tape-recorded accounts of network meetings, from tape recorded accounts of classrooms or from field notes from one of these sites. Passages that are recreated partially from memory are so indicated. Throughout, quotations taken from field notes or tapes of classroom meetings are represented exactly as Spoken, I use bold type to draw attention to particular words or phrases that I mean to emphasize. Where Pal'UCipants emphasized, I use underlines. 57 (655'. it. ETC trope of teacher researchers who build hypotheses and then test them. However, for the less experienced (in teacher research-speak) urban teachers, this was not a natural speech act. This was clear because the urban teachers’ language practices and ways of behavior did not display these same patterns When the more experienced teacher researchers from the suburban and rural schools began the brief presentations that all were asked to give vis a vis an introduction, three of the seven began by holding up an artifact of student work and discussing it as the introduction to their role in the student learning. They had brought student journals and student-authored books for display. They appeared natural in their use of these artifacts as evidence. Jeannie held up a boys’ journal as she spoke about her insistence that students write every day. As she fanned the pages, it became clear that he had done that very thing—written a lot. Angie tapped on a video-tape that she had brought, a video tape her students had made to teach other students how to engage with book club discussions in significant ways. While there was clearly no time or space to show the tape, she held it and referred to it as she spoke. It became an important part of her story. Kate turned pages of student writing as she spoke, passing them around the room in order to let all members inspect this artifact of practice. Several members of the larger, more experienced, group told a classroom story that lead them to their inquiry. Kate said: I was trying so hard to get them to write about things beyond game boys and the weather. I told them that it had to be something that they might care about in twenty years, though twenty years to them is not even in the ballpark of their lives. Slowly, though they began to see that the 58 to \K '1 flit Margret 51 l vi ant res. 19, It is useful problems it sound alike ll1€ll manaé Students. F Succeeded taught firsr‘; leafllErg [Eli lmtard DErg. 3b00k {h e}, Sillllem‘s llli pTESemau on Weather it journals could be a resource for process writing. This game-boy writing little boy went back and took up an entry where he talked about his uncle being shot while deer hunting. And he really saw that this had an importance so he could turn it in to a good story where the everyday stuff was harder(A udio tape, June 19, 1999). Margret stated similarly: I wanted them to write more than just about tarantulas and raising animals (from some of the literature they had read). These weren’t rich responses so I asked them instead to write about themselves . . .(A udio tape, June 19,1999) It is useful to note that not only do these responses resemble one another in what the problems were and how the teachers attempted to work with those problems, they also sound alike in the way the teachers are framing the problem of practice and discussing their management of it. In each case, the teacher presents a problem that she sees with her students. Following, she enumerates her solution and suggests that the intervention has succeeded. The nuances of the stories are familiar despite the fact that Kate (at the time) taught first grade in a rural district and Margret teaches fourth grade in the suburbs. Both teachers tell of a problem that they managed to work with by drawing student attention toward personal stories that had resonance rather than toward disconnected references to a book they were working on (in Margret’s case) or to trivial issues like games (in Kate’s student’s instance). Additionally, and perhaps even more powerfully, the way of presentation rang similarly. Both teachers used a problem, intervention, solution model of teacher interaction with students to argue for a way to work with students to prompt 59 knee. h diff. i from an. importar educator used arti particular: common exl‘fi‘tienc means to , Commton l Man ”765 the” Pfese Mediate the Pilncipg hath Whom lumber ar- their writing and thinking skills. Both explain the problem, then assert that “I” did something—either asked them to assess the sustainability of a piece of writing or ask them to be more internally focused—to bolster their responses. Clearly, the original “experienced” group had prototypical behavior that they knew how to exemplify and respond to. It resonated throughout the room that they had a pattern of talk, that they had a menu of verbal and non-verbal cues from which to draw from and that they were used to interacting with other teachers in these ways. It is also important to see that these behaviors were modeled and reinforced by the teacher educators and graduate students working in the network. They too, spoke of hypotheses, used artifacts to tell their stories, and thus, tacitly reinforced the behaviors. The newer group (the Detroit Literacy Circle) was also defined by a series of particular interactional manners. They all taught at the same school. Thus, they had in common a daily experience and a shared vision of the reality of their working experiences. While the more experienced group used the language in ways marking them as holding prior knowledge in common, (for instance, knowledge of personal writing as a means to get students to write beyond a summary of a text) this second group had a common knowledge of students, colleagues and administrators from which to relate. When these teachers presented their inquiry projects to the group, two of them peppered their presentations with references to individual students and situations that only their immediate colleagues would be familiar with. They called students and colleagues and the principal by name, names that were meaningfirl only to the members of the meeting with whom they shared their teaching days. In addition, they sat together, very close together and with the exception of one member, spoke without bringing out materials 60 IR from their bags or piles of papers. Instead, they spoke with rich verbal inflection and emphasis. Lena spoke of her frustration with the discontinuity of the class day in this way5 : I am just getting them going, and m, they come and pull them out. They pull them out to go to Sylvan or student council and I look around and there are empty seats just about everywhere. All over the place, kid, seat, kid, seat. I am thinking where are mystudents. I mean they are mine when they are tested, but I sure didn’t have them mgh. (Audio Tape, June 19, 1999) Lena’s story is ripe with energy, frustration. It is notable in this tape how animated her portrayal of her problem is, how long she stays on the above emphasized words. While Kate and Margret might have used student work as evidence, Lena used her own reproduction of student activity to dramatize her points. The difference between this story and the stories of Kate and Margret is in tone, certainly, but it is also in content. While Kate and Margret may have been once similarly frustrated by their problems, their stories end with some good news. Each trails off by suggesting that they moved toward resolution of their dilemmas. The issues had been closed to their satisfaction. Lena, instead, punctuates her story vociferously with a dangling concern. She has not sought to solve her problems yet, but rather leaves them out on the floor for consideration. This is clearly a different manner of presenting a dilemma than those presented by KateE and Margret. While they use their stories as examples of dilemmas capably managed, Lena uses her story for something else. It isn’t clear whether she is looking for answers from the group or not. It is clear that she has elected to lay out a concern that is very potent and ongoing for her. Her purpose for presentation is clearly different. I have heard 5 . . . . . . Underlining rs used to indicate speaker emphasrs 6] Kile": it \‘s 3“,; iiscot “Discg memb; mar and to de. eloi dil‘x‘our 5311171; gmUps. literary texts that nobody feels willing or able to critique referred to as “museum pieces” (F lorio-Ruane & deTar, 2000) that are used to be admired but not to be delved into. In many ways, Kate and Margret use their stories as museum pieces. They leave no room for re-interpretation of their dilemmas as they are in many ways “over.” By contrast, Dania’s story is wide open and pulsing with life. James Gee (1992) speaks about difference as a prerequisite for learning when he writes of primary and secondary discourses. For Gee, everyone has a primary discourse in which they are naturally comfortable and to which they belong. This primary discourse is involved in how we see ourselves and also in how others see us. Gee writes “Discourse are always ways of displaying (through words, actions, values and beliefs) membership is a particular social group or social network” (p. 107). Yet, beyond the primary discourse, secondary discourse are also leaned for use in other kinds of situations and contexts. These secondary discourses are picked up and shift as people shift in their development and interests. To learn deeply, he believes, one must work from inside a discourse, yet be able to stand outside of it far enough to critique its norms, manners and assumptions. One way to think about the first meeting of the TLC is in terms of these discourses. Two secondary discourses might be in operation, one that the first group had learned by their previous experiences in teacher study groups. The other, learned by the Detroit Literacy Circle, was practiced mostly in their school community. While one tended to tie up ends, the other did not. And, as will be described below, when the discourses became less distinct in the hands of a member who had a foot in each of the groups, there was a serious misinterpretation that lead to a failed communication. 62 ,. D? W A -1 .. r ‘ .n-‘j' L11» 'u Came lhi‘lt l As usual, not all discourses are created equally. It is often the discourse of the powerful that those on the margins of it are expected to adopt if they wish to succeed. In psychological terms, the more experienced members of a discourse community can be thought of as potentially more powerful to define the situation and ways of speaking. Thus, newcomers begin learning in a group setting such as this one as “legitimate peripheral participants” (Lave & Wenger, 1991). As such, new members are not central to the activity of the group gradually move from the outskirts to the center, and thus, change the way the center is held together. Again, this principle is rested upon that of difference. In this model there would be more experienced teachers (who worked previously with the CIERA researchers) at the center of the action and newcomers (the teachers from Detroit), who, as such, are legitimately peripheral and thus, on the margins. This way of thinking was both helpful and limiting in my analysis. It helped me to identify entering perspectives on the basis of the communities from which participants came. But it also failed to capture the ways that participants voices changed regardless of their prior study group experience and it did not reflect the ways in which newcomers’ participation was, far from peripheral, transformative of the practice presumed by the group as a whole. Examples follow to illustrate both how this theoretical model helped and limited what I was able to see in data analysis. Difference in prior knowledge became one powerful forces for change in the Teacher Learning Network. When ideas started to flounder or frustrations came before fertile ideas, it was difference that held the group together and made it a place where the greatest common denominator could emerge. I 31’ glle in the analyses to follow, for a coming together, not necessarily of marginalized 63 teachers toward the center, but rather of all teachers into a new configuration, and perhaps, a hybrid discourse and practice created newly together. Analyzing the Language and Activities of the TLC. To begin to investigate the language and activities of the members of the two groups that became The Teachers’ Learning Collaborative (TLC), I engaged in participant observation of its meetings, and also listened to tapes of the discussions they contained. In this section, I offer a historical glimpse of the emergent TLC as a discourse community primarily through the lens of the stories participants told in the course of their participation. TLC meetings were periodic retreats. They were held in various members’ homes and, as such, asked people to travel to and from one another’s home communities. As Table 3 shows, the meetings were well attended by the teachers focal to my study. This table also describes, in summary, the activities in which TLC members engaged in the meetings. These meetings were almost always held on Saturdays and the location and agendas changed regularly (see Table 3.) At the meetings, a prescribed “agenda” was always passed out which contained the emphases for the meetings. The agenda was invented by a sub-group of the TLC, generally with the host for that meeting having the greatest input. Time was set aside for issues that were not detailed in the agenda to arise, and often the agenda was completely discarded by lunchtime in favor of emphases that arose out of the morning session. Stories in the TLC Literary critic Wayne Booth (1988) argues, “we all live a great proportion of our Ii ves in a surrender to stories about our lives, and about other possible lives, we live more 01' 16388 in stories (p.14) However, Jane Tompkins believes that it is a rare occasion for 64 academicians to allow for the telling of stories as evidence of anything. Storytelling is seen as touchy-feely, something that is okay for pleasure but not for real thinking (1996). These two positions are exemplified in Rosenblatt’s (1939/1994) model of efferent versus aesthetic readings. In this view, stories are read for multiple purposes at multiple times, sometimes for pleasure, other times for more didactic purposes. The TLC as an activity space had a strong predilection to the telling of stories. These stories served multiple purposes, becoming a crucial analytical trope for the group. The teacher educators who acted as the initial group gatherers were story-tellers themselves. At the first meeting a tale was woven about how all the participants had come to be in that same living room. In my field notes from June, 19, 1999, I wrote “Susan gives us an account of our movement from where we were to where we are. She shows through the narrative of her own coming here that we all are here because we should be. It is a happy convergence of work and lives.” This was my first notebook entry and one that seemed trivial until I retreated back to my notes from that first day to find where the telling of stories might have started. Her own “How I came to be interested in this and all of you” story paved the way and established a common genre for communications that started that first day and was transformed over time. Florio-Ruane believes in the power of stories, but also believes “If our stories of self are to help us reform institutions or build new communities, we need to be willing to reinvent them, repeatedly, and in the company of others, embracing rather than defending ourselves from contact” ( Florio-Ruane & deTar, 2001, p. 150). Below I offer re-tellings and direct quotes of stories told by TLC members. I recreate these stories to illustrate the ways that the TLC members moved from one kind of audience for each others stories to quite 65 another. Stories early on differ in nature and content both in the telling and in the receiving. While I previously showed a connection in form of the stories within one group (Kate and Margret), the following analysis shows that over time stories change among all participants in content and structure toward more common features. These shifts index both movement from peripheral to center and center to peripheral as and in the process of transforming the TLC’s central practices. In addition, the layering of and learning that occurred through the offering and accepting of stories modeled the processes articulated in the Vygotsky Space. If we insert stories as the activities that occur within the space, we can see that stories are told, are revised with feedback from an audience and re-emerge as new stories that attend to the increasing complexity that comes with audience feedback. The re-interpretation of one’s own stories, what Polkinghorne (1991) terms “reemplotment” allows for richer understandings to emerge. Early Stories: Maria’s Maria is the youngest, least experienced teacher present at the first TLC meeting. . She resides in the city and works in the same building as the other city teachers. She begins her presentation of her self and her teaching situation with this story that describes a difficult situation: Because I was so far down the totem pole on seniority I was given a first and second grade split. You know at this time I had only been teaching for a half a year. I came in halfway through last year. So I am thinking, how am I ever going to teach TWO grades when I barely can keep my head up teaching one. You remember I had only taught for one and one half years at this point. I am thinking this is crazy. So I was just trying to work with one half of the students at once 66 t‘erh she l War. there Sling her 5 lfistn met 3 She \A and doing their phonics and their Orton Gillingham, but it was not . . . working I guess. So many of them couldn’t read it, read at all and this was all I could do. I was going crazy (Audio tape, June 19, 1999). It was a big problem, a problem met by the group with sympathetic nods and twisted faces of disgust. As teachers, perhaps, it was an affront to them all that this novice teacher was given 32 students at two different grade levels and umpteen assorted reading levels and was told to instruct them with little social, curricular, or instructional support. But this was not the end of her story. Maria had taken it upon herself to work within the constraints she had been given. She had enlisted the help of a university-based teacher educator who agreed to work in her classroom one day a week as an additional hand in the classroom as well as to work with Maria on reorganizing time, space, and pedagogy in order to accommodate her dilemma. Maria speaks of the beginning of her retooled pedagogy in the past tense. These verbal cues should suggest that there is much more to this narrative than the problem that she began with. She tells the group “So I was just trying to work . . “ and “I was going crazy.” Indeed the poster, papers, and student materials around her are the first clue that there is much more to this story, that things have happened to change an untenable situation into a workable one. However, before Maria had the time to continue on with her story, to detail the “pilot unit” she had written with the assistance of a building based instructional aid and the university teacher educator expert in literacy, a teacher who had met Maria for the first time that day began offering suggestions. It is significant that Maria had the seventh speaking turn in the group, however, she was the first teacher from the urban group to be heard from. The turns went around 67 I . . . .1... 4t- IUTT‘. sent. pref J ,! ado! the living room in physical order (see Appendix C for a map of participants physical locations at meeting one) and Maria was next in line. Of the previous six presentations, there had been discussions and questions from the group, but nobody had attempted to problem-solve for one another. As I noted previously, this may have been in part because the suburban/rural teachers had closed off or appeared to have handled their dilemmas. Maria had too, it seems, looking back on the transcript. Had she not paused for an instant, she may have gone on to finish her story similarly to the ways Kate and Margret had. It turned out not to be the case. Kate said that she had a large class too, but was assisted by a student teacher, a senior in high school (working in her class as community outreach) and a school-based professional tutor. “This helped insure that every child interacted individually with an adult at least once everyday. They need to be stared at, be read with or to read to an adult. I’m not sure it matters who that adult is” (Field notes, June 19, 1999) When Maria’s colleagues, the ones who work at the same school as she, murmur that they have no such support, Kate quickly responds that “There surely is a parent, then, that can come in and take a few of the students at a given time” (Ibid). Again, Maria and her colleagues shake their heads. Though Kate, a veteran of teacher study groups, is a 20 year plus experienced teacher, she has never worked, perhaps never seen, a context as the one in which Maria and her coworkers spend their days. In this school, almost all of the parents work full time to support their families. If not at work during the school day, they are busy caring for younger children or elderly relatives. Even those parents who might have the necessary transportation and time to go to the school even once a week for an hour, may 68 lOlh'arc Cha (”"2 r—o (D not because of an uncertainty about what the teacher might require of them. As evidence by the much maligned low attendance at parent-teacher conferences, open houses and curriculum nights, it is clear that the parents of children at Rice elementary where Maria and her colleagues work do not have a comfort around school that would make it natural or easy to find parent volunteers to work in the classroom. Kate’s comments show how different the contexts of teaching—community, students, schools, parents—can be. Kate offered a solution that had helped her through a situation not unlike Maria’s, yet it was implausible in the context of Maria’s work. It was also clear, however, that Maria was not looking to this group to solve the problems of her practice. She had taken it upon herself, already, to work within her particular teaching context in order to manage a situation that had become all too unmanageable. This exchange between Kate and Maria became an important data point in the development of the group . For one, it is the initial “contact” between the group of teachers from Rice and the group of teachers from the other districts. Though it wasn’t overtly contentious or problematic as it happened, it did present an awkwardness that built a bit in that first meeting. The coming away fi'om this kind of exchange and moving toward another, I argue is one of the successes of this group as well as one of the lessons enacted in the classrooms of both Kate and Maria. Kate believed that the story Maria told had elapsed, that she had come to the end. However, unlike stories, “life and history are inconvenient . . . Because we are ‘in the rnildest’ of them we cannot ascribe determinate meaning to them” (Egan 63). Because Kate wished to be helpful and saw the meeting as problem-solving, perhaps, she offered suggestions that would be viable for someone working in her context. It is notable, 69 this however, that the problem solving component of the meeting had not been exercised in the “museum pieces” that had been offered by the half dozen rural and suburban teachers who had presented before Maria had taken her turn. Though her dilemma was also capably managed, her age, her race, her physical position in the room, something had created a difference that caused Kate to respond to her differently than she had to the colleagues who worked in places like her, who looked more like her, who sat closer to her. Deborah Tannen offers an analysis of problem-solving versus problem-relating in her book “You Just Don’t Understand ” Though her argument focuses upon gender difference in communication styles6 the contrast works here too, This was a suggestion of content. Kate responded to it as one she could relate to, had experienced, and found a way to solve successfully. She offered her reading: Here is something that can be done to help solve this problem, to fit a solution into slot one. It had worked for her, and thus, she was offering it. This isn’t to paint a picture of a good guy and a bad guy. Kate’s 20 plus years of really excellent teaching and both good and bad professional development experiences placed in her the expectation that she might “give” Maria a helpfirl solution. Kate’s behavior exemplifies one of the problems of professional development activities that rely upon collaboration of teachers from different contexts. Guskey writes: What is neglected in nearly all these efforts (to invent solid, effective professional development) is the powerfiil impact of context. In fact, synthesizing the evidence across studies is done specifically to decontextualize the data . . . (however) the uniqueness of the individual 6 I)l'oblem-solving is male, Tannen argues while problem-relating is female 70 it 335 73!“. ' LSIA : w llii‘CTC teSp‘or “(the SEQUIN attentj real me eXPOSL setting will always be a critical factor in education (p. 117). If it is true that particular teaching contexts are the most important detail of teaching, then the use of cross-building collaboratives are uniquely positioned to offer a different kind of support. As the work of the group proceeded, the kind of exchange typified by the one just enumerated between Maria and Kate became less and less prevalent. This shift came about as meeting participants began to work together, over—time, in mutually respectful ways. They visited one another’s classrooms, spoke on the phone and by E-mail, and generally developed the kinds of relationships that thrive because of their interdependence. These kind of getting-to-know-one-another experiences were invaluable for the TLC because they helped shape new questions as participants began to learn first-hand about contexts so different from their own. But it wasn’t only that Kate had tried to fit a solution from slot A into a problem from slot B. It was also that she responded to Maria differently than she responded to the group members that she had worked with before. This argues so clearly for the need for sustained interaction with groups. Trust building and community interaction may have become cliche due to over- attention to corporate bonding in big-business-America, but it came about because of a real necessity. Disconnected individuals cannot learn to work together without repeated exposure to one another in supportive environments. Problem-solving (or failed attempts to do so) were a much more prevalent activity in meeting one than in any of the meetings to follow. At first glance, one wouldn’t see this as an issue to think much about. One member of a group presents a dilemma and the rest of the group offers suggestions on managing that dilemma. In fact, this sounds like a model of professional development that might be lauded as contextual, 71 n l; collaborative and practioner-directed, all adjectives used positively when contrasted with more traditional professional development models that are often monologic, context-free and given to, rather than arising from, practioners. However, a close look at the kind of interactions present at the early meetings of this group suggest that contextualized, practioner-driven professional development can be as conservative in nature as any of these other models. If there is always a single group apprenticing newcomers then extant practices are perpetually reinforced and change doesn’t come. The Beginnings of Connections As the group solidified and became more familiar, the contexts of their individual situations seemed to make story-telling a more productive activity. As the relationships in the TLC formed, it became clear that solutions from context one would not necessarily translate to context two. This insight became more apparent as more and more stories were told and the listeners positioned themselves not as problem-solvers but as audiences engaged with problems. This learning occurred as participants shook off the notion that stories were offered as conduits to other stories that would solve them. A pivotal exchange occurred in a fall meeting when a story told by Sharon, a longstanding member of the autobiography group. In this exchange, Sharon tells of her discomfort in giving over control of her pilot unit to another teacher in her building. One of the teacher educators, one of the urban teachers, Maria, and one of the rural teachers, Kate, discuss this with her: Sharon: Maybe you guys can come see what I am talking about. Since 72 0flirt. I am not in the building all the time anymore7 I am not exactly sure if things are going as I would have them go. It (the curriculum) feels like my project, but I know I have to give it up and let it go. Dr. T: Do you think the assessments are being administered wrong? Sharon: No, it’s more the . . Maria: I know. For me it is like giving up my things. These are my things and how dare you do them wrong. But, Sharon, isn’t that part of what we are doing? We are inventing something that moves as it moves around. Sharon: I know. Perhaps I need to come see it in other classrooms, like in yours, then I will know there isn’t A Way, there are WAYS. Kate: Don’t come to my room looking for any WAY (laughs) (Field notes, November 6, 1999). In this exchange, the “problem” is put on the floor and used as a point of inquiry rather than as a propellant toward answers. This exchange is pivotal because it is a clear mixture of many different group members coming together to play around in a topic. Sharon comes away with fodder for thought based on experiences from her colleagues and her own understandings. Florio-Ruane and deTar (2001) noticed this dynamic in their study of teachers reading autobiographies of culture. They defined this process as one of “joint inquiry” where some topics and stories become the stuff of the turn exchange not in order to find external answers to them, but rather in order to explore complications as a group. Belenky et. al. (1986) use the term “connected knowing” to describe a process by which Ieamers begin to empathize with one another in order to 7 Sharon had recently taken a job as the building reading specialist which took her to district meetings often. 73 Ir—* understand someone else’s situations, relate it to their own and thus build knowledge from the interaction of the two. They go on to define “passionate knowing” as “the elaborated form connected knowing takes after women learn to use the self as an instrument of understanding” (p. 141). Sharon does use both her own experiences and the experiences and opinions of her colleagues to begin to shape her own view of a situation just moments before had frustrated her. My data does not show that participants come away with pat answers that satisfy them immediately. Rather, like Dewey’s educative experiences ( 193 8), Florio-Ruane and deTar’s joint inquiry (2001) and Belenky et al’s (1986) passionate knowing the discourse of the TLC members creates complications that continue interrogation on roads that open up and take new turns because of interaction with others. The discourse of the TLC invited complexity and that is why it was so messy, so indeterminate, and so ultimately sustaining. In social encounters, learning comes about because of the interaction of opinions and perspectives. Thus, there is more information to manage and account for. Instead of a drive toward simplicity, sociocultural teacher learning drives toward complexity as a route to continued learning. Later Stories: Lena’s Story In the January meeting, Lena, a TLC teacher working with fifth graders in an urban school talks about a problem she is having with one of her student teachers. Lena: He thinks he should know everything there is because for god’s sake they are only fifth graders and he thinks, ‘hey, I took fifth 74 grade once and I learned about history in college, so I am not going to prepare at all for this lesson on the civil war.’ And the kids ask him these really deep interesting questions. I am sitting in the back thinking ‘wow these kids are really into this’ but of course since he hasn’t prepared well and is just learning that he knows nothing about this, he goes over it super quick and makes it into a behavior thing. He tells them that they are going to have to learn silently if they don’t stop yelling out answers, but I know too well that they are fine. It is him that is not behaving right. The group chimes in quickly. Kate: Do you think he knew what he didn’t know? Lena: I’m not sure. I think he knew something was going not too well. Angie: Did you talk to him about this after? Lena: I haven’t yet; I thought I would let him bring it up, so he might have a chance to think about it before . . . Kate: Do you think he will bring it up? Lena: In a way I just feel sorry for him because it was really a failure. But now I am thinking that maybe he is so arrogant that he didn’t even see what happened. Actually maybe that is what happened. Sharon: Is that what happened? (Video Tape, January 15, 2000.) The conversation that arose from Lena’s initial presentation of her current teaching dilemma with an intern she is dissatisfied with has many of the same characteristics as the story that Maria told at the first meeting about her problem managing a classroom 75 Q: (9‘ 510116 reinte LU ~——- —o with multiple students, grades, and reading levels. Both of these stories began with a member telling of a dilemma. Both of these found an audience of the other network members who appeared to engage with the dilemma. However, that first interaction fell flat because TLC members attempted to solve a problem from Maria’s context with the tools and dispositions of their own. In the interaction between Lena and other members of the group, rather than offering suggestions based on their own experiences working with interns or junior staff members, the group prompts Lena with questions about her specific situation. By doing so, they allow her to fortify her narrative in a way that helps her continue to re-interpret a complicated situation. Polkinghorne (1991) uses the term “re-emplotment” to indicate the cognitive movement that occurs when individuals re—interpret and re-present their life stories. For Lena, the questions from the other TLC members began her process of reinterpretation of her perspective on the role of the intern in this failed lesson. There are at least three interpretive moves in this short segment. First, Lena is unsure of the answer to a question from Kate. She says, “I’m not sure.” Following a series of questions, she decides “Maybe he is so arrogant . . “ and then finally “maybe that is what happened.” Lena literally reinterprets her own story as her audience—Kate—scaffolds her thinking by prompting more reflection. This is much different that Kate’s previous discussion with Maria whose articulation of a problem of practice was cut short by Kate’s proffering of a tightly constructed, yet untested, solution. This is a moment of learning for Lena who has just experienced the power of audience feedback at its most subtle and perhaps most effective. It is also the mark of a change in pattern for Kate who has clearly shifted from solver of problems to joint inquirer into them. This is a much more fruitful 76 interaction in that it allows the contextual nature of any teacher’s dilemma to remain just that, contextual and a particular person’s dilemma. Lena clearly came away from the interaction with a new perspective based upon an interaction even though one might not see explicit “help” from Sharon. It is also important that the narrative of Lena’s problem took the interaction down a rode where information is added to clarify Lena’s own position rather than to help her see someone else’s. For example, Sharon merely acts as an audience as Lena verbally re- drafts her experience in order to help her see alternatives and to make coherent a situation that was not entirely understandable. Instead of jumping in with solutions, she allows herself to act as a reflective surface to help Lena think through her own situations. Together, Sharon and Lena act as audience and author of a new interpretation of Lena’s narrative. Joint Inquiry in Professional Development Discourse The dynamic that Sharon and Lena exemplify in the above example is a signature one in future TLC meetings. Perhaps the differences in their teaching contexts were so dramatic as to persuade members that every story couldn’t be generalized to every situation. In fact, it began to feel that no story was of group domain. Participants didn’t spend much time relating stories they heard to their own situations, but rather, they told their own stories in order to contribute to the developing interpretations of the original story. In this, members began to interrogate the stories that they were given rather than attempting to solve what they might have seen as problems with solutions. Stories were thus positioned as opportunities for “authors” to revise understandings that they previously held. Positioning stories this way helps teachers to own their own dilemmas 77 lOOlt‘ a SOUICQS leache, and thus learn strategies for solving problems of the present and problems of the future. Below I have sketched an example following the life cycle of a topic as it is argued and inquired into during the second half of the TLC’s first year to illustrate the development of the discourse strategy of joint inquiry around a problem of practice. A subset of the TLC group had retreated for a weekend to the woods in upper Michigan to write a series of “I Can” statements for students(See Raphael, George, Florio-Ruane, in press). These statements were powerful in that they were innovative ways to allow students to speak on their own behalf about their growing competency in literacy learning. Because I knew of this powerful experience for their learning and on behalf of the learning of their students, I began to wonder about a similar power to having teachers interact around their own assessment. In essence, to write “I can” statements for youngsters, they needed to pare down to the essentials of what learning is all about and make it understandable for multiple audiences. I believed that a similar approach might help demystify the swirl of standards and assessments putting external pressure on teacher’s work. In that spirit, I reviewed standards for language arts teaching from a variety of sources in an effort to present an activity that might support teachers in the pursuit of their own voices for standardizing their profession. At the January meeting of the TLC, which I hosted, I asked the TLC members to look at policy texts and make sense of them in the real world of their classrooms. Prior to the meeting, I mailed each TLC participant a survey that listed eight teacher standards that I had culled from lists of standards for teachers published by reputable and respected sources such as the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), The International Reading Association (IRA,) and the 78 Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium Task Force on Assessment (INTASC). I have written about this work in another text (see Berne, 2001), yet I also detail it as part of this study in that the activities of the group on that day suggest much about the evolution of the discourse patterns of the TLC. I asked the teachers to rank order these standards in reference to the importance they played in their own classroom work. Further, I asked them to omit those standards that they felt weren’t important enough to be included on a short list of standards and add that which were not included in our original list. I also asked that they give us any comments in written, verbal or electronic form. I told them that this was part of the work for my dissertation and that they should consider it seriously if briefly as this was only weeks before winter vacation (A copy of the original document and instructional memo sent to the teachers is found in Appendix D.). I took care to list these standards out in an arbitrary order, taken from the range of six documents. that I had studied. These included standards from organizations like The National Council of Teacher’s of English, The lntemational Reading Association, and the American Federation of Teachers. To be fair to each document I looked at, I selected one or two of the first three standards they offered. I tried to offer the standards that seemed to be most important to the standards writers in each particular case. I wasn’t attempting to load the list in any way, to have special favorites or to plant duds. It actually wasn’t the content of the standards that I was interested in, but rather, I was interested in the form of the teacher’s responses. I asked the teachers to return the documents to me sometime after the winter break, and when they did I was surprised at what I received. These far-from-ordinary teachers, teachers who were used to critical 79 (r 17:6 I110 Obs. reflection and arguing for the importance of their own work were sending me back documents that were merely re-numbered. They had no comments, no additions, and with the exception of a single one, no deletions. At what was the next TLC meeting, I asked that the teachers revisit these standards as a group. I asked them again to look at the same list, this time in small working groups that comprised 4 or 5 teacher from different schools, districts, and communities. This time I asked them not to rank the various standards, thinking that this may have been too binary a task. Instead, to come to a group consensus on one or two standards that they felt they would like to describe. They were to devise a story-starter based on the literacy work they had been doing with struggling readers that explicated the particular standard they had chosen to work with. Story starters, it was explained, are merely that: pieces of a fuller picture that serve to represent and suggest an anecdotal moment but that are presented in narrative form. As they worked, I served as participant observer and also video and audio taped the groups in progress. Once the teachers were given these instructions, the standards came alive. Instead of the standards controlling the teachers, as standards can do, the stories from these teachers controlled the standards. The small groups had lively discussions about students, curriculum, teaching and learning all told through experiences and examined through the lens of standards. The following is a tiny piece of a much fuller conversation on standards that I have presented in firll text in Appendix F. In this conversation, participants in one small group are discussing which standards they would like to explicate. Marta: I am thinking we should go with reflection. 80 S‘Ji‘vf anti Lena: I just don’t think reflection can do that much. You can’t see it or touch it. How do we even know that we do it? Joelle: We know because it makes what we do into teaching rather than sticking stuff in front of them and hoping they will learn, maybe. Marta: To me it is a constant. And I bet it is for you too. Maybe you are just thinking about it as separate from what you do (Video tape, January 15, 2000). In this conversation, participants use “reflection” as a way to understand the process of their teaching. It is interesting that Lena trails off at this point, not saying much more about her relationship to reflection. Initially, I believed she had been outnumbered by her colleagues and just elected to retreat. However, later, as the small groups reported back to the bigger group on what they had discussed, Lena says: “Actually, I learned that reflection is a matter of smarting up your context. It’s like I don’t see what I do as reflective, but as we were talking I was like ‘I do that; I couldn’t teach without doing that.’ I think they (her group) helped me see that my teaching is something that is so much a part of me that I have trouble separating out the aspects” (Video tape, January 15, 2000). What Lena says is profound. In her ability to think with her colleagues she is gaining insights about her teaching that were previously blocked by her own too familiar lens. They are also learning from her. I had given participants blank copies of the surveys so they might refer to them or take notes in the group. Marta returned hers to me With a note: “Lena isn’t sure that reflection is all its cracked up to be. Wow. It’s like the anti-Ed school thing. Nobody would say that in an in-service in my district. I love her 81 St: frankness.” Marta is widening her vision of teachers and teaching as is Lena. The reciprocal learning in that group attests to the discourse of joint inquiry emerging. As teachers were packing up from this session, Lena asked me if she could use this activity to help her begin a conversation with her interns. I was pleased she asked and told her that I hoped she would let me know what she learned from it. Explicitly and implicitly the TLC teachers were becoming to one another both author and audience. When they make this move, the group takes on the character of a classroom where students and teacher work together to make sense of the world and themselves. This example foreshadows a component of TLC interactions that became the cornerstone to deep, complex teacher learning. When I sent out the surveys initially, teachers were only able to respond from their own context. This was an individual activity, one that was all the more isolating because I had asked them to respond in writing rather than to me by phone or in person. Because of this, I believe, the teachers felt pinned into the idea of a didactic answer that existed outside their own opinions. Thus, it became scary to forward an opinion that might be “wrong,” might reveal their biases. That this was far from the truth is irrelevant. These teachers who were absolutely outstanding in their previous abilities to work together to see inconsistencies and irrelevancies in even the most bullet-proof curriculum were unable to speak back to a short survey. Once they were able to meet in groups with other teachers who they had built trust and rapport with, other teachers who they had experience working with, the standards task became productive and conversation-generating. The coming together with teachers from worlds apart to work on authentic tasks became the modus operandi of the group. 82 EX U11 get Spa con 19p] nett Clair lhe l The Power of Alike and Apa_rt The TLC teachers’ were influenced by their experiences in the network because they were able to use the network as a piece of a puzzle that included experiences from their individual classrooms. This offers a theoretical lens from which to view and define teacher learning. Raphael and Gavelek’s (1996) interpretation of the Vygotsky Space can be helpful when thinking through these issues. In this space, learning “Involves four processes: appropriation, transformation, publication, conventionalization” and “Learners engage in these processes throughout their formal and informal schooling as they develop and learn language conventions, concepts, and the knowledge of our society” (Raphael and Goatley, 1997, pp.28-29). This model can contribute to the idea that a powerfiil core of knowledge is moved along from individual to individual. Of course, Vygotsky’s model assumes that individuals will adapt knowledge to their own experience and thus transform it before publication of new ideas. In the Vygotsky space, understandings are built and negotiated as public knowledge becomes private enterprise, gets transformed and then reemerges as a changed form of private utterances in a public space. The TLC teachers had opportunities to learn from and in the network and from and in their own classrooms. When one accounts for multiplicity in spaces and learning communities, we see the Vygotsky model enlivened by another dimension. In this reproductive model, public conventions are present in two different spaces—that of the network and that of the classroom. Each space has its own set of discourses, knowledge claims and protocols. When teacher Ieamers are in one of those locales they go through the planes that the Vygotsky space specifies, yet they are also doing so in other activity 83 spaces where they are taking other contexts and knowledge claims into account. This creates a three dimensional, dialogic model where participants move through multiple spaces simultaneously but not necessarily uniformly (see Figure 1). Thus, the learning going on inside the network may stir up and accelerate learning while in the classroom. Similarly, classroom learning may prompt network interactions that assist in grounding new understandings. As the teachers worked among and between the two spaces, they could place them in dialogue with each other, with other group members, and with colleagues in their own schools. One might believe that a second year teacher from the inner city had little to share with a two decades experienced teacher from the suburbs; one might even make an analogy that the young teacher is somewhat of an apprentice to the other. Lave and Wegner (1997) talk about learning communities of practice where the newer participants gradually gain enough experience with the discourse and practices that they move toward the center of activity. Many scholars have related that classrooms are themselves communities that serve normative purposes (Anyon, 1980). In this, analysis of the discourse in classrooms often find that the charismatic, popular students, those with skill in verbal acuity, often lead the way in classroom discussions (Jackson, 1990). These students become a self-made “center” to which others apprentice themselves. But just as Lave and Wegner’s model, there is an assumption that a central core of knowledge or experience exists and that outsiders can ascertain what that core is. In the Teacher Learning Network called the TLC, there were forces that held the group together, but there was no primary knowledge that one person or group of peoples held and others attempted to close in upon. To the contrary, members moved back and forth 84 Figure l: Accelerated Multi-plane Learning Increasing teaming 85 as both authors of stories used to work through issues in their classrooms and as audiences for the stories of others. Thus, they taught and learned and, as they did so, the core of knowledge changed. The case example below illustrates this phenomenon. A Case of Disconfirrning Evidence There had been a shared understanding among the suburban and rural teachers who instruct primarily Caucasian children that the ability to talk about texts in small student-lead groups was related to age. They had derived a formula that related the age of the child to the number of minutes that child could be expected to participate intellectually and socially in a group conversation about a book. This claim became subject to disconfirrning evidence when one of the inner-city teachers offered her experience that her second-graders would sustain a book club conversation for far longer than the expected 8 or 10 minutes. She noted that they went on and on with productive, connected language about the text they were each assigned to read for twice as long as she had been set up to expect based upon the experience of the suburban and rural teachers. When she let her students loose on a piece of text that they had all read or had read to them, the children would argue, agree, question and critique. They had a sawy about relating the text to their own lives and a comfort with going back into the text to prove their contentions about it. These were all skills that the suburban teachers had warned her would be difficult to teach youngsters to do. This piece of information lead all the teachers to wonder if it may not have been age that was the determining factor for sustaining a conversation. It also clearly wasn’t reading achievement levels as the second graders in the inner city school showed great skill at oral language use and high quality talk about text 86 while their reading comprehension levels were lower than those children in rural and suburban schools. Once this piece of disconfirming evidence was introduced, the whole group was forced to think of their previous knowledge claims as more tentative. And so, the experience became so much more than just the sharing of individual experiences. The network became a learning plane where teachers could cross boundaries both physically and psychologically in order to flex their own knowledge and build upon it. The influence of the urban students’ experience working with a curriculum that was once thought of as defined in particular ways forced a dramatic reconsideration of all facets of the teachers’ work. This example illustrates the importance of mixing teachers heterogeneously in order to help them to test knowledge claims in contexts not their own. There are several aspects of this interaction that helped force the insight that eventually came, that student skill at talking about texts was not related to age, nor was it related to reading achievement. First, it was critical that teachers interacted with those outside their usual teaching day. Second, it was critical that the TLC be closely tied to classroom practice. If not for the urban teacher’s experimentation with book club groups on her own turf, none of the teachers would have known that there might be local differences that could prompt universal insights. Finally, unlike more traditional professional development activities where innovations are marketed as fully created texts offered to teachers as the answer, the TLC was able to see the text they were creating—that of a curricular framework—as a hypothesis to be tested rather than a done deal. It was with equal portions of surprise and interest that the insights from the urban classroom were embraced in the group. Difference became something to add complication, and thus, 87 increase conversation and engagement. Composition theorists (Elbow, 1981;Graves, 1983;Calkins, 1994 ) talk about the need for writers to use audience feedback to see components of their texts that are hidden from those who are intimately involved in creating it. The TLC became this kind of sophisticated assemblance of “readers” of the stories brought in by the membership. Had it not been for the reading of the urban students expertise at book discussions as unusually proficient, nobody would have noted any reason to change an interpretation about age as related to ability to discuss. In addition, the urban teachers might not have seen clearly how strong their students were at a skill that more affluent students lacked. Seeing the Wage; Exchanges about the book club conversations in urban and suburban children also complicated knowledge about the urban (almost exclusively Afiican American) children and what to expect of their performances as literate members of a classroom community. Where there had been articulated frustration about the urban student’s abilities on standardized reading tests and tests designed to assess comprehension that accompanied their district mandated basal, there had been little discussion of their proficiency with oral language. The exchanges with the suburban teachers about their difficulties getting their students to converse productively for any length of time helped the urban teachers “make the familiar strange” and see that a skill like oral language use could be linked to reading instruction and used as a tool for helping students reading achievement. One of the urban teachers commented that “this storytelling, the way they tell stories has never seemed anything but extra-curricular. Now I begin to see it as central” (Field notes, September 88 18, 2000). Just as the old adage states “the fish will be the last to discover water,” inner city teachers were so used to the oral skill of their pupils that they had ceased to appreciate its value. Simultaneously, the suburban teachers did not recognize these children as having a strength on which to build that might be one the suburban kids lacked. And both urban and suburban teachers began to critique their tacit expectations of Ieamers as they related to socioeconomic status. The skill of these urban youngsters was held in contrast to the behaviors of others who have more traditionally academic skills. It allowed everyone to feel that skills like oral language proficiency and storytelling might contribute to skill-building of a more traditional sort, the kind that is reflected on standardized tests and in mandated competency measures for instance. This idea made it from these urban teachers through the building to the principal who then referenced it at a Wednesday staff meeting. Though this may sound like a benign path, it was a significant moment when the principal discussed reasoned pedagogy in front of the entire faculty and credited a young teacher for introducing the idea. The buzz of this circulated at Rice for days. There was evidence that other teachers in the building were contemplating the implications of this new piece of information. This was the first piece of tangible evidence that practices might change in a building, not just in the teachers involved in the TLC, but in teachers attached to them in a professional game of “telephone” that might actually improve because of changes in the interpretations as different teachers try out different versions of a practice in their classrooms. So we have a mixture of two groups increasing the complexity of previous conceptions and allowing all teachers to rethink practice. Both insights—that of oral 89 lamp. he a popu comr initia cone: fntitt have learn: as 10 for gr anthn differ per5pt Offer 111116): Rice li lSSUeg the set hill] of language linkage to reading comprehension and the idea that skill at discussion might not be a product of age—arose out of the interaction of unlike practioners with unlike student populations. However, this interaction came about because each group of teachers had common concerns about literacy instruction that brought them in this contact zone initially. This description, then, attests to the value of groups linked by a common concern, in that way alike, and held apart by differences in circumstances that became fi'UIIfiIl comparative experiences. Cultural anthropologists (Geertz among them, 1972) have taught us of the value of comparative perspectives on our own lives. These teachers learned that it is possible to be a student of comparative education if a group is set up so as to offer competing paradigms. These teachers learned to see what they had once taken for granted as rich and complicated. It is not so different from the way that anthropologists re—interpret their own behaviors after returning from experiences that differ radically. Goingfiack Home: The Rice Literacy Circle It wasn’t only that the teachers learned from the interaction of differing perspectives, for they also valued the insights that those who did share a context could offer. There were particular problems that were local and contextual. For instance, the inner-city teachers continued to meet after school with one another. This group—the Rice literacy circlefl—was a place where any teacher from Rice interested in literacy issues could come for support and collegiality. Originally formed by the administration of the school, it quickly became practioner-lead as the administrators involved became busy with other obligations. In another text, colleagues and I wrote, 90 The core of teachers who attended Literacy Circle faithfiilly began to take firmer control of the group’s agenda and activities. Meetings shifted from an all-purpose meeting room originally designated by the principal to the classrooms of teacher members. As, in their view, one of the few meeting times not dominated by administrative agendas, the Literacy Circle was a special discursive place. Thus what initially seemed like a weakening of the group actually became its strength. For those who chose to participate, the Literacy Circle became, over the ensuing months, a place where troubles could be told, critical questions aired with minimal risk, and good ideas shared (Florio-Ruane, Berne & Raphael, 2001). It is interesting to contrast the topics and emphases that arose in these meetings as opposed to the meetings of the Teacher’s Learning Collaborative. As one might expect, these conversations were much more closely tied to building politics and the significant stresses of teaching children who have already fallen behind their peers in literacy achievement. For example, at a relatively late point in the fall term, teachers at Rice were told that there would be shuffling of students into and out of classrooms so that resources could be redistributed. The teachers were horrified at what this would do to students who had just begun to gel with the routine of the classrooms where they had spent nearly two months. They expressed anxiety about the way their students would be measured on standardized tests against students who had spent the entire year in a single teacher’s charge. This conversation was serious and the theme of it was taken up in several meetings in a row. Though agendas with other topics were passed out before the 91 meeting, this event clearly took precedence in the minds of the teachers, and they tabled their discussions of mixed aged reading “buddies” and informational texts to discuss this problem. Though this inter-building conversation went on among the Rice teachers for weeks, it never made it to the TLC meetings. It was clear that the heterogeneous group of practioners was not the site to discuss concerns tied to a single building, yet these concerns were pressing. It is to the credit of the Rice teachers that they were able to air their frustrations and problem-solve this together as they were truly in it together. Teachers in the group brainstormed and shared information on various students who were passed around from one to the next. One teacher had spent a lot of time and energy on a new integrated curriculum in which student’s literacy instruction would be integrated into their study of mathematics, science, and social studies. She learned that on November 1 she would not be teaching math or science and thus would have to redo her schema. Other teachers offered her assistance with this daunting task. This support helped ease some of the pressures on these teachers faced now with disrupted curriculum, new children to learn about, and various other changes. Though this move in the words of one Rice teacher “15 unbelievably wrong. There are many ways to share resources. Children are not resources to be moved around at will” (Field notes, October 23, 1999), the teachers appeared to find solace in their interactions with one another. The problems didn’t go away, yet the Rice teacher who spoke so adamantly against the move had perceptibly relaxed after discussing it with her colleagues. Clearly, teachers who work with one another in collaboratives like the TLC and the Rice literacy circle benefit from both heterogeneous groupings where teachers from varied instructional contexts get together and more homogeneous building or district 92 based groups. Teachers need many different contexts to think through the many different issues that define their work. Though this issue may not have made it to the TLC, the conversation style practices at this meeting might, upon fiirther analysis, appear to fortify this meeting as well. It is also true, however, that the characteristics of the interactions in the Rice Literacy Circle where not like the interaction in the TLC. For instance, the Rice teacher who was told she would be losing a number of her students brought the issue to the table in the following interaction with several of her colleagues. Joanie: You know they are moving them don’t you? Evelyn: Did she decide. Did she tell you? Joanie: Of course not. She had Ms. Dean (the assistant principal) tell me. Kendra: I heard too. It will be important because she (another teacher) can’t teach reading, so she’ll have you do all that reading and she’ll just do math. Joanie: You know that’s not why. It’s numbers. All numbers. Kendra: Well you can concentrate really hard on reading then. Joanie: I know, but we were just getting moving with the math journals and stuff. It gets me. It just gets me. Evelyn: Me too. And it is worse for you. This interaction stands in contrast to the interactions most typical of TLC exchanges. In this piece of meeting discourse, Joanie tells of her concerns and is responded to by Kendra who interprets the cause of Joanie’s dilemma. Joanie continues on in the interaction by disputing Kendra’s interpretation with an alternative one. Kendra appears to agree with this interpretation easily, raising the question of whether her original idea was one that she really believed in. In any case, the interaction in this site is more 93 familiarly statement, response, statement, response. In the interaction between Lena and Sharon in the TLC context, Sharon’s questions were used to prompt Lena’s re- emplotment of her own story rather than as potential interpretations of it. The crucial difference then, arises out of the use of questions. Questions in the TLC In the TLC, when questions are used to follow up a narrative, they are most often used to help the narrator re-interpret his or her own story. I offered four vignettes designed to typify exchanges in the TLC network earlier in this chapter. In the first, I gave an example of an early interaction when members were still feeling their way through the experience. In this exchange, Kate and Maria miss each other’s purposes because Kate answers the questions that she perceives Maria having. Kate’s response is inappropriate for two reasons: first, Maria was not looking for input on her story, she was looking for an audience to listen. Second, Kate’s solutions were mismatched to the problem because they arose out of her very different teaching context. The next three vignettes demonstrate the building of authorship and readership as roles for TLC members. In the example of teachers looking at standards, Lena learns quietly as she incorporates the stories she listens to with the stories that she hears around her. In this prototypical Vygotskian movement, her new knowledge arises out of an internal integration between her initial schema, the ideas of others and her own ability to think through changes in perspectives. Her “publication” of her own awareness of reflection as a crucial component in her teaching arises out of an interaction between the external views she has heard and the internal views she previously held. When Lena and Sharon discuss the problem Lena is having with her intern, she seems poised to accept advice, 94 but Sharon’s previous experience in the network has taught her that the varied teaching contexts in which they both reside forbid easy transference of experiences. Instead, she uses herself as a backboard as Lena builds her own new understandings from Sharon’s thoughtfirl prompts. When Maria offers her experience of using a curriculum that was designed by and for a limited number of cultures, she brings a new view to the table that is crucial in allowing for a flexible notion of truth to emerge. This too, shows that the group is able to open up channels of communication through the ability to place the classroom stories of one member next to the classroom stories of another. Teaching as Process As the activities went along, the teachers developed a manner of working where teaching moments were isolated and teachers were able to reflect upon them with the assistance of colleagues. This resembled a writers workshop where one member had the opportunity to receive feedback on “drafts” of teaching that were orally published and in some cases published also with artifacts of practice like teaching plans, heuristics, class handouts or student work. Just as participants in writer’s workshops are trained to give I- centered feedback with the acknowledgement that the writer needs an audience to test out ideas on, TLC teachers began to feedback their colleagues ideas in ways that helped the originator of the idea read it with new perspectives. The following exchange took place during a lunch break on a Saturday meeting in January. Kim: Did you bring it with you? Lena: No I left it at school but it is this big chart and in it I itemize what they are supposed to be doing with respect to independent reading and writing. I wanted it to be motivating. To see the circles filled in and know 95 that they were doing all this, but the kids they just couldn’t see why they should do it. It almost worked the opposite, like I am not going to fill out that chart. I am not going to read unless you make me. Kim: Like a game? Lena: It is a game, they know it is all a game. Do what you are told and you will learn something. Isn’t that also a game? Kim: I’m not sure. Lena: Me either, maybe I’ll redo, the chart to make it less like a race and more like personal achievement, but I don’t know if that’s it (Audio tape, January 15, 2000). This exchange is notable because it tracks on to the idea of colleague as audience for teaching hypotheses. Lena doesn’t assume that what she is presenting to Kim as an example of her literacy teaching is stable or finished. In this, she presents it as a work-in- progress and thus, allows for the opportunity for revision. In contrast to the way that interactions within this group of teachers once proceeded, now Kim and Lena show that they have found language and methods to present ideas that they have used in tentative form. This is no small issue. What I call “teaching texts”—moments that can be described as lived in the classroom for a particular audience and purpose are rarely interrogated as drafts. Part of this reason, surely, is that they are interactive and unrecordable. It is simpler to see an initial drawing or piece of writing as something that can be changed because it has a moment when it is frozen and can be easily defined as not yet finished. In contrast, once a “teaching text” is produced it is consumed (at least in the view of the student) as finished. 96 The difficulty with considering a live “teaching text” as one that is open to interpretation is that it has already occurred in a real context and has influenced children for good or naught. It takes a strong disposition to learn to reflect upon lessons as presentations that can be revised, that need to be interrogated so that their strengths and weaknesses might be revealed. Lortie (1975) argues that the historical positioning of teaching as a social science insures that it will be Increasingly influenced by ideas drawn from behavioral science. Those trained in behavioral disciplines are inclined to conceptualize teaching in instrumental terms—to talk of ‘treatments’ and ‘options’ and to assess outcomes in terms of measurable and discrete objectives (p. 66). Clearly, looking at a teaching episode as a moment or a text, one that will not easily yield an outcome or an answer, is difficult. Lortie found it was easier for teachers to quantify their work in simple ways by taking on a pragmatic and rationalist view of teaching borrowed from science. Jackson’s (1990) belief that teachers shy away from hard, intellectual work would also support the idea that reflecting on teaching opportunities and behaviors is not a favored activity. However, critics of this generalization (Lanier and Little, 1986 for example) argue that many teachers are attracted to that which is hard in teaching and that the shear number of individuals needed to teach all children for a large number of years guarantees that some will be inclined to intellectual work and others not. In any event, it is hard and perhaps counterintuitive to elucidate moments from real classrooms in order to consider them as interpretive opportunities. Early in the group meetings, in fact, teachers were steered away from doing this by the energy of the group 97 as it seemed to want to solve problems presented instead of interrogate situations. As time went on, however, it became clear that problems were so locally situated and born of situations existing in a given time and space that to offer solutions was a band-aid, to offer perspectives and ways to help individual practioners think through their own teaching as a beginning of something and not an end, was fertile and became, in my view, the raison de etre from the perspective of the participating teachers. The idea of social interactions (like teaching) as texts may have been crystallized by cultural anthropologists, but it also takes its roots from process writing theory. In composition studies, texts are thought to be indetemrinate and bound by the interaction of reader and writer. (Bartholomae, 1996; Rosenblatt, 1994) Texts are also often thought of as a part of an ongoing discussion about texts, and in that, not bounded by the page and position of their authors (see Barthes, 1976, for example). Research on reading processes, similarly (see Tierney and Pearson, 1981/1992, for example) argue that proficient readers build texts from the texts that they are confronting combined with the texts in their heads. In this, they attach meanings from the text they are confronted with in combination with the previous “schemas” that exist in their minds from experiences of life and other texts. Literacy learning, then, can be thought of as a series of experiences where one interacts with a text, whether by reading it or writing it, and that text takes on life when mixed with the personal histories of its readers or writers. This is an historical Situating of reader/writer and text. It isn’t a far stretch to see that teaching can be similarly positioned in philosophical ways. A teaching moment can be thought of as an act that has particular meanings for the creator and the createe. A student may “read” a lesson or lecture as 98 something far different from what the teacher had intended. Just as authorial intention is questioned by some critical groups as irrelevant, so might educational theorists believe that it is the reception of the idea, that is, the student’s perspective on the idea that is crucial. How the idea traveled from teacher to student in a transformative way is, like a text, situated culturally, historically and personally. Mich. The Teacher Learning Collaborative offered opportunities for conversation about authentic problems of practice as its primary activity. In this, the speech genres (Bakhtin, 1978) of the group were particularly related to the forms and content of their participation. Participants engaged in joint inquiry that can only be had in the kind of sustained, trusting relationship that occurred because teachers both came to listen and to learn from one another. Thus, the social nature of their interaction mirrored that of student learning in the Vygotsky Space (Gavelek & Raphael, 1996). Teachers offered perspectives and at times altered those perspective because of the ways the discourse of the group combined with their own internal discourse to forge new meanings. In this group, the dynamics of the interaction included narrative as an important genre for questioning and working out dilemmas, experimentation as a part of wise decision making rather than a mark of immaturity or uncertainty and the continual coming together from varied teaching contexts into the space of the TLC. All of these practices are supported by the literature on complex learning in that they involve social participation within a community structure. In these ways, TLC appeared to be a site for teacher learning contrasting with more typical forms which are more didactic, rely on talk to convey expert knowledge in response to pre-ordained problems, and are of short 99 duration. What did teachers learn and what did that learning look like inside classrooms as well as within the TLC? The next two chapters tackle these questions in two ways: case studies of two focal TLC teachers working in very different contexts; and cross-case comparisons and contrasts involving six TLC members’ classrooms as well as “buddy” classrooms with which they were paired for comparison of student learning in the wider CIERA study. In the following chapter, I will focus in on two of the focal teachers and the way that the cases of their classroom practices are instantiated by the work of the TLC. It is important to enter into classrooms when inquiring into professional development activities because traditionally “teachers’ professional development appears weakly coupled to effects on students . . .Whether it is university course work or the workshops provided by consultants . . .too often the relationship to improvement in student learning is remote or nonexistent” (Sykes, p.161). I could talk about the emergence of teacher stances, dispositions, and discourses within the TLC, but it is when traces of the TLC are witnessed in teacher classroom practice that true effectiveness can be argued. In the case of social interaction, teacher’s most important “publication” site for new knowledge (Gavelek & Raphael, 1996) is in the classroom. It is this space that ultimately proves the worth of a social learning experience for the teacher involved. 100 CHAPTER FOUR THE FAMILY RESEMBLANCES OF TWO CLASSROOMS: RICE AND HARLAN Introduction Because I believe that teacher learning must be manifested by classroom behavior, I went to the classrooms of TLC teachers to help understand if and how their work in the TLC was instantiated in classroom action. To gather this information, I spent time in the classrooms of the six focal teachers I previously detailed in Table 1. In this chapter, I focus closely on two of those teachers. I selected the two teachers—Ms. Harris and Ms. Laetner-- because I believed their teaching contexts to be disparate enough that any strong resemblance in their practice would have to be accounted for by something more than chance. I also selected these classrooms because I had the opportunity to test my hypotheses about these two rooms in follow-up interviews with these two teachers. This allowed me to triangulate my observations with their comments, and thus, adds rigor to my observations. My intention in entering their classrooms was to observe classroom practice as it related to the components about literacy instruction worked on within TLC. Thus, my questions for observations clustered around the following categories: 1. What evidence of publication of new knowledge (as in quadrant IV of the Vygotsky space) could be observed? 2. What influence did the community of scholars of the TLC have on the participants once they returned to their home bases? 3. Could the influence of the secondary discourse or speech 101 genres emerging in the TLC be observed in the classroom? 4. Was the principle of inquiry as learning evident in the classroom as I believed it to be in TLC? I had the following data on these two classrooms: (1) Field notes from participant observation on two days for Ms. Laetner and four days for Ms. Harris; (2) Video and/or audio tapes of all of these days; (3) Notes on follow-up conversations by phone; (4) E-mail exchanges with both teachers; (5) Copies of some student work from the days I visited; (6) Published texts from conference presentations and journal articles co-authored by Ms. Laetner and Ms. Harris. I worked back and forth fiom all these sources in order to better understand the notable resemblance in these two classrooms where one would expect there to be none. Further, my analysis in the previous chapter helps me argue for the effect of the TLC as the mediating factor that holds these two teachers and thus, the practices of these two classrooms, together. Angela Laetner and Maria Harris are participants in the Teacher Learning Collaborative. With the exception of age, (they are both in their twenties) they couldn’t be more different. Angela teaches third grade in a rural school whose children are drawn from far reaching corners of the second richest county in the country. These children are heterogeneous with respect to race, religion and represent only a small number of ethnic backgrounds. Harlan’s grounds are well-kept and the classrooms have a brightness that is the product of clean windows, new paint, and thick carpeting. Angela has the assistance, much of the school day, of a student teacher, a paraprofessional designated to work with two mainstreamed children, and one of several rotating parent volunteers. Her students leave her classroom to go to “specials” once or twice each day. They attend Media 102 Center, Art, Music, Gym and Recess and during these portions of the day, they are out of Ms. Laetner’s immediate supervision. A small percentage of the students at Harlan receive free or supplemented breakfast and lunch through state supplements. Most, however, have family incomes well out of the range of needy (see Table 2). Maria Harris’ second graders are homogeneous with respect to race and cultural background. In the inner-city school in which she works the children are exclusively Afiican American. They range in age more than Ms. Laetner’s students as several are children that have been held back and are repeating second grade because of lack of academic progress or poor attendance in previous years. Enrollment reflects a transient population, with students coming and going across the year. Though the area surrounding this school is desolate, the interior resembles schools with somewhat richer resources. Though there are few computers and the building has leaks and cracks, student work decorates the hallways, children and teachers make their ways around the building with bounces in their steps, chalkboards and pencils abound. Because Rice serves more children than it has the physical capacity to house, instruction goes on in every available nook and cranny. As a Title One school, many people and programs come and go in support of improved achievement especially in literacy and math. Aids work with children on math manipulatives in the narrow halls, the former library now serves as a makeshift classroom, and the teacher’s lounge becomes the meeting place not only of teachers but (much to the teacher’s dismay) other external groups as well. Many of the children at Rice receive free or reduced price breakfast and lunch and for some, these are the only nutritious meals they eat. Difficult 103 economic times have made it hard for the parents at Rice to put adequate meals on the table in spite of the fact that many of them work multiple jobs. Intersection of Classrooms Angela Laetner and Maria Harris didn’t speak directly to one another in the first TLC meeting, but they did have some previous, second-hand contacts. The winter prior to the first TLC meeting, Ms. Harris briefly piloted a literacy unit at Rice that involved book club discussion groups and the adaptation of the book club curricular framework in her (then) first/second grade split classroom. She was working with Dr. Susan Florio- Ruane, a university-based teacher educator supervising intern teachers at Rice who volunteered to assist Ms. Harris in finding ways to accommodate the needs of her large, split grade class and its diverse range of student reading abilities. Dr. Florio-Ruane was simultaneously involved with the group of teachers and researchers at CIERA who were taking part in adult book clubs (the Literary Circle) and learning about book clubs for children (the Book Club Study Group). In addition, the principal at Rice had asked Florio-Ruane to help her start a conversation group on improving literacy instruction at Rice. When these situations intersected in the person of Dr. Florio-Ruane, an initial contact between Ms. Harris and Ms. Laetner occurred. At a Book Club study group meeting where Ms. Laetner was present, Florio-Ruane was thinking aloud about how to help Ms. Harris’ children access books and improve their comprehension. Ms. Laetner was also interested in this question and volunteered that her own pupils (third graders) were experienced talking about text in small groups. She offered her class to make a video tape on how to carry on a fi'uitful book club discussion for the benefit of Ms. 104 Harris’ students. She believed that this would be instructive for her students as it could serve to crystallize their knowledge of book club procedures as they thought about ways _ to communicate about it with another group of students. Central to her class video was the idea that good book talk could be learned and practiced by participation in “fish bowls,” or activities where a small group talked about a text while other students observed the discussion. After the discussion, all students de-briefed what they had seen, heard, and experienced. In their video, Ms Laetner’s third graders used a talk-show format to present their ideas on book club discussions to the first and second graders at Rice Elementary School. When Ms. Harris presented this tape to her students, they were enraptured. Students from Harlan lead them through a series of “capers” that held their attention and immersed them in the idea of book club. The children on the tape taught the other children in ways that their teachers could not have, modeling, sharing, and adding touches of humor in a “real life” series of examples of book talk. One way to think about what occurred is that the nascent links between Ms. Laetner and Ms Harris and the use of technology afforded the children of the suburban third grade direct contact with the children of the urban first/second grade. As the child- to-child contact grew, the youngsters learned about book talk and they also crossed a bridge between their two school communities. Thus, when Ms. Laetner and Ms Harris ultimately met the following spring, their sense of contact was immediate and strong— around the idea of “fishbowl” and the effort to get good book talk going in classrooms but also around the idea that t_othe_r they might learn and grow in their practice as literacy educators. By all evidence this did happen. But something more happened as 105 well. My close observation of the inner-workings of their two classrooms revealed the literacy practices of the two teachers could be held as evidence of the residue left by the value system emerging out of the professional development experience that they held in common. A look inside their respective classrooms helps shape the argument that professional development practices can influence and shape classroom behavior as classroom behavior shapes and influences professional development. Essentially, the ways of inquiry, community shaping, establishing of secondary discourses, and learning as inquiry into knowledge that I observed as the modus operandi of the TLC were also found in the classrooms of these two teachers. Ms. Laetner’s Class at Harlan Elementag The space in which things reside matters. Anyone who has ever fought for a bigger office or to extricate themselves from sharing a room with a sibling knows that surroundings can become the environmental forces that govern behaviors. Harlan, the school that Ms. Laetner works in, is a new school. It is well-planted and well-planned. Upon signing in as a guest, I got a high tech visitor badge that changed color after the day was up, a strategy to prohibit visitors from re-using the pass and insuring that they register their business at the office each day. Armed with my still bright blue visitor badge, I peek into the room where the receptionist informed me I might find Ms. Laetner. The room in which Ms. Laetner and her students spend their day is no bigger or smaller than most elementary school classrooms. (see map of Ms. Laetner’s classroom in Appendix G) For a moment, peering in, however, I am disoriented. It is natural to look for the teacher in an elementary classroom, and she or he is usually easy to find. But it takes me several moments to 106 locate the teacher and determine what activities are underway. There are four adults working in various ways in the classroom. One stands near a cupboard of art supplies and pulls children’s art projects off a bulletin board. She carefully pulls the staples out of the paper collages as to keep the artwork intact. Another sits in a kid-sized chair next to one student and looks over his shoulder as he reads a comic-looking book. A third is marking papers with a green pen at a table in the back of the room. Finally, I locate Ms. Laetner, the only familiar face to me, leaning over as she assists a little girl with a worksheet. Nobody much notices my presence, so I take a seat in the back. After a few more minutes of quiet activity, the children respond to a bell that indicates it is almost time for one of their “specials”——-activities that occur outside their home classroom. The students ready themselves for gym class, some of the girls pulling off hard-soled shoes to put on athletic ones, one boy taking off his sweatshirt so that he is clothed in only a thin tee- shirt. As they depart, they leave only the (now five) adults behind in the room. As Ms. Laetner clears up some of the debris left by the students, I introduce myself to the student teacher and apologize for interrupting in the middle of a lesson. I tell her that it took me longer to get to the school than I had planned, and she shares that all visitors say the same thing. This school had the distinction of having students from the largest distance of any elementary school in the area, some riding more than 45 minutes to and fiom school even though they are within the school district. The children live in small clustered communities that aren’t exactly farms, but are certainly rural. Though many live on large plots of land, their parents most often work on the line at one of the big three auto companies or in the many service industries that have arisen to feed, clothe and otherwise accommodate the numbers of auto workers and their families. 107 I spent two days observing the activities of Ms. Laetner and her students. In addition, I was provided with a video-tape of a book club discussion by one small group of her students that occurred a day I wasn’t in attendance. I also communicated with Ms. Laetner by phone and email as I proceeded through my data analyses to check my observations with hers. From this data set, I was able to see that the literacy instruction bore a family resemblance both to the literacy instruction in Ms. Harris’ inner city classroom and to the work of the teacher-leamers in the TLC, a group in which both Ms. Laetner and Ms. Harris were closely involved. In particular, Ms. Laetner and Ms. Harris invoke the use of story-telling, of narrative means of expression, as a route into literacy knowledge, as both a means for improving reading instruction and a heuristic for argument and problem solving. Just as in the TLC stories were told toward an analytic end, stories were also valued this way in the classrooms of Ms. Laetner and Ms. Harris. This phenomenon was present in the ways that literacy instruction proceeded and children learned how to work with reading, writing and oral language to increase their understandings of the world. These components are also present, as detailed in Chapter 3, as important learning tropes of the teacher learning in TLC. Stories and Literacy Learning at Harlan Ms. Angela Laetner’s five most struggling student readers grab their books from the box she has provided and proceed to the guided-reading carpet in the corner of the room. Students and teacher wiggle around on the hard floor to get as comfortable as possible. Ms. Laetner tells them that they are starting a new book today and that they should spend some time handling it, looking at the cover, and “snifling around” (Field notes, February 15, 2000) in the pages. The book, Amelia’s Road. by Linda Jacob 108 Altman has bright, large pictures that many of the children identify with and use to make predictions about the content of the story. Ms. Laetner does a think-aloud protocol—a method of reading instruction where more skilled readers reveal the thought process they go through when they read by making external the internal dialogue of reading. She reads a few words, then wonders aloud what it all means, asks if this might remind her of something else she has read, questions, responds, and continues reading. She tells the children that “I am reading aloud and telling you what I am thinking as I read. You go ahead and read in your head as I go along. You note where you have questions that I haven’t asked.” Later she reminds them that “questions about reading don’t make you a worse reader, they make you a better reader.” “So ask yourself as much as possible and don’t worry if we don’t get to the answer. It is the question that is important” (Field notes, February 15, 2000). After twenty minutes have passed, Ms. Laetner rises from her place on the floor with the Amelia’s Road group. Though they have only gotten through about one quarter of the text, she tells them that they will finish next time. One student asks if she can take one of the books over to her desk to finish reading it. Ms. Laetner tells her that she would prefer that she selected one of the independent reading books during independent reading time but that she is very happy that the youngster is so interested in the book. She tells her that this will give her something to look forward to for the next day. The whole group listens as she tells the student that she is always happiest when she knows she has a book that she loves waiting for her on her nightstand. “That feeling is one great reason to read a lot” (Ibid). The students watch Ms. Laetner, perhaps hoping for some more insight into the reading life of their teacher. However, Ms. Laetner shepards them 109 off to their independent reading groups and prepares to meet with another group of children and their books. In this small exchange, children learn that Ms. Laetner has a story to tell, a story of her personal engagement as a reader. Though I might have once viewed this as a throw-away line, analysis of my field notes indicate the importance of this exchange in this classroom. For one, the students are absolutely mesmerized by the image of their young teacher with a life, a nightstand, and a desire to read. In my two-pronged notebook just after my first visit to this classroom I wrote “Children’s mouths remain open at the image of their teacher with a life outside of theirs”flV/emo, February 21,2000). More importantly, once I contrasted this classroom moment with moments found in Ms. Harris’ room across “the world,” I began to see that the infusion of personal stories as evidence, as ways of making arguments, was prevalent and important in both classrooms. Instead of telling the child that the book was too difficult to be easily read alone, instead of glossing over the question with an answer about resources needing to remain in the classroom, Ms. Harris used a personal story to make an argument that the children were engaged in and deemed an acceptable answer. Additionally, and perhaps more easily seen, is the structure of this reading group. “Guided Reading” is an important part of the TLC’s curricular framework. Inside the reading groups, teacher and student interaction is an important cue to the privileging of kinds of literate activities. Ms. Laetner helps students to see that readers, even good readers, use internal dialogue and questioning strategies to make meaning of texts. The practice of teacher modeling of reading strategies is important because it allows for the notion of all sorts of modeling of literate practices. I speculated that if Ms. Laetner 110 models reading for her students, then she might model other aspects of comprehension. In particular, I wondered about her use of narrative as a way to teach and explain. Might this be a model she had learned and was now teaching her students? Was it something I saw happening in the teaching and learning of other TLC participants and their pupils? An examination of other parts of the student and teacher day reveal this to be the case. Snack Break at Harlan. During a snack break at Harlan, Ms. Laetner asks students to “present.” Jaycee gets up to show the notebook that her mother bought her on the way home from school yesterday. Jaycee explains that her mother bought it as a reward for taking care of her younger sister over the weekend while her parents were busy painting the bathroom. The children strain to see that J aycee’s notebook has a picture of a popular singer on the fi'ont. Ms. Laetner asks students if they have questions about Jaycee’s show and tell. Lots do, and there is a longish discussion about what one might do with such a fine new notebook. Though Jaycee seems reluctant to talk much about that which she had been so anxious to show, Ms. Laetner does learn that Jaycee intends to “list my homework and maybe write some stories in it.” Once the discussion drifts toward the singer on the front and whether she is “fine” or not, Ms. Laetner thanks J aycee and adds her opinion that the inside of the notebook will certainly be more interesting than the outside once she starts “to create it.” Jaycee responds. She plans to begin writing everyday after school with a special log entry this evening. She gathers steam with this idea finishing with her promise “I’ll read it next time I can share” (Audio tape, February 15, 2000). The next student sharer is Ken. He tells that his team won their important hockey game the night before and that they only have one more game before they are in the 111 championship round. Ms. Laetner asks if this is the same team Ken was on earlier in the year because she thought she remembered a similar story then. He replies that this is the same team, but it is a different tournament, this one plays after school and the other played on the weekend. Ms. Laetner thanks him for the clarification and notes how busy this must make his evenings. Another boy remarks that Ken still always finishes his assignments. Nobody responds to that comment. (All from Field Notes, February 15, 2000) Ken asks if he can show the medal that he won. When he pulls it out of his pocket, the class is uniformly interested. Other students strain to look as Ms. Laetner suggests they pass it around for all to admire. Ken looks pleased and humbled by the attention and returns to his seat. (Ibid). Ms. Laetner tells me in a phone conversation a few weeks later that Ken is one of her shyer students and that he is a reader struggling to work at his own grade level. It was clear that both of these students gains understanding about the purpose and form of narrative from this classroom episode. In each one, their own perspective on the stories they present changes as the conversation between themselves and their audiences allows for a new way of understanding their lives. For both Jaycee and Ken, their stories become something more than they start out as when placed in the public realm for response. Ms. Laetner spends almost twenty minutes listening to the students share their stories, and according to Ms. Laetner, this is repeated many times during a week. It is also of note that Ms. Laetner helps her students learn story structure and something about audience and authorship during this activity. She spends a good deal of time working with the “author” of the story on making the plot meaningful (for example asking Jaycee 112 what she might write in her notebook instead of having her focus upon only the picture on the front, by having Ken relate back thematically to a previous story). She also attempts to engage the class as an important peer audience so that she isn’t the only one responding to the stories of her students. The explicit teaching of narrative structure in the context of listening and speaking is a little practiced activity in elementary classrooms. It isn’t that stories aren’t told and listened to in the space of a school day, but more that these activities are considered as outside the regular instructional time. To the contrary, in this class, narrative stories are used as part of a literacy curriculum that includes more formal instruction in story structure in the context of guided reading groups and whole class discussion as well as the kinds of integrated experiences like snack break. In this lesson, students learn that stories are ways to communicate, that they have authors and they have audiences. In many ways, the integrated approach to narrative exercises is not unlike the ways that teachers worked together in the professional development experience detailed in chapter 3. Like the joint inquiry of the TLC, students worked together to co-construct narrative episodes that helped them understand and order their own lives. Book Club Discussions at Harlan Another day, Ms. Laetner’s students grab their folders and write fiiriously in their journals as the teacher, student teacher, and aid busy themselves with paperwork in various comers of the room. Students are very quiet as their pencils scrape the thin journal paper in front of them. Though they write for just five minutes or so, not one child looks up fi'om their work or seems distracted in any way. The only rustling is the rustling of children looking back at previous journal entries and to reproduced sheets of 113 paper inserted in their journal that suggest appropriate kinds of journal responses. I look over the shoulders of enough students to see that they each have a printed graphic entitled “What Can I Write in My Journal”? Various bubbles and squares contain suggestions and by all evidence this heuristic is helpfiil. All seem content to write a lot. The text they are working on is Chicken Sunday, a book by an author they children have read before, Patricia Polacco. After writing in their journals about the book, Ms. Laetner tells them that they should be “ready to club.” The movement around the room indicates a familiarity with this phrase as students pull chairs together into small, delineated groups. The following passage is from the middle of a Book Club discussion. Two of the children (Max and Stephen) in this group are from the lowest reading group. One (Laura) is a special needs student who spends only half the day in the classroom.1 The other two (Jessie and Kim) are considered by their teacher to be at, or just above, grade-level in reading. Max: I thought it was cool that they threw the eggs. Stephen: They didn’t throw the eggs. He thought they had thrown the eggs and That’s why they thought he was mad at them. Max: Then why did they sell them? Kim: They felt bad so they helped. They just wanted to help. Jessie: Here is what I wrote in my journal. (reads) I liked the part about the dinner and the hat. Laura: The hat was weird ’ Ms. Laetner had argued to allow this student to remain in class during book club activities. She based this on research that suggest, “Since students identified as learning disabled may often have considerable language abilities , despite lower achievement scores, the oral language and strategies learned in Book Club suggest it may be an ideal setting for literacy learning” (Goatley, 1997). 114 Jessie: Uh uh. It was an important hat. Max: Hats aren’t like that now. Jessie: It was written a long time ago. When Patricia Polacco was little (Video-tape, February 21, 2000). Clearly this discussion moves quickly from point to point. Where there are confusions, however, group members attempt clarity. The students in this discussion are acting as collaborators together to problem-solve about a text. When Max presents a reading unsupported by the facts of the text, Stephen corrects him with his interpretation. When he asks a follow-up question, Kim offers a response. In the second portion of the conversation, Jessie takes a leadership role as she both disagrees with one interpretation and adds information to the mix to clarify another. I present this exchange for several reasons. For one, it shows a typical book club discussion in a classroom at Harlan. This activity is important in the class, “students look forward to it and it serves as an organizing principle for much of the language arts work” ( notes from E-mail with Ms. Laetner, March 29, 2000). Second, it illustrates a social structure for learning that is created and sustained fiom students themselves. In these book club discussion groups, students are left alone to discuss the text. If the teacher is around at all, she is circulating throughout the groups, taking notes in her binder. Once the book club discussion is through, students come back into the more typical large group discussion and share their small group activities with the larger group. This “community share” is important because it changes the context for student’s literacy practice (Raphael & Goatley, 1997) Just as The Vygotsky space recognizes multiple planes for learning, Ms. Laetner’s students get to practice talk about text in multiple places: individually in 115 journal writing, in small heterogeneous student-lead groups, and in large class discussions. Further, as seen in the previous example, they also gather with their teacher in like-ability groupings in order to work with others on their level on various skills and strategies. Thus, there is a constant movement from one activity setting to another where information gets re-complicated, re-interpreted, and re-presented. Just as I argued previously that the teachers moved through Vygotsky’s space in multiple places, students do as well. They have the chance to work in groups of students with similar abilities (in the guided reading groups) and with various abilities (in the book club groups). These varied landscapes allow for multiple ways of knowing, of complicating, and of learning. They also allow for multiple ways of reading to be practiced and privileged. Stories and Literacy Learning at Rice Like students at Harlan, students at Rice elementary also have very long bus rides to get to school. Rice is located in an area that was once densely populated with families, but now is nearly desolate. Neighborhood youngsters made up only about 40% of the pupil population at Rice. Absent inexpensive housing and local employment, the past twenty years saw a shift in residential patterns. Many low-income families now “stay,” as they describe it, in the city’s northeast rather than in the Rice area. Previously white ethnic and working class, the northeast is home to so many low-income renters, that the schools there cannot accommodate all the children who live in walking distance. Recognizing a few years ago that Rice did not have enough pupils to remain a functioning school, the principal proposed to take children from the northeast to fill her school. About 60% of Rice’s children therefore ride buses 116 long distances—some traveling 45 minutes over congested surface streets. And, as Detroit is typified by residential neighborhoods deeply scarred by freeways dividing them, the children who are bussed come from disparate sectors of town (Florio-Ruane, Berne & Raphael, 2001). One January day, Ms. Maria Harris, a second grade teacher at Rice, asks students to turn their attention to a chart she is creating on the board. On it she has written “Who are special people?” She then leads a lengthy discussion on who are the special people in her students’ lives and what makes them so special. She asks J ’Von who reports that his grandma is special. Ms. Harris asks what it is that makes her so. He mutters a little, stumbles a little verbally and doesn’t answer. She pushes on the point, asking the question in different ways. J ’Von replies, after awhile, that she “buys me things”, “makes me breakfast”, “takes me to church” (Field notes, January 18, 2000). Apparently dissatisfied with this answer, Ms. Harris asks for “a story that shows how special she is to you. I mean if I said ‘okay J’Von prove to me that she is special what pieces of information would you give me?”’ (Video tape, January 18, 2000). J ’Von puts his head down on his hands in response. However, the pupil directly across from J ’Von tells the class. “My brother is special because he knows about the things that are like television, computers and stuff. One day I brought all these fiiends home and he showed us a way to rig up the television to get all the stations . . .to get Nickelodeon and all. We still get them, so these fiiends keep coming over to watch the shows. It used to be that we hung out at Jonah’s house. Now we all come to my house.” Ms. Harris responds by telling the author of this story that “you’ve just done a great job 117 using details to help me understand something. Good job” (Field notes and video tape, January 18, 2000). She asks if there are any other children who would like to share their special person tale. Another student asks if he can count his pet in the special person category. Students are interested in this detour and one reminds Ms. Harris of her pet that had to be put to sleep earlier in the year. She asks that the children “don’t make me start crying.” by forcing her to remember her dog and the whole experience of putting him to sleep. Several children engage her in conversation about the dog . One reminds her that “At one time he was in your life ”(Video tape, January 18, 2000) so “He must have been very special. I remember you talking about him. Remember, Ms. Harris, how you showed us his picture and we talked about how he slept in your bed and kept you up all night?”(Ibid). Ms. Harris looks at this child for awhile and pauses. She appears to move away from the comment as she asks the class how they would feel if something really important to them were taken away—“the way “Midnight” (her dog) was taken from me.” She then goes into a story about the dog, his part in the family and influence on her life. She relates first to herself, using her own loss and then to the text the class is currently working on A Chair for My Mother by Vera Williams where fire destroys most of a families’ belongings to help children think about this idea of loss and of things that are special. She brings up the real life experience of losing her dog as a way to relate to the story—ignoring the fact that she had just tried to deflect this conversation, she now invites it and builds a rich example of loss and recovery by her own example. In doing so, she offers a model for relating textual details to personal details as is recommended by 118 reading researchers as one important way to increase student comprehension ( Anderson, 1984; Brown, Palincsar & Arrnruster, 1984; Squire, 1994). Ms. Harris does many things in this exchange to build rich contexts for narrative and to allow children to practice their skills as both author and audience. First, she talks about the ways to make arguments through detailed, descriptive stories rather than through decontextualized lists. Though J ’von becomes frustrated by his inability to produce the type of text that his teacher is asking for, another child at his table clearly picks up the lesson and proceeds with a terrific example of what Ms. Harris explained. Further, Ms. Harris engages another child in a round of conversation reliant upon the stories of personal experience that both have produced. In this, there is a model for instruction on narrative: an expository lesson by Ms. Harris, an example by a student, another model by Ms. Harris. The children have learned something about how special people function in the lives of their peers and their teachers. Even more, they have learned how important presenting information through narrative episodes can be. A Literacy Lesson at Rice In Ms. Harris’ classroom, later in January, she gets out the day’s local newspaper and asks a large portion of the class to take a section each and begin to browse through it. She asks that they try to find words or sentences that they are able to read and to think of questions to ask about the words or passages. She has shared with me previously that many of her students have trouble with sight words that appear out of contexts, that is in someplace beside the chalkboard or their basal reader. This exercise then, “helps them see that words are everywhere. They need access to lots of print” (Interview, January 18, 2000). She reminds them that they don’t have to know a lot about a piece of text to be 119 able to ask questions of it. Students are told they can ask their question of themselves (in a journal); of their neighbor (verbally, but quietly) or of the teacher (Ms. Harris when she is finished with her reading group or me). I look over the shoulder of one student who has listed the single words: “Detroit”, “News”, “Weekly”, “January”, “Final” in a line going down his paper. I ask him what questions he might ask about these words. and he responds at length. He tells me about an experience he had at Chuckie Cheese’s ( a pizza/video game emporium) when his uncle had more points in a video game than anyone had before, how lights and whistles went off on the machine when he reached some magic number, how they were given a free pizza and pop. He gets increasingly excited as he tells the details of the place “ it had more video games than I had ever seen. It even had toys and games for little kids, but we stuck to The Aviator game.” I pull up a chair to hear more. “I want to go back again so bad because I think I saw his trick and maybe I could win even more points next time” (Field notes, January 30, 2000). The story winds down, so I ask him what about the words he cut out made him think of that story. Even I have forgotten my original inquiry based on Ms. Harris’ assignment. Had I remembered, I might have asked him what questions he had about a story he had obvious control over. He says that the word “Detroit” made him think of the story because Chuckie Cheese was “in somewhere near Detroit. My uncle picked me up and we went there. It took a long time to get there because of it was far” (Field notes, January 30, 2000). Darren’s story was rich, linear, and demonstrated an awareness of audience. He knew of the things I might know about and the things he needed to explain. He went into a lengthy depiction of the video game concept which he rightly assumed I 120 wouldn’t be familiar with. Consequently, we met very nicely in a middle ground where he had a story to tell and I had something to learn about that story. Together, 1 think, we were pleased with our experience: he offering the story; me receiving it. Ms. Harris had set us up for this conversation by her framing of an assignment that recognized personal stories, told verbally or in writing, as pieces of a curriculum of literacy. It would have been easier, a more controlled environment in her classroom if she had asked all students to look for their words and write them out quietly; however, I believe that if that was the case Darren would have missed this particular opportunity to be an author, and I would have missed an entertaining and informative story. As it was, we were not the only ones sharing a story, and I found myself scooting my chair closer and closer to his in order to hear everything over the competing sounds of everyone else’s stories. The telling of stories is not a generally valued component of a school-based literacy experience. Kieran Egan believes that while of late narrative has attracted a bit more attention in school than it did in the past that “there has still been relatively little ingenuity expended on working out how to turn its obvious engaging power to practical educational advantage.” (1997, p. 59). Bruner insists (1996) “ It is only in narrative mOde that one can construct an identity and find a place in one’s culture. Schools must cultivate it, nurture it, cease taking it for granted” ( p. 42), He claims earlier in the text, however, that there has always been a tacit assumption that narrative need not be explicitly taught, that it is picked up from hanging around the world. He disputes this, Citing cultural differences for valuing narrative more or less and consequently helping Childl‘en with it to varying degrees. Despite the lack of attention to narrative construction, 121 scholars don’t dispute the way that narrative helps to locate a learner and arm them in methods to organize their world (Riessman, 1993) However, the study of narrative in elementary school especially, is often neglected in favor of the study of reading—a needless dichotomy that only tends toward the idea that a student is not an author in the way a professional story-writer is an author. Unless they are told to a teacher and listened to for deliberate reasons, oral narratives are often not assessed. However, if we listen to children on a playground or getting ready for lunch we hear the most amazing stories, evidence that they do have control over a genre and that they improve as they practice. Because these aren’t produced as permanent texts, we often disregard them as play or worse keep children away from the opportunity to express this crucial form of literacy. To value this activity is clearly a goal of Ms. Harris’ and, from observations, also a goal enacted in Ms. Ms. Laetner’s classroom, and a method of inquiry and way of learning in the TLC. Book Club Discussions at Rice Ms. Harris reminds her students that there are important rules to follow for book club discussions. The children listen to her give the rules and then recite them back. “Everybody gets to share ideas” “Everybody’s ideas should be respected.” “Discussing isn’t the same as arguing”. Ms. Harris also reminds students that if they cannot participate effectively in the group that they should pull themselves out of the discussion and go to the “time-out chair”. She tells them that this isn’t a punishment, but rather a quiet place to gather thoughts before returning to the work at hand (Field notes, February 8, 2000). 122 I watch the group that Ms. Harris has told me contains three of the most struggling readers in the class. She has mixed these students with three children who are at or near grade level in their reading. As I pull up a chair, I see that they are preparing themselves for their book club discussion in the same ways as the four other groups around them. Almost in unison, students put down their pencils and perch their journals open to the page they have written in the moments before. Though I understood that they were to talk about the story they had read, no student in this group opens a book or draws one near. I look around to see that this isn’t the case at other tables where students are fighting for space among open textbooks, open journals, elbows and pencils. This group is comprised of three boys and two girls. Caitlin, Tori and Alan are the students identified to me by Ms. Harris as “my most struggling”. Whitney and Luke are “at grade-level”. The children begin to discuss the book that they have all read. Whitney: What did you think? Alan: I had something like that happen when I got a Nintendo and my mom decided to let my sister play with it and that was the end. Whitney: The end, she took it? Alan: I never got to play with it again. Luke: That’s baaaad. Why’d you let her? Alan: I don’t know (Video tape, February 8, 2000). The discussion is lively, but the content seems to be only superficially related to the book. While students are asked to discuss the text, really they are discussing other ideas related but not on. They have a lengthy discussion about a Nintendo video game that one 123 of the members had and then had taken away from them. This lead to a discussion of other objects that group members had removed as punishment or for other reasons. Later, I asked Ms. Harris about my observation that children seemed a bit off task and she corrects me immediately. This kind of talk, launched fi'om text, is deemed successfiil and appropriate because it is a legitimate form of response to text. “It’s what we all do. . .(she told me) we all use texts to frame our personal stories” (Field notes, February 8, 2000). She tells me that appearances aside, this kind of book club discussion is generative of literacy learning. The stories that prompt the children’s’ own stories are better understood as the children use previous schema from their own lives to anchor their understandings. I begin to wonder if an outsider watching the TLC conversations might think similarly. It looks as if TLC participants are “off-task” in that they veer away from work on the curricular framework to talk about the insides of their classroom. But, indeed this is an important part of their work as these discussions feed back and establish local issues that the curricular framework must take into account. In addition, conversations help build trust, establish discourse practices and pave the way for productive inquiry whether they are squarely on task or just to the side of it. Ms. Harris teaches me the same thing about book club discussions. She believes it is difficult for students to talk in class without adult intervention. Even those discussions that might be richer once the students have more experience are educative because they bring about more opportunity to practice school discourse. Building Understandings of A Chairfor My Mother at Rice Following is a piece of a book club conversation from second graders at Rice elementary a few weeks later than the first example. The text they are discussing is A 124 GM for My Mother by Vera Williams, a story about a young girl sharing a home with her mom and grandmother. Through the story we find that their furniture and other belongings had recently been destroyed in a fire. The girl’s mother saves her tips from a waitressing job in order to buy the chair “we were all dreaming of’ a chair where I can “turn out the light if I fall asleep in her lap.” Ms. Harris’ students had been asked to write in their response journals about their own feelings of loss as a way into the story of this little girl. They have these journal entries in fiont of them as they begin their discussion, In the group (that Ms. Harris tells me has two struggling readers, two at grade level and one above) Courtney, Thomas, J acqelyn, Sherise and Leon pull their chairs close together and fiddle a little as they anticipate the activity. I capture this group after a brief discussion of who should start. Courtney volunteers after Leon has admitted that he doesn’t know what to say first: Courtney: (reading)If I lost something valuable to me I would feel sad because it was something I loved. Thomas: I think it is sad that you were sad that you lost something you loved? (turns to girl next to him and says) Do you agree with me or disagree? Jacqelyn: I agree Sherise: Me too . . .And I think that the girl in the story was happy, more happy than she would have been if she hadn’t lost it in the first place. That chair with the roses, the rose covered chair was more important because she ought to save her money to get it. 125 Courtney: It was her mama’s money. And the chair was for her mother. It is called a Chair for My Mother The mother is the one who came back from work so tired that she needed a chair with roses on it. Thomas: Leon is next in the circular order. Leon: I didn’t finish. Sherise: I didn’t finish either. Leon: Ms. Harris say I don’t have to always finish. So I didn’t Finish. Sherise: Yeah, but I think that it was happy, a happy story because all the neighbors did help them even if they gave them bad fiirniture and they still had to buy the other chair. It was happy even though it had sad parts. (Video tape, February 17, 2000) This exchange is representative of the talk of this group. Members played different roles, had different kinds of responses to the text, and thus it was an admirable piece of work for second grade pupils. Courtney and Sherise in particular have found that this forum helps them to dig into the story and reveal some of its complexity. Their conversation gives rise to many important questions: Is it a happy or sad story? Is it a story about a family, a community, or an individual? Though they may have come to these conclusions after a more traditional teacher-lead discussion of the story, they work together to build an understanding and in this their learning is a construction of their own ideas in interaction with the ideas of their peers. Rather than waiting for a teacher to validate or discourage a particular interpretation, they work together to build individual understandings. 126 Furthermore, there are connections between conversational points. Though Leon and Jacqelyn and Thomas don’t contribute as much to this emergent interpretation of the book, at least J acqelyn and Thomas are outwardly engaged with a process. They have roles to play and demonstrate their participation in the group in their own ways. It is also not necessarily the case that Thomas was disengaged from the task. Jackson (1990) cautions researchers against looking only for external manifestations of student engagement. It is true, however, that these students are familiar with the “rules for a good book club discussion.” In fact, they had recited them chorally just before beginning their discussion. Participating by verbalizing interpretations and questions as well as responding to other members were all important parts of the protocol. It is notable that these students unpacked some of the hard themes of this book even though only one of them (according to Ms. Harris in consultation with her records book) could read it independently. This group goes on for almost 15 minutes (double the age-minutes relationship theory) and stops mid-conversation when several are pulled from the group in order to go to special tutoring outside the classroom This group of struggling and non-struggling readers was able to sustain productive talk about a text for a large amount of time. In spite of the fact that not all of the group participated in the dialogue, there weren’t diversions from the work of the group caused by disruptive behavior. While Thomas was primarily silent, Leon acted as the task master, reminding the group to cling to protocol and J acequn displayed listening skills when she reinforces the ideas of another member “I agree”, she reminds us. And this in itself is an interpretation. 127 In the TLC’s evolving curricular framework, much emphasis is given to the student-lead small book club discussion groups. As described earlier, these clubs are designed to promote talk about text, a key component in increased comprehension skill. An important characteristic of these groups is that they are heterogeneous with respect to reading level and, where possible, with respect to ethnicity, race or social status within the classroom. Because of these emphases, book clubs become sites where interpretations of books, poems , or stories can be tried out in a safe environment. Since these groups are rarely monitored first-hand by an adult, pupils are free to float ideas that they might be reluctant to introduce if they feel they may be informally assessed as they might in a large-class discussion of a piece of literature. In “The War Between Reading and Writing and How to End It” Peter Elbow (1993) posits an idea that conversations and initial writing about a piece of text might be considered the first draft of a reading. Teacher should design opportunities he believes “to interrupt the process of reading to write out how they are perceiving and reacting to the text. This process helps everyone see how vividly reading creates meaning by a process of gradual and often collaborative and transformative negotiation” (p. 22). Once this draft is produced, it can be shared in any number of ways2 and then, combined with the responses to these readings and the ideas of others, a more refined draft of a reading is produced. This more sophisticated draft contains the ideas from the initial reading plus the knowledge gained from writing and thinking as well as talking to others. These experiences together produce increasingly more refined interpretations. Elbow argues that this goes on throughout a life when readers are dealing with texts that are layered and 2 Perhaps as part of a conversation about a text; perhaps as some early drafting of a response; perhaps in a reader response journal 128 important to them. He shows that readings of texts change over the life of the reader and that this process should be honored. Another Book Club: Harlan Students work on “Chicken Sunday” The following exchange is from a book club discussion about Polacco’s nglgep Spaday . This was a book club captured on tape from Ms. Laetner's third grade students at Harlan Elementary. Angel: She was friends with the boys next door and she even went to church with them? That’s weird. Mike: Why weird. Nicole: Would you spend Sundays going to church if you didn’t have to? Just to go with your friends. Where were her parents? Angel: They said that her babushka had died. Is that a parent? Mike: I don’t know. Maybe it is a grandparent Nicole: I still don’t get it. And, why she would want to give a hat to some- one else’s grandmother. Mike: She loved her like the boys. She made them all dinner every Sunday. It was like her family. (Video Tape, February 15, 2000) This conversation goes on about the relationship of the author to her fiiends’ grandmother. As it does, it is clear that interpretations are being built in the interaction of one pupils’ reading with another pupils’ reading. The stories of one child’s reading merges with the stories of another child’s reading and together they each encounter new stories. Just as teachers ideas about their teaching can change in interaction with other 129 professionals, so too can, and should, student interpretations of texts change when they are given the opportunity to interact with texts and one another. Nicole’s initial journal entry depicts her first interpretation of the story. She wrote: “Sundays in mine house are for us” A ? why go somewheres els on Sundays” (Student Journal, February 14, 2000). It is a reasonable conjecture based on the exchange between Nicole and her book club group that she might have some new answers for herself. Mike’s statement about the grandmother’s love for the main character might have taught Nicole about their relationship and answered her journal question that explored the ideas behind family and fiiendship. While the divide between family and friends may be clearly delineated in Nicole’s mind based on her life circumstances, it was not so for the main character, and perhaps, others in her group. Though there was no follow up writing about this to analyze, Nicole’s participation in the small group report to the larger group suggests that the discussion was helpfirl to her comprehension of both the story and a larger cultural phenomenon. Ms. Laetner asked each book club group to report something that happened in their group of interest to the whole class in an activity that follows book club called “closing community share.” In this activity, small groups speak to the whole class in one or multiple voices. That is, they often tell of consensus that has built in their discussion, but also often talk about conflicts that remain. As can be seen in the example taken from the closing community share, Nicole gives evidence that she has revised her initial queries about the nature of friendships to a more complicated one. Following the reports 130 of two other book club groups, the teacher asks that Nicole’s group share an “intriguing topic” from their conversation as well as to assess their work on a four-point scale.3 Mike begins by telling everyone: I really liked the story. Angel: We didn’t talk about that much. We talked about the babushka and . . . Mike: We talked about the way that they were like family even though they were fiiends. Nicole: They were friends who had become like family, family that you eat Sunday dinner with. (Field notes, February 15, 2000). Returning to Nicole’s journal entry that poses the very question that she then articulates an answer to suggests that the book club discussion assisted her in re-interpreting a piece of a text that was quizzical to her. In the process, she created a new understanding of the text and of family parameters that might extend beyond those that are familiar to her. So_cially Constructed andfltrrative Ways of Knowing In these two classrooms, meaning is socially constructed through interactions with peers and more knowledgeable others, knowledge is understood as narrative in nature and literacy is valued as an interpretive tool for learning about texts and about the students’ own lives. Tierney and Pearson write (1981/1992) A reader has a right to an interpretation . . .comprehension is an interactive process involving more than a regurgitation of an author’s explicit ideas. 3 This was an assessment scale designed by the class in collaboration with their teacher. In this, they came up with a list of criterion for a good book club discussion and were asked to give a numerical value to the quality of their discussion. Some of these criterion were of substance “We clarified confusion” others were of style: “everyone spoke , we didn’t interrupt one another.” At the end of each book club session, group members had to individually rank number their own group and give a rationale for their decision. 131 Readers should be encouraged to actively engage their background knowledge prior to, during, and after reading. They should be given opportunities to appreciate and evaluate the adequacy of their own perspective and other interpretations, to monitor their own progress through a text, and to discriminate new learnings fiom old knowledge (p. 496). Though this is an accepted belief on the part of literacy researchers, examinations of literacy practices find that the enactment of the philosophy is difficult and that teachers often default to more conservative, decontextualized practices (Mevarech, 1995). The TLC teachers highlighted in this chapter have found their own ways to enact their values, values that upon inspection bare a similarity that is not due to happenstance. Family Resemblances The small group discussions at Harlan and Rice confirmed my suspicion that the modus operandi in these two classrooms was of a familiar prototype. The ideology behind the instruction clearly rested in a common set of values about literacy instruction, about children as Ieamers, and about the teacher’s role in the mediation of the classroom processes. Instruction such as is seen in the classrooms I described is not typical of elementary literacy instruction. For one thing, so much of traditional literacy instruction is teacher-lead. Though students often work independently, the activities are tightly bounded by teacher time-management and expectation. Ms. Laetner and Ms. Hanis shake up the traditional classroom instructional paradigm in their privileging of the telling of stories as a way into more formalized literacy learning, in their acknowledgement of conversation-based learning as an instructional paradigm and in their ability to let students build interpretations through 132 social interactions with one another. Importantly, these are some of the very points that arose in my analysis of the teacher professional development activity that they each were participants in. In this, the family resemblance I noticed among a set of diverse classrooms (see Chapter 5) was also apparent in the adult learning experience of the Teacher Learning Collaborative. This suggests that the social constructivist, narrative, process model of learning that was apparent in both places may have been apparent because the teacher moved in both spheres. On the surface, the activities in the two classrooms may look, in form and content, quite different. An expansion of the idea of form as content, however, shows their basic pedagogical and philosophical similarities and the ways in which values of the teachers are revealed in their classroom behaviors. Maria and Angie both value verbal narrative, “storytelling” as an important literacy skill. They each make it an explicit part of the work of the class, even though Angie exercises this skill in time that is not explicit to the students as literacy work and Maria builds it in as a piece of literacy learning. They have in common a valuing of narrative in teaching and a commitment to building student literacy through story, especially as it supports thinking in oral language and interaction. This commitment is realized in very different ways in practice, yet it accomplishes the same, specific goals. In fiction and in education we need a combination of form and content to impart the message. I have blended the ideas of form and content with one another in order to arrive at an idea of a teaching as a genre. In that it is a genre, it is a vehicle and a method in one. These components rely upon one another for their meaning: one without the other becomes trivial, in one case, or anchorless in the other. As teacher educators, we must 133 think of form in all its complexity, the way that literary formalists have taught us to look at the form of a poem or novel not only as the manner in which ideas are housed but as ideas in themselves. The instructional forms of these teachers bare a family resemblance that is rich in its philosophical underpinnings and complex in its undertakings. As we delve fiirther into their classrooms, their common forms become even more predominant in a classification of the work and activities. Conclusion Finding meaningfirl family resemblances between the classrooms of Ms. Harris and Ms. Laetner was instructive in its own right because it suggested that teachers across diverse settings might hold common goals and values yet realize them in locally adaptive ways. It was also importance because it suggested to me the possibility of another layer of resemblance that might provide a clue to learning: that of the learning of the nature and value of a particular genre (i.e. narrative) by teachers in the context of their professional inquiries and the idea that this learning might show up again inside their classrooms, where narrative became an important part of their emerging curricular and instructional framework. I was able to note this because I was inspecting the actions of the children in the classroom from the perspective of socioculturalism, Thus, imagining that evidence of learning is evident in discourse environments like the small groups set up in these classrooms, like in the one-on-one encounters that students have with one another and with their teachers, like their journal responses and more finished pieces of writing allows researchers and teachers to evaluate interventions in ways that previous input/output models of learning may not. Similarly, once I understood the classroom as a discourse 134 community with specialized norms, protocols and language patterns, I was also able to see the actions of the students as contributing to a larger literacy environment. This has implications both for professional development and classroom learning. Ifit is true that the work teachers do on behalf of their own learning is related to the way they wished their children to learn, then the conservative pedagogy of professional development that Miles (1995) speaks of is troubling. Are we teaching a “hidden curriculum” in the pedagogies for professional development that is even more powerful than its manifest curricula? Ball and Cohen (1999) speak of one shot professional development workshops as “the professional equivalent of yo-yo dieting”, and argue that teachers have shelves of dusty binders filled with the remnants of a day spent with an expert who promised them the promised land if only a new technique might be tried. If we extend Ball and Cohen’s metaphor we can see that the poor diet of professional development seeps into the poor diet of classroom instruction. If potato chips and soda are good enough for teachers, they must be good enough for students as well. It takes a major overhaul of pedagogy and curriculum to improve teacher professional development enough that its traces might be seen in productive classroom behavior. The residue of the powerful learning fiom the TLC was apparent in the classroom. This is to what professional development should aspire. The next chapter looks at six pairs of classrooms in six schools. Six classrooms are those of TLC members, and the analysis focuses on seeking fiirther evidence of family resemblances among the TLC teachers’ classroom moves. In addition, six other classrooms (buddy or control classrooms) are viewed as they offer quite different approaches to teaching literacy in the same schools and at the same grade levels and, in 135 most cases, with the same materials. Finally, links between TLC itself as a community of Ieamers and the TLC classrooms as literacy learning communities are investigated. 136 CHAPTER FIVE ACROSS CONTEXTS AND DOWN THE HALL Introduction I walked away from the classrooms at Rice and Harlan knowing that there was a family resemblance that went beyond the fact that each teacher worked hard at creating a good environment for student learning. In short, the teachers I observed used narrative tropes to help students understand the ways that communication functions in their world. Further, I was able to find the kinds of linkages that I noticed in the classrooms of these two teachers in the rooms of several more who had been part of the group of teachers working in the TLC. It is worth repeating that these resemblances were elucidated because I observed both TLC and the classrooms of TLC members from a sociocultural perspective. Viewing learning this way allows the language and behavior of students and teachers to depict a theoretical perspective that I argue was common to the classroom practice and the professional development experience. The inquiry based experience that these teachers shared in the TLC appears to have been potent enough to affect the classroom behaviors of the participants in such a way that they have notable similarities. I know this relationship existed methodologically as well as instinctively, for my own accounts of the classrooms of the teachers resonated with the same forms of teaching. That is, each teacher used a commonly characteristic teaching methodology to work with students literacy. As described in chapter four, this methodology was one in which student stories were privileged as ways to make arguments and to learn about reading and writing and how to approach the world. In addition, I visited another classroom in each of the same schools that also housed a 137 teacher who was reputedly strong in literacy instruction. These teachers were good teachers who taught the same grade-level students but were not participants in this professional development activity. While these (other) classrooms were energetic and students appeared to be engaged in productive tasks that helped them in their reading and their writing, they bore little resemblance to the classrooms I write of, or, for that matter, to each other. This counterpoint helped me see how particular teaching themes persevered in the very dissimilar teaching contexts that I found among a group of teachers held together by their participation in a year-long professional development experience. Of course the teaching I watched and write about is not identical, nor would anyone want it to be. However, I began to feel that, though each teacher had a distinct practice, this practice was tied together with the other teachers both thematically and structurally. Six Schools Children and teachers look very different both physically and demographically in the six schools represented in this study. (see Tables 1 and 2) Looking at the physical school buildings is one place to understand difference as well as similarity. While one sits atop a hill overlooking a dirt road and vast amounts of farmland, another sits low to the ground, the only occupied building in blocks of abandoned houses and storefronts. A third is surrounded by commerce—fast food restaurants, discount clothing stores and gas stations. Still another is in the very back of a residential neighborhood in the shadows of a suburban college campus. One requires visitors to be clothed with high-tech badges that change colors as the time allotted for the visitor expires; another doesn’t note the entrance of an outside researcher at all. 138 Inside, one school has a gymnasium, a library, scrubbed walls, and new furniture. Another is run-down and a little dank with more leaks and holes than maintenance can keep up with. There is no functioning library, at one, as the room that was once the media center was appropriated for classroom use. Space is a problem at two of the schools as the populations that serve their schools have exploded. In one, a suburban school, there has been an influx of new residents because of the internationalization of one of the large auto companies. In another, the school is crowded because the principal has offered to take children who have been asked not to return to their neighborhood schools. One school has a spanking new playground with extensive equipment for climbing, swinging and digging. When the children at another school go out for recess, they are lead to an open field and allowed to run and invent games with a small supply of balls but without a structure on which to swing, slide, or climb. As different as they are structurally, though, there are some remarkable likenesses. Walls inside all the schools display student artwork. Each classroom has a chalkboard, chairs for students and teachers, books, and pencils. They all smell of peanut butter and oranges; in all cases children are separated by age and bells punctuate the school day. It is from the vantage point of sameness and difference that I turn to an examination of the literacy instruction that I witnessed and gathered data on as an important piece of this study of six teachers’ participation in a professional development network. A Framework The curricular framework that the Teacher Learning Collaborative teachers created in collaboration with the CIERA research team is called, Book Club Plus (see 139 Raphael, Florio-Ruane, & George, in press). This is not a program. Rather it is a framework or schema for designing curriculum and instruction. As such, it is meant to offer teachers principled, locally adaptable way of designing literacy education. The idea to invite a group of teachers to work together to design such a framework as part of their own professional development was opportunistic. As they have described elsewhere (see for example, Raphael et al, 2001), Florio-Ruane and Raphael worked with three different teacher study groups, each concerned with improvement of literacy by means of comprehension activities involving talk about text. When the researchers had a chance to “go fiirther,” they invited the teachers fi'om these three groups to work together in a network in which they would be linked by a mix of face-to-face retreats, classroom site visits, and E-mail. Their proposal, fiinded by the US Oflice of Education as part of CIERA, was to attempt to re-engage low achieving young readers. The logic of Book Club Plus, then, was a response to this proposal—to create a framework for literacy education which would be engaging and would respond to the dual commitments mentioned in the previous chapter. Additionally, the researchers thought that developing such a framework as a network of teacher researchers would be, for the participants, a potentially powerful form of professional development. The researchers tracked this process as such (see Clark, 2001). The framework that TLC ultimately designed asks that children become active participants in their own literacy learning. Through engagement in literacy activities: reading, writing, listening and speaking via small group book club discussion, and large classroom activities, students interact around texts in the same ways that adults who relish reading and literary-talk have always done. Book Club Plus is innovative because 140 it posits three related features: (1) Real reading and real conversation about reading in heterogeneously grouped peer discussions (as in one of its predecessors, Book Club); (2) Direct instructional support in skills and strategies in same-ability, small, teacher-led groups; and (3) A “literacy block” within which reading, writing, and oral language are woven thematically so that all students participate in the same curriculum theme regardless of their reading ability. For this framework, building on book club activities some of the members had experienced for themselves with Florio-Ruane and Raphael, the teachers chose the theme, “Our Storied Lives.” This theme was year-long and taught in three sequential units: stories of self, stories of family, and stories of culture. In its content, structure, and functions, the Book Club Plus framework differs from conventional instruction—either process-oriented, whole language style instruction or direct instruction in sub skills and strategies. It uses authentic literature, focuses on compelling thematic content that links literature and youngsters’ lives, and contains both age-appropriate and instruction-level work with text. Traditionally, reading instruction in school has been in the service of far different goals. Students interacted around texts for the purpose of gaining information that could then be demonstrated on quizzes, unit tests or through oral performance. In this, the efferent component of reading—reading to find answers or to show others that one could read—far outweighed the aesthetic goals (Rosenblatt, 1938/1983) of reading for pleasure, to spur critical thinking and interpretation, to learn for the sake of learning. Because of this real difference in form and content for reading instruction, a different instructional paradigm with accompanying different instructional behaviors and attitudes is necessary. 141 As a framework, I wondered if its heuristic value would be visible in the classrooms of TLC teachers. What would Book Club Plus look like across grades? In more affluent suburbs with higher achieving readers? In small and large classes? In schools with and without required reading/language arts textbook? How would Book Club Plus be responsive to local standards? What about state and national standards to which all TLC teachers were generally held? Many such questions motivated the analysis presented in this chapter. This chapter looks closely at six TLC teachers and the ways in which their participation in the development of this curricular innovation can be captured. In other words, were there core behaviors and attitudes of teachers working with this particular curriculum? Did the relationship I noticed between and among the teachers at Rice and Harlan extend to the other teacher’s classrooms in the network? In this, I hoped to try and understand how teachers’ participation in a professional development network can be manifested by their classroom behaviors. I also wondered about the consistent delivery of a curriculum that allows for individual teachers’ interpretation and local adaptation as he or she is confronted with a real group of students with real, contextualized needs. As before, I used the lens of socioculturalism to peer at the classrooms and the interactions apparent between students and teachers. This was a way of thinking about learning as evidence from participation in communities of practice (like classrooms), evidence of learning as written or spoken utterances, the mutual engagement in a secondary discourse or speech genre, and the ability to move through different places within the community so that sub- discourses became generative as they allowed for critiques of behaviors and manners in other sub-discourses. 142 Toris for Analysis The data presented in this chapter comes in part from a branch of an assessment study comparing the achievement of Book Club Plus students with those of students fiom comparable control classrooms on measures including reading comprehension, writing competency, oral language proficiency and reading attitudes. The study is a six-district study spanning suburban, urban and rural districts in three counties in Michigan. In each case, a TLC teacher was paired with a colleague who used another literacy curriculum or set of curricula. Students in both classrooms were assessed early in the year and then again in the spring to examine individual as well as classroom growth. (see Book Club Plus, in press, for the results of this aspect of the study) Of particular interest were the struggling readers in each class since the curriculum was designed partially as an intervention into the work of students who show below-grade level reading achievement. As a research assistant on this project, I observed the practice of all TLC and control classrooms. I video-taped TLC classrooms and took field notes each time I visited. In the control classrooms, I audio taped as well as taking notes. This study of the TLC teachers’ behavior complements the extensive student data and is the focus of this chapter. Of the six studies, complete teacher data is available for five. We defined a complete data set as comprising four data sets from both the TLC and control teachers. The first data set consists of literacy logs (see Appendix E for a sample literacy log) for two separate weeks (one in winter, one in spring). These logs asked teachers to tally time spent on literacy activity in an entire week and further delineated exactly what literacy activity was occuring in what time frame. Teachers were offered categories such as 143 “Writing in response to literature”, “Teacher read aloud”, “Spelling instruction”, “Testing” as well as a slot where they could indicate what other literacy activities were going on. These logs fiirther asked teachers to indicate who was involved, if it was a whole class activity, small groups working together or individuals engaged alone. The second data set includes at least one (but often two) visits from a university researcher during literacy work. The third consists of notes, audio or video tapes or a combination from literacy activities during field visitations. The fourth includes demographic information from teachers. Again, all data sets are complete with the exception of one for which literacy logs were not available. Who are the TLC Teachers? All six of the TLC teachers that we studied had some role in the writing of the curriculum and a very active role in how it was assessed. Though the TLC meetings were called by university professors as you recall from the discussion in Chapter 3, they were largely led by the members of this teaching group. All six of the TLC teachers are female. They range in age fi'om their twenties (3), thirties (1) to those in their forties (2). Five of the teachers are Anglo-European Caucasians and one is African American. The average number of years of experience for the TLC teachers is 1i.8 with a median number of 12 years (see Table 1). In this study, there are three third grade classrooms, one eighth grade classroom and two second grade classroom. Each of these classrooms is paired with a control of the same grade level. Five of the six TLC teachers have Master’s degrees in teaching, reading, or education. The one exception plans to begin her degree within the next academic year.1 ' Continuing, formal education is required for Michigan teachers to continue work in public education. 144 Who are the Control Teachers? The control teachers were selected, whenever possible, because they were reputed as strong in literacy instruction. Because we sought to match classrooms wherever possible within a single building (which we did in all but one case)2 and by the same grade-level, choices were ofien limited. I visited these classrooms and asked the teachers to complete paperwork in the same ways as the TLC teachers so that I might reveal the tiniest slice of life in their classrooms. Of the six control teachers (see Table 4) 4 are female and 2 are male. Their age range is similarly spanned from early twenties (2) through thirties (1), forties (1) and fifties (2). Four of the teachers are Anglo-European Caucasians while two are African American. The average number of years teaching for the control teachers is 16.8 with a median number of 15 years. In this group, four of the six teachers have Master’s degrees in education or related fields. The remaining two both expressed unprompted interest in the continuation of their education. 2 In one school this was not possible since the three 3rd grade classroom teachers shared a common space and often exchanged professional ideas. Thus, the control classroom teacher was selected within the same district, from a school with similar demographic data. 145 Table 4: Control Teachers " " , V Age ears experience .. .. _ Mr Hrggrs Inner City Early 20’s First Year BSEE Second Ms. Gordon Urban Forties Five MAT Third Ms. Lightfine Suburban Forties Sixteen MAT Third Mr. Jackson Rural Sixties Twenty-five plus MA Third Ms. Corbett Suburban Sixties Twenty-five plus MA Eighth Ms. Darling Rural Early 20’s Third BSEE Second Time Spent on Literacy As indicated in Table 6, the control teachers3 engaged in an average of 2.5 hours per day in literacy related activities. These do not include activities most often thought of as reading or writing across the curriculum or where literacy is used as a tool for the The TLC teachers worked with their students on study of another school subject.4 literacy an average of 2.8 hours per day. 3 For this measure, I excluded the middle school teacher as the “period” structure of this school dictated the amount of time spent in literacy. Though the kinds of activities were subject to teacher decision, the time spent on literacy was predicated on the period. 4 So for instance, writing up a science report or reading a math textbook is not included though many scholars would argue that those are also literacy-based activities. 146 Table 5: TLC hours per day on literacy 3.4 hours U 5 hours H “it i i 1.5 hours Ms. Laetner 2.8 hours 4.25 hours 1.5 hours Ms. Paul 2.2 hours 2.75 hours 1.5 hours Ms. Bassie 2.9 hours 5.5 hours 1.5 hours Table 6: Control Teachers’ hours per Day on Literacy ' :1 5.39:3: i._ s 5 Mr. Higgins I 2 8 hours Ms. Gordon 3.1 hours 3.75 hours 2.5 hours Ms. Lightfine 2.6 hours 3.5 hours 1.75 hours Mr. Jackson 1.6 hours 2.25 hours 1.25 hours The high correlation between average number of hours of literacy instruction in both groups suggests that any achievement of TLC students on literacy measures is not due to merely more time on task. In order to account for the expected changes in daily schedules (like special assemblies, field trips, or parent teacher conferences) I also analyzed the single day in the ten day set that each teacher spent the most time on literacy and the one in which they spent the least. For the control teachers, the average “most” time was 3.3 hours and the average “least” time 1.6 hours. For the TLC teachers, the average “most” time was 4.3 hours per day; the average “least” time was 1.5 hours. These time analyses reveal a similar amount of time spent in the practice of teaching and learning about literacy in the control and TLC classrooms. 5 Based on two week sample 5 In the space of the two weeks’ sampled 7 In the space of the two weeks’ sampled 147 In order to think about the kinds of activities that were privileged in the various classrooms, I took three measures represented on the literacy logs ( of the 12 offered) and analyzed the frequency of the particular literacy practice. I selected “Writing Process”, “Teacher Read-alouds” and “Spelling Instruction” as three categories of common literacy instruction in schools. I chose these three categories arbitrarily from the twelve available categories. (see tables 7 and 8) file 7: TLC teachers’ Comparisons across three categories Time spent per ten day period on ~- process Wrrtr_ng ------ " * Time spent Per ten ;eday perm on _ . 45 minutes 4 hours 45 minutes 2 hours45 minutes Ms. Laetner 3 hours 3 hours 30 minutes 1 hour 30 minutes Ms. Paul 45 minutes 4 hours 2 hours45 minutes Ms. Catsman8 4 hours 1 hour 45 minute 0 hours Ms. Bassie 3 hours 30 minutes 3 hours 15 minutes 5 hours Table 8: Control Teachers’ Comparisons across three categories Timespentperte“ ' lme spent perten ;‘iiten day period on 3 day period can»; 2? day period on """"" Teacher Reade]??? I. isolated spelling Control'l‘eacher 2"‘51i ” " ”Mf.iLelandiii}£332TE‘?§’§?7§?L£i_;-;:::.zlnstructlonx;:- Mr. Higgins 2 hours 4 hours 15 minutes 3 hours30minutes Ms. Gordon 9 hours30 minutes 3 hours 30 minutes 3 hours30 minutes Ms. Lightfine 3 hours 15 minutes 2 hours 45 minutes 3 hours Mr. Jackson 45 minutes 2 hours 45 minutes 4 hours45minutes Ms. Corbett9 1 hour 30 minutes 2 hours 45 minutes 30 minutes The previous measures discussed reveal some interesting quantitative data. Since the sample was non-random and the visitation schedule even less so, it is unfair to make 8 9This rs an eighth grade classroom and represents time in two class periods 9This IS an eighth grade classroom and represents time in two class periods 148 too much of the similarities or differences. However, two points do draw notice. First, the amount of experience, age, and educational level are similar for both groups. Common sense shows us the resemblances of both groups on these basic demographic levels. Second, there is some correspondence within groups between repetition of various activities. However, it is not true that TLC teachers were any more similar in range of activities than the control teachers. This excludes the idea that TLC teachers were acting lockstep on behalf of someone else’s instruction about how to run literacy instruction. Though TLC teachers did have a framework, they did not routinize it to the extent that all teachers were acting, presenting, and teaching in the same ways. In this, it is interesting to examine the practices in the classroom to see if the tentative conclusions about the two classrooms discussed in chapter 3 having a family resemblance in the forms of instruction can be triangulated by looking across other classrooms with TLC classrooms and those without them. Classroom Set up The Book Club Plus program is centered around small discussion groups. It is not surprising, then, that a prominent characteristic of the classrooms of TLC teachers is a grouping of student desks in small clusters. Of the six TLC teachers, five of them have their rooms organized in small clusters of student desks. Because of this configuration, students have opportunities to interact with each other far more easily than a more traditional configuration where students are side-by-side in rows of tables or individual desks. Clearly then, classroom talk is allowed to be distributed among both teacher and students and student-to-student. Since Book Club Plus privileges the interactions of students around learning, it is logical that a teacher might believe this model to carry 149 through the entire school day. Of the control classrooms, only one teacher set her room up in these small clusters of student desks. The remaining teachers had them in rows of individual desks or rows of two or three student tables. More traditional, this configuration is organized so that student attention will be focused upon the front of the room (where the teacher most often resides). It was this difference in the classroom set-ups that first prompted a look at what other characteristics of the classroom environment might be common across sites. It also spurred consideration of how and why these similarities might have occurred. The study of classroom environment—as defined by the physical surroundings, the comings and goings of people and activities and the like-- can reveal philosophy and pedagogy in a way that interviews and results of test scores might not. This feature is one that is often overlooked in studies of classrooms but one that Jackson (1990) argues is essential to understanding the work of schools. (See Appendices G-J for maps of two TLC classrooms and two control classrooms). For instance, four of the six TLC classrooms had areas in them for students to sprawl out on the floor during independent reading time. One other had a set of couches (purchased with the teacher’s own money) for the comfort of readers during daily independent reading sessions. Of the control teachers, one had a carpet and one had a series of stuffed chairs near a computer that she explained was used for “casual study”. It was evident that TLC classrooms were marked by areas that were available for student independent reading. These areas were obvious in their difference from the regular classroom space. Though control teachers also had areas of this type, only one defined it as a “different sort of environment” (Field notes, May 7, 2000). On the other hand, TLC teachers spoke about 150 these spaces as absolutely essential to their construction of reading (Memo, April 5, 2000). Children moved to these delineated areas (observed in three cases: two TLC; one control) as a mark that it was time for themselves to work as independent readers. Those children in rooms that did not have designated areas to go for independent reading either read at their desks (two control cases) or weren’t observed during independent reading activities ( two control, one TLC). Classroom Library Eleven of the twelve TLC/Control classroomsIO had some form of a classroom library. I defined a classroom library as a space dedicated to a variety of books of various genres, authors, themes, and reading levels. I did not consider a set of text or trade books occupying a shelf or shelves as part of a library. These libraries ranged in size from occupying one shelf on a smallish bookcase to occupying an entire wall from floor to ceiling. The location of these classroom libraries became a point of interest for me when I noticed that 4 of the 6 TLC classrooms had their libraries on one of the walls perpendicular to the front of the room—to the side of where one would traditionally find the teacher. (see maps in Appendices G and H). By contrast, all 6 of the control rooms had classroom libraries at the back of the room, at the farthest point from the teacher’s desk. While I could speculate on the relationship between physical and psychological positioning, it is enough to say that the physical positioning common to most TLC classrooms was similar enough to be dramatic. Additionally, three of the six TLC classrooms had students using the library during independent reading times of the day. I didn’t observe any control classroom students using the library, but I observed less of ‘0 The exception was the eighth grade control classroom where no library was visible, but multiple copies of textbooks were displayed. 151 these classrooms engaged in independent reading. My field notes from two of the TLC observations confirm the common ways that classroom libraries were used and positioned. On a February visit to Ms. Bassie’s room I wrote, “Students use classroom library as a browse-able space that they visit until they have selected a book to their liking. I watch a boy choose a book, page through it at his desk and return it for another one” (Field notes, February 9, 2000). On a May visit to Ms.Tott’s room I noted, “The classroom library seems suited for an entire school, not merely a single class. Students must have to consult a catalogue in order to know what is there. Several shuffle through the packed shelves at the beginning of SSR (Sustained Silent Reading)” (Field notes, May 7, 2000) Guided Readingin TLC Classrooms It is again only fair to point out that TLC teachers were visited on days when they would be doing particular literacy-related activities. The control teachers were asked to be visited during literacy activities that they would define as typical in the classroom. In this, the TLC teachers had a high degree of correspondence in the type of work that was going on. For instance, all TLC teachers in elementary grades placed students in guided reading groups that were small enough to interact as groups with the teacher. These groups were always (all cases) pulled to a special corner of the room and gathered around the teacher. The groups were delineated by level, and most levels read different books. In one case, two groups read the same book despite one groups’ members having an easier time with it. It wasn’t clear in any case if the children knew what reading level their reading group occupied; however, researchers are fairly certain that children do understand their own reading level in large part because of their placement in these 152 reading-level based groups (McMahon, 1997). Students often previewed new books with 3) “ their teacher pointing out things like “picture-clues, author’s craft”, relationships they might have to this author, potential difficulties with text placement, vocabulary, and etc. Ms. Bassie lead students through a picture book called Aunt Flossie’s Hats. She asked them to predict what it would be about from the pictures on the cover. One student predicts “ It will be about hats that fly around and around.” And another, “It’s about a store where they sell hats like a department store” (Field Notes, March 28, 2000). Ms. Bassie doesn’t refute or support either of these predictions, but she does note them on a piece of paper in front of her. Once all of the group members have had the opportunity to make predictions, she takes them thrOugh the title page, discusses the role of the author and the illustrator and talks to them a bit about publication dates and other information found before the actual text. Then, she asks them to take turns reading pages while other group members follow along with their fingers and their “thinking heads.” In Ms.Tott’s second grade classroom students are working on books about Martin Luther King Jr. One of her higher groups is reading a short biography of the civil rights leader and gathers around her to discuss it when they are called for their turn. They begin by talking about the time that the biography was written (1984) and the era that the biography took place (MLK Jr’s lifespan). They spend a good deal of time discussing the importance of the distance between the two dates and the happenings in the world that may have influenced the biographers interpretation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. The children have already read the book, but they are asked to go back through and pick out passages that they find important as a way to “make decisions about the most crucial points in his life or the book” (Audio tape, May 19, 2000). They are told to pay special 153 attention to the opinions of their fellow students. “You can think of new ways to think about books when you hear what other people say was their favorite,” (Ibid) Ms. Tott tells them. I saw guided reading groups in all the elementary school TLC classrooms. These sessions lasted from 6 minutes to 25 minutes. Teachers took either two or three groups in the time allotted on a given day, and always promised to get to the remaining groups in the next session—sometimes the next day, sometimes later in the week. While this activity occurred, other students were doing either independent reading (2 cases), unit work from a required basal (1 case) or writing process activities with another adult (2 cases). That these other activities were worked on as students were brought to the teacher in their guided reading groups helped underscore the idea of guided reading with the teacher as part of a holistic process of literacy learning. Guided reading wasn’t just the place where you show off your reading skills to the teacher. It was a place, instead, where one kind of literacy activity occurred among other important literacy activities that might not be for teacher inspection. The guided reading groups had a resonance and bore resemblances to one another in the form of their physical set-ups and in the content of the activity. They weren’t merely places to practice oral reading skills, but rather, places to engage in many aspects of books with the assistance of the teacher and the support of other classmates. These activities weren’t blatantly evaluative in any of the classrooms I observed, though three of the teachers took extensive notes during the activity and all indicated that they were noting the progress of individual students to record at a future time. One teacher, Ms. Harris, for example, developed a checklist for ongoing assessment that was geared to her district’s standards 154 and the content objectives of her mandated reading series. In this way, she was active mediator of two different systems that would otherwise intrude on her classroom but which, as part of her local adaptation of the Book Club Plus framework, was a tool of her own creation Independent Reading in TLC classrooms The position of independent reading in TLC classrooms seemed very rooted in the idea of literacy as pleasure and power. Students could exert control over their own choices of texts as well as work on books that their teacher selected for them. For instance, in one TLC room, Ms. Laetner’s students gathered in three groups during their morning literacy block. 1' Some students worked with the teacher on the floor on books slightly above their comfortable reading level. Others did a writing activity with the student teacher where they wrote about the importance of their first names in defining their character; still others read from books they had taken out from the classroom library or brought in fi'om home. There was no sense that any of these three activities was more important than another. In fact, Ms. Laetner spent much time setting up the three activities and talking through each one. “Group one will be reading from the classroom library . . . let’s remember to pick books that we can concentrate on for sustained amounts of time. Though I will bring you in and out of other things like writing with Ms. J (the student teacher) and reading with me, I want you to keep at that book. . . or the book you brought from home” (Video tape, February 15, 2000) . This is interesting because of the care taken in setting up the independent reading as important and essential. Instead of using independent reading as filler-in time as it can be used in a classroom, Ms. Laetner showed students that reading for pleasure is not an extraneous activity that ” See Raphael et a1. (2000) for a discussion of Literacy Block 155 can or cannot be done. She insisted that all groups take their particular task seriously and that they use the time for the goals she designed. I observed independent reading (sometimes called Sustained Silent Reading or Drop-Everything-And-Read) in all but one TLC class. To varying degrees, each teacher tacitly valued independent reading as much as she did more assessment-oriented activities like guided reading or writing journals. Since much of the work of the small groups is not teacher-inspected, students are required to take responsibility for their learning and to understand that improvement has to be spurred from within rather than from without. Though all teachers ultimately assess kids literacy in multiple ways, TLC teachers take as a given that students will be interested in books, in talking and writing about books for the sake of it rather than to please a teacher or excel on a test. Student-leard Book Discussions Book club activities had sameness and variation in the book club classrooms. In the middle school classroom, for instance, the instructor began the lesson asking students to get in their book club groups to discuss reading log entries to Paul Zindel’s flre Ifigm Students were given a few prompted ideas to discuss and then let go for 20 minute discussions of the text. While they discussed, the instructor circled and listened intervening only occasionally and only when a group veered off topic. Following, groups were asked to report to the large group on the substance of their conversations. The elementary teachers behaved similarly during small group student-lead book club discussions. 156 Literacy as Interpretive Power in TLC Classrooms TLC teachers also include quiet work in their literacy activities. For instance, students are often asked to respond in reader’s journals to a particular prompt based on a common book or are asked to respond more generally to something they had read. However, there is also a strong sense that conversation is a component of literacy, that people who read and write often do so in noisy, messy ways. There is additionally the understanding that the instructor is not the sole arbiter of truth and correct answers. For example, when students begin work in Ms. Catsman’s 8'h grade on The Pigman, she tells them: “These characters aren’t much older than you. I think you will be able to understand and relate to their stories in much richer ways than someone who is much older or much younger” (Video tape, February 22, 2000). Though this sounds like a throw-away line, a carefiil consideration of it reveals how empowering it would be to a student who now has the license to interpret from his or her own vantage point. A second grade teacher in the inner city tells her students to “Think about the way you would feel. Don’t you think this helps you see how she (a character in the book) felt?”(Field notes, January 21, 2000). Again, a clue that literate understandings can emanate from within. Ms. Tott, a TLC teacher, asked her students to talk, in small student lead groups, about their relationship to the main character of the book A Chair for My Mother. She told them in her set-up time that “It is not important that you all feel the same. Go ahead and share the differences (in your feelings)” (Field notes, May 17, 2000). This marks for students a relationship to books that values opinions and is not reliant upon consensus for satisfaction of texts to occur. Even in second grade, TLC teachers seemed to set up a 157 standard of literacy talk which privileged an individual reader’s response rather than a correct answer. Literacy Instruction in the Control Classrooms The larger study added six “control” classrooms for a particular purpose—to see if there might be a difference in achievement in reading in paired classrooms where the teacher was not a TLC member and the Book Club Plus framework was not in use. Details of the assessment study are forthcoming from the wider project (see Raphael et al, in preparation). However, my opportunity to collect data in these paired classrooms was serendipitous. It permitted me to compare and contrast activity settings in same age, same school classrooms, some of which were using Book Club Plus, and some of which were not. The control teachers, expectedly, varied in the kinds of assignments and activities the students worked on. In one case, middle school students discussed individual projects related to African American History month. Students were asked to report on research on an important Afiican American First. These projects were individual—each student was asked to select a different person—and could be presented in writing, verbally, with an art project or any creative way the student might come up with. Following this discussion, students worked on a chapter from their text about regular and irregular verbs. The three principle forms of verbs were listed and examples from the book were discussed. Students were then asked to do two worksheets plugging in regular and irregular verbs. The teacher, Ms. Corbett, told her students “You have to learn these like your times-tables. Store them in your personal computer memories” (Field notes, 158 February 22,2000). She also reminded students “If you have a question don’t ask them (fellow students), ask me”(Ibid). While students in this class were engaged in a dynamic discussion of African American firsts, there was a great deal of engagement with the instructor. Students were clearly trained to speak to the instructor and to keep inter-student contact to a minimum in this activity. The teacher called on individual students for their report and then worked with those students in one-on-one interactions. The second portion of the class was silent, following the instructor’s brief review of verbs and the instructions for completing the follow-up practice worksheet. Students were not to use each other as resources in this highly individualized model. The burst of talking that accompanied the bell to indicate the period was over stood in contrast to the silent work that had just proceeded it. Another control classroom had a rather lively discussion of a Tommie dePaulo story, The Legend of the Persian Carpet. In this room, students were very much engaged with each other and encouraged to add to tentative conclusions or predictions that fellow students made. The following exchange was typical of this class: Ms. L: Why was he loved? Annie: He was kind and wise Ms. L: Anyone else? Any other reasons Terrence: Because he had . . .he had Josh: Everyone’s love Annie: Kindness Ms. L: Yes, all of those things. (Field notes and partial recollection, April 5, 2000) 159 This exchange shows the beginnings of a real conversation about reading. The students were engaged, enjoying the story and seemingly, enjoying talking about it. There was a bustle of page turning and an enthusiasm to respond to the teacher and one another. Several of the children had read this book before and were fairly bursting to tell the others what would ultimately happen. Ms. Lightfine politely asked them to restrain and to “Keep the surprise alive for those of us encountering this for the first time”(Field notes, April 5, 2000) Those who had read it were smugly keeping the secret. Reading was fiin here; it was also exciting. In Ms. Gordon’s classroom, students worked in small groups to create sentences that depict control over grammar rules that they have studied in their texts. When a group’s discussion of what topic to use in their sentence becomes contentious, Ms. Gordon tells them to work things out on their own the way they have been taught. They are to “Use kind words to get over it and on with it” (the work at hand )(Field notes, February 8, 2000) . At the periods’ conclusion, groups put their sentences on an overhead so the rest of the class could check their work. (For descriptions of all control classrooms at work, please see Table 10.) 160 Table 9: Summary of Activities in TLC classrooms ............................................................. ................................................ TLCTeacherGrade Acnwtytm) Duration Ms. Harris Second Guided reading groups, 2 visits/ one hour Large group discussion, book clubs, independent work with newspaper words each Ms. Laetner Third Independent reading; 2 visits/two hours snack break stories, each guided reading, process writing, book clubs Ms. Paul Third Large group discussion 1 visit/ 90 of culture; birthday minutes party celebration; book One 1 hour clubs, guided reading video-tape groups Ms. Catsman Eighth Teacher read aloud, 1 visit in period student independent #1/1 hour reading, book club 1 visit in period discussions, large #2/1 hour group community share Ms. Tott Second Guided reading; songs; 1 visit/2 V2 hours process writing activity (brainstroming); teacher read aloud Ms. Bassie Third Process writing; 2 visits/ 1 hour teacher read aloud, guided reading groups; book club discussions; student assessment of work and 2 hours 161 Table 10: Summarv of Activities in Control Classroom ................................................................ ................................................ Gradechvrtytws)l>uratwn Mr. Higgins Second Large group work on 1 visit/1 hour grammar rules, student lead song Ms. Gordon Third Large group discussion 1 visit/90 of grammar, individual minutes seatwork on worksheets; small group demonstration of grammar rule Ms. Lightfine Third Teacher read-aloud, 1 visit/ 90 journal writing, large minutes group discussion on book Ms. Corbett Eighth Large group discussion 1 visit/1 hour of in-progress projects, grammar lecture, individual seatwork on grammar exercises Mr. Jackson Third Workbook assignment, 1 visit/ 90 teacher lead recitation of minutes answers to assignment, teacher read-aloud Ms. Darling Second Large group work on 1 visit/ 45 vocabulary minutes Conclusions—what Makes TLC a Learning Community? I saw evidence of engaged students responding to good teaching in both the control and TLC rooms. I was able to observe some common characteristics of the TLC teachers and would like to offer those as further evidence that their exists a family resemblance in the activities in the classrooms of teachers who were working together in the TLC network. Despite the fact that they worked in different contexts, at different grade levels, with different amounts of administrative input into their lessons, there is an interconnection of activity kinds and philosophical underpinnings that is not evident in 162 the comparisons of the TLC classrooms to those that lie just down the hall. I would like to note that in my mind the enactment of the curriculum and the design of the curriculum are intertwined. We don’t have a close look at a teacher working with this program who was not intimately involved in creating a piece or pieces of it. In this, it is exciting to think how much of the teacher behavior is because of the way the curriculum exists and how much of it arose out of the experience of writing it together with other teachers. This relationship is interesting and provocative for those interested in teacher learning, both pre-service and in-service. At the risk of painting with too broad a stroke, I would like to offer my view of the common characteristics of the classroom behavior of teachers involved in the TLC. Because these characteristics occurred in these classrooms in no way precludes them from occurring in the control classrooms. Instead, the control classrooms acted as a counterpoint that helped me to see what about the TLC teachers was similar. These can be thought of as the “distinctive features” or the differences that made a difference as I looked across sites. Below I describe several norms that seemed to distinguish the TLC teachers’ pedagogy. Correct without consensual TLC Teachers teach their students that answers can be correct without consensual agreement. In other words, reader response theory was privileged as a way to make meaning through reading. Because a student had an idea that was attached to a particular way that they viewed the world, it was a valuable idea. Though small group work tended to be normative in that the majority of students often persuaded an outlier to come to their way of thinking, this was not evident in the behavior of the teacher in small guided 163 reading groups or in large group discussions introducing or preceding small student-lead book club groups. This lesson is complex because it undercuts the idea that reading and writing are passive activities that, if mastered, lead to established answers. This is a scary idea for students and can be even scarier for teachers. The thought that reading a text can result in multiple, often competing interpretations makes the work of teaching reading complicated as it questions whether anyone can ever possess “the answer”. While at least one control room gave evidence of embracing reading as fun and interesting but not necessarily un-knowable as fact, (Ms. Lightfine) TLC teachers continually pushed students to articulate different interpretations without worrying that they might be personal. This was also a lesson learned as the TLC teachers grew in their own right as teachers in the activity space of the TLC. Teachers learned that perspectives can be fodder for conversation rather than answers to questions. Like their students they came to see interpretations as contextual and constructivist. In their study of women’s progression through formal and informal educational institutions, Belenky et a1 (1986) find that women who can integrate the voices of their inner selves with the voices of peers and more knowledgeable others are able to find the spaces in their minds and lives important enough to nurture growth and change, in short, can learn from themselves and from others. Distributed Knowledge A corollary to the idea that correctness does not have to be consensual is the idea that the knowledge base in the classroom is distributed among teacher and students. In TLC classrooms, group conversations are at times teacher lead, but they are sustained through the contributions of the students. Researchers (see Cazden, 1988) argue that 164 even ostensibly interpretive questions are imagined, by both teacher and students, to have a correct answer that the teacher possesses and the students fish for. In four cases of TLC teachers I found deliberate construction of knowledge by students and teacher. This was marked by a shifi in the interpretation that the teacher offered based on conversations with students. In short, the construction of an understanding was managed by more than just the teacher. In a discussion of “Mattie’s Hats”, Ms. Bassie speaks with a guided reading group: Ms. Bassie: What do you think the problem is in this story? Max: They just got lonely when they were ordinary. Ms. Bassie: I didn’t think of them as ordinary. I thought of them as more . . . as easier to sell. Max: That wasn’t true though. Ms. Bassie: No. It didn’t turn out that way. (Audio Tape, May 18, 2000). This exchange is part of a larger one in which Ms. Bassie responds from her own reading but clearly is open to the readings of her students. In this exchange, Max offers his own, very reasonably argued interpretation of a text that his teacher had seen a bit differently. Instead of trying to bring Max toward her interpretation, Ms. Bassie appears thoughtfiil about his and draws his point into her later discussions. In another TLC classroom, second graders remind their teacher that “Patricia Polocco must like to write about things, since we also read about the quilt in the other book.” Her response, “I hadn’t thought of it that way” (Field notes, February I 7, 2000) is interesting because it suggests that the students are adding to her consideration of an intertextual link. This positions her as a 165 reader who is gathering information from other readers in an interactive relationship. How different this is from the Freirean (1970) banker/teacher. In the case of these teachers, readings are flexible and are not fixed by a more experienced reader, not predicated on the interpretation of the more powerfirl teacher. Groups are Flexible Tools for teaching and learning The use of group configurations in the TLC classroom was similar across all sites. Teachers grouped students in guided reading groups in all elementary classrooms by reading level ability. Additionally, they mixed students by reading ability and, where possible, by other factors like gender and classroom social status in book club discussion groups designed to elicit competing opinions on texts that might complicate understandings and thus, enhance comprehension. Students also engaged in literacy activities like discussions of texts in large group, teacher lead sessions and in sessions where small groups reported to the larger class on their activites. A glance at Table 10 “Summary of Activity in Control Classrooms” reveals a different pattern. In only one case are students configured in anything but the large group or as independent agents working alone on reading or workbook pages. This demonstrates a different paradigm of philosophical orientation to literacy. While literacy may be many things in the control classrooms, it is not revealed as privileged as a sociocultural interaction between peers. The teacher is the overseer at all times or students are left to engage alone. In TLC classrooms, however, multiple kinds of group interactions form the cornerstone of literacy activities. Children are expected to learn both from heterogeneous, student-lead, small group interactions and from teacher-lead like-ability groups. In the same way that the TLC network members returned to their largely 166 homogeneous teaching contexts to fortify themselves with knowledge that could not be gained in the mixed group and additionally, learned from the heterogeneous teacher network things that they wouldn’t see had they remained on their home turf, students benefit in TLC classrooms from operating on dual planes. Recall from chapter 3 that I have defined this as the simultaneous movement through the Vygotsky space at difl’erent venues and that it is in this interaction that learning is most stimulated. Just as the teachers had to move from alike groups in their schools to a mixed community in the TLC, children in TLC classrooms work with students at and not at their own abilities. Literate Practices as Practice The classrooms of TLC teachers display multiple notions of literacy in practice as well as literacy as practice. In other words, reading and writing, listening and speaking aren’t only ways to communicate to others, but also ways to build understandings. Thus, they are as much tools for thinking as they are tools for the transmission of ideas already thought. TLC teachers demonstrate this in many ways. First, the book club discussion groups are ends in themselves. To a person, the teachers allow the students (even second grade students) to come to their own conclusions about the success of their book club. While the teachers lay out some base behaviors (connected talk, for one; using specific textual details, for another) the actual process of the discussion is privileged over an “answer.” If students have discussed a book, then the book club is deemed a success. There is no penalty for lingering questions or uncertainties that remain once the discussion is over. Ms. Tott’s third grade students, for instance, were asked to speak on their own behalf about the success of their group for their own growing understandings. Louis reported, “She said he wasn’t a good fiiend, but I thought he was. I say that this 167 makes us both good readers. We both wondered and we still wonder” (Field notes, April 5, 2000). In an eighth grade TLC classroom, a student told me “It’s cool that we don’t have to tell anyone how we decided what we decided. The group can speak for us or we can speak for ourselves. I like that we get to do something that is fun without the teacher giving a grade on it“ (Field notes, February 22, 2000). These two students speak eloquently on behalf of book discussions as vehicles for learning about reading, not as demonstrations of what they can or cannot do. In only one control classroom did I see a literacy activity that wasn’t clearly tied to preparation for an exam, a point value, or a teacher assessment. One control teacher asked students to “Listen carefiilly as you can be sure to see this on the spelling test” (Field notes, May 2000). Another assigned groups a point value based on the correctness and coherence of a mutually constructed sentence. This difference in tone was important as it stressed a philosophical point manifested in classroom behavior. If the point of reading and writing is to learn more about reading and writing, then assessing every piece of work is not only pointless, it is counterproductive. Skilled readers and writers know that lots of practice and false starts come with growing interpretations and refining literacy skills. One way to promote this is by allowing for interpretive attempts that are buffered by the safety of the knowledge that they won’t be constantly evaluated. Tracking Classroom Behavior with Network Behavior The previous dispositions, the tendency to view answers as correct without being necessarily consensual, distribution of knowledge among all participants in a community, flexible groupings and practices as practice are also evident in the TLC network learning 168 community. As discussed in Chapter 3, network business was conducted as a process of iterative narratives that were complicated, messy, subject to multiple interpretations, and unfinished. All of these tendencies are ones that position a learner in a particular fi'ame. When one believes in these components as prerequisites to learning, it is no wonder that practice would reflect it, practice of one’s own learning and the facilitation of learning for students. TLC members learned from one another in reciprocal relationships and they practiced this in their classrooms as well. This has vast implications for the practice of professional development. It suggests that we might look to professional development to model effective learning practices rather than to merely offer practices that can be grabbed from the professional development site and imported for classroom use. Teachers and Students Manage Meaning It is also of crucial note, that the characteristic tendencies of both groups cluster around the idea of story telling as a way to manage the meanings around us. This idea gathers its In the next, final chapter, I will discuss the implications and resonance that might come from a belief in principle of professional development as a learning practice. Traditional professional development does not account for the complexity of teacher learning as manifested in the practice of teacher education. Taking into account that adult Ieamers might import their own learning practices to their work with youngsters demands a new paradigm of in-service learning and an abject rejection of methodology that is inconsistent with the demands of complex learning. 169 CHAPTER SIX The Vital Role of Spaces for Teacher Learning A Third Space Gutierrez and her colleagues (1999a, 1999b) speak eloquently of a “third space” where opposing positions and literal spaces can be brought into dialogue, in which dissonance leads to fruitful new understandings, in which there is an opportunity to grow richer understandings additively. In this model of growing competence, the third space of learning occupies a place between the discourse and norms of the traditional classroom context and the discourse and norms of the home or community environments. Thus, students learn from an amalgamated view of life that takes into account both their home communities and the social practices that lie therein, and the school community with its particular manners and ways of operation. For the students working in this space, (literally a community center where they participate in after school and before home living) a hybrid discourse occurs where children and adults work together to blend disparate communities with disparate practices. Richard Rodriguez (1982) talks about the problems inherent in moving from his family of origin into a school community where a completely different value system, language practice and social interaction occurred. Rodriguez writes; What I am about to say to you has taken me more than twenty years to admit: A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn’t forget that schooling was changing me and separating me fi'om the life I enjoyed before becoming a student. That simple realization! For years I never spoke to 170 anyone about it. Never mentioned a thing to my teachers or my classmates. From a very early age, I understood enough, just enough about my classroom experiences to keep what I knew repressed, hidden beneath layers of embarrassment. Not until my last months as a graduate student, nearly thirty years old, was it possible for me to think much about the reasons for my academic success. Only then. At the end of my schooling, I needed to determine how far I had moved from my past (p. 502). Rodriguez goes on to detail the struggles of replacing one kind of life with another. The children who visit the community center after school are being asked to use Rodriguez’ struggles, struggles they too will endure if they succeed in the world of school, to find a place where they can operationalize their lives without needing to deny either part of it. Rodriguez had few compatriots, few other “scholarship boys” to relate to. He bemoans this isolation from both the comfort of his family where he no longer feels a communicative parity and from the world of school and books where he can’t help but see himself as a great imposter. Rodriguez argues that part of becoming successful in school is the shrugging off of familial values and practices. He goes on to argue that this comes with great dissonance and, he believes, now unbelievable loss. To help manage this kind of dissonance, these bilingual children are asked to gather together to create new lives in a community space that is physically and psychically different from either space in which they are asked to reside completely when physically there. The argument goes that once children learn to use all their strengths to be and live, that they will help both home practice and school practice come together in their own individual bodies and minds to create a place that is culturally acceptable to themselves. 171 If we apply the ideas of complex learning theory and the third space to teacher learning, we can see professional development can be a place where diverse perspectives intersect with previously held beliefs so that complex learning can occur. It is in the intersection of classroom practice and professional development practice that the third space for teacher learning emerges. If we only think about a space called a classroom or the experiences that a teacher takes with him or her from that classroom as the basis for teacher learning, we have a single image from a single perspective. In a way, this is the “home” culture that the teacher brings to interactions with other teachers. Even if a teacher brings his or her classroom mindset away from the classroom to work on it, she or he is still bound by this singular image. It is thus essential for a teacher to work back and forth with the image of the classroom in which they reside and the second or first hand experiences of the classrooms of others far different from themselves in order to anthropologize their work and thus, learn to experience it anew. In some ways, then, the experiences of a professional development moment where teachers listen to the stories of other teachers from far different teaching contexts can be seen as akin to the experience of children from minority cultures who leave the space of their homes with its familiarity, good points and bad points. Once children or teachers leave their “homes” however, they must find a way to incorporate the elements of this new culture that allow them to assimilate productively as they simultaneously learn to maintain their ties to their origins. As Rodriguez discusses, this is never easy. Teachers in the TLC were blinded by the regularity of their experiences so totally that they couldn’t often articulate their students’ strengths. Once confronted with a set of 172 students who they began to learn about through the stories of their teachers, they could make cognitive jumps that helped them revise their position relative to their own kids. This was significant in that it allowed new strengths to appear and new instructional supports to emerge. However, like students who may be quick to replace one cultural practice with another (for home always feels a little provincial when confi'onted with bold new paradigm, paradigms that only feel bold because they aren’t familiar), teachers had to learn to incorporate new views rather than allow them to override previously held beliefs. The TLC became a precious third space for the teachers I studied because it was a place that attempted to blend “home” and “new” practice in its attention to the narrative manners of presentation of arguments. In other words, because teachers became adept at making meaning through the stories of themselves and others rather than looking for the story endings from places where the stories did not start, they created a new way of managing interactions that enriched their understandings of other teaching contexts along with their own. Without an awareness of the intricate relationship between these traditionally separate spheres of work, (my classroom and someone else’s classroom) teacher learning will go on next to classroom practice instead of through and with it. The norms of privacy that have generally defined teachers practice (Lortie, 1975) To the extent that such third spaces exist in teachers’ continuing education, we need to document and analyze them to discover the learning they might afford. Understanding that a third space might exist in which teachers can work on complex problems of practice in no way magically solves the problems of teacher professional development. There remains the problem of defining the impact a particular 173 professional development activity has on a teacher. It is not enough to transform a teacher’s understanding if that understanding is not evidenced in interactions with curriculum, with children, with pieces of the school day. Like the traditional model of reducing the complications involved in teaching, perhaps the field has attempted to reduce the complexity inherent in tracking teacher change as a result of leaming experiences. Certainly teachers should speak for their own learning and can in powerful ways. But that learning evidence needs to be tied to classroom practice in order to merit much priority in finding and time allocation decisions. I have attempted to build a model of observation that can argue for the influence of a professional development activity on teacher practice as the practice simultaneously informs the teacher learning experiences. In this, it is not only that teachers learn and then bring that learning into their practice. It is also that their practice can inform and enforce the manners in which they learn. Teacher Learning in the Third Spafi On March 21, 200], a report on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition looked at the problems of literacy achievement in the United States. In the report, a comprehensive testing program in the state of Ohio was highlighted as one state’s solution to the decreasing rate of literacy among high school graduates. In this program, every public school was required to test students’ fourth grade reading skills as a way to make decisions about state funding, and school effectiveness. Schools with high levels of below-grade level students were given “support” in the guise of pre-packaged curricular materials designed to prepare teachers and students for testing in the future. Students in a low-income school in Columbus, Ohio were recorded by the news program as they chorally recited spelling words like “ Barracuda, B-A-R-R-A-C-U-D-A, Barracuda.” The 174 teachers interviewed explained that they were acting on a scripted lesson created at the state-level and mandated by their building administrators. For nine weeks, all literacy instruction for fourth graders in this school was to be drawn from the script. As teachers were interviewed, the children’s recitation of disconnected spelling words droned on in the background. This is Ohio’s solution to the problem of ineffective literacy instruction. In effect, Ohio has taken the decision-making power out of the hands of its teachers and entrusted the education of its children to a singular vision of reading instruction. In this view, the contextual needs and situational components of an individual teachers’ classroom are subordinated to an instructional design created by department of education researchers and faculty from Ohio’s universities. Thus, teachers become the street-level bureaucrats that deliver information rather than create and design it (Lipsky, 1980). I propose a different kind of solution that is just as responsive to the problems of children’s learning evidenced in Ohio classrooms and schools all over this country. In my view, disciplined attention to teacher professional learning and grth can place the responsibility for students’ literacy learning back in the capable hands of their teachers. When capable and supported teachers have time and space to think through the contextual issues related to their work, instruction of substance and style may boost the competency of the students in their charge. The education of our teachers is not adequate if it is defined as an academic degree (or even more than one) and self-selected, hit and miss professional development opportunities. Because this is the current paradigm for teacher in-service learning, it is not surprising that many states have elected to take over pieces of teacher’s work as they 175 mandate curriculum vis a vis the pressure of standardized tests and the slick packaging of externally created lessons. Separating the teacher from his or her work, though, is an unconscionable solution in that it positions teachers as technical workers present only to deliver someone else’s idea of education. We don’t need bright and competent teachers if we strip them of their potential for engaging with their own problems of practice and arriving at new ideas for working with students. Instead, we can very well replace teachers with computers and allow education to go on unmarked by ongoing person-to- person interactions. In 1995, the American Federation of Teachers released their opinion that: Without professional development school reform will not happen. The nation can adopt rigorous standards, set forth a visionary scenario, compile the best research about how students learn, change the nature of textbooks and assessment, promote teaching strategies that have been successful with a wide range of students, and change all the other elements involved in systemic reform. But, unless the classroom teacher understands and is committed to the plan and knows how to make it happen. The dream will come to naught (pp 1-2). Clearly, the answer lies not in giving up on teachers, but on helping to support them as they seek to improve their practice. There is agreement among scholars of professional development (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Hawley & Valli 1999) that a pedagogy and curriculum of professional development needs to be articulated and supported in order to influence the learning of teachers. What that curriculum would look like, what the pedagogical tools that would 176 underpin it are unarticulated largely because we have few good models of professional development that we have accurately and reliably assessed (Guskey, 1995; Smylie, 1989; Wilson & Berne, 1999). Though assessing an activity surely doesn’t make it right, it does help to weed out those activities that mismatch in their goals or delivery. Because we have no good measures for so much that is labeled professional development, we aren’t entirely sure what goes on in a teacher’s practice that might have been influenced by an experience of professional development. Of those opportunities that have been examined, most have been examined solely from the perspective of the teachers who have participated. Though this is one good measure of the efficacy of a learning situation, it alone does not tell us much about the actual classroom translation of an experience. Smylie’s 1989 study of 14 classes of professional development and their relative use to teachers relies upon only a single measure—teachers opinion—to make its claims. Smylie himself questions the appropriateness of relying upon teachers to assess effectiveness when teachers seem reluctant to change their practice and are often most impressed by professional development that is supportive of their previous stances and behaviors (p.550). 1 would add that measures of teacher professional development that are self-reported are often skewed because they are given directly after an experience before the teacher has the opportunity to integrate new ideas and to test them out in a classroom context. Other attempts to look quantitatively and qualitatively at teacher learning in- practice have suffered because of the cumbersome nature of the task. For instance, researchers working in mathematics learning (Carpenter, Fennema, & Franke, 1996; Silver & Stein, 1996) have designed elaborate systems of tracing teacher learning of 177 individual students. While these appear promising, the time intensive nature of the tracking of teacher learning onto student achievement suffers both from a lack of good measure of student learning and from the virtual blizzard of paperwork required to maintain access to both teacher and student change. Learning a new pedagogical skill is not an end in itself. Learning experiences must prompt questions, be educative (Dewey, 193 8) and contribute to a disposition of inquiry (Ball & Cohen, 1999) if they are to be fruitful. This leaves the field with two important questions. One, how do we design learning experiences for teachers that will sustain them over the space of a career? Two, how can we assess these experiences for impact on classroom behavior, and ultimately, student achievement? Toward Complexity My study speaks to these difficult issues in two ways. First, I have found that teacher professional development that is grounded in sociocultural notions of learning excludes the kind of professional development that are one dimensional, either exclusively building-based, exclusively discipline-based, or exclusively pedagogical skill based. The building of complexity in professional development is what prompts insights and the desire to continually question practice. The desire to reduce complexity and compartmentalize teacher work is an artificial attempt to “chunk” a practice that is nothing if not a fluid enterprise in which multiple cognitive schema are employed simultaneously. To separate the learning about general pedagogical knowledge, knowledge about students, knowledge of subject matter, pedagogical content knowledge, knowledge of other content, knowledge of curriculum and knowledge of educational aims (Grossman,Wilson, & Shulman, 1989) is to misunderstand the substance of teaching and 178 learning. Teaching is a matter of praxis where deep funds of knowledge are enacted in the service of classroom activities. Professional development must rise to this complexity and embrace the ways that complexity can serve to complicate and enrich extant understandings. I began to understand that the power of the Teacher Learning Collaborative was in the way that the forms of the teachers’ learning mirrored the curricular framework that they were enacting in their classrooms. In other words, they were exercising the same skills that they had commonly agreed would become the curriculum for literacy instruction. Because their learning was taking place in a space outside both the traditional sites for professional development and the classroom, their was room to place those two environments in dialogue with one another. This puts an even more immediate spin on the need to reform the ways we think about the serving up of teacher professional development. If forms of learning are important (Bruner, 1996) then it is only logical that they would transfer from one venue to another. If we are negligent in our attention to form in the teaching of teachers, how can we expect their practice to improve? Key Linkages In the Teacher Learning Collaborative, (TLC) the important learning models that were relied upon to make instructional decisions are the same ones that were used to make those very decisions. For instance, as teachers designed a literacy instructional program that relied upon sociocultural, narrative and process forms of learning, they were doing so inside a learning experience that similarly prized these forms. In this, their learning models were reflected in their classroom behaviors as their classroom behaviors also informed their own learning. (See Figure 2). This symbiotic relationship takes on 179 many dimensions when considered as the basic link between teacher and student learning. Figure 2: Teacher Classroom Behavior and Network Behavior Relationship Teacher Classroom Behavior W \/\/\/\/\W\/\ Network Behavior Erickson (1986) uses the term “key linkages” to refer to crucial connections that help one build a theoretical understanding of data. In this study, my three key linkages came about when I began to track the student learning ideologies onto the practice of the teachers in the learning network. Narrative My first key linkages was an understanding of narrative as a place for both teacher and student learning. It is not true that the telling of stories is a generally valued component of a school-based literacy experience. Kieran Egan believes that while of late narrative has attracted a bit more attention in school than it did in the past that “there has still been relatively little ingenuity expended on working out how to turn its obvious engaging power to practical educational advantage (1997, p. 59). Bruner insists, “It is only in narrative mode that one can construct an identity and find a place in one’s culture. Schools must cultivate it, nurture it, cease taking it for granted” (1996, p. 42). 180 He claims earlier in the text, however, that there has always been a tacit assumption that narrative need not be explicitly taught, that competence in this form is picked up fiom hanging around the world. He disputes this, citing cultural differences for valuing narrative more or less and consequently helping children with it to varying degrees. Despite the lack of attention to narrative construction, scholars don’t dispute the way that narrative helps to locate a learner and arm them in methods to organize their world (Riessman, 1993) However, the study of narrative in elementary school especially, is ofien neglected in favor of the study of reading—a needless dichotomy that only tends toward the idea that a student is not an author in the way a professional story-writer is an author. This assumption is typified in many ways. For one, unless it is told to a teacher and listened to for deliberate reasons, oral narratives are often not assessed. However, if we listen to children on a playground or getting ready for lunch we hear the most amazing stories, evidence that they do have control over a genre and that they improve as they practice. Because these aren’t produced as permanent texts we often disregard them as play or worse keep children away from the opportunity to express this crucial form of literacy. In a published version of the pilot unit one TLC teacher wrote in response to her “problem of practice” she lists “oral language” as one of the “problems” and explicates her solution, “ foster talking/listening to learn in the centers; write for audiences; integrate oral language and writing.” (Hasty, Beasley & Florio-Ruane, 1997). These are skills that were planned and became practice both in the classroom and as teacher learning in the network. So contrary to the expectations of narrative (especially oral narrative) as a marginalized part of the serious literacy curriculum, TLC teachers found important and integral places to 181 practice the skills of oral narrative in the service of building various literacy, analytic, and cognitive skills. Teachers, also, learn through the service of narrative. In the field of education, narrative, particularly personal narrative or autobiography, have been touted for all that it can do for teachers in encouraging them to construct knowledge, in helping them in curriculum theorization and planning, and teaching learning , in helping them explore constructions of self and other. . . (McVee, 1999, p. 17) Both groups learned from narrative and through narrative as a way to construct knowledge, practice story-structure, and become authors and audience. Though stories are often begrudged as soft ways of making arguments, the teachers and students who were influenced by the TLC network sought stories as powerful interventions into understanding. In fact, their own understandings of texts and of their own experiences gathered substance as they expressed them as authors for their audiences. Groups Alike and 13pm Both the curricular framework for student learning and the context for teacher learning valued the interaction of heterogeneous and homogeneous groups. In both places, there was a deliberate and sustained attempt to offer Ieamers both kinds of contexts to practice growing understandings. For the teachers, they were allowed the opportunity to mix with other teachers whose backgrounds, present teaching circumstances and ideologies might be quite different from their own. This allowed the narratives of teaching to fall on the ears of a diverse audience, opening up questions and possibilities that might have remained unstated if they had been voiced in a single school 182 building. It was also true, however, that teachers from similar contexts or the same building worked on particular issues best with one another. In their book chapter “The Essentials of Effective Professional Development,” Hawley and Valli argue: Professional development should be primarily school based and integral to school operations. This does not mean denying teachers access to out-of-school leaning experiences through professional associations or networks, graduate study, or teacher centers. However, opportunities to learn in powerful ways are most often connected with the recognition of and solution to authentic and immediate problems (1999, p. 140). I found that the teachers learned powerful, integrated lessons in professionalism through collaboration and work in a diverse community of practice. The fact that much of the work of this network was not building-based was what assisted it in becoming a dynamic community of practice where teachers established protocols that were supportive of one another without problem-solving for one another. This eliminated some of the traditional problems of teacher collaboratives where the practice of “bonding by bitching” prevails. Because teachers had to learn about one another’s contexts, they became rapt audiences for the stories each told. Had they come from the same buildings, the stories may have been all too familiar and thus, the influence of telling them and gaining new insights from the audience interaction would have been largely changed. Teachers fiom the inner city schools would have never seen the oral language proficiency of their students as a component of literacy in the ways they ultimately came to if not for the reflection of the teachers from other contexts. Similarly, extant practice from groups who had worked 183 together before would have remained if not for the infusion of new perspectives. Lave and Wenger (1991) argue that it is only in the relationship of apprentices to master artisans that practice gets transformed through time. Similarly, each person in the TLC group by virtue of their context was alternately an apprentice of other’s work and a master of their own. Because of this relationship, change might occur in many venues. Students in TLC classroom are also placed in heterogeneous groups. McMahon (1997) offers three important reasons for the essential role of mixed-ability student groupings. First, factors other than reading ability influence the way that children act in groups. Second, mixed-ability students often bring a greater diversity of responses and thus assist in problematizing interpretations that students might come to. This problematization is thought to be a key component to increasing comprehension monitoring processes for readers. Finally, students who have poor reading skills aren’t necessarily poor at interpretation of stories. They may have rich oral language proficiency that make them assets to groupings (pp. 91-92). Children in these classrooms are expected to read books that may be a bit too difficult with the assistance of more time, instructional support, or a similar scaffold. In this, all children can share the same reading experience. Just as it is important for teachers to test out their ideas on a group of unlike listeners, it is crucial for students to have the opportunity to interact in academic ways with other students who have different kinds of academic skills. Like the teachers who are best left to solve some problems with teachers from similar contexts, children in TLC classrooms worked in homogeneous groupings during sessions of guided-reading. In these sessions, teachers most often worked at skill 184 w«»—o~—¢M. :- building which is very level dependent. The books selected in this context would be geared to a particular competency level and thus, mixing groups would be cumbersome. Learning_as Process Teachers and students learned that gaining skill in anything can be a series of hypotheses that may or may not yield a satisfactory answer. It is in the process of discussion and interaction with ideas that meanings emerge. Paulo Freire (1970) defines this kind of “problem-posing education” as affirming Men as beings in the process of becoming—as unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. Indeed, in contrast to other animals who are unfinished, but not historical, men know themselves to be unfinished; they are aware of their incompletion. In this incompletion and this awareness lie the very roots of education as an exclusively human manifestation. The unfinished character of men and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education is an ongoing activity ( p.221). Teaching is ongoing and imperfect and it is up to teachers to embrace rather than shirk away from that reality. Similarly, reading, writing, listening and speaking are all processes that lead to greater understandings but aren’t ends in themselves. Thus, the paradigm of reading a story and taking a unit comprehension test flies in the face of what we know about how readers make sense of texts in ongoing relationships with other texts, other people and their own ideas. 185 Theoretical Positioning of Convergent Learning When teachers work simultaneously in sites for professional development and in classrooms, the forms of instruction and leaming in each place can inform the other. In this, the practice of teaching kids can also be a place to learn about ways to learn for adults. In the teachers’ classrooms, the narrative, sociocultural, collaborative learning might be incorporated into an ideology that allows for advanced adult learning to arise and flourish. It isn’t important to recognize which idea came first, the form for adults or the form for children. It is of far greater moment that we support the dialectic that they create among spaces. In fact, if we return now to Spiro et al (1995) we see that it is in the positioning and layering of one learning experience on the other that advanced learning in ill-structured domains like a classroom or a professional network occur. Expanding the Spaces and Contexts for Professional Development Based on these three key linkages, I believe that I can argue for a renewed attention to the pedagogy of professional development because of their intricate connection to the pedagogy of classroom practice. Ball and Cohen (1999) argue that teacher learning must go on both “in” and “from” practice. Little (1999) discusses the value of “noninstructional teacher time.” Both understand the necessity for the practice of teaching to be considered as something more than the interaction of student and teacher. When teachers learn “in” practice, then, they learn from an interaction of their own learning and their students behavior which may or may not manifest itself during a classroom day. The parameters of teacher space must expand to include the kinds of Opportunities that the TLC teachers had, the opportunities to leave their classrooms and buildings and work among other educators who can assist in bringing new insights to old 186 problems. “As in medicine and law, to be ‘in’ practice is not necessarily to be in an operating room or a courtroom. One is ‘in’ a realm of legal practice when one drafts or comments on appellate briefs . . .” (Ball and Cohen, 1999, p. 13). Expanding the notion of teacher’s work space would open up a new positioning of professional development, and consequently, ideally, teacher learning. When we allow teachers the time away from classrooms and buildings to learn they are not leaving their practice behind. Parents who roll their eyes when told that the child has a substitute because the teacher had a meeting must understand that teacher practice is their learning, that these “meetings” may be trivial, but they also may be the crucial ingredient to maintaining skill and intellectual sharpness among teachers. We don’t begrudge lawyers the time it takes to prepare for court (in fact we pay them by the hour for it). Teacher learning is preparation for teaching if it is done with forms that are proven effective in increasing competency “in” and “for” practice. Heretofore the pedagogy of professional development has not acknowledged the possibility that its forms and filnctions are powerful interventions in their own right. Instead, the conventional view is that in-service education is aimed at transmission of content, usually in an expert/novice activity of short duration. Finding that over time this diverse network constructed a powerful pedagogy transcending differences of local context and influenced teacher learning as well as student learning suggests that the social organization of professional development is as important as its content. Moher Learning Networks A teacher learning network is one way to assist teachers in the kinds of learning that scholars support for children, and thus, I argue, will accelerate the ability of teachers 187 to teach with these tools. Research on teacher learning networks highlights their “strong contextual nature, their infinite variety of purpose and character, and their similar organizational tensions” (Lieberman & Grolnick, 1996, p. 43). They also are noted for: the ways in which they bring people together and organize their work: agendas that are more often challenging than prescriptive; learning that is more indirect than direct; formats for work more collaborative than individualistic; attempts at change more integrated than fi'agmented; approaches to leadership more facilitative than directive; thinking that is more multiperspective than uniperspective; valuing both context- specific knowledge and generalized knowledge; and structurally and organizationally more movement-like than organization-like. (44) Lieberman & Grolnick’s study of sixteen teacher networks with a variety of purposes, demographics, funding structures, and longevity suggests that while there is no explicit model for the way that networks are structured or operated, there is a family resemblance among them in their purposes, their goals, and perhaps most importantly to this discussion, their structures. Teacher Learning Networks take as their core the idea that teachers have important agendas of their own, and that bringing those agendas into a public space will help teachers work on managing their work. Many of these networks—the TLC as one-- have forged a purpose unprompted by organizers, disciplinary agendas, or research bases. They have thus shown themselves as collectives that are organized around their own purposes. Teacher networks are constructivist in nature and flexible in design. They allow the potential for ideas meshing and colliding with other ideas. 188 Smylie’s (1994) study of Teachers’ views of the effectiveness of professional development activities didn’t list network collaboratives as one of the choices. However, it is notable that of the 14 potential sources, with the exception of those housed in colleges (undergraduate education courses, undergraduate courses in fields of specialization, graduate college courses in education graduate coursed in subject matter areas) and those in direct contact with administrators ( consultation with building-level administrators and formal evaluation of performance) all could be considered as part of the activities of this network. For example, teachers did read and study professional journals, they used their direct experience as teachers to facilitate discussion, they consulted with subject-matter specialists and colleagues from other buildings. All of these are considered, in Smylie’s research, and in the minds of many practioners and teacher educators to be separate activities. The TLC was able to collapse the work of teaching in ways that allowed multiple components to converge and be worked on at once. In this, networks have the potential to cross purposes and accelerate the achievement of teacher Ieamers as they work on their craft. Looking at Classroom Behavior When we insist, as a field, that teacher professional development be assessed based upon its influence on classroom practice, we only ask that the manifestation of teacher learning be evidenced by their work with youngsters. However, it is incumbent upon us to give teachers the time and space to incorporate professional development experiences with classroom work. In this, immediate evaluation of an influence is likely to offer misleading views of impact. Huberrnan (1995) discusses career stages in the lives of teachers that are more or less hostile or ripe for innovation and deep change. He 189 argues that we must look for growth and change over a long period before making judgments about it. Similarly, long periods of same practice may be the prelude to a cognitive burst of new understandings. We must be patient with teachers and with those who research teaching with the knowledge that small, incremental changes may add up to large scale reform. On the other hand, hibernation of innovation may just be a rest before a period of dramatic and significant change. If we trust that teachers are participating in experiences that value their construction of their own learning in the company of other concerned Ieamers, we can be patient for the evaluation phase. In the same way, a single learning experience may be seen less or more over a given time period. It is in the altering of teaching perspectives and stances, not necessarily quantifiable skills that true learning can be seen. Call for Research The next step is to look for greater achievement from students as a direct result of teacher learning. I caution that, like over-testing of students, over-testing of teachers even via their students responses to their interventions can create more problems than it solves. However, a layered look at the parallel ways that teachers and students gain understandings of complex issues like literacy would tell a lot. In the ways that I have tried to examine classroom practice as evidence of teacher disposition, I would urge researchers to look at student artifacts of and attitudes toward literacy as a way to gauge their growing productive complications of reading and writing as ongoing processes. A companion study would examine the way that teachers position literacy instruction as they engage in new professional development experiences. Work in subject matter understandings (see Duckworth, 1996; Fennema et al, 1992 ; Florio-Ruane, 1994; 190 Wineburg & Grossman, 1998, for some examples) are good places to begin the process of examining the relationships between the manners in which the professional development proceeds and the manners in which teacher classroom behavior is articulated by the teacher, the students, researchers, or administrators. 191 APPENDICES 192 8:8 mm a“, z , . {aw-5g: . (tiff! . ' v‘ m” I. {e n 21.1% 3555;." rm..- ..s¢> .x' .. warm" av 32'... .. ”455: . . .. . . . as .fl. 5. E. . 5...... Van: .. n w. ”fixer?“ .e”. 3n. .. .5... 5.2.»... ”w..." he... N .. .x. a». (”fie ” . .. summing...” ”it”... 5 fluff/(.75. Z If. .. 1..” '-:-;- .>:s§ .w ”a . fl... m fggmmms’g' ;, 5,» ,s .. ,. 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L”. ...... «$4.5: macafiogm mo mcocmooq 3858:— 194 In #1 : TLC Meet A endix C .3395 €_=ao€m Aux... ”any... ...... gum . ..flnnmnnu wavinnmamm . ”44m..”””””m”” ..H ... ...444”.H.”..”-” . ....NHVIiWMWWHIJ I... ... ... 22......) .n. .... u ....mmu .4..”~. ”44444.”..444..” JV}: . . . ...“ArazelrhIIhIIINIV ... .22.. 5.55.5.5}: . ....”44.””.”””” .. 55"..th aha... ... I 2.5:le (.... .A ..i ..m4um... .. Y CS = CIERA Staff Inner City Teacher IT= Researcher Rural Teacher Suburban Teacher R = RT ST UP Professor Urban Teacher 1ver51ty = Un' UT: 195 Appendix D: Standards Survey TLC Teachers: Few studies have examined the relationship between the development of student literacy and teacher learning. An important part of the research in the TLC is that link. Just as members have worked hard to understand the effects that curricular innovations have on students, we would also benefit from studying how these changes in practice affect teachers. As a preliminary step toward this, I have examined a set of standards documents written by various national and state-wide organizations. Though these organizations have attempted to distill down to a list the behaviors they believe define good teaching, it is clear that none of these lists explain firlly what good teaching is. This is where the voice of teachers who are presently working in the classroom is crucial. As part of the work on my dissertation, I would like to develop a list of standards for practice that would be meaningful in the classroom. I hope you will agree to share your voice in the following ways: 1. Read the following list of standards that I have drawn from a variety of sources. 2. Note if you agree a particular standard should be included on a “short list” of indicators of teaching competencies. 3. Note if you believe a particular standard should be removed from the list 4. Add any standards that don’t appear here yet are crucial to your practice (be sure that the total number of standards does not exceed 10). 5. Once you have your new list, rank order the standards from most important (1) to least important (10). l. I understand subject matter: Knowledge of a subject includes both familiarity with basic facts and information as well as an understanding of the ways of thinking and doing within the discipline. 2. I know students: Knowledge of students includes understanding how different people may develop and learn. This also includes the way students act individually and the effects of groups on individual learning and behavior. 3. I am skilled in curriculum planning and design. Teachers can identify large curricular goals and design units to support those goals in coherent 196 fashion. 4. I am comfortable with the psychology of reading and reading development. Teachers know the characteristics of good and poor readers as wellas how reading, writing, and spelling develop. 5. I have studied the language structure of English. This includes phonology, phonetics. morphology. semantics, orthography and syntax. 6. I can work with others to support students. I am comfortable asking colleagues and administrators for support and in letting parents know when their insights or expertise are needed. 7. I am reflective about my practice. When I attempt innovations or use tried and true methods I have a decision-making system for analyzing what actually happened in the classroom. 8. I know how to use and interpret various assessment measures. These might include performance and other authentic assessments as well as standardized instruments. 197 Appendix E : Literacy Log Daily Log of Literacy Activities Teacher’s Name: Date: Time Teacher Student Reading Spelling Testing Listening/ Other Devoted read- Ind. Groups Instruct. speaking Literacy aloud ' ' ' 8:00 8:15 8:30 8:45 9:00 9:15 9:30 9:45 10:00 10:15 10:30 10:45 11:00 11:15 11:30 11:45 12:00 12:15 12:30 198 Appendix F: Transcript of Standards Discussion Marta: I am thinking we should go with reflection Lena: I just don’t think reflection can do that much. You can’t see it or touch it. How do we even know that we do it? Joelle: We know because it makes what we do into teaching rather than sticking stuff in front of them and hoping they will learn, maybe. Marta: To me it is a constant. And I bet it is for you too. Maybe you are just thinking about it as separate from what you do Joelle: I think that all these others are routes from reflection, or reflection is a route to all these other things that make teaching rigorous, without reflection you may or may not ever do them well. Like “I know students” how do you know that unless you can use reflective thinking in action to decide if your choices are the appropriate choices. Marta: That’s it. Lena: But how would we represent it? Again, it is an energy maybe but it isn’t really a skill. Can it be taught? (Undecipherable talk) Lena: Maybe we could use an example rather than trying to draw it. M aybe One of us could give our story starter they called it fi'om a reflection that was helpful 199 ppendix G Ms Laetner s Room GHVOEI'dIA (DIV/080 EI’IHCIHHDS 200 OOI‘ 201 Appendix I Control Classroom C-BOARD computers 202 Appendix J: Control Classroom C-BOARD B-BOARD T’s Stool computers “1% I ’ ’ 9 (57’ in" If door 203 Appendix K: List of Children’s Literature Cited Altman, L]. (1993) Amelia’s Road New York: Lee and Low DePaolo, T.(1993) The Legend of the Persian Carpet. New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons Greenstein, E. (1997) Mattie’s Hats Won’t Wear That. Howard, E.F (1991) Aunt Flossie’s H2; New York: Clarion Books Polacco, P. (1992) Chicken Sunday New York: Philomel Books Williams, VB. (1985) A Chair for My Mother New York: Harpercollins Zindel, P. 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