LEARNING TO TEACH AS ACCULTURATION: A CASE STUDY OF CONSTRUCTING A PROFESSIONAL TEACHING CULTURE OF LEARNERCENTERED PEDAGOGY By Gerardo Joel Aponte Martínez A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education – Doctor of Philosophy 2017 ABSTRACT LEARNING TO TEACH AS ACCULTURATION: A CASE STUDY OF CONSTRUCTING A PROFESSIONAL TEACHING CULTURE OF LEARNERCENTERED PEDAGOGY By Gerardo Joel Aponte Martínez This study explores how a group of Dominican teachers build a professional teaching culture of learner-centered pedagogies by working with a U.S.-Dominican education non-profit organization, CREAR. First, this study uncovers the CREAR cultural logics—the knowledge and know how’s characteristic of teaching—that shape CREAR teaching to define learner-centered pedagogies. Second, the study considers how the Dominican teachers’ cultural logics about teaching interact in the process of learning to teach learner-centered pedagogies within CREAR, especially how their experiences prior to CREAR mediate how they make sense of, construct, and accept CREAR’s professional teaching culture. Finally, this study considers how CREAR’s pedagogies for learning to teach rely on both cognitively-rich and practice-based opportunities to learn, which embed teachers in the cultural logics advocated by CREAR. CREAR provides a space for sustained follow up through modeling, mentoring, and monitoring and evaluation. Through these, the teachers in CREAR go through a process of acculturation in their professional development over time, building important relationships that influence the process of learning to teach. This study ends with considerations of implications and recommendations for professional development practitioners and scholars regarding the acculturation process in learning to teach. Keywords: cultural logics about teaching, professional teaching culture, teacher learning Copyright by GERARDO JOEL APONTE MARTÍNEZ 2017 Le dedico esta disertación a las educadoras y educadores del DREAM Project. Espero que este estudio comparta con fidelidad el empeño con el cual día a día laboran por dar una buena educación a las niñas y niños de la República Dominicana y así sirva de inspiración a educadoras y educadores del mundo. La familia que han formado, con sus altas y sus bajas, realmente nos enseña a todas y todos que el corazón de la enseñanza es la pasión por nuestras niñas y niños. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For many, the road to a dissertation is a long and lonely one. While my road has certainly been long, I am honored that I was never alone. I owe an invaluable debt of gratitude to an array of amazing individuals who advised me, inspired me, supported me, and cheered me on over the past years. A la gente linda del Dominican Republic Education And Mentoring Project: Me han enseñado tantísimo sobre lo que significa ser un maestro excelente. Rebeca, Ive, Yessica, Vanessa, Joelki, Molly, ustedes me inspiran con su dedicación y compormiso a la enseñanza, a todos las niñas y niños que con tanta dedicación y esmero enseñan. Gracias por darme la bienvenida a su comunidad y hacerme parte de la familia de DREAM. To my incredible advisor, Dr. Kyle Greenwalt, and my amazing dissertation director, Dr. Lynn Paine. Thank you both for supporting me to explore my ideas, no matter how overcommitted I was, but most importantly, thank you for believing in me every step of the way, especially when I didn´t believe in myself. To my wonderful faculty mentors and committee members, Dr. Sandra Crespo, Dr. Bethany Wilinski, Dr. Anne-Lise Halvorsen, Dr. Maribel Santiago, Dr. Anthony Pellegrino, thank you for taking chances and venturing into new scholarly ventures with me. To the best writing group a young scholar could ask for, Iwan Syarhil, Yu-Han Hung, Yunjeong Choi, and Elise Dixon, you have been an inspiration and I literally would not have written much without you. v To my incredibly supportive friends: Natasha Perez, Amal Ibourk, Jose Manuel Martinez, Rev. Dr. Kit Carlson, Amy Maffeo, but especially to Isabella Tirtowalujo and Abraham Ceballos, words cannot express how much your love and care have helped me get to this point. To my family, but especially my dear sister Jerica and my beloved godfather Howie, I am so grateful to you for picking up the slack when I have had to burn the midnight oil and for being there when I needed a listening ear. To my mother Adelina, the first ethnographer in my life, with my father Jerry, my first educators. Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee, Who from the heavens the streams of His mercy doth send thee. Ponder anew What the Almighty can do, Who with His love doth befriend thee. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1 Factors in Teachers’ Learning to Teach ................................................................... 1 A Problem of Teacher Learning and Culture ........................................................................ 3 Introducing CREAR ............................................................................................................. 10 Research Questions ........................................................................................................... 16 Organization of the Dissertation ........................................................................................ 17 Chapter 2 Learning to Teach as Situated Cultural Practice ...................................................... 19 Learning to Teach as Contextual ........................................................................................ 20 Competing Teaching Knowledges and the Affordances of Space ........................................ 23 Knowledge for Teaching as Cultural Knowledge ................................................................. 28 Learner-Centered Pedagogy: An Example of Culturally-Constructed Pedagogy .................. 33 Learning to Teach As Acculturation .................................................................................... 36 Conceptualizing This Study ................................................................................................ 38 Chapter 3 Investigating a Professional Teaching Culture ........................................................ 40 Introducing CREAR Teachers .............................................................................................. 40 Researcher Positionality: The Participant-Observer ........................................................... 46 Reflections on Methodological Decisions and Data Analysis .............................................. 52 Data Collection Methods and Sources ................................................................................ 54 Interviews ...................................................................................................................... 55 Field Observations ......................................................................................................... 59 Participant-Observer ...................................................................................................... 61 Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 61 Transcription and Translation: The Role of Spanish ............................................................ 62 Chapter 4 The Role of the Teacher in the CREAR Professional Teaching Culture ..................... 64 Learner-Centered Pedagogies in CREAR ............................................................................. 65 Role of the Teacher ............................................................................................................ 69 Transfer of Responsibility in Teaching and Learning ....................................................... 70 Teachers Guiding Students ............................................................................................. 76 Assessment-Driven Instruction ...................................................................................... 83 Well-Crafted Planning ........................................................................................................ 87 Teachers Must Be Well-Planned ..................................................................................... 88 vii Curriculum As a Double-Edged Sword ............................................................................ 96 Planning Materials ....................................................................................................... 104 The Cultural Logics about Teaching in CREAR ................................................................... 106 Chapter 5 Exploring Teachers’ Various Cultural Logics about Teaching ................................. 109 Lideily .............................................................................................................................. 110 Becoming a Teacher through Motherhood ................................................................... 111 CREAR Teaching as Creative, Interesting and Fun ......................................................... 119 Yessica ............................................................................................................................. 121 Philosophy of Teachers ................................................................................................ 122 Taking in CREAR’s Classroom Management .................................................................. 126 Lizbeth ............................................................................................................................. 130 Teacher’s Work as Missional ........................................................................................ 131 Patience, Teaching, and Making Sense of CREAR Teaching ........................................... 138 Making Sense of Teachers Negotiation of Cultural Logics ................................................. 140 Chapter 6 Learning to Teach as Acculturation ...................................................................... 143 Situated Teacher Learning: Re-visiting the Problem of Learning to Teach ......................... 144 Acculturation through Pedagogies of Learning to Teach ................................................... 148 Cognitive-Based Opportunities .................................................................................... 149 Practice-Based Opportunities ....................................................................................... 152 Acculturation through Identity Building and Traditions .................................................... 156 Like a Family ................................................................................................................ 157 Roles and Contributions ............................................................................................... 159 CREAR Traditions ......................................................................................................... 160 Time and The Process of Acculturation ............................................................................ 164 Chapter 7 Implications and Recommendations .................................................................... 168 Letter to Jeanne ............................................................................................................... 170 Letter to Dr. Tobin ........................................................................................................... 173 APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................ 175 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................ 184 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Participating teachers’ backgrounds and CREAR experiences ....................................... 44 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Teacher Learning Continuum ........................................................................................ 14 Figure 2: Possible teaching cultures when comparing France and the United States (AndersonLevitt, 2002, p. 35) ....................................................................................................................... 30 Figure 3: Conceptual Framework for the study ........................................................................... 39 Figure 4: Los Terremotos teaching team. Summer 2016 ............................................................ 42 Figure 5: Students from the CREAR School site, which I lead, walking along the Lares Beach at the conclusion of the community parade. Summer 2016 ......................................................... 162 x Chapter 1 Factors in Teachers’ Learning to Teach “They’re not learning the strategies! They go right back to teaching the way they always have. That’s why I’m going to start working with pre-service teachers because they’re more new, more willing to learn.” Even after three years, I still remember hearing this statement from Jeanne, the Academic Director at CREAR1 while we sat in the air conditioned central office in preparation for the summer academic program. Jeanne was sharing background information about the organization, telling me that one of her goals in CREAR had been to support local teachers and improve the quality of their teaching by relying on learner-centered pedagogies. She shared stories of how she had conducted professional development with local public-school teachers, including spending time modeling learner-centered instructional strategies in teachers’ classrooms and giving short workshops on specific strategies that teachers could use. Additionally, CREAR invited local public-school teachers to work with U.S. teachers during the summer, the two-fold goal of students having both local and international teachers and providing the Dominican teachers with an opportunity to learn from a U.S. teacher. However, in 2014 Jeanne reflected that these programs were not working, despite seeming to adhere to best practices in teacher learning. The teachers still returned to the strategies they knew best. Her solution, at the time, was to focus her efforts on university students in teacher preparation by developing an internship program that provided hands-on learning supported by professional development workshops. 1 Individuals’ names, the organization being studied, and all sub-national geographic locations have been assigned pseudonyms. Participants chose names by which to be referenced. 1 As I listened to her talk about why she thought the programs were unsuccessful, in my head I kept thinking about the clash of cultural differences. What if the public-school teachers did not implement learner-centered strategies because these strategies did not fit their cultural logics about teaching? It seemed obvious to me that given CREAR’s “U.S. culture,” something in teacher development was being “lost in translation” for the Dominican teachers. I wondered about the effectiveness of U.S. teachers coming to the Dominican Republic for five weeks and, in addition to co-teaching lessons, also mentoring Dominican teachers. Jeanne and I spoke often about our observations of a mismatch between the model for learner-centered pedagogy taught and expected by CREAR in its classrooms and what Dominican teachers indicated that they practiced in their schools (or what Jeanne observed during her visits to public schools). When I say that it seemed obvious to me that there were cultural differences, I do not intend to take this difference at a surface level – one set of people from one country and another set of people from a different country. Looking at cultural differences is ingrained in my lived experiences. I have experienced the deep-rootedness of cultural logics, the “beliefs, goals, and concerns about education characteristic of a culture” (Tobin et al, 2009, p. 9-10) on teaching and learning because I have lived my life as a cultural wanderer (and wonderer), and my own schooling and education experiences have been solidly multi-cultural. I went to elementary school in Puerto Rico, where I was born, I went to middle school in Belize, and I went to high school in Peru and Florida. My college education is from Florida, and I was a middle school social studies teacher in Central Florida, where a mix of ethnic, national, and linguistic cultures are central to day-to-day life. I recognize the impact of culture on schooling 2 because I have lived it. Therefore, seeking a better understanding of how culture impacts teachers’ learning to teach has been a personal process of becoming a teacher educator. In the spirit of this cultural wandering and wondering in teaching and learning, I embarked in this dissertation to explore how culture played a role in the learning to teach in CREAR. This chapter provides a brief overview of the literature on learning to teach that helps us better situate the problem the dissertation addresses, looking at learning to teach as a process of acculturation. The chapter continues by introducing CREAR as an organization and how its professional development program can be understood in light of the literature on learning to teach. I also briefly introduce my own positionality in the organization and the study, which I later expand in Chapter 3. These sections build the context for the research questions, which I introduce in the third section of this chapter. Finally, I provide a brief overview for the chapters that follow. A Problem of Teacher Learning and Culture Jeanne’s statement has stayed with me since 2014. She was frustrated by why teachers “did not learn” the strategies, which she hypothesized as related to when teachers learn: the inservice teachers are set in their ways and would not accept new ways, while the pre-service teachers would be more willing. In contrast, I argue that it important to bring attention to what teachers learn, which as we shall see in this study, is intimately linked to how and where teachers learn. In this study, I present how a cultural lens helps us better investigate what teachers are learning because it helps us look at teaching (and teacher learning) practices from a more complex perspective. A cultural lens allows us to see pedagogical decision making as more than technical steps of enactment; a cultural lens sheds light on the beliefs and 3 experiences that inform such steps of enactment. Additionally, examining the process of learning to teach through a cultural lens brings to the surface tacit practices that impact teacher learning. As such, this study looks at the cultural influence on teachers’ rationales for their practice and their learning to teach, as well as the range of responsibilities, expectations, and professional development through which the organization defines what teaching should be. In this process, I expand the definitions of what it means for teachers to “learn” or “not learn” beyond conventional measures of teachers replicating certain pedagogical practices with accuracy and the formal settings of teacher learning beyond professional development workshops, teacher preparation courses, and mentoring. Instead, I look at learning to teach as it happens in the day-to-day of being in CREAR, the practices that happen inside and outside the classroom, the justifications that come from things learned in workshops and those that come from standing beliefs and experiences explained in terms of something being done “because you know how it is here.” This dissertation, therefore, attempts to respond to the problem of teacher learning by looking at the process of learning to teach through the lens of culture. I examine how learning to teach involves a process of acculturation, “the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures” (Sam & Berry, 2010). This study specifically explores how being a CREAR teacher, with its corresponding expectations and responsibilities, exposed the teachers to a new culture and led them to change and grow in their attitudes, beliefs, and practices, in ways that represent a shift in their teaching culture. 4 To better understand the opportunities to learn that CREAR offers teachers, I review how the question “How do teachers learn?” has been answered.2 Throughout the 20th century, educators in the United States have answered this question with teacher preparation programs, first in normal schools focused on preparing teachers and later with education schools within comprehensive universities. Learning in teacher preparation programs was complemented with professional development workshops and trainings following education reforms that responded to various socio-political movements, such as those responding to the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik or the release of the report A Nation at Risk. However, educational researchers have attested to the failures of mass education reform movements not dissimilar to Jeanne’s frustration: experienced teachers remain consistent in their teaching methods and their pedagogies are hard to change (Tyack & Cuban, 1997). However, in-service teachers are not the only ones who resist pedagogies learned in professional development. One critique of the model of teacher learning in teacher training institutions in the United States is the gap between theory and practice, between what is taught in the university classroom and what is practiced in the field. This gap is commonly discussed in schools, especially as student teachers and beginning teachers interact with veteran teachers. Teacher education graduates, school administrators, parents, and politicians complain about the irrelevance of the programs due to the theory-into-practice method of teacher education (Korthagen, Loughran, & Russell, 2006; Levine, 2006). This approach 2 I reference the development of teacher education in the United States because CREAR teacher educators were educated in the United States and its policies are developed primarily based on research and policies in the U.S. Based on my work with the CREAR professional development, Dominican education policies play a minor role, which I explore later in the dissertation. 5 emphasizes the dissemination of knowledge on the foundations of education, educational psychology, and sociology through lecture, leaving it up to the pre-service teacher to make sense of this on their own or in the field experiences (Korthagen et al., 2006). As a result of this approach, beginning teachers face “reality shock” when being in charge of the classroom for the first time along with a “washing out” of insights gained during preparation; these phenomena raise questions about what these teachers actually learned in the preparation courses (Korthagen et al., 2006, p. 1021). As these pre-service teachers enter the classroom and address the challenges of classroom teaching, they experience severe problems like management and day-to-day lesson planning; they struggle with stress, loneliness, isolation, disillusionment, and fatigue, leading to an enormous learning curve (Van Hover & Yeager, 2007, p. 672). Differences in values, identities, and tools in the university and those in the school setting make it difficult for beginning teachers to transport theories and practices they encounter in the university into the school setting (Anagnostopoulos, Smith, & Basmadjian, 2007). Feiman-Nemser (2012) terms this difference in experience as the “two-worlds pitfall,” arguing that the differences between the university and school learning experiences cannot be left to the individual pre-service teacher to mediate (p. 177). How methods courses are taught, disconnected from experiences in the field, is a premier critique of teacher education. Research calls for increasing and improving the time pre-service teachers spend in field-based or clinical environments (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010; Sleeter, 2001), emphasizing the importance of such environments in transitioning teacher preparation from knowledge-based curriculum to one organized around learning core practices of teachers (Ball & Forzani, 2009; Sharon Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009). 6 Given these concerns for in-service and pre-service teacher learning, I think we should draw attention towards what it means for teachers to learn. Research and experience tell us that teachers do not learn to teach simply by attending workshops or courses; instead, educational researchers point to a range of factors influencing our “learning” to teach. The significant contributions of Lortie’s (1975) study of the socialization of teachers helped frame teacher learning prior to formal teacher preparation. Considering the apprenticeship of observation, those experiences as students that shape our vision of what teaching is, challenged the notion that teacher learning began in formal teacher preparation institutions. Dewey (1956) similarly warned against limiting considerations to formal preparation, arguing “Only by extracting the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future” (p. 49). In addition to the role of experience and socialization in teachers’ learning, other scholars have pointed to the role of personal experiences and histories (Connelly, Clandinin, & He, 1997; Holt-Reynolds, 1992), identity and dispositions (Agee, 2004; Gomez, Allen, & Black, 2007; Horn, Nolen, Ward, & Campbell, 2008), and beliefs (Bryan & Atwater, 2002; Fang, 1996; Nespor, 1987; Pajares, 1993) on teacher learning and teacher practice. This dissertation is situated in culture as one of the factors influencing teachers’ learning and practice. I rely on the work of Anderson-Levitt (2002) on teaching cultures to recognize the different bodies of knowledge about teaching that exist from which teachers and others make sense of what happens in schools. Further, I rely on Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa’s (2011) concept of cultural logics about teaching as a term to refer to the beliefs, goals, and concerns about education that lie beneath the surface of teachers’ work. There are two ways in which I 7 employ references to culture in this study: group belonging, as well as institutional identity and belonging. The most obvious use of culture related to a dissertation involving people from different countries refers to the combination of ethnic, national, linguistic, and socio-economic groups to which individuals belong. Participants in this study hail from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the United States, and France, and they represent a mix of languages and socio-economic backgrounds. As such, belonging to these groups gives individuals certain language, practices, and notions about how teaching is and should be, based on shared experiences within national, ethnic, linguistic, or socio-cultural groups. These practices, notions, and languages would be the cultural logics about teaching from which the teachers make sense of their practice. I am deeply aware of the problematic nature of generalizing this view of culture and the demonyms Dominican and U.S. Not all Dominican teachers believe or act the same, just as not all people from the U.S. believe or act the same. Further, the practices advocated by CREAR staff do not necessarily represent the practices typical of U.S. classrooms. However, as I explain further in Chapter 2, there are shared ideas and values, including national debates that inform how things should be. For example, while certain forms of learner-centered pedagogies might not be typical of U.S. classrooms, the debate in the U.S. surrounding learner-centered pedagogies does influence Jeanne’s interpretation of these practices and hence how she projects them to the teachers in CREAR. By the same token, when I reference the Dominican teachers, I do not mean to tokenize the teachers in this study who work for CREAR as representatives of all Dominican teachers. I rely, instead, on the understandings, the logics, and the perceptions of “how things are” or “how things should be” that participants in the study reference in relation to the broad cultural categories (national, ethnic, linguistic, socio- 8 economic) to understand what these teachers share with teachers in their communities. The goal is to recognize the ways in which these shared understandings and practices influence the adaptation towards new or different practices. Additionally, I use culture to refer to the institutional character and identity that CREAR possesses, with distinct goals, practices, language and ideas that emerge from the different cultural views present in this multicultural microcosm. There are specific ways in which language is used in CREAR, certain behaviors that teachers should demonstrate towards students and towards other staff members, and certain values about teaching that are held dear in the organization – all characteristics of a teaching culture. Therefore, becoming a CREAR teacher is adopting and adapting values and beliefs as new practices are acquired. In this way, the dissertation shows how CREAR has a culture, a way of doing things that newcomers are taught to follow. This process of teaching others how to follow the CREAR way is what I term acculturation. In acculturating to CREAR’s institutional culture, Dominican teachers are also learning about how to teach. These characteristics of CREAR drew me towards this study of teacher learning and the impact of culture. In addition to its cultural characteristics, I was drawn to CREAR because of its innovative approach to teacher professional development. CREAR’s professional development responds to questions of teacher learning across a career span. As we shall see in this dissertation, the internship program that Jeanne created for CREAR provided intensive practice-based professional development over time—years—leading us to recognize that teacher learning happens throughout the lifespan. More importantly, teacher learning in CREAR programs must be understood as occurring through an unfolding process rather than discreet stages because 9 CREAR’s teacher learning programs occur over time and they are not strictly a teacher preparation institution, like a university, or just a school where teachers practice their craft. Introducing CREAR CREAR is a non-profit organization focused on providing education support and resources to children in low-income and at-risk communities in the Dominican Republic. CREAR was founded to address the lack of access to and the poor quality of education in much of the Dominican Republic. While CREAR serves communities around the country, most of its programs are based in Lares, a majority low-income community in the northern region of the Dominican Republic. Since its beginnings in the mid-1990s, CREAR has operated through the work of volunteers. Before I continue, I would like to explain my choice of “CREAR” as the pseudonym for this organization. This dissertation relies heavily on the impact of language as it shapes becoming. Crear is a Spanish word meaning “to create,” which I believe is an appropriate representation of what CREAR does. CREAR seeks to create learning opportunities in which children are active co-constructors of knowledge. CREAR seeks to help teachers create welcoming and positive spaces of learning for their students. CREAR also seeks to empower youth and young adults towards new economic opportunities by creating partnerships with local businesses and community engagement projects. Most importantly, CREAR seeks to create new types of teachers. Initially, most CREAR volunteers were individuals from the United States seeking to volunteer in a developing country. However, currently the majority of staff members in CREAR are Dominican, Haitian, Haitian-Dominican, or Dominican-American. Administrative staff is 10 mostly composed of volunteers living in the Dominican Republic, most of whom come from the United States. The CREAR Board of Directors is based in the United States, composed of Dominican, Dominican-American, and U.S. members. CREAR is funded through grant funding along with private donations from a wide range of organizations, including the U.S. and Dominican governments, U.S. and Dominican companies, private donors, and other educational foundations. CREAR is a key player in the field of education in the Dominican Republic, often sponsoring or co-sponsoring national education development programs awarded to the Dominican Republic. CREAR programs encompass four areas: early childhood education; primary education; holistic youth development; and arts, culture, and community enrichment. At the forefront of its mission, and central to teacher development work, CREAR offers academic enrichment through a Montessori school early childhood education program, an out-of-school program that runs through the academic year in partnership with local public schools, and a summer academic program. The CREAR classroom in each of these programs is made up of a team of two teachers working together to teach students math and literacy skills. Curriculum for math and literacy is geared towards remedial skills that help children who are below grade level in school, an unfortunately common occurrence in schools throughout the Dominican Republic. In CREAR, “student-centeredness”,3 which they defined as addressing the individual needs of students, serves as the guiding principle for teaching; as a result, having multiple teachers in the classroom and using learning stations that afford individualized attention to students are 3 While CREAR mission statement uses the term student-centered, I use learner-centered to fit the theoretical frameworks I rely on. 11 cornerstones of CREAR teaching. CREAR programs are offered at its school campus in Lares, at local public schools, and community centers. While most programs are held in the northern provinces of the Dominican Republic, some of its programs are in other parts of the country. All programs provide financial and material support to local communities, especially by hiring staff members from the local communities. These local staff members include pre-service and inservice teachers who join the organization in part to obtain professional development and teaching experience.4 Since CREAR views itself and its programs as introducing and supporting a distinct view of teaching and learning, teacher professional development is a necessary part of its larger efforts. Teacher professional development in CREAR occurs in a variety of programs.5 In response to her assessment of CREAR’s early efforts and challenges in changing teachers’ practices, Jeanne created a teacher internship program for university pre-service teachers. This internship program developed teaching teams by matching a more experienced lead teacher with an intern as an apprentice. Lead teachers initially were U.S. volunteers, college-educated with a range of disciplinary backgrounds, who worked with CREAR for a year. Interns were Dominican students of education enrolled in local university teacher preparation programs. In addition to designing team-teaching as apprenticeship, Jeanne has developed a range of workshops introducing general teaching methods—such as lesson planning and curriculum 4 More details of CREAR’s programs and staff are discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. 5 Throughout the dissertation, my use of “CREAR professional development” will refer to all opportunities to learn to teach that CREAR designs, including the teacher internship program, in-house professional development workshops, conferences, and all similar activities through which teachers formally learn more about teaching. 12 development—along with more specific topics that arose based on observations—such as strategies to increase student participation or literacy development in emerging readers. Additional professional development opportunities include conferences and seminars with U.S. academics who partner with CREAR to bring research-based practices to the teachers in shortterm PD. Over the past three years, interns who have completed the internship program have since become the lead teachers who then mentor new interns. Through this, the organization’s staff has become increasingly more local, which has shifted CREAR’s overall character and mission. I want to situate the type of professional development that CREAR carries out by referencing a continuum of experiences for teacher learning. Feiman-Nemser (2001) called for particular attention to the learning that takes place directly after formal teacher education, teachers’ induction into the profession. She argued that each stage in the continuum of learning to teach contained “central tasks,” or “a unique agenda shaped by the requirements of good teaching and by where teachers are in their professional development” (Feiman-Nemser, 2001, pp. 1014-1015). This notion of central tasks and how they fit the different “stages” of professional development helps us conceptualize teacher learning in a developmental manner rather than something that is achieved in a certain step (e.g. graduation, teacher certification, job placement, etc.). Feiman-Nemser argued that induction, the period in which new teachers begin their careers, involved a specific set of central tasks in learning to teach that facilitated the transition into teaching, serving to bridge experiences in teacher preparation to the realities of classroom teaching. 13 If we consider Lortie’s apprenticeship of observation and Feiman-Nemser’s induction, I believe we can conceptualize learning to teach within a continuum of experiences that build on personal histories, experiences, identities, and beliefs. We can visualize a continuum of teacher learning as follows: Personal histories, experiences, identities, beliefs Apprenticeship of observation Teacher Preparation Induction Continuing education Figure 1: Teacher Learning Continuum CREAR combines elements of the continuum of learning to teach associated with teacher preparation, induction, and continuing development; CREAR combines element of all without being fully any of them. In Chapter 2 I expand on this characteristic and make the case that CREAR functions as a third-space. In addition to a fascinating teacher learning program, the staff makeup, the funding and governance, and the programs implemented generated both inhouse (such as teacher professional development) and programs adopted/adapted from outside (such as a holistic youth development program through sport: Sports for Life) all give CREAR a complex cultural identity—neither fully foreign nor fully Dominican—making it an ideal case study of the impact of culture and cultural logics about teaching in the process of learning to teach. 14 Throughout this dissertation, I make references to my experiences not only as a researcher but also as a CREAR staff member.6 I began my work with CREAR in the summer of 2014 when I served as the Academic Director for CREAR’s summer academic programs. In my position as Summer Academic Director, which I have continued each year since, I was responsible for coordinating orientation for all summer program staff, creating and adapting curriculum resources to be used, supervising academic staff through observations and evaluations, and providing ongoing professional development for academic staff (including U.S.based teachers, Dominican teachers, and other U.S. and Dominican volunteers). While the principal goal of the summer academic program is to provide additional assistance to Dominican students in low-income, rural communities greatly struggling with literacy and math skills, the summer academic program is also meant as a form of professional development for Dominican teachers. The summer academic program brings together U.S.-based certified teachers and Dominican in-service and pre-service teachers to co-teach math and literacy classes. The goal of these co-teaching partnerships is to create professional development opportunities, especially on learner-centered pedagogies, for Dominican teachers Over the years, Jeanne and I have built a close working relationship, and we have engaged in many conversations to reflect on the impact of our work, the principles that guide what we do, and our positionalities in the roles we play inside the organization and in the communities at-large. These conversations have helped me engage in the work of CREAR not only in a pragmatic manner – preparing me to carry out my responsibilities – but also inviting me to have an 6 I explore with more depth the methodological implications of my positionality as a participantobserver in Chapter 3. 15 intellectual and reflective stance towards my work that has pushed me to raise important questions for this study. Research Questions As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, what Jeanne identified as the ineffectiveness of professional development with in-service teachers, is consistent with research on teachers’ knowledge and practice, such as Vavrus and Bartlett (2013) and Kennedy (2006). Using Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa’s (2011) cultural logics about teaching—the knowledge and know-hows about teaching that are shared with the group—we can consider the possibility that the teachers’ cultures play a role in the Dominican teachers’ response, or lack thereof, to the workshops. This study explores the interactions of cultural logics about teaching involved in CREAR’s programs for learning to teach. Inspired by Vavrus and Bartlett (2013), Tabulawa (2013), Anderson-Levitt (2002), and Tobin, Hsue, and Karasawa (2011), I believe that the cultural logics that inform teachers’ visions of teaching and learning heavily influence their understanding of CREAR’s professional development on learner-centered pedagogy, and in turn influence the type of teaching practices they enact in their classrooms. I also see that CREAR, as its own cultural space, attempts to bring teachers into new ways of thinking and acting and requires therefore, a kind of acculturation. Therefore, the research question of this study attempts to put these premises to the test: How do Dominican teachers’ cultural logics about teaching influence their implementation of learner-centered pedagogies? In this larger question lie the following components: 16 1. What cultural logics about teaching can be found in the CREAR professional teaching culture? 2. How do Dominican teachers navigate different cultural logics about teaching? 3. How does CREAR’s professional development program acculturate Dominican teachers into its professional teaching culture? By exploring these questions, this study seeks to present how CREAR builds an induction system through which teachers are acculturated into a professional teaching culture of learnercentered pedagogies. Organization of the Dissertation In this chapter, I provided an overview of my goals for the dissertation. I briefly discussed the problem statement that inspired the dissertation: a question of how culture impacts learning to teach and the concepts that guide this work. I also introduced CREAR’s programs, especially teacher professional development programs, and how I became involved with CREAR. In Chapter 2, I dive deeper into the conceptualization of learning to teach as a sociocultural process, exploring the concept of cultural logics about teaching and the formation of professional teaching cultures, using learner-centered pedagogies as a vehicle for understanding culturally-constructed pedagogies. In Chapter 3 I explain the methodological considerations related to uncovering cultural logics about teaching and the professional teaching culture that has emerged in CREAR. I also expand on the methods and analysis that I employed in this study and provide further context for this case study. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 explore the CREAR professional teaching culture and the cultural logics at play in the process of learning to teach, especially how learning to teach in CREAR involves entering a cultural process 17 of learning. We will see that CREAR is characterized by a specific professional teaching culture, one that is not quite Dominican, or U.S., or public school, or private school. Chapter 4 will explore aspects of the CREAR professional teaching culture by discovering teachers’ visions for the role of the teacher in learner-centered instruction. Chapter 5 will consider more deeply how the visions of teachers interact with other cultural logics about teaching that teachers possessed. In Chapter 6, I argue that learning to teach in CREAR involves a process of learning and taking on a culture through a range of CREAR pedagogies for learning to teach. Chapter 7 offers implications and recommendations for teacher education scholars and practitioners on how to take into account the formation of professional teaching cultures and the influence of cultural logics about teaching. 18 Chapter 2 Learning to Teach as Situated Cultural Practice In Chapter 1 I introduced CREAR’s professional development program as a response to the challenge of teacher resistance to learning new pedagogies. The introduction to CREAR’s teacher learning programs allowed us to see how its programs provide a range of experiences along the continuum of teacher learning, as Jeanne framed the problem and its response as a question of when teachers learn. In this chapter, I intend to re-frame the problem as what teachers learn, and by extension how and where, by showing the cultural processes of teaching. At the heart of this study is the idea that teaching is a cultural practice, and more importantly, learning to teach is also a cultural process. Due to its trans-cultural character, CREAR provides us a special glimpse into cultural change in the process of learning to teach. This chapter explores a series of concepts that shed light on the relationship between culture, teaching, and learning to teach that frame this study. First, learning, especially learning to teach, is contextual, relying on space and people as key components of what is learned. Second, multiple and competing knowledge for teaching has traditionally been separated by space, and the theory of third-space disrupts the privilege of certain forms of knowledge over others by literally or figuratively opening new spaces for learning to teach. Third, we see how knowledge for teaching is shared with people in groups to which we belong, our cultures. Cultural knowledge for teaching is not limited to one culture; instead, we rely on the cultural knowledge from the multiple groups to which we belong (e.g. national, professional, socioeconomic). Fourth, we will see how our cultural knowledge about teaching can be embodied in practice and often implicit. Finally, learning new teaching practices challenges our cultural 19 understandings and pushes us to confront our cultural ideas about teaching; this acculturation process has different impact on different people. Learning to Teach as Contextual Traditional notions of teaching and learning have structured both processes as discrete transactions in which knowledge is transmitted and acquired, from an individual who delivers to an individual who receives (Greeno, Collins, Resnick, & others, 1996). Situative learning theorists, when defining teaching and learning, challenge this perception of individual transactions devoid of context and intention. Rather, these theorists argue that physical and social contexts deeply impact learning, and by extension teaching (J. S. Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Greeno et al., 1996; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Putnam and Borko (2000) provided a review of research on situated learning as it applied to teacher learning. They identified three characteristics of situated cognition within teacher learning: cognition as “(a) situated in particular physical and social contexts; (b) social in nature; and (c) distributed across the individual, other persons, and tools” (p. 4). To build a case that cognition is situated, Putnam and Borko highlight that “[h]ow a person learns a particular set of knowledge and skills, and the situation in which a person learns, become a fundamental part of what is learned” (p. 4). They call attention to the role of interactive systems of individuals, group interactions, and materials as key components of learning. In other words, what surrounds the learning experience matters in terms of what is learned. Furthermore, they call attention to the need for learning activities that are authentic, making their case by citing J.S. Brown et al’s (1989) discussion of learning as a process of learning the ordinary practices of a culture and A. Brown et al’s (1993) discussion of learning for 20 the goal of preparing students to be lifelong intentional learners. Through these examples, Putnam and Borko argue that what is learned must be learned in authentic means that mirror what will be practiced. They remind us that the ultimate goal of learning is being able to use what one has learned. CREAR’s work in teacher professional development can be examined using this lens of authentic activities.7 In addition to being responsive to the context in which learning takes place, Putnam and Borko, and the sociocultural theorists they reviewed, found that cognition is social, and therefore the individuals involved in the process of learning impact the type of learning accomplished. They state, “Interactions with the people in one’s environment are major determinants of both what is learned and how learning takes place” (Putnam and Borko, 2000, p. 5). In other words, they acknowledge that we live our lives in discourse communities through which we make sense of the world and learn. From this perspective, “learning is as much a matter of enculturation into a community’s ways of thinking and dispositions as it is a result of explicit instruction in specific concepts, skills, and procedures” (p. 5). In learning to teach, university faculty, graduate instructors, mentor teachers, field supervisors, administrators, students, parents, community members, and the myriad others involved in large or small-scale interactions with teacher candidates all influence what future teachers take away about teaching. Experienced teachers similarly are influenced by networks of colleagues, from fellow teachers in their subject or grade levels to those outside their school building, to administrators and coordinators in districts or professional teaching organizations, to name a few and not 7 The impact of these activities is discussed in Chapter 6 21 ignoring the impact that parents and community members, as well as students, might have on teachers’ learning. Finally, Putnam and Borko (2000) argued that cognition is distributed. In essence, cognition is shared and involves the individual, others engaged in the activity, and the tools utilized to accomplish the task being learned. They cite the example of a Navy ship that requires multiple individuals with specific knowledge and a combination of their tools to navigate a ship out of the harbor. This collaboration of specialized knowledge, they argued, reveals a “distribution of cognition across people and tools [that] made it possible for the crew to accomplish cognitive tasks beyond the capabilities of any individual member” (p. 5). In other words, one individual does not hold all the knowledge necessary for all things, and we rely on others who can add to our knowledge in order to accomplish tasks. This stance problematizes the traditional view of teaching as a classroom-contained, closed-doors activity given that how students learn (and how teachers learn) does not happen in isolation and is not carried out in isolation. The situative perspective begs attention towards “how various settings for teachers’ learning give rise to different kinds of knowing” (Putnam and Borko, 2000, p. 6). These three aspects of situated learning in the context of learning to teach present important contributions for teacher education. Authentic activities as advocated by situated learning theorists responds to the challenges arising from divorcing theory from practice in teacher preparation; we must expand our notions of the means and spaces in which teachers learn to teach and incorporate more holistic approaches to teacher preparation and development. It is important to note that Putnam and Borko (2000) do not suggest all teacher learning needs to occur in school classrooms, with students, in order to count as “authentic 22 activities.” Rather, they show that each space provides different opportunities to learn and that the connection to how learning is applied is just as important. Therefore, teacher professional development needs to mediate the different “spaces” where teachers learn and the process of integrating that learning into their practice. Key to learning to teach is not only the space but the discourse communities and the tools utilized in the process. Putnam and Borko noted that “[p]atterns of classroom teaching and learning have historically been resistant to fundamental change, in part because schools have served as powerful discourse communities that enculturate participants (students, teachers, administrators) into traditional school activities and ways of thinking” (p. 8). Therefore, the discourse communities which teachers join influence the perspectives teachers will have on their roles and their tasks and how to perform these. Teachers need opportunities to participate “in a professional community that discusses new teacher materials and strategies and that supports the risk taking and struggle entailed in transforming practice” (McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993, p. 15). The impact of discourse communities is a key component of the framing of this study, which considers how teachers in CREAR learn a professional teaching culture together; they form a discourse community through which they define and re-define their teaching practices. Competing Teaching Knowledges and the Affordances of Space Learning to teach occurs in different sites; most often, teacher preparation involves a university classroom where ideas are presented and discussed with field placements in schools that promote the “practice” of these ideas. As we have seen from situated learning theorists, context—especially space and the people surrounding the learner—affects learning. One can conclude that learning to teach should purposely incorporate multiple “sites” for learning to 23 promote richness of situations. Multiple sites of learning, including both university and school classrooms, are not simply a reflection of the different types of experiences that inform teachers’ knowledge. Different forms of knowledge and different ways of being are privileged or marginalized based on the place in which they are learned and practiced. Scholars such as Bhaba (1994), Anzaldúa (1987) and Gutierrez (2008) use the theory of third space to speak to how cultural hybridity allows for the disruption of the power dynamics that conventionally link space and knowledge. Given that different spaces of learning to teach privilege different knowledge about teaching, I paid close attention to the spaces for learning to teach that CREAR created and the knowledge communicated in these spaces. As I began to argue in Chapter 1, CREAR does not function precisely as a space for academic learning to teach, like a university, or solely as a site to learn by doing, like an apprenticeship model would (in which a novice teacher follows a mentor teacher). Instead, it functions as a third space in organizing learning in ways that bridge divides in teachers’ knowledge. The concept of “third space” addresses the fact that learning occurs in different places, and that such places affect the type of learning that occurs. Zeichner (2010) proposed using the framework of “third space” as applied to teacher education to advocate for the creation of an “equal and dialectic relationship between academic and practitioner knowledge” (p. 92). He contends that third spaces reject the binaries of practitioner and academic knowledge that pervade much educational research and discourse. He advocates for university and field placement staff to work together in developing teacher education experiences because the growing body of evidence shows that both components are crucial to pre-service teachers’ preparation. The idea of third spaces is increasingly embraced in teacher education literature as 24 an in-between place where people from different settings and cultures can come together in a space that does not privilege any group and in which they can learn with and from each other (Cuenca, Schmeichel, Butler, Dinkelman, & Nichols, 2011; Martin, Snow, & Franklin Torrez, 2011; Williams, 2014). Advocates give several reasons in support of third spaces in teaching and learning. Third spaces permit space for different forms of learning. Gutierrez (2008) argues that third space attends to both vertical and horizontal learning. She explains that traditional notions of development emphasize vertical learning, measured along progression (e.g. novice to expert, immature to mature, etc.), while horizontal learning addresses expertise that develops within and across an individual’s practices, as students are active members of a community. She argues for the notion of repertoires of practice, composed of both vertical and horizontal knowledge, which includes learning in formal settings in conjunction with the range of learning that takes place outside formal schooling, and how these can come together in the third space (p. 149). Similarly, Moje et al. (2004) utilize the idea of third space to explore merging students’ in- and out-of-school literacies, especially for “allowing students to better access and negotiate the privileged texts of upper level, content area classrooms” (p. 44). In teacher education, third spaces bridge connections between different forms of teacher knowledge (academic and practical). Zeichner (2010) explains that the historically dominant model of teacher preparation in the United States has relied on teaching theories in the university and subsequently practicing or applying what they learned at schools (p. 90). This dichotomy has fueled the differentiation between theory, or the knowledge produced at the university, and practice, or the knowledge practitioners use. He argues that third spaces bring 25 practitioner and academic knowledge together in less hierarchical ways to create new learning opportunities for prospective teachers. Similarly, Darling-Hammond et al. (2005) recommend that connecting practice to expert knowledge must be built into learning experiences for teachers, citing studies where interacting with expert knowledge allows teachers to better identify areas needing improvement, consider alternative strategies for the future, and problem solve and reason through pedagogical dilemmas. Finally, third spaces foster analysis of practice in ways that reduce the marginalization associated with teaching “practice” (Grossman et al., 2009; Zeichner, 2010). This marginalization is best exemplified by the “two-worlds pitfall” characterization where the constructivist teaching endorsed by the university is seen in tension with the perception of transmissive instruction prevalent in K-12 classrooms (Anagnostopoulos, Smith, & Basmadjian, 2007). According to Darling-Hammond et al. (2005), many teacher educators argue that coursework taken concurrently with field experiences allow student teachers to “see and understand” theory and practice differently; furthermore, they cite research showing evidence that “carefully constructed field experiences can enable new teachers to reinforce, apply, and synthesize concepts they are learning in their coursework” (p. 401). In an important mapping of different definitions of learning to teach and practice, Lampert (2010) described a way of using the term “practice” to refer to what teachers do habitually or by custom (p. 25). She argues that decomposing teaching into component practices is a way to identify and name what new teachers need to be able to do, especially with an outlook for helping them rehearse these practices (p. 27). As teacher preparation shifts towards practice-based instruction and learning 26 to teach by studying teaching (Hiebert, Morris, Berk, & Jansen, 2007), third spaces provide an opportunity to delve into analytical conversations about teaching practices. Much of the research on third space in teacher education primarily focuses on the role of the supervisor during the student teaching phase of the teacher education program (Cuenca et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Williams, 2014). These studies highlight various challenges of working in the third space including those of boundary crossing, changing self-identity, negotiating relationships and working within fixed structures without the power to change these structures. This study on CREAR looks not just at the supervisor but at the teachers’ takeaway from professional development in a third space. I believe the concept of third space can allow us to consider the type of teacher preparation work that occurs in CREAR. CREAR’s internship program promotes practice-based learning—as interns are engaged in practice when they co-teach with lead teachers—in addition to theoretical knowledge they receive in professional development workshops. CREAR brings teachers enrolled in teacher preparation, puts them in a teaching situation, and gives them professional development to teach according to its standards and expectations. As such, teachers learn teaching concepts through practice. For example, before starting a round of reading assessments before the summer academic program, Jeanne conducted workshops with teachers to discuss the mechanics of the reading evaluation. While the workshops were grounded in very concrete tasks of practice, the knowledge learned was tied to a specific situation, lessons on reading assessment also shaped teachers’ understanding of literacy development more generally. Jeanne had to explain how literacy development occurs in order for teachers to better understand how the reading assessment works and its results. CREAR 27 teachers are engaged in routine practice-oriented workshops like these which situate the theoretical and conceptual learning that takes place in classrooms; in, the daily practice of teaching, teachers put to practice the more theoretical learning that happens in workshops. This study brings together the work on situated learning to acknowledge the interrelated systems that impact the process of learning to teach, from the physical spaces, to the people and communities involved in the learning process, to the tools used to learn. In the case of CREAR, opportunities to learn happen in a range of spaces, through a wide range of activities, with a diversity of individuals, and through a number of tools. Furthermore, CREAR affords a mediated space for learning to teach—a third space. This third space is not limited to solely academic forms of knowledge or solely applied forms of knowledge, but instead one that bridges between forms of learning. The CREAR third space affords the vertical progression from novice teacher to more experienced teacher, with actual promotion possible within the organization in addition to incorporating other learning experiences that teachers have. Last but certainly not least, CREAR elevates the value of teacher knowledge grounded in practice, promoting opportunities to practice what is learned and learn by practicing. This study examines the ways in which CREAR situates teacher learning as a third space. Knowledge for Teaching as Cultural Knowledge In the preceding sections, we have seen how situated learning theory and third-space allow us to more closely examine the impact of spaces, such as classrooms, in the process of learning. However, to better understand the process of learning to teach, it is important to recognize that teachers’ learning experiences are influenced by the cultural knowledge they share with others belonging to their cultural groups. The very knowledge about teaching they 28 learn is tied to goals, expectations, and beliefs that are partly constructed by cultural understandings of teaching, which may affirm or contradict the cultural paradigms about teaching held by those preparing to become teachers. In order to better understand how culture shapes teacher knowledge and practice, I rely on Anderson-Levitt’s (2002) conceptual framework of cultural knowledge for teaching and Tobin, Hsueh, and Karasawa’s (2011) work on cultural logics and teaching practice. Anderson-Levitt brought the cultural anthropological lens to studying the knowledge and practice of teachers, identifying the work of teachers as a cultural practice. She used James Spradly’s definition of culture: “the acquired knowledge that people use to interpret experience and generate social behavior” (Anderson-Levitt, 2002, p. 8). Using “culture” to refer to the bodies of knowledge, values and know-how that are shared among a group of people, she emphasized the notion that individuals draw on multiple bodies of knowledge both when enacting their practices and when understanding others’ practices (p. 27). “As people interpret and generate behavior from moment to moment, they ‘reach into,’ ‘dip into,’ or ‘draw from’ reservoirs… of knowledge, values, and beliefs” (p. 31). Culture, in Anderson-Levitt’s view, is much more than a hard marker of ethnicity or nationality that delineates a set of knowledge that everyone under that identity marker (such as American or French) shares, but an indicator of the “reservoirs” or “bodies” of knowledge which similar individuals pull from to make sense of the world. She uses the image of “webs of culture” to recognize how knowledge can be held in common (shared) with others in group categories that transcend nationality and/or ethnicity. As such, Anderson-Levitt makes a key case for seeing people as having multiple cultures. 29 Based on her work with teachers in France and the United States, Anderson-Levitt identified reservoirs of knowledge about teaching held by different groups of people. She labeled these “teaching cultures,” different bodies of knowledge about teaching that exist from which teachers and others make sense of what happens in schools. In her work, she traced different bodies of knowledge accessed by people and shared with others in their respective countries (national cultures) and those accessed by people and shared with others in their respective professions (professional cultures). She identified notions about teaching held by people in the U.S. that were different from notions about teaching held by people in France, as well as notions about teaching that teachers held in common with other teachers but differed from notions held by non-teachers (i.e. parents and community members). More importantly, she recognized that overlaps can occur between different cultures; in other words, there are overlapping cultures that individuals might access. In her study about French and US teachers, such overlap occurred as illustrated in Figure 1. Specific to France Held in common across national boundaries Specific to the United States Used by teachers only French NATIONAL PROFESSIONAL CULTURE TRANSNATIONAL PROFESSIONAL CULTURE U.S. NATIONAL PROFESSIONAL CULTURE Held in common by teachers and lay people French NATIONAL CLASSROOM CULTURE TRANSNATIONAL CLASSROOM CULTURE U.S. NATIONAL CLASSROOM CULTURE Figure 2: Possible teaching cultures when comparing France and the United States (AndersonLevitt, 2002, p. 35) 30 Anderson-Levitt’s framework for cultural knowledge for teaching showed that there are notions about classrooms that are shared by teachers, who are professionally trained for work in classrooms, and non-teachers. These notions are ideas about classrooms and about teaching, shared both at national and transnational levels. It is these notions about teaching that are shared within national settings that Tobin et al. (2011) investigate as cultural logics. In their seminal study of preschools in China, Japan, and the United States, Tobin et al. (2011) introduced the concept of cultural logic as part of their exploration of teacher decision-making and praxis. In studying praxis, they sought to uncover not only what teachers did but also why, what the authors call “action plus intention” (p. 19). Ultimately, they found that the teachers and pre-school administrators in their study relied on key ideas common to those in one country that sometimes were absent and sometimes outwardly clashed with educators in the other countries. Their work recognized that teachers’ praxis is informed by implicit cultural practices, or cultural logic, defined as “beliefs, goals, and concerns about education characteristic of a culture” (p. 9-10). Tobin et al. (2011) linked the concept of cultural logic to related concepts such as Jerome Bruner’s folk pedagogy, Kathryn Anderson-Levitt’s “knowledge-in-practice” and “embodied knowledge,” and Bruce Fuller’s cultural models (Tobin et al., 2011, p. 19). Bruner’s folk pedagogy refers to “taken-for-granted practices that emerge from embedded cultural beliefs about how children learn and how teachers should teach” (1996, p. 46). AndersonLevitt’s explanation of culture and knowledge includes the recognition that “people construct knowledge as they go rather than drawing on ready-made ideas,” signaling that cultural knowledge is not static and that it “encompasses both ‘beliefs’ (in the sense of ideas that you 31 expect some people to challenge) and ‘common sense’ (whatever you assume everyone takes for granted)” (2002, p. 8). Fuller’s cultural models of education refer to “a parent’s or teacher’s tacit understandings of how things should work” (2007, p. 74). All these concepts rely on an understanding of teaching praxis as influenced by culture, especially national or ethnic cultures. As referenced in Chapter 1, CREAR as an organization brings together a range of ethnic, national, linguistic, and socio-economic groups of people, and is therefore culturally diverse in many ways. The individuals who are part of CREAR bring with them values, beliefs, and goals informed by and shared with the variety of groups to which they belong. On the surface, the organization brings together Dominican and U.S. people. These national distinctions represent one reservoir of knowledge from which participants draw in their day-to-day work. In these reservoirs, there are knowledges that most members of a group (i.e. Dominicans or Americans) share and use to inform their practice because living in the Dominican Republic or the U.S. leads to commonalities in experience that fill a common reservoir, the culture. Anderson-Levitt is clear to point out that referring to this common reservoir of culture does not automatically presume that all Dominicans know the same things about schooling, but that, as her work found with French and U.S. participants, there is a common set of cultural knowledge about teaching shared with others in the same nation. Other reservoirs of knowledge for day-to-day living involve individuals’ ethnic groups, linguistic groups, socio-economic communities, and others.8 8 There are key methodological implications when recognizing that individuals rely on multiple cultures beyond nationality. I address these concerns in Chapter 3. 32 Learner-Centered Pedagogy: An Example of Culturally-Constructed Pedagogy Learner-centered pedagogies are hailed as a key element of education reform in the global south, and CREAR is one of many organizations seeking to promote better teacher quality by teaching teachers to implement learner-centered pedagogies. Learner-centered pedagogies is a central framing of the type of teaching that CREAR expects (its cultural logic about teaching). Building on the assumption that pedagogy is intimately tied to cultural knowledge/logics about teaching, I rely on the work of Vavrus, Bartlett, and Salema (2013) and Tabulawa (2013) who explore how learner-centered pedagogies are culturally-constructed by teachers and learners. Learner-centeredness traces its origins to constructivist learning, “which assumes that knowledge emerges through interactions and experiences among learners and through reflection on one’s own ideas” (Vavrus, Bartlett, & Salema, 2013). Learner-centered pedagogies might also be called active learning, participatory method, student-centered pedagogy, childcentered pedagogy, critical-thinking pedagogy, inquiry pedagogy, discovery-based teaching, among other terms, to highlight the centrality of the learner. This centrality of the learner traces from strands of the progressive education tradition (Tabulawa, 2013; Vavrus et al., 2013). Learner-centered pedagogy is often set apart from teacher-centered pedagogies, especially in a continuum between the teacher being most active in delivering content and the student most receptive, to the student being most active in discovering and creating and the teacher passively supporting (Leo Bartlett & Cox, 1982). It is important to note that there is considerable convergence around the view that learner-centered pedagogy is equal to “good teaching” (Anderson-Levitt, 2003; Vavrus & 33 Bartlett, 2013). This is especially the case within the development agenda of Western governmental aid agencies and other non-profit organizations working in teacher capacity building as part of education reform. More and more organizations are leading professional development programs for teachers to adopt learner-centered pedagogies (Johnson, 2010; Tabulawa, 2013). However, as Vavrus, Bartlett, and Salema (2013) point out, the global export of learner-centered pedagogies is occurring far more at the level of policy than practice. Furthermore, their Teaching in Action study revealed instances where teachers heavily negotiate the pedagogies due to contextual factors, echoing other studies in which pedagogical reform led to negotiation, resistance, and localization of pedagogies imported as part of education reform agendas (Anderson-Levitt & Alimasi, 2001; Lesley Bartlett & Mogusu, 2013; Jungck & Kajornsin, 2003; Ouyang, 2003; Silova & Steiner-Khamsi, 2008). Tabulawa (2013) further explained the localization process by arguing that pedagogies are products of socio-cultural contexts, and he eschewed a technical view of pedagogy for a more robust understanding of how pedagogies are co-constructed in their contexts. He built his critique by recognizing the positivistic technical rationality that characterized many programs that take best practices and attempt to implement them elsewhere, in disregard of sociocultural contexts. Tabulawa pushed back on the cause-and-effect relationship derived from this technicist approach to pedagogy and teacher practice to recognize that teaching “is inherently value-laden and context-specific” (2013, p. 14). He drew connections to Vavrus (2009) where she argued that localization of social constructivism taking place in Tanzania revealed the cultural politics of pedagogy comprising cultural, economic, and political forces shaping the ways in which teachers implemented pedagogy. 34 This brief discussion of Tabulawa’s and Vavrus and Bartlett’s work is important to operationalize how culture comes up in teaching and learning. As CREAR relies on learnercentered pedagogies as the central construct of its professional teaching culture, we must acknowledge that defining what learner-centered means becomes a cultural act of making meaning, both on the part of the organization and on the part of the individual teachers who engage in learner-centered pedagogies. This is the prime site of negotiation of cultural logics about teaching in this study. Inspired by the work of Vavrus and Bartletts’ and Tabulawa’s, I want to raise questions I see missing in the literature on cross-cultural professional development that I believe exploring CREAR can answer for us. CREAR provides a space for practice-based teacher education while teachers are still pre-service. These teachers work and learn together closely. They reflect often on successes and failures. Jeanne’s observations also provide teachers with the opportunity to reflect and correct. Teachers also experiment with the strategies, then they report and share their ideas in team meetings and professional development workshops. Therefore, conceptualizing learner-centered pedagogy as a cultural process allows us to see the discursive relationship among the group as a type of socio-cultural construction of pedagogy, and to notice that pedagogy is uncommon in many school settings, and something that has not been explored in the literature In the following chapters, I examine how sustained professional development, especially the intensely relational nature of professional development in CREAR, is a process in which teachers continuously shape and re-shape their cultural logics as they interact—adopting, adapting, or resisting—with learner-centered pedagogies. 35 Learning to Teach As Acculturation One aspect not considered in Tobin et al. and Anderson-Levitt’s work on culture and teaching, an aspect also missing from much of the literature on teacher preparation, is the part that culture plays in initial teacher preparation. The interaction of multiple teaching cultures is more obvious in a context such as CREAR, where multiple ethnic cultures work together, as opposed to a teacher preparation program populated by people of the same nationality or ethnicity. Most of the CREAR teachers were educated in Dominican public schools, while the logics behind the CREAR teaching culture mostly originate from U.S. educational research, discourse, and practice. As such, the Dominican teachers are learning to teach bringing sets of cultural logics about teaching and encountering new sets of cultural logics about teaching in CREAR. In this multi-cultural or trans-cultural setting, I rely on the work of psychologists Sam and Berry (2010) who look at the process of acculturation, the ranges of responses that individuals have towards acculturation, and lessons about how people adapt as a result of acculturation processes. In their study of the psychology of contact between different cultural groups, Sam and Berry (2010) defined acculturation as “the process of cultural and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures” (p. 472). They developed a framework for understanding acculturation that involves three components: changes that take place during acculturation, the way in which people acculturate, and how well they adapt (referring to a person’s well-being and how well they manage socioculturally) following acculturation. One important finding is that there are relationships between how individuals acculturate and how well they adapt. They specifically identify that often those who engaged in both their heritage 36 culture and in the larger society are better adapted than those who acculturate by orienting themselves to one or the other culture (by way of assimilation or separation) or to neither culture (marginalization). Sam and Berry (2010) identified three important characteristics of acculturation. First, there is reciprocity in the influences that cultural groups have on each other during acculturation. Second, acculturation entails a variety of processes and outcomes, meaning that groups, and individuals within groups, adopt different ways to deal with the acculturation experience. Third, situational factors can alter the experience and course of acculturation, and therefore different people might have different outcomes in response to their changing experiences (p. 473). In the following chapters, I make the case that after listening to participating teachers speak about their own ideas about teaching, their experiences in teaching prior to CREAR, and lessons they have learned about CREAR, we consider how CREAR’s professional development to promote a professional teaching culture of learner-centered pedagogies exists as a process of acculturation. More than learning a set of procedures and practices—say, like learning how to fly a plane or how to cook a steak—learning to teach learner-centered practices involves a negotiation of ideas about teaching that go beyond procedures and steps; these decisions involve logics and belief statements that run deeper and are harder to articulate because they come from within us, those parts that are shared with our larger cultural groups. However, it is important to remember that CREAR is not solely a site where different national/ethnic cultures (i.e. Dominican, American) come together; CREAR forges an institutional culture that negotiates 37 beyond the national constructions of culture. As such, learning to teach in CREAR involves various processes of acculturation which we shall explore in the coming chapters. Conceptualizing This Study As we have seen in this chapter, situated learning (Putnam & Borko, 2000) helps us to understand the professional development aspect of CREAR’s work. Based on their work, we start with the assumption that teachers learn by doing, with the people who surround them, in the spaces and with the tools at their disposal. All of these are factors influencing how we learn. Anderson-Levitt and Tobin et al. help us recognize the cultural nature of teaching practices, which undoubtedly requires learning about the cultural notions behind these practices as well as how our own cultural lenses affect how we understand and carry out a teaching practice. Cultural notions underlie practices of teaching and teacher learning, and learning to teach must involve a process of examining these notions. This study looks at the way in which one organization, laden with its own cultural logics about teaching, brings learner-centered pedagogies to some Dominican teachers, who must make sense of these pedagogies through their cultural logics about teaching in order to develop and adapt their teaching practice. Figure 2 illustrates the links between the ideas underlying this study. In the dissertation, I seek to understand how the CREAR professional development on learner-centered pedagogies acculturates teachers into a professional teaching culture. 38 Acculturation Figure 3: Conceptual Framework for the study 39 Chapter 3 Investigating a Professional Teaching Culture As we have seen in Chapters 1 and 2, CREAR affords a situated teacher learning space where Dominican teachers and professional development staff shape a professional teaching culture shaped by multiple cultural logics about teaching. This qualitative case study (Yin, 2014) enriches our understanding of teacher learning by considering CREAR as a “third space” for situated learning where educational reform ideas are negotiated and implemented in the context of international development. At its very core, this study sought to uncover cultural logics about teaching, and as such required access to teachers’ praxis, their “action plus intention” (Tobin et al., 2011, p. 19). The work on cultural aspects of teaching that guided my study (e.g. Anderson-Levitt, 2002; Silova & Steiner-Khamsi, 2008; Tabulawa, 2013; Tobin et al., 2011; Vavrus & Bartlett, 2013) pointed to the many tacit aspects of teaching within both action and intention. As such, it was important in this project to outline multiple methodological approaches to allow me to see the difference in visions and ideas about teaching. I employed research approaches that can allow us to see the familiar become strange. This chapter begins by offering profiles of the dedicated educators who make up CREAR as a way to prepare us to attempt to understand their cultural logics about teaching and how these play out in the process of learning to teach in CREAR. I then describe the methods and analytical strategies that allowed me to access cultural logics about teaching. Introducing CREAR Teachers If one can use such a term when referring to individuals interacting with each other, the unit of analysis in this study are Dominican teachers who are learning to teach through their work as teachers in CREAR. Their knowledge, their stories, their experiences, their goals, all that 40 they shared with me regarding their teaching served as the basis for the exploration in this study. As was briefly mentioned in Chapter 1, CREAR relies on several types of teachers to teach its academic programs. These individuals vary in education, teaching experience, nationality, and ethnic background. Before detailing the teachers who participated in the study, I introduce more generally the kinds of people who work for CREAR and the types of work they conduct. The following image of a CREAR summer school classroom is a helpful tool to understand the composition of classrooms and the interaction between teaching teams. This classroom represents the class of Terremotos (Earthquakes) because the theme for the summer program was Physical Geography. It is composed of students ages 12-16 with a reading level equivalent to 1st grade9 but enrolled in public school grades from 3rd to 9th grade.10 Having similar reading abilities (as yielded in the assessment) is the primary determinant of how students are assigned to a CREAR class; additional factors include age, public school grades, and gender balance in the class. The classroom is led by a Professional Development Coach, Sam, who shares teaching responsibilities with the Assistant Teacher, Bryssette. These teachers have two academic assistants, Leonel and Lauren. As the PD Coach, Sam is responsible for leading the planning and delivery of instruction; over the course of the program, Brysette goes from co-teaching to 9 Reading levels are assessed throughout a student’s participation in CREAR programs using the Reading A-Z assessments. Assessments are translated to Spanish by Reading A-Z, and evaluations are conducted by CREAR staff members. 10 This class composition is not atypical for CREAR summer academic programs. The number of students who were reading at grade level in the summer academic program in 2016 was 30 students out of 210 students enrolled at the CREAR School site. This ratio is lower for other CREAR summer academic program sites. One of my primary responsibilities in the summer academic program is to make these assignments as well as personnel assignments. 41 leading instruction. Every day, Sam and Bryssette have two hours to plan together, and during this time Sam is able to mentor Bryssette as a teacher. As Academic Director, I provide curriculum and instructional support to both of them, making suggestions about teaching strategies, topics, and activities. Students having discipline issues are referred to me as Director. Sam is a U.S. certified public school teacher in elementary education. At the time of the research, she had been living in Lares and working for CREAR for 10 months. Bryssette is Dominican student of education at a local regional university and also an English teacher at a private Christian school in a community near Lares. She was new to CREAR the summer of 2016. Leonel is a local high school student who volunteered with CREAR in the summer of 2016. Lauren is a U.S. college student from Colorado, studying to become an elementary school Leonel Lauren Bryssett e Sam Figure 4: Los Terremotos Teaching Team. Summer 2016 teacher. She signed up as a volunteer for CREAR for the summer of 2016. The assignments to teaching teams ensure that a U.S. based certified teacher mentors a Dominican student of 42 education; both are supported by a local volunteer and an international volunteer whose only required qualification is a high school diploma. During the yearlong academic program, classrooms are similarly set up, except they do not have volunteer academic assistants. The yearlong academic program classrooms are led by a lead teacher who is assisted by an intern teacher. When I started working with CREAR, these lead teachers were U.S. individuals who volunteered with CREAR for a year, usually as a gap year or an opportunity to gain experience working abroad. After Jeanne instituted the teaching internship program in 2014, gradually more Dominicans who graduated from the program successfully became lead teachers. During the summer academic program, PD Coaches are required to be certified teachers (a majority of whom are U.S. teachers but some are Dominican public school teachers with several years of partnering with CREAR). During the yearlong academic program, lead teachers are not usually certified teachers. A majority of assistant teachers are always Dominican students of education enrolled in local universities; during the summer academic program, some assistant teachers are Dominican public school teachers mentored by a U.S. PD Coach. Table 1 provides a summary of the study participating teachers’ backgrounds and experiences. CREAR’s teaching staff involves different teaching roles and different roles that support teachers’ learning. Quite a number of people have taught in CREAR during the past three years since I have been involved. The study focuses on how Dominican teachers respond and contribute to the CREAR Professional Teaching Culture, so I sought to include as many participants from CREAR as were available. From all the teachers working for CREAR in its three main sites in April 2016, only one teacher declined to participate in any data collection. Given 43 Participant Age Nationality Education Lizbeth 29 DR Bachelor’s Degree en Educación Básica (Licensiatura), awaiting teacher certification Yessica 25 DR Elementary Education; 4th year student Lideily 25 DR Elementary Education; 3rd year student Role(s) in CREAR Intern teacher; Summer Academic Program Assistant teacher; Summer Academic Program Co-Director; Yearlong Academic Program Coordinator Intern teacher; Assistant teacher; Summer Academic Program Co-Director Intern teacher; Assistant teacher; Summer Academic Program Co-Director Intern teacher Assistant teacher Assistant teacher Secondary math; 2nd year student Brysette 30 DR Foreign Language Education; 3rd year student Jeanne 32 US, BA in English Writing, Summer Academic MexicanM.Ed. International Program PD Coach American Ed CREAR Academic Director Table 1: Participating teachers’ backgrounds and CREAR experiences Navarro 19 DR Years with CREAR August 2013present August 2014present August 2014present January 2016present Summer 2016 May 2013present time constraints during data collection, not all participants were able to participate on all data collection activities; therefore, I have focused my attention on the six participants (see Table 2) who responded to all data collection requests. Additional participants’ data is used to confirm observations and themes. During data collection, I observed and interviewed a total of 13 CREAR staff members. Additionally, I observed and interviewed one public school teacher who works with CREAR in the summers, and two public school teacher administrators. I spent a week in two public 44 schools where CREAR teachers have itinerant programs11; some of that time I spent in public school teachers’ classrooms. The teachers I focused on all taught solely for CREAR, though efforts were made to reach out to teachers who had CREAR experience and were teaching in public schools. Based on these teachers I focus on what CREAR is rather than how it might compare to other programs. I take into account the perspectives of Dominican teachers with different time of service with CREAR. Chapter 4 reports on how these participants report on the CREAR professional teaching culture around the role of the teacher in learner-centered pedagogies. Given the deep interconnection between teachers’ lived experiences and their teaching practice, I selected three of the participants to serve as focal participants. I looked at the stories of Lizbeth, Yessica, and Lideily much more closely to draw themes of cultural logics; their stories are examined in depth in Chapter 5. The stories of these focal participants show close alignment between the participant teachers’ goals, their cultural logics, and the teaching culture of CREAR. It is important to note that the stories of other teachers who have worked with CREAR in the past might deviate from the CREAR teaching culture, especially as they have left CREAR and become public school teachers. While attempts were made to include these teachers as part of this study, logistical constraints during data collection prevented me from doing so. This study is therefore not able to consider how CREAR teaching culture holds up in the practice of a CREAR veteran who no longer is actively part of the community. My focus for this study centered on how teachers who are in the community of CREAR navigate and construct their teaching. 11 This refers to CREAR teachers who teach CREAR after-school programs following CREAR expectations for teaching but utilizing the facilities of public schools. 45 Researcher Positionality: The Participant-Observer In addition to observations and interviews of participating teachers listed above, I relied on my own experiences as a participant-observer in CREAR. Across the two and a half years from when I began to work for CREAR until the end of data collection, I spent nine months living and working in Lares. As Summer Academic Director, I assisted Jeanne in curriculum development, identifying instructional resources to be used, preparing assessment materials, and generating reports for the organization. As Director of the main summer academic program site, I oversaw the day-to-day running of the school, walked into classrooms to observe teaching and provide support to teachers, and attended to disciplinary issues when students were sent out of classrooms due to misbehavior. I also planned and led extra-curricular activities for the school such as the desfile, the parade through the town; paseo, a fun field trip; and Noche de Familia, the culminating event where families and community members come to the school to see students’ projects. During that time, I was not just a researcher observing a teaching community; I was a key member of this community, being acculturated just as the Dominican teachers I assisted. I have been careful to focus the reporting in this study on the stories that participating teachers reported, rather than my own stories of working with CREAR. However, I want to be transparent in recognizing that I navigate a complex positionality as participant-observer, and I did so with attention to a critical reflexivity towards how I questioned my positions, identity, and ethicality as a researcher with those researched (Planel, 2016; Robinson-Pant, 2016; Savvides, Al-Youssef, Colin, & Garrido, 2016). In recognizing my positionality, I attempted to build a dialectical construction of knowledge in getting to know mine and the participating 46 teachers’ cognitive maps (Robinson-Pant, 2016). In the spirit of critical reflexivity, I want to explore who I am in relation to this research, recognizing the advantages and disadvantages of the way I am able to combine being an insider and an outsider (Khan, 2016). Who am I when it comes to doing research? That question has been a point of constant reflection since I began forming my dissertation plans during my first summer in the Dominican Republic, but it became even more crucial as the dissertation proposal took shape. As I reflected on my positionalities and subjectivities, I recognized three key areas of my self that could potentially significantly influence my perception of the research participants, the participants’ perception of me, and our personal, working, and research relationships. My cultural identities heavily blur my lines as insider/outsider. I am Puerto Rican and was born and raised on the island, a distinction that is significant in Caribbean cultures with heavy migrant populations to the U.S. This means I speak Spanish as my mother tongue and I grew up familiar with foods and traditions that are very similar to the Dominican Republic. This upbringing allows me to connect with people when we talk about lechoza [P.R. and D.R. word for papaya] because it makes us seem similar, though when we talk about chinola (D.R.) or parcha (P.R.) [passion fruit] we encounter our differences. These transactions of similarity and difference provide a surface level connection that I have perceived as fostering access to deeper relationships of trust. The surface linguistic and cultural bonds we share provide an entry to develop confianza, “porque ya tú sabes cómo es aquí” (because you know what it´s like here), as one of the teachers expressed to me, appealing to a connected Latinidad, a cultural commonality between us that recognized a certain insider positionality. 47 Yet I cannot ignore the political and ethnic tensions that exist between us, especially given the heavily politicized process of defining Dominican identity within a context of tensions in Dominican-Haitian relationships. Part of not ignoring these political contexts is the fact that I was born a U.S. citizen, I was trained in the U.S., and I reside in the U.S. My neighbor in Lares liked to tell me “Boricua, ¿cuándo te vas pa’ Nueva Yol?” [“Puerto Rican (colloquially), when do you leave for New York?”]. As she said that, she would also ask about why it is so hard for Dominicans to earn a visa to the U.S. I cannot overlook the impact my national origin and citizenship, perhaps privileges, have on how the people in the community, along with my participants, perceive me. Relating to the Lares community is just as important as relating to CREAR staff, including the participants in the study, given the importance of relationships in the work that CREAR does and my own role within it. Going out into the community for me is not unlike Lizbeth or Yessica or Jeanne going out into the community; people know I am the Director at the school. While in CREAR people might not express strong opinions about my work (it’s not polite), out in the streets (or with children who don’t hold back) I am more aware of how people see me, as a kind of foreigner. Therefore, the surface level confianza or trust that arises from our cultural similarities and differences was complicated by these political distinctions, resulting in a mixed insider/outsider positionality that allows me access and at the same time troubles what I can gain. The second area of my subjectivities regards my education and work experience, and this category is front and center of my dissertation research. I am highly educated, currently pursuing a doctoral degree from a top U.S. university. My experience and research in a top teacher preparation program in the U.S. give me a particular lens for understanding teaching 48 practice. I taught middle school social studies in a Florida school for two years. My definitions of learner-centered pedagogies and my visions of teaching [the tools through which I explore my research questions] are defined by my training and experiences in the U.S. Additionally, as a summer Academic Director, I have a key position of authority that heavily influences how comfortable people feel talking to me, especially disagreeing with me. I have worked hard to make myself accessible to people and other aspects of my positionality truly “soften” this aspect, but I am still working out how to shift this perspective. Working as director gave me access to the routines of the organization that provided entries of inquiry. For example, as I worked to plan orientation week workshops, over the years I received feedback from teachers and staff members about what could be learned and planned during orientation week. I was also privy to the feedback from staff members about the limitations of orientation week, of the learning that took place and the things that did not make sense during that time. In addition to having access to this data, being director allowed me to know to ask for such data. Additionally, my director position allowed me to frame questions about professional development from a perspective that recognized how professional development happened formally—through workshops and onboarding—and informally— through modeling lessons and observation debriefing sessions. Having a shared summer academic program experience, having access to the insider language of CREAR—estaciones (learning strategy), Dame Cinco (behavior management strategy), and “Estamos Juntos” (participation strategy). The fact that I only work in the summer eroded some of the “administration versus teachers” hierarchical perception (as opposed to the full time director who stays all year long), 49 and made me a little more accessible. My own sense of belonging shifted because I have been in Lares and with CREAR for a total of about nine months over the past two and a half years by the end of data collection. As the staff and the Lares community have gotten to know me, perceptions of me as a tourist, a foreigner, are complicated by my insider knowledge, my cultural heritage, and the fact that I have spent a fair amount of time there. In my time as director, and later as director and researcher, I engaged in what Davies et al. (2013) call “moment-by-moment ethical questioning” that helped me continuously reflect on my positionalities, starting from the perspective of “subjects, including the researcher, as emergent in encounters with others” (p. 680). This moment-by-moment ethical questioning happened often when I had to create and impose rules and procedures. For example, timeliness and attendance were often points of contention that involved my use of personal criteria in assessing worth. If a teacher was not in school grounds by 8am, I was supposed to follow up with them – mark the tardiness and have a conversation with them. Continuous tardiness was cause for dismissal. However, Dominican teachers often labeled this understanding of timeliness as “American time” and there was often push back, not just related to understanding that “things happen” (a delay in public transportation or having to wait out rain) but the requirement of being on campus by 8am (as opposed to 8:01am or 8:02am). When we invited parents for Parent Night, the time cited and the time in which parents “would actually show up” differed by 30 minutes to an hour, so teachers would say “We tell the parents to be here at 5pm so they’ll get here by 6pm.” Understanding of timeliness was culturally constructed, the organization’s “American time”, the parents’ “Dominican time,” and the teachers caught in the middle. As director, I weighed the importance of following organization expectations with the 50 importance of being responsive and sensitive to the cultural values of the people with whom I worked. Ultimately, I believe that culturally sensitive research, which begins with the assumption that participants “bring their own culturally specific knowledge to the research” (Roegman, Knight, Taylor, & Watson, 2016), is at the heart of the problem I’m trying to study: how the organization/the professional developers [and by extension the researcher] bring their own culturally specific knowledge and position this knowledge as more important than the participants’ knowledge under the guise of good teaching. The reason why I am qualified to tell these stories is that I cross the borders of insider and outsider very easily (it’s easy for me to do it because I have enough of the cultural knowledge while at the same time having present in my mind that I am not a part of the culture). My very blurry insider/outsider lines allow me enough insider knowledge to build the necessary relationships with my participants and prompt them in areas that I know would enrich the data in the study. At the same time, I possess a level of outsider-ness that pushes me to have to ask questions to get at the heart of the speaker’s message more than my own reading/interpretation of their message. However, in addition to acknowledging the complexity of my positionality and assessing its impact on data collection through critical reflexivity, I sought to mitigate negative impacts of my positionality in two ways: building close relationships of friendship and trust and working with a range of participants with different relationships to me in my role as Academic Director. Because I worked with CREAR over the course of several years, my relationship with Jeanne, Lideily, and Lisbeth was one of friendship and trust because we served as co-directors. Building close working and personal relationships was an important way to go beyond determining tasks 51 to be done or assessing performance; we also trusted and relied on each other. As such, I believe these individuals were opening up to me in their interviews from the basis of that trust. However, other participants in the study had a variety of working relationships with me – I served as Academic Director over some (Navarro and Brysette), but for others I was not a supervisor (Yessica and Samantha). Still, I made sure to corroborate data from these participants with other participants with whom I had no formal working relationship as a method of member checking. Reflections on Methodological Decisions and Data Analysis This work is a qualitative case study (Yin, 2014) informed by ethnographic data collection methods because it is focused on revealing culture and cultural interactions. Cultural logics about teaching are not readily revealed with direct questions. Tobin et al. (2011) employ video-cued ethnography to have interviewees respond to what they see in specific situations. The videos show instances of teachers’ work with students, giving opportunities to participants to respond with what they think the teachers should have or should not have done; these conversations about what should or should not happen reveal logics that might otherwise be hidden. These should’s and shouldn’ts are salient when the participants come from very different cultural contexts, where expectations of what teachers should do differ greatly. In seeing a teacher behave in an unexpected way, participants in Tobin et al.’s study articulate otherwise tacit knowledge about teaching. Because this dissertation is about culture, I want to briefly describe how I connected teachers’ stories and views to teaching cultures, or how I operationalized teaching cultures within this study. Informed by the work of Anderson-Levitt (2002) who explored the variety of 52 teaching cultures based on national and professional cultures, and with the guidance of Tobin et al (2001) who uncover the implicit cultural logics about teaching that educators in three different countries possessed, I define the CREAR professional teaching culture as the set of practices and rationales characteristic of this organization. In this study, I identify cultural logics as the ideas of what teaching should be like, the rationale statements they use to justify teaching practice. I rely on the teachers’ references between what public school teachers do and what CREAR teachers do (and when relevant, what U.S. teachers do), and these broadly constitute Dominican and CREAR cultural logics about teaching. As noted in Chapter 2, these labels refer to the reservoirs of knowledge from which teachers pull their ideas, reservoirs that are shared based on common experiences that people in these groups – Dominicans and CREAR staff – generally share and hold in common. As I read the data from participants, I purposefully sought opportunities to understand logics they shared based on reservoirs of knowledge, such as nationality, socio-economic background, gender, and language. These notes are made within Chapters 4, 5 and 6. To reveal tacit knowledge, this study relied on three methods of data collection: semistructured individual interviews, field observations of teachers’ teaching, and researcher field notes. Using these methods allowed me to obtain the following key pieces of data from the participants. Observations of participants’ teaching provided prompts for conversation about the practices they employ and the elements that influence their practice. Debriefs of field observation allowed me to access additional information about the thinking behind different actions, and what the teachers perceived as typical in their work. This typicality would serve to allow them to articulate their expectations, the should’s and shouldn’ts that reveal cultural 53 logics about teaching. Observations and debriefs provided prompts for the tasks I developed forthe semi-structured interviews. In the semi-structured interviews, I asked participants to share stories about teaching, along with articulating notions about what teaching should be about. With prompts from the field observations, I developed three teaching anecdotes to serve as focal prompts for further discussion of similarities and differences in teaching practice that would lead teachers to discuss similarities and differences in cultural logics about teaching. Participants shared stories about their teaching that highlighted their visions for what they believed teaching should be like. Participants also expressed how these ideas about schooling were similar and different to the types of schooling they experienced in different settings—their time in public school, their field experiences in university teacher preparation, CREAR teaching, and any other exposure to school cultures they had. To ensure a critical engagement with the data, I relied on continuous discussions with mentors and colleagues unfamiliar with the Dominican Republic or CREAR. By running my ideas, analysis, and findings through them, I was forced to produce evidence of my analysis and respond to questions without the familiarity to the context. I also verified my language analysis with colleagues in language education whose maternal language is Spanish. Data Collection Methods and Sources Due to my role both as participant and observer, I acknowledge that my experiences working with CREAR starting in 2014 impact how I understand the experiences that participating teachers shared with me. However, as much as possible I have sought the experiences of the Dominican CREAR teachers as the key sources of data for my understanding 54 of negotiation of cultural logics about teaching. Data was collected during two periods. During both those times, my active role with the teachers was solely as researcher. Thanks in part to funding from the MSU Department of Teacher Education, I traveled to Lares for 23 days in April 2016, when I conducted field observations of the yearlong academic program both at the CREAR School and at two of the public schools where CREAR operates. Additionally, I conducted the first round of semi-structured interviews with focus participants. I also collected additional interviews with CREAR administrative staff and public school administrative staff. While at the public schools, I was able to observe public school teachers’ classrooms and a professional development workshop from the school district at one of the public-school sites. From data collected during this round, I proceeded to develop prompts for the second round of data collection. This second round occurred in the first two weeks of August 2016, after the conclusion of the 2016 summer academic program. During this time, I conducted two interviews with all focus participants in addition to two PD Coaches who worked with CREAR during the 2016 summer academic program. The first interview took place face-to-face, after which I sent a set of questions by email to serve as the second interview. Interviews I conducted three interviews with each of the focus participants. I employed interviews in order to provide a space for conversations around the participating teachers’ teaching knowledge, beliefs, and enactment of teaching practices as a way to reveal cultural logics about teaching. As Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) put it, “[L]ived and told stories and the talk about the stories are one of the ways that we fill our world with meaning and enlist one another’s assistance in building lives and communities” (p. 35). I believe speaking with CREAR teachers 55 would best allow me to hear their stories of working with the organization, of going to school and what makes a teacher admirable, their perceptions of the organization and of their work, and how they make sense of their practice. Questions were designed to elicit narratives of experiences balanced with description questions of practice and statements of beliefs. Some redundancy was intended between Interview 1 and Interview 2 and within Interview 2 to assure that participants had opportunities to expand on their responses. Interviews were conducted in the language most comfortable to the interviewees, which was Spanish for all participants except for Jeanne and Sam. All interviews were audio-recorded and written researcher notes were kept for transcription. See Appendix A for interview protocols. Tasks This study sought a very careful approach to honor the voices of each of the participants, especially the voices of the Dominican teachers. To do so, I planned the interviews to serve as opportunities for teachers to express their knowledge and experience as they see it and not just moments for them to answer my set questions. I acknowledge that Dominican teachers do not articulate their practice and rationales as frequently as participants in U.S. studies often do, so I paid careful attention to use interviews not just as a way to elicit specific data to analyze but as important opportunities to build relationships with participants, to engage in conversation with each other about the work of teaching, how they see it and how they choose to represent it. In order to build the case for how teachers negotiated their practice, I paired interview questions with tasks that provided teachers with examples of learner-centered pedagogical practices that can elicit the articulation of their beliefs about teaching. These tasks were used 56 during Interview 2. In the first task, teachers used a graphic organizer with an eye, an ear, and a heart to respond to describe what an outstanding teacher does, says, and how it feels to be in their classroom. This task was meant to elicit teachers’ vision of what teaching should be like. In the second task, teachers drew a T-chart with three similarities and three differences between CREAR and public schools, which resulted in conversations about what constitute teaching (in order to draw a comparison between both institutions) and how the teachers perceived members in each institution. Teachers spoke about when they make comparisons, whether it is fair to make comparisons, whether it was easy or difficult to make these comparisons, which further brought out their feelings about teaching and their logics about how teaching should be. The third tasks asked teachers to complete a Venn Diagram comparing their vision of what an outstanding teacher is like and what it has in common (and not) with what they know of public school teachers and CREAR teachers. This exercise provided an additional point of conversation around what it means to compare these, why this is a challenging task, and in what circumstances this comparison is done. Each task arose out of repeated observation of CREAR teaching, interviews that suggested that CREAR teaching was viewed by many as distinct from local teaching, and a desire to elicit concrete examples of how my participants constructed such distinctions. These task-based conversations led to deeper explanations of the teachers’ logics about teaching. The Anecdotes One additional component of Interview 2 was for the teachers to read and respond to three anecdotes about teaching. These three anecdotes were developed from incidents I observed during field observations in the month of April 2016. The stories are mostly faithful to 57 what I observed. The first anecdote is about Drop Everything and Read (DEAR), describing how a teacher ends DEAR time and debriefs it with students. The anecdote was intended to elicit conversations around the role that literacy instruction plays in CREAR, especially the CREAR culture around DEAR time, which is a central practice of the organization. Additionally, the anecdote was intended to foster conversation around teacher-student call-and-response procedures and other practices that seek to promote student participation. The second anecdote is The Yelling Teacher, which depicts a teacher rudely yelling at students who lack materials to get back to their seats, which almost leads to an altercation between students, but the teacher fails to respond. This anecdote was meant to elicit conversation around classroom management and student-teacher relationships. Finally, the Teacher in Estaciones (Learning Stations) anecdote described how a teacher conducted the activities of a learning station. Learning stations are a cornerstone of CREAR pedagogy and as such I intended for teachers to speak to how they carry out learning stations and their rationales for utilizing this strategy as learner-centered. Given my experience working with CREAR, and the responses of the teachers during the interviews, both the DEAR time and Learning Stations anecdotes highlight CREAR teaching. The Yelling Teacher Anecdote, however, was recognized by the teachers as something they experienced in public schools, the setting in which I encountered that experience (though I did not discuss with the teachers where or how I saw this). In each case, using anecdotes was a way to generate a broader, but concretely informed discussion of visions of teaching. I chose the set of anecdotes based on preliminary analysis of initial data that identified these dimensions of teaching—literacy, student-teacher interaction, and learner-centered teaching— were among key ideas in CREAR’s argument about good teaching. 58 Field Observations As referenced earlier, in addition to interviews, I conducted several observations of the participants’ teaching, a total of three observations for each focus participant. I took notes of as many events as transpired, jotting down what teachers said, what students said, positioning around the room, the types of interactions between students and between students and teachers, and the flow of instructional strategies. However, considering the wide range of things that occur in classrooms, I selected three specific aspects of CREAR teaching on which to focus my attention. One observation focused on literacy instruction, one observation on math instruction, and one observation on student-teacher interactions and classroom environment. I chose these three areas because they are distinctive in CREAR. Literacy is Jeanne’s priority in the work of CREAR, so how literacy instruction is structured follows a specific CREAR model; I wanted to see how the teachers implemented something distinctive. Math, on the other hand, is not as standardized within CREAR programs, so observing math allowed me to see how the teachers involved creativity in instructional planning. Classroom management is another area given much emphasis in CREAR, so I spent one observation paying close attention to the strategies teachers used in common and the strategies they did not. After each observation, I met with the teachers to get narratives of the teaching episode that linked action to intention (Tobin et al., 2011, p. 19). These observations provided opportunities for teachers to provide specific examples of their pedagogical decision-making, personal similarities and differences, and how these similarities and differences led them to see broader philosophical differences regarding teaching. Field observations lasted the entire teaching period according to the teacher being observed. 59 I observed a total of eight CREAR teachers in three different school sites. Typically, these teachers work in 2.5 hour shifts with students. During these shifts, students spend some DEAR time, some time in literacy instruction, and some time in math instruction. Soledad, the lead teacher, and Jessenia, the intern, taught in the afternoon shift at Caracol Primary School. I observed them on three occasions. Misael, Alina, and Sarah, all lead teachers, taught in both morning and afternoon shifts at the CREAR school; I observed them all for one shift each. Lizbeth was not teaching during this time, so instead I observed her modeling a strategy for one of the CREAR teachers and then I shadowed her in the work she does as coordinator.12 Yessica, Lideily, and Navarro did not teach in the same 2.5 hours shifts. Instead, they taught 45 minute shifts with a brief DEAR time and then the rest of the time was spent in learning stations. Each teacher was assigned a group of up to five students, and the teacher led the students on the instructions for the activities. All three teachers taught in the same classroom, the computer lab at Senderos Primary School, which they shared with the public school technology coordinator and various administrators who used the space as well. In their case, I rotated to see full learning episodes for each of the teachers– the duration of a learning station with each of them. After each of the observations, I sat with the teachers for about 20 minutes to debrief how the lessons had occurred. In the case of Yessica, Lideily, and Navarro, I met with all three of them together. 12 I was not able to get all observations or all interviews from these participants, which is why they are not focus participants in the study. 60 Participant-Observer Throughout the data collection process, I collected my own reflection journals as I made sense of the experiences I had. Therefore, my reflection journals are an important source of data that helped me understand my participation as well as how I made sense of the CREAR culture and the teachers’ work. As a participant-observer in my role as Academic Director of the summer program, I not only observed the teachers’ teaching, but I was also implicated in the development of the teachers through workshops for professional development. Therefore, in addition to my reflection journals where I thought about my role, I referenced observation notes as well as preparation notes I made in the field recording my intent and the reactions to the differences in teaching practice that teachers reported and those I noticed from my own work. These journals and notes were also a key place for me to account as carefully as possible for my positionality and how it underlies my observations, my questions, and my reading of the teachers’ voices. Analysis After data collection in the spring and summer of 2016, I conducted thematic analysis of the interview data (Glesne, 2011). To do so, I transcribed all interviews with the focus participants as a way to immerse myself in the data. I transcribed and coded the data by round of data collection – first data collected in April and then data from summer. The first round of analysis involved open, line-by-line coding of the interviews in their original language – in-vivo coding (Saldaña, 2016). In vivo coding allowed me to really focus on the thoughts of the participants as expressed through language. Examples of codes from this in vivo coding stage include “difícil” (difficult), “sabelotodo” (know-it-all), and “democracia guiada” (guided 61 democracy). With these terms, participants evoked images of related concepts – difficult students, know-it-all teacher, and bounded choices. After the first round of in vivo coding, I conducted a code mapping of all in vivo codes for the focus participants in order to identify similarities and differences across participants. This mapping allowed for a second round of coding – focused coding (Saldaña, 2016). Focused coding allowed me to identify similarities and differences of experiences in responding to interview prompts and subsequently create categories of common threads addressed by the participants. Examples of these codes include “Role of the Teacher” and “Expectations of the Students.” These codes indicate patterns in the teachers’ responses, speaking about ways in which they saw themselves and their roles (or that of mentors), and things they expected from students, whether implicitly or explicitly. These two themes were not only examples of focused codes but also proved to be the most prominent themes in the participants’ responses. As such, I present in the dissertation the aspects of the CREAR professional teaching culture that was most prominent in teachers’ minds. Transcription and Translation: The Role of Spanish According to Marshall and Rossman (2010), one fundamental issue in transcription refers to the difference between spoken language and written language. This was a particular challenge given the linguistic tools that the participating teachers utilized in the interviews. Often, teachers ventriloquized (Tannen, 2007) in which they invoked the words of another in order to illustrate a point. Very often, teachers would stop mid-statement to continue to the next part of their thought without finishing the statement, leaving it for me to interpret the end of their statement. Some important markers of speech, such as silences, pauses, and 62 whispering, which all proved significant in data analysis, were noted in the transcript, imitating a theater script. Developing transcripts as scripts allowed me to maintain these aspects of speech that do not appear in written language. In keeping with Marshall and Rossman (2006), transcribing was “an interpretative process, where the differences between oral speech and written texts give rise to a series of practical and principal issues” (p. 203). To confirm expressions and intonation, I utilized the recordings during analysis and writing of the dissertation. The use of the Spanish language proved to be significant in this dissertation. As I mentioned, it has been my intent to honor as closely as possible the words and thoughts and experiences of the participating teachers. I have attempted to do so by keeping their words in their original language, conducting the analysis in the language in which it was originally uttered. All attempts have been made to explain through multiple means for non-Spanish speakers, and I hope that non-Spanish speakers will take seriously the importance of listening to the Spanish voices of the teachers in this dissertation as they speak what they know and experience. In the next chapters, I utilize the following conventions. Spanish words are not italicized to recognize the importance and equal value of the experiences and the thoughtfulness of the teachers’ expressions in their original language; furthermore, I want to invite the reader to be reminded of their own positionality as it relates to the teachers in this study, to be invited into their world in the sounds and expressions of their stories. English translations are provided immediately following Spanish terms and quotes. 63 Chapter 4 The Role of the Teacher in the CREAR Professional Teaching Culture As we have seen in the previous chapters, the literature on situated teacher learning calls attention to the possibilities that third spaces can provide teachers to problematize dichotomies between “academic” and “practical” knowledge; third spaces afford teachers opportunities to make new and different connections between different types of knowledge. In such spaces, recognizing the interactions of different cultural logics about teaching, and how these cultural logics impact pedagogical praxis, are important components of improving teachers’ education. This chapter presents the CREAR professional teaching culture in order to begin to showcase CREAR as a model that affords situated teacher learning as a third space. In this chapter, I share what CREAR teachers learn in such a teacher learning third-space where the teachers navigate their cultural logics about teaching in light of CREAR’s teaching culture (learner-centered pedagogies). I focus specifically on the role of the teacher in learnercentered pedagogies, which was a theme displayed prominently in the teacher interviews: the role of the teacher in the CREAR classroom and the role teachers played in participants’ prior experiences was markedly different. First, I present elements of the CREAR professional teaching culture as evidenced in the practices that CREAR advocates for its teachers. The CREAR professional teaching culture is built on learner-centered pedagogies, which as we have seen, are deeply linked to culturally-constructed notions about teaching, or cultural logics. Therefore, I offer a presentation of cultural logics about teaching that CREAR teachers use to make sense of learner-centered pedagogies. Finally, I discuss implications for the connection between pedagogies and culturally logics about teaching. This chapter relied primarily on data from the 64 three interviews which took place in April and August of 2016 with all focus participants (Lizbeth, Yessica, Lideily, Navarro, Bryssette, Sam, and Jeanne), as named in direct quotes. Learner-Centered Pedagogies in CREAR As an organization, CREAR’s goal for teaching revolves around learner-centered pedagogies. Their goal statement for primary education reads: “Student-centered classrooms, trained teachers, interesting learning materials, high interest books, and a culture of reading are at the core of our primary education programs.” To this end, CREAR teachers utilize a variety of instructional strategies that promote active student participation in order to address the needs of students. Based on the teachers’ interviews, an analysis of CREAR teaching documents, and my experience working and providing training for CREAR, I argue that the CREAR professional teaching culture of learner-centered pedagogies revolves around the following salient characteristics: “the spotlight is on the students;” positive student-teacher relationships, especially utilizing positive reinforcement; and developing critical thinking skills that prepare students for the real world. First and foremost, CREAR continuously reinforces for staff that students come first. Lesson activities are expected to involve 100% student participation—meaning that all students should be actively engaged in the task at hand—to ensure that students are benefitting from the activity. If the activity is not benefitting students, if they are not learning from it, then teachers are expected to change the strategy. Yessica described this as, “Nuestro enfoque principal es trabajar esas necesidades que tiene el estudiante” (Our main focus is working on the needs that the student has). All participating CREAR teachers gave a version of this statement when describing CREAR teaching. Planning is conducted specifically towards 65 addressing the needs of students, and therefore assessing such needs is a key task that teachers carry out in CREAR. For example, enrolling students into the summer academic program involves a well-orchestrated production of receiving student demographic information and ensuring that students have taken the reading pre-assessments in order to group students by their reading levels. Because the goal is to help students achieve in their specific learning needs, group assignments for all academic programs are based on students’ reading levels as assessed at the beginning and end of academic programs. Focusing on the needs of students is so important that even expectations for professionalism are linked to putting students first. For example, when going over the list of professional expectations—which include being on time, wearing appropriate attire, avoiding cell phone use when students are present—Jeanne’s rationale is that students come first and if the teachers are not at school, or are not dressed appropriately, or are distracted, then we are failing to put students first. A second overarching characteristic of the CREAR professional teaching culture relates to being positive. Classrooms are built as positive spaces for students and teachers to work together, and therefore teachers are expected to maintain positive relationships with students, and students are expected to maintain positive relationships with teachers and with each other. A typical instruction in CREAR involves positive reinforcement of expected behavior, such as “Gracias a esta mesa porque colocó los libros al centro de la mesa” (Thank you to this table [of students] because they placed the books at the center of the table). Such instructions are meant to compliment students for following the instructions and to motivate other students to comply. Navarro specifically points out “Aquí en [CREAR] se felicita a los niños por su trabajo que se hace” (Here in CREAR we congratulate students for doing the work they do). Both 66 Yessica and Navarro spoke about how using positive language motivated students towards working, which made them feel more integrated. However, more than using positive language to address students and motivate them to work, CREAR teachers are expected to avoid using negative language towards students, especially put-downs and insults. One of the main instructions given in every orientation workshop for new staff is that teachers should never raise their voice at a student, and that teachers should never insult students. The third salient characteristic of the CREAR professional teaching culture is the goal to utilize instruction to develop critical thinking skills in the students to prepare them for the real world. This goal starts from very basic strategies to more elaborate applications. For example, teachers typically use short books developed by Reading A-Z to help students practice basic literacy skills. While teachers typically rely on recall questions to assess comprehension, CREAR puts an emphasis on students being able to answer critical thinking questions, which include a range of questions such as application questions, inference questions, evaluation questions, and opinion questions. On a more complex application of critical thinking skills lies the projectbased learning model of instruction. Teachers are tasked with organizing their units around projects that have a real-world application, preferably one that is relevant to the lives of students in their communities. One of the participating teachers in the study, Soledad, planned a unit on the theme of geography of Movement. Given that her school overlooks the international airport, she built the unit to include a look at migration and the impact on the local economy, including migration of Haitians for work and migration of people from the U.S. and Europe to expat communities. Students visited the international airport and engaged with customs officers to discuss security around movement of people, goods, and services. 67 These three characteristics can be considered cultural logics about teaching that CREAR holds and promotes. They are principles or themes that make up an integral part of the CREAR professional teaching culture. Their prevalence and importance to CREAR’s work is incredibly distinctive of the work that CREAR does; it is not possible to be a successful teacher in CREAR without employing these notions. Teaching strategies that are typical of the CREAR professional teaching culture are linked in one way or another to these principles. For example, Drop Everything and Read time is consistently the first thing that happens in every CREAR program class. At that time, all staff members are expected to read, whether they are with students or not; enforcing this expectation is one of my first responsibilities. At the beginning of the teaching shift during the summer academic program, I ask my office assistants and the coordinators for extra-curricular activities and even the custodian to grab a book (at adult reading levels, rather than a children’s book) and join one of the classrooms to model for the students a culture of reading. To maintain a positive environment in the classroom and achieve 100% participation, CREAR teachers constantly use, “Si escucha mi voz, un aplauso” (Clap once if you can hear me) as a way to get students’ attention. After nine months in CREAR classrooms over two and a half years, I confidently state that it is not possible to be in a CREAR classroom and not hear this expression used. It is as distinctive to CREAR as the uniform poloches (t-shirts) stamped with the CREAR logo. Additionally, small-group instruction through learning stations are a staple of CREAR classrooms. Teachers are continuously trained to identify activities that fit the format of learning stations—groups of no more than five students arranged by similar reading levels, spending 15 minutes on tasks that students can complete independently with minor teacher 68 direction. While some time is dedicated to whole group instruction during the teaching shifts, a similar amount of time is spent in these small group activities in order to provide teachers as much time to work individually with students. As we have seen in this section, CREAR’s typical activities are linked to the cultural logics about teaching that the organization holds in order to promote learner-centered pedagogies. These ideas about teaching serve as a set of principles to guide curriculum and instructional decision making. In other words, learner-centered pedagogies require an orientation regarding the roles that teachers and students play towards each other to achieve learning. As teachers spoke of their experiences working with CREAR, their stories contained clear indications for what they saw as the roles of the teacher and the students, what they reported as their cultural logics about teaching within CREAR. These roles that fit within the CREAR professional teaching culture of learner-centered pedagogies contrasted with a more teacher-centered model of education that teachers had experienced elsewhere. The following section expands how the teachers themselves view teaching as it is present in CREAR. Role of the Teacher The previous section introduced us to teaching and learning strategies which CREAR advocates as part of its goal of learner-centered pedagogies. However, pedagogical praxis is not only the discrete actions, what teachers do, fail to do, or avoid doing; teaching practices/actions are imbued with intended beliefs, goals, and desires which are deeply affected by culture. Therefore, the bulk of this chapter focuses on what logics guide teachers’ decision-making about what they do, that is, the thinking and intentions behind the practices CREAR advocates. Speaking about their views of teaching with CREAR, the participating teachers reported a vision 69 of teachers as facilitators of learning. This vision can be seen as their interpretation of the CREAR expectations for teachers or as a CREAR cultural logic about teaching. When defining the CREAR professional teaching culture, the teachers spoke about a culture of teaching that entails certain expectations of how a teacher should conduct their work. First, teachers need to transfer the main responsibility of teaching and learning from the teacher to the student, especially by reducing the amount of time that the teacher speaks and increasing the amount of time that students speak and work independently. Second, teachers need to guide students towards learning expectations and, in order to do so, must model and motivate them. Third, teachers need to use assessment to identify the needs of students. Fourth, teachers need to have well-crafted planning including multiple strategies to meet the needs of all students. Transfer of Responsibility in Teaching and Learning CREAR teachers maximize how much attention the student should have as part of the teaching and learning processes. They highlight this characteristic as a key distinction between Dominican public schooling and CREAR schooling. Where Dominican public schooling is seen as driven by content-delivery, they define CREAR teaching as driven by students’ needs. Lideily calls this “que el estudiante sea un componente activo de la clase” (that the student is an active component of the class). Strategies such as what CREAR teachers call “100% participation” and “active listening” – with a myriad of chants to catch student attention – are integral components of every CREAR classroom, especially the ever present “Si escucha mi voz, un aplauso” (clap once if you can hear me). This transfer of responsibility is seen in three areas: increased student talk time and reduced teacher talk time, increased student visibility versus 70 decreased teacher visibility in the classroom space, and student needs driving content selection and delivery rather than predetermined teacher goals and ideas and mandates. 80/20 On the question about a typical CREAR classroom, Lizbeth responds that the teacher needs to strive to let the child develop their own skills, given that the child is at the center of the teaching and learning processes. To describe how this is done in CREAR, Lizbeth uses a formula for how active the teacher needs to be (monitoring, guiding, helping, modeling, classroom management) and how active students need to be in activities. En una aula típica de CREAR, un maestro va a hablar veinte [por ciento] durante la clase o durante el tiempo de la clase, mientras que el estudiante va a tener oportunidad de un ochenta por ciento…. El maestro no se va a parar y a vaciar todo lo que sabe, sino que solamente va a guiar, y el estudiante va a emplear el otro tiempo para crecer, desarrollar las habilidades, hacer las preguntas. Entonces, como, empezamos desde ahí. El maestro tiene un veinte por ciento, el estudiante tiene un ochenta por ciento. In a typical CREAR classroom, the teacher will speak for 20 percent during the class or during the class time, while the student will have the opportunity of 80 percent…. The teacher will not stand and empty all [they] know, but [they] will only guide, and the student will employ the rest of the time to grow, develop their abilities, ask questions. Then, that’s where we start. The teacher has 20% and the student 80%. In this passage, Lizbeth shares a very important component of the CREAR professional teaching culture: the sharing of time between teacher and students. She indicates the CREAR expectation that during class periods, teachers should speak for only 20% of the lesson while students should speak for 80%. She highlights the notion that students need time, a lot of time, to grow, to develop their skills, and to ask their questions. This student time needs to be substantial and significantly more than the time that teachers should have for leading class activities. 71 Through this 80/20 formula, the sharing of time between teacher and students emphasizes freedom that students should have in terms of the amount of time dedicated to them, which is the perfect example to Lizbeth about how student-centered teaching should work. Re-stating the first part of her response to the question, she emphasizes that the student needs to be in charge of developing their abilities. She highlights the notion that students need time, a lot of time, to grow, to develop their skills, and to ask their questions. She explains that the CREAR teacher is not going to stand in front of students and vaciar todo lo que sabe, “empty all they know”, on the students. In using this phrase, Lizbeth provides a metaphor for an archetype of teachers – the sage on the stage, the teacher who delivers content on students, simply pouring it or emptying it into them by lecturing in front of the classroom. Enseñar al frente (Teaching in front) Writing about her learning experiences with CREAR, Lizbeth introduces the culture of student-centered instruction by noting how different it was from her previous experiences and what she anticipated when joining CREAR. Cuando empecé con [CREAR], pensé que se trataba de que solo iba a enseñar en una aula frente a un grupo de estudiante, que iba a hablar durante casi toda la clase como se hace en las escuelas publica de mi país, nunca imaginé que tendría el apoyo que he tenido, que recibiría talleres, capacitación y retroalimentación con seguimiento, no imaginé que aprendería tantas estrategias de manejo del aula y nuevas formas de ayudar a los estudiantes, pero sobre todo, no imaginé que a través de las prácticas de enseñar iba a desarrollarme personal y académicamente de la manera en que lo he hecho. When I started with CREAR, I thought that I was just going to teach in a classroom in front of a group of students, that I was going to talk for most of the class as is done in the public schools of my country, I never imagined I would have the support I have had, that I would receive workshops, development and feedback with follow up, I never imagined I would learn so many strategies for classroom management and new ways to help students, but above all, I never 72 imagined that through the instructional strategies I would develop personally and professionally in the way I have. In this quote, Lizbeth narrates the vision of what she sees as the typical work of teaching of a Dominican public school teacher to contrast with how learning to teach in CREAR has taught her new ways of seeing teaching. She highlights the teacher’s physical position in the room (the front), the teacher as the speaker in class for a large portion of the time, and the act of teaching summarized as “just” this performance. In discussing what she has received from CREAR, she notes that this typicality of public schools is markedly different from the instruction in CREAR, where workshops, professional development, and observation feedback allowed her to learn multiple classroom management and instructional strategies to help students. She sees this process of learning as leading her to personal as well as professional development and growth from the instructional strategies. Vaciar el material (Emptying the material) In the interviews, the Yelling Teacher anecdote, where the teacher yells exasperatedly at students who come asking for paper to complete the independent activity, provided an important point of conversation about the role that teachers play in creating a studentcentered environment. In discussing her reactions to the anecdote, Lizbeth notes lack of proper resources (quizá ella no tiene suficiente material) as a key problem for the conflict between teacher and students, and she seems to expect that the teacher should have planned to have the necessary materials ahead of time. She lists the number of alternatives the teacher could have counted on. 73 Esta maestra como no tiene visión, es como solamente “Quiero vaciar el material que tengo y eso es lo que voy a dar” o “Planifiqué que es individual.” Pero no. A veces en la práctica, hay que ajustarla a la hora de la clase. ¿No hay suficientes hojas? Hay que hacer un cambio. De ahí es que viene como la violencia en los niños. Y ella al final no hace como una reflexión de qué pasó. Después que pasó eso, lo que dice [la anécdota] es que “comienza su repaso de la actividad independiente.” Entonces no está qué pasó con esos estudiantes. ¿Se le corrigió el problema de darles las hojas? No podemos empezar una clase donde hay un caos. This teacher does not have vision, it is only “I want to empty the material I have and that is what I will do” or “I planned that this would be an individual activity.” But no. Sometimes in practice, one has to adjust it during class time. There aren’t sufficient sheets? A change has to be made. That is where the violence in the children comes from. And she does not reflect in the end on what happened. After that happened, [the anecdote] says that she “starts the review of the independent activity.” So it does not say what happened with the students. Did the issue with the sheets get corrected? We cannot start a class where there is chaos. In Lizbeth’s mind, the fact that there were multiple options for responding to this situation leads her to believe that the teacher in the anecdote lacks vision and that “lo único [que] parece importarle es dar el contenido” [the only thing that seems to matter to her is delivering the content]. She argues the teacher is focused on delivering the lesson as was planned without recognizing that lessons need to be adjusted depending on the students and their needs. For Lizbeth, this rigidity along with the lack of respect for students resonates with interactions that happen in Dominican public school, which she sees as alienating students and causing key behavior problems. Therefore, the role of the teacher involves being well prepared and flexible in order to address challenges that come up in class. However, Lizbeth concludes that this particular teacher has not reflected to recognize what went wrong in the scenario that led to students almost fighting, and what the teacher could have done differently and better. Instead, the teacher continues teaching as if nothing 74 was the matter. Lizbeth sees this lack of self-reflection as indicating the teacher focused on delivering the lesson as planned, something she recognizes is what public school teachers do, regardless of where students are and their needs. This “emptying of material or content” represents a coverage of content knowledge regardless of whether learning is occurring; it is solely for the purpose of the teacher delivering the content, following the lesson plan. She contrasts this notion with engaging in critical thinking which seeks true learning. While Lizbeth’s reflections on the teacher yielding a directive role in order to promote a more active role for students are certainly powerful examples of the CREAR professional teaching culture, she is by no means alone in her perspective. Lideily advocates for competency-based or skill-based instruction because she believes these approaches foster greater student development. [Las educación por competencias lleva que el niño] cree ese hábito de investigar, de participar, de querer ser él quien componga la mayor parte de la clase, no el típico estudiante que llega a la aula y se queda sentado a hacer nada, sólo a escuchar al maestro, que el maestro diga y diga y diga. [Competence-based education allows the child] to develop the habit of investigating, of participating, of wanting to be the one who makes up the majority of the class, not the typical student that arrives at the classroom and stays seated and does nothing, only listens to the teacher, that the teacher talks, talks, talks. Lideily’s quote is particularly significant because of the way in which she clearly articulates the importance of decreasing teacher directive roles and increasing the students’ active roles in the classroom. Lideily’s use of “diga, diga, y diga” (talks, talks, talks) is a droning repetition that couples with her use of “typical” recall images filled with the weight of boredom, frustration, and helplessness that comes from interacting with such classroom teachers as a student in many Dominican public schools. The diga, diga, y diga teacher, like the 75 vaciar el contenido teacher, are constructed in opposition to the role of the student-centered teacher. As we can see in these anecdotes, the CREAR teacher does not believe in following the “the sage on a stage” model, but instead believes that a teacher should serve as a facilitator of learning. For the teachers I interviewed, this vision of the teacher’s role provides the justification for why teachers need to reduce the amount of time that they speak in class and increase the amount of time that students speak in class and also work independently. To be a good facilitator, the teacher needs to model the expectations for students. The teacher needs to give clear instructions for what is expected so that students will follow. The teacher is responsible for meeting students at their level. Teachers Guiding Students To explain this shift in the center of responsibility for teaching and learning from teacher to student, the CREAR teachers used the term “guiding” to describe the facilitator role they play as teachers. According to Lizbeth, the CREAR teacher will not be sitting behind a desk, but instead will be monitoring the classroom, moving, guiding, and helping. This combination of tasks invokes a set of indirect instructional moves, encapsulated in the term “guiding.” The CREAR teachers related this indirect teaching style, “guiding the students,” with: helping students recognize their learning needs, empowering students to develop their skills, and taking the students step-by-step in the activities. 76 Hablé con mis estudiantes (I spoke with my students) As Lideily shared that she learned in CREAR professional development the importance of not “forcing the child” towards learning but instead to guide the child in learning, she spoke about guiding students to recognize their own learning needs based on assessments. Vamos primero a hablar de qué vamos a hacer y cómo lo vamos a hacer y después entonces lo hacemos. Por ejemplo, eh, aquí usamos la evaluación de matemáticas. ¿Qué yo hice? Yo hablé con mis estudiantes brevemente, “Okay, ¿tú sabes qué a ustedes le falta reforzamiento de [los temas en] la evaluación de matemáticas?” “Ah, a mí me falta en esto, esto, esto, y esto” Entonces le llevo lo mismo (énfasis original) que ellos me dijeron, de diferentes formas. Entonces eso he aprendido más para llevármelo para mi carrera para ser maestra. We will talk first about what we are going to do and how we are going to do it and then we do it. For example, eh, [in CREAR] we use the math evaluation. What did I do? I spoke with my students briefly, “Okay, do you know what math evaluation topics you need reinforcement?” “Ah, I need reinforcement in this, this, this, and this.” Then I take the same thing [emphasis original] that they told me, through different methods. So that I have learned to take with me for my career as a teacher. In this anecdote, we see Lideily recognizing that students need to know the areas in which they need to grow, the areas which then inform her planning. She justifies the teacher move of helping students interpret the assessment and reiterates these topics during the lesson when she is teaching. In other words, she gives a purpose for learning, a very personal and individual purpose, as she reveals to the students that she is designing her lessons with their needs in mind. We can extrapolate that she is giving students a purpose for learning the content, beyond the teacher-centered rationale of the curriculum, which as Lideily points out, is often “forced” on the students. Not forcing the students into content but inviting them into it instead is an important teaching value to her and to other CREAR teachers. 77 Los estudiantes están haciendo el proceso (The students are doing the process) Lizbeth builds on this notion of speaking with students and not forcing them towards content by highlighting the importance of students being active in the learning processes rather than simply following the teacher’s guided practice or demonstration. Speaking about what is important in the classroom of an excellent teacher, Lizbeth stated that it is important to ver que los estudiantes son como los que están haciendo como más el proceso, como el maestro tú lo estás viendo como un guía y no como un sabelotodo parado en la pizarra enseñando todo, sino como una persona que está guiando pero los estudiantes están trabajando en el proceso. see that the students are like the ones who are doing more the process, like the teacher you see them as a guide and not as a know-it-all standing at the board teaching everything, but as a person guiding but the students are working the process. In this quote, Lizbeth emphasizes the indirect teaching role of the teacher to guide while foregrounding the active role of the students to work independently on the proceso (process, the class activity). The teacher is guía (guide) as opposed to sabelotodo (know-it-all). This notion extends her caution of the teacher focused on vaciar contenido by saying the teacher needs to guide students in a more hands-off approach. More importantly, the juxtaposition that Lizbeth references here—students working the process as positive and know-it-all teacher as negative—allows us to see that Lizbeth is speaking to a process of empowering students to achieve, and to do so independently, which is also evident in Lideily’s practice of guiding students to understand their needs based on assessments. 78 El trabajo es independiente pero la maestra los va a guiar (The work is independent but the teacher will guide them) The CREAR teachers did not imply that the notion of facilitator takes away a directive role in the teacher. One characteristic of the teacher guiding is that the teacher takes students step-by-step, and that their facilitation varies in directness. The process of guiding the students to do independent work teeters between direct instruction and indirect facilitation. For example, Lizbeth notes that the goal of the teacher is that students are independent and critical thinkers, but she qualifies that this happened when working with the older students which allowed her to be very hands-off. [T]ú solamente [tenías que] explicar, dirigirlos, guiarlos, y ya hacían todo el proceso. Entonces, como, cuando trabajas con un tipo de estudiante así que ellos pueden seguir solos [para] desarrollar, como, el tiempo en la clase, están haciendo el trabajo. [Yo como maestra] estoy como en realidad haciendo lo que estoy haciendo porque la meta es que ellos sean independientes y que sean críticos que sean—puedan decirte a tí “No, yo pienso que es así” o “Lo voy a hacer así” o pueden—No solamente están dependiendo de la maestra. Porque si yo no estoy, o mañana—como, eso es lo que estábamos buscando. You only needed to explain, direct them, guide them, and then they did the whole process. Then, like, when you work with a type of student like that, who can continue on their own to develop, like, the time in the class, they are doing the work. As the teacher, I am really doing what I am doing because the goal is that they are independent and that they are critical [thinkers], that they can tell you “No, I think it is like this” or “I am going to do it this way” or they can—They are not only depending on the teacher. Because if I am not there, or tomorrow— like, that is what we are looking for. As she describes how she worked with a group of older students, she uses guiding in a sequence of teacher moves: explicar, dirigirlos y guiarlos [explain, direct, and guide]. She notes that the teacher only needs to explain or give instructions and then dirigirlos and guiarlos 79 (direct them and guide them), which imply follow up teacher moves, the types of moves that happen one-on-one in support of what students are doing in small groups or independently. In a different conversation, Lizbeth reiterates the importance of the teacher’s facilitator role in guiding while emphasizing the importance of independent student work beyond simply copying from the board as is typical in Dominican public schools. Speaking about the Teacher in Estaciones anecdote, Lizbeth summarizes that she has a good impression of the teacher because the teacher in the anecdote is very clear on the expectations for student independent work. [La maestra] está haciendo [la clase] paso por paso, ella está explicando que copie las preguntas y luego le da las instrucciones. Da las instrucciones, y los estudiantes empiezan a copiar calladamente. O sea ya hay una rutina que ya se puede ver, o sea, ya ellos pueden hacerlo. También les da un tiempo de diez minutos como para que ellos hagan y después podemos ver la interacción entre el maestro y los estudiantes, como que no se quedó ahí, “Copié y ya,” sino que después vino un tiempo de contestar las preguntas de comprensión y los estudiantes tienen que hacer un trabajo: contar la historia y (pausa). O sea, está, el trabajo es independiente pero al final la maestra los va a guiar. Quizá viene a la corrección o “Me gustaría que fuera de esta manera” “¿Qué tú crees si le puedes poner?” [The teacher] gives the instructions, and the students start to copy quietly. That is, there is a routine that can be seen, that is, they can already do it. Also, she gives them time of ten minutes so they can do and then we can see the interaction between the teacher and the students, like it did not end there, “I copied and done,” but that afterwards came a time to answer the comprehension questions and the students have to do a task: tell the story and [she pauses]. That is, it is, the work is independent but at the end the teacher is going to guide them. Maybe it comes to correction or “I’d like it to be this way” “What do you think if you could put?” Lizbeth invokes the role of the teacher in guiding the students to emphasize that students are not on their own even as they work independently. This guidance takes shape through subtle prompts, suggestions, or corrections. The phrases and the intonations Lizbeth 80 uses in this anecdote convey a notion that when the teacher guides, they do so by making recommendations that students should weigh and decide on. “Me gustaría que fuera de esta manera” (“I’d like it to be this way”) carries very respectful tones even as the phrase directs the student towards a specific way of doing something. The second phrase, “¿Qué tú crees si le puedes poner?” (“What do you think if you could put?”) asks the student, with softness and deep respect, to consider a recommendation. As Lizbeth uses these phrases, she reveals the ways in which the role of teacher guiding uncovers the responsibility of the student to act in learning activities empowered to make decisions about how to move forward. Que no se sienta obligado (That he doesn’t feel forced) Yessica and Lideily also spoke about this teacher-student dynamic when they spoke about providing students with options as a way to encourage their participation in class activities. Speaking about creating a positive student-teacher relationship and a classroom environment where students are encouraged to achieve, Yessica suggested, Si tú no eres bueno en esto, […] vamos a buscar otra opción. La cuestión es que siempre hay que hay que darle la opción al estudiante. o le damos opción para que él se sienta libre de hacer pero sin perder la firmeza. Por ejemplo, yo quiero que un estudiante haga algo, que escriba o lo que sea, yo lo que hago es como “Escribes aquí conmigo o escribes allá con Pedrito o fulano.” Entonces al final, él va a estar escribiendo pero por lo menos le dí como dos cosas que él pueda hacer. Entonces eso, que el estudiante se sienta a gusto, libre, y como un ambiente de que no se sienta obligado o reprimido. If you are not good in this, […] we’ll find another option. The thing is that we must always give the student another option, or we give them an option so that he will feel free to do but without losing firmness. For example, I want a student to do something, to write whatever, so I do it like “You can write here with me or you can do it over there with Pedrito or someone else.” Then at the end, the student will be writing but at least I gave him like two things he could do. So, the student can feel at ease, free, and like in an environment that they don’t feel forced or repressed. 81 Democracia guiada (Guided democracy) Lideily considered a similar stance of student freedom – not forcing students – yet maintaining an element of teacher guidance. She termed it democracia guiada [guided democracy]. [A]lgo que aprendí es como a no forzar el estudiante. Y es que dejarlo como que él se vaya guiando. Es más como niños más chiquitos. Como, por ejemplo, dejarlo ser libre es lo que quiero decir, como la libertad de expresión que puede tener un estudiante, como le digo yo, la democracia guiada. Como yo lo llevo [al estudiante] por el camino que ellos quieren ir. Something I learned is to not force the student. And it’s that you let them guide themselves. It’s more like younger children. Like, for example, letting them be free is what I mean, like the freedom of expression that the student can have, what I call, guided democracy. Like, I take [the student] on the way they want to go. As Lideily later expands on her use of guided democracy, she echoes Yessica’s use of guided options and questions to give students choice within teacher parameters. Yo quiero que me hagan un resumen [así que] yo pongo dos o tres opciones de cómo ellos pueden hacer un resumen. Ellos eligen la manera más fácil para ellos. Como, es la democracia guiada. Tú vas a escoger cuál tú quieres usar, cómo tú lo quieres hacer, pero está bajo mi control porque yo te di las opciones. I want them to write a summarize [so] I put two or three options of how they can summarize. They choose the easiest way for them. Like, it’s the guided democracy. You choose which you want to use, how you want to do it, but it’s under my control because I gave you the options. Considering these quotes together, we can see the ways in which the teachers navigate the complexity of the student-centered professional teaching culture of CREAR through a guiding role. This role heavily emphasizes students playing an active role in learning. The teachers argue that there should be plenty of opportunities for student choice and student voice, even while reducing teacher voice. Still, the CREAR teachers advocate a control element 82 that teachers should have, whether in giving step-by-step instructions in which students can work independently or by creating teacher-approved suggestions through which students exercise an element of choice. Assessment-Driven Instruction Assessment is a key component of the work that CREAR does. As a non-profit organization, data on the value added by programs is essential to provide a range of donors and funding agencies, along governance agents, with reports of effectiveness and efficiency to further raise the necessary funds for the programs to continue. To accomplish these goals, several staffing positions in the organization are dedicated to the accurate and appropriate use of data. This assessment culture has passed on to teachers, who play key roles in conducting assessments of student learning. However, the teachers have taken more than a role to make effective use of assessments for funding purposes; they incorporate assessment as an integral component of planning instruction based on students’ needs, as we saw in Lideily’s example of sharing assessment results with students. Yessica described it best when she stated, [E]l enfoque principal es, no es como seguir una guía, no es como seguir un currículo. No es que esto es lo que me toca dar este mes y este mes yo lo voy a abarcar. No. Nuestro enfoque principal es trabajar en esas necesidades que tiene un estudiante, ya sea de comprensión, pensamiento crítico, quizá alfabetización inicial, o etcétera. Our main focus is, it not to follow a guide, not to follow a curriculum. It is not that this is what I am supposed to give this month and this month I shall give it. No. Our main focus is to work on the needs that the student has, be they comprehension, critical thinking, initial literacy, etcetera. To accomplish this goal, assessment plays an important part of the student-centered professional teaching culture of CREAR. 83 Mi evaluación diagnóstica (My diagnostic evaluation) In the use of assessment in CREAR, pre-tests and post-tests dominate in assessing student growth. However, pre-tests serve as more than comparative points; they are used as diagnostic assessment of students’ performance levels to inform design instruction based on the specific needs of students. Responding to the question about the three similarities and differences between CREAR and public schools, Yessica compares small group work in CREAR with small group in public schools and highlights that diagnostic assessment is critical to forming small groups. Pero yo como tengo el conocimiento de CREAR, yo hago mi evaluación diagnóstica para los estudiantes o una prueba y los colocaría en esos grupos pequeños de acuerdo a sus niveles. Pero no puedo decir “Esta maestra hace esto o hace lo otro.” Sino se hace una división de pequeños grupos. Eso sería una semejanza. But I, since I have the knowledge from CREAR, I conduct my diagnostic evaluation for all students, or a test, and I would place them in those small groups according to their levels. But I cannot say “This teacher does this or does that.” Instead, one makes the division of small groups. That would be a similarity [to public schools]. Yessica defines her knowledge base by citing CREAR knowledge as a way to venture into how small groups are selected. As she wrestles to identify similarities and differences between public schools and CREAR, she is able to dig deeper with confidence in her speaking (she again remarks that she is not as well versed in what goes on in public schools), the confidence of someone who completes a task routinely. She explains that she uses diagnostic assessments to create small groups of students with similar levels13 in CREAR classrooms. She ends by re 13 These levels are reading levels determined by the Reading A-Z curricula and assessments used in CREAR. 84 stating that she cannot speak for how public school teachers divide groups, but limits the similarity to the use of small groups. Summative Assessments Consequently, there are summative assessments to track student growth as a result of instruction. Both Yessica and Lizbeth, in responding to the Teacher in Estaciones anecdote highlight the important role of assessment that debriefing and closing activities play to help teachers know what students learn and how this leads to further planning for instruction. For example, Lizbeth noted that the Teacher in Estaciones anecdote is very typical of how CREAR teachers prepare students for the reading evaluations, which are used to identify students’ reading abilities, put them in groups, as we have seen Yessica comment, and keep track of the effectiveness of the teaching programs. Retroalimentación y Cierre (Feedback and closing) In addition to the summative value of assessment, CREAR teachers use assessment as an important planning tool. In responding to the Teacher in Estaciones anecdote, Yessica identifies herself as the teacher in the story14 and explains how she came up with the idea of using a sheet of paper for the story and a sheet of paper for the questions. She proceeds to explain how learning stations are supposed to work, and in that explanation critiques what she sees is not happening accurately here. This leads her to focus on the way this teacher debriefs the lesson and gives feedback. 14 It is interesting to note that Yessica in fact is not the teacher observed in the anecdote. The fact that she thinks she is shows how much the anecdote resonates with the type of teaching she and other CREAR teachers do. 85 [L]a retroalimentación se le da… antes del cierre. Básicamente se dan como las estaciones y ahí como hablamos “Vamos a recordar de que tal estaciones” Eso es como la retroalimentación y hacemos como preguntas así eso al final como la evaluación, “Qué aprendiste?” O si no hacemos un boleto de salida que hacemos como (pausa). En la escuela pública es que aprendí esto. En CREAR también. Pero, le llamamos boleto de salida y básicamente lo utilizamos como “Dime algo de lo que estuvimos hablando sobre el tema tal.” Siempre como preguntas relacionadas con el tema y los estudiantes responden. O simplemente, “Dí algo de lo que estuvimos hablando como de forma general, en la clase completa” y básicamente tiene que resumir la clase y hacer la fila. Como su boleto para hacer la fila, entonces eso le ayuda mucho a recordar el tema. Y es como muy bueno para los niños. Entonces los estudiantes se van, y nosotros nos quedamos como revisando los cuadernos. Por ejemplo cómo trabajamos, si pudo completar esa estación, si no la pudo completar. Entonces para planificar más en base a esas necesidades que ellos tengan. The feedback is given… before the closing [of the lesson]. Basically, you give the stations and then we talk “Let’s remember what we did in the stations.” That’s like the feedback and we have the questions at the end like an evaluation. “What did you learn?” Or if not, we have an exit ticket that we make like (pause). In the public school I learned that. In CREAR also. But, we call it exit ticket and basically we use like “Tell me something about what we talked about topic X.” Always with related questions to the topic and the students respond. Or simply, “Say something of what we talked about in general, in the whole class” and basically they have to summarize the class and make the line. Like their ticket to make the line, and then that helps them a lot to remember the topic. And that is good for the kids. Then the students leave, and we stay like reviewing the notebooks. For example, how we worked, if they completed the station, if they couldn’t complete it. Then for planning more based on those needs they have. Yessica identifies the debriefing and closing of the activity as an important part of the needs-based student-centered pedagogy of CREAR. By having an opportunity to share what they learned in the lesson, the teacher has a chance to identify what the students learned and what they did not in order to plan for the following lesson. As she discusses the closing assessment strategy, Yessica recalls learning something similar in the public schools. However, she fails to clarify exactly what was learned at CREAR and what was learned at the public school. She first indicates the CREAR routine "We have an exit ticket" then interjects "I learned 86 this in the public school. Also in CREAR," where the name used is exit ticket and a specific instruction "Tell me something we talked about topic X" noting that CREAR strategy is to have students talk about something specific about the topic of the day. However, she then opens up the prompt "Something general" and says it is meant to summarize the class and get in the line to leave the classroom, stating that doing this strategy helps students recall the topic for the day. I think this comparison helps us to see the ways in which the logic around the closing of the lesson is not firmly established as a CREAR activity or a public school activity. The CREAR strategy is meant to be more specific and targeted, which Yessica begins to point out, but then this knowledge is interrupted by her insertion of the public school classroom memory, which leads her away from the CREAR strategy. Well-Crafted Planning Planning is the number one priority of professional development in CREAR, and therefore teachers receive a lot of professional development to improve their planning strategies as well as the instructional strategies to be employed. The message given to teachers (and based on the interviews, received by them) is that a teacher should be well prepared ahead of time, not teaching the first thing that comes to mind when they arrive to the classroom. The teachers reported that planning ahead ensures that a teacher can be innovative, to take into account multiple factors in deciding what and how to teach. Yessica even articulated that the solution for poor teacher performance is professional development about planning and the use of multiple instructional strategies. In addition to serving as a classroom management tool, well-crafted planning in CREAR ensures that teaching is student-centered by gearing instructional planning towards students’ needs and that teachers employ a variety of 87 instructional strategies to foster student development and critical thinking. This section explores the CREAR teachers’ logics around planning by focusing on the expectations that the CREAR teachers have about what teachers should do when planning. Logics around planning revolve around the following expectations. First, teachers must be well-planned, and good planning must be done ahead of time. Second, curriculum is a double-edged sword: important to guide the teacher but problematic when it becomes the sole driver of instruction. Third, lessons need to be planned with students in mind; therefore, lessons need to be dynamic and interesting. Fourth, teachers need to plan around the materials they have. Teachers Must Be Well-Planned The teachers described a number of characteristics for what counts as well-crafted planning. Jeanne, the Academic Director, stated, “It’s obvious when a lesson is well-planned.” According to the teachers’ descriptions of planning, this obviousness lies in three characteristics: following a specific teaching goal or objective, planning ahead of time and not improvising on the spot, and exercising creativity and innovation rather than following traditional routines. Los objetivos (The objectives) All the CREAR teachers reference a notion of teaching with goals, objectives, and purposes, especially because using objectives was linked to excellence in teaching. While discussing the classroom of an excellent teacher, Lizbeth highlighted the importance of planning and using objectives to guide instruction. Y también, como, he aprendido mucho sobre los objetivos, las metas. Que todo sea como muy claro, que [los estudiantes] puedan hablar acerca de qué están 88 haciendo, cómo lo van a hacer y ver que el maestro tiene una planificación, unas actividades, como, coordinadas, que todo eso se planeó antes. [La lección] tiene como el inicio, pero también tiene la actividad…. No nada de imprevisto. Que los materiales, todo lo que necesita lo tiene, como, a la mano. Porque eso es otra cosa que también va a dificultar el manejo de aula—si no tenemos preparado los materiales, lo que vamos a usar en la-- Entonces como preparar, un maestro previamente preparado. And also, like, I have learned a lot about the objectives, the goals. That everything is very clear, that [students] can speak about what they are doing, how they will do it and see that the teacher has a plan, coordinated activities, [and] that everything was planned ahead of time. [The lesson] has like a beginning, but it also has the activity, like…. Nothing is improvised. That the materials, everything that is needed, is at hand. Because that is another thing that makes classroom management difficult – if we don’t have the materials prepared, what we are going to use. So, like, planning, a teacher who is prepared ahead of time. In this quote Lizbeth captured her idea of a well-planned lesson by outlining the use of objectives and goals in order to make a lesson clear so that students may follow along and know what is expected of them. She adds that the lesson should not be improvised on the spot, but have the necessary instructional materials at hand. This quote is part of Lizbeth’s response to what an excellent teacher does, so it is noteworthy that she summarizes her answer with the statement “un maestro previamente preparado” (a teacher who is prepared ahead of time). In other words, a well-planned teacher is a mark of an excellent teacher, and being well-planned includes having objectives that provide clarity for students on what they are learning and allows the teacher to have all the necessary materials. This vision of planning is a manifestation of thinking about student-centered learning which connects objectives and students. Rather than objectives being for the teacher to know what they are doing, objectives are also meant for students. Last but not least, Lizbeth indicated that being well-planned, especially with 89 materials, leads to good classroom management. This aspect of planning and materials will be discussed further in this section. Yessica echoed Lizbeth’s statement of excellent teaching and the use of objectives. In response to what makes an excellent teacher, Yessica said “[U]n maestro modelo es aquel, ejemplo, que tiene un propósito para cada clase, y que vea que ese propósito se cumpla en cada, cada clase” (A model teacher is one that, for example, has a purpose for each class, and that they see to it that the purpose is fulfilled in each, each class). In addition to linking excellence in teaching with planning and the use of objectives, Yessica points out that the excellent teacher ensures that these objectives are met, a brief shoutout to the importance of assessment in the teachers’ work, especially in CREAR. Additionally, in the repetition of the word “each,” Yessica emphasized that following goals should be done in each and every class. She leads us to see that an excellent teacher has a purpose every time they teach, that they do not teach lessons that do not seek to achieve a purpose. Not improvising (No improvisar) As we saw in Lizbeth’s quote above, the CREAR teachers spoke against teachers improvising their lessons, and instead pointed to the importance of being prepared ahead of time. They emphasized the importance that time plays in the planning process; the teachers argued that time afforded them flexibility to address the different needs of their students. Lideily provides a prime example of this argument. At the end of a long interview about her teaching practice, I asked Lideily if she had any additional thoughts to share with me. We had been talking about the anecdotes in the second interview as a way to give her space to speak about her practice. I was really intrigued that when I asked her about any additional 90 thoughts she wanted to share about teaching, Lideily shared her understanding of what planning should be. Bueno sería como de [CREAR], comparándola con mi corta experiencia en la escuela pública. Y es sobre planificación. Está bien que todo ahora está muy cambiado y la escuela pública está haciendo su planificación, pero muchas veces el maestro va improvisado. El maestro va improvisando en la escuela. Como “Okay, yo me siento en cinco minutos, saco dos o tres preguntas de este libro y se las doy al estudiante.” No hay una actividad donde el estudiante se pueda relajar sino que más bien es transcribir y a decir, a decir lo que dice el libro. Entonces, en [CREAR] no se da eso, se da más como una planificación más detallada. Well, it would be how in CREAR, comparing it with my short experience in public school. And that would be on planning. It is all well that now everything has changed and the public school is doing its planning, but many times the teacher improvises. The teacher is improvising at the school. Like, “Okay, I will sit down for five minutes, take two or three questions from the book and give them to the students.” There is no activity where the student can relax but it’s just transcribe and then to say what the book says. Then, in CREAR that doesn’t happen, it’s a more detailed planning. In this part of her statement on planning, Lideily contrasted the image of a teacher who improvises their planning with that of a teacher who is planned ahead of time. She connected the former with public school teachers and the latter with CREAR teachers. She pointed out that a teacher who improvises relies on limited instructional strategies that are ineffective for learning: copy down the questions and have students restate what is written on the text. Yessica shared this point as well, saying this type of unplanned public school teacher gets to the classroom and asks the students “¿Dónde es que vamos hoy? ¿Qué es lo que vamos a hacer hoy?” (Where are we going today [with this lesson]? What are we doing today?). Navarro also referenced how much they remember public school teachers who spend too much time dictating from the textbook and having students “transcribe,” copying from the textbook, and the teacher just talks about it. In these types of settings, Lideily and Navarro both argue, 91 students no se pueden relajar (cannot relax). With this remark, we can see how Lideily and Navarro link planning ahead of time as a function of student-centeredness: the teacher planning ahead of time considers activities that avoid boring the students and instead implement activities that allow students to relax in productive ways. They greatly value that students feel calm and happy in their learning environment. As Lideily continued describing what she considered una planificación más detallada (a more detailed planning), she expanded the CREAR teaching culture around planning that we see in Lizbeth’s quote earlier. [E]n [CREAR] no se da eso, se da más como una planificación más detallada. Donde yo pienso en los pros y los contra, qué necesito, cómo lo puedo hacer, cómo puedo hacer que el tiempo me rinda más, cómo hago que mis estudiantes aprendan lo que yo quiero que aprendan sobre eso. Cómo una lectura en voz alta de un libro puede llevar a que mis estudiantes el día de mañana aprendan sobre qué es el gusto por el aprendizaje. In CREAR that doesn’t happen, it’s a more detailed planning. Where I think in the pros and cons, what I need, how I can do it, how I can make the time last longer, how I can make my students learn what I want them to learn about it. How a book read aloud can help my students to learn tomorrow about what is a love of learning. In contrast to teacher improvisation in lessons, Lideily argued that CREAR teaching involves “a more detailed planning” that carefully considers the pros and cons involved in planning. CREAR planning includes: materials (“what is needed for the lesson”), the strategies (“how it can be done”), time management (“good use of time”), and learning goals (“how to make students learn what [the teacher] wants them to learn”). This type of planning does not come from improvising on the spot but through careful attention ahead of time. Additionally, planning ahead of time avoids instructional activities where students are simply transcribiendo 92 (transcribing, copying from the textbook), the type of teaching that critiqued as simply vaciando el contenido (emptying the content). Planning ahead of time also ensures that the teacher can be responsive to students. Speaking about planning for the summer academic program, Yessica expressed the big challenges she faced in planning, highlighting the importance of planning ahead of time to allow flexibility in changing instructional strategies. [E]so fue un reto tremendo porque casi para darle a todos ahí era difícil. No tenía muchos momentos de concentración. Tenía que buscar como en el mismo rato muchas estrategias para implementar en la clase. Ese fue el momento en mi vida que yo tuve que planificar más (énfasis original) que todo el tiempo porque me…. Buscaba diferentes estrategias por las que no me funcionaban en la mañana las cambiaba para la tarde. Um, otra cosa era que en la noche casi dormía buscando estrategias y materiales para los niños para que aprendieran y eso. [Planning for the summer academic program] was a great challenge because to accomplish everything, it was difficult. I did not have a lot of time to concentrate. I had to look on the spot for many strategies to implement in the class. It was the time of my life when I had to plan most (emphasis original) of the time because…. I looked for different strategies for those that did not work in the morning I changed in the afternoon. Another thing is that at night I almost did not sleep [from] looking up strategies and materials for the kids to learn and such. The summer academic program is an intense period of teaching for teachers, as Yessica revealed in this quote. Teachers teach two groups of students for up to three hours a day, mostly focused on literacy skills. The groups range in reading skills more than during the regular year, and there is less time to accomplish and measure progress. Even in such an intense time of teaching, Yessica prioritizes the importance of preparing ahead of time for teaching. While teachers in the summer program spend up to 5 hours of contact time with students, they have about three hours in the day for planning. However, due to the limited time of the program – 93 five weeks – the teachers face the challenge of adjusting their teaching style, setting up expectations, identifying strategies that work for the group of students with them, recognizing the needs of the students in each group, and working out group dynamics in the students as well as the teaching staff among many other challenges of teaching. Despite these difficult teaching circumstances, Yessica emphasized the importance of planning and not simply improvising lessons when showing up to teach. Me inventé todo (I invented all kinds of things) Planning ahead of time and using objectives to guide instruction are practices that allow the CREAR teachers to avoid “traditional” teaching. The CREAR teachers often characterized as “traditional” teaching the use of improvisation, lack of planning, rote memorization, dictation, and transcribing. Instead, they believed teachers should be innovative and creative in order to achieve the teaching goals. Lideily provided an example of how well-crafted planning allows the teacher to be creative. En mi clase, yo me inventé todo para dar el valor de inteligencia emocional. Me inventé todo un cuento que supuestamente me había pasado en la universidad y que yo tenía ganas de pelear con una muchacha y que esa muchacha me estreyó en la puerta. ¡Mentira! Yo me senté en mi casa y lo escribí y lo memoricé y luego se lo dije a mis estudiantes. Pero mis estudiantes aprendieron qué es inteligencia emocional. Pero yo me planifiqué para eso. Yo, si en dado caso yo me enfermaba y no podía venir a trabajar el otro día, yo muy fácilmente podía coger mi celular y enviar un mensaje de texto o un correo a mi compañera. “Mira, esta es la clase de hoy. Este es el texto que vamos a hablar y esta es la actividad que vamos a hacer a través de eso.” Se la podía enviar por correo. Pero yo estaba planificada, yo tenía mi clase ahí. Entonces es como, es cuestión de tener claro qué tú quieres y cómo tú quieres lograr que tus estudiantes lo aprendan. In my class, I invented all kinds of things to teach the value of emotional intelligence. I made up a story that supposedly had happened to me at the university, that I wanted to fight with a young woman and that she pushed me against a door. It was a lie! I sat at home and wrote it down and memorized it, and then I shared it with my students. But my students learned what emotional 94 intelligence is. But I planned myself for that. If I had been sick and couldn’t come to work the next day, I could very easily get my phone and send a text message or email to my colleague. “Listen, this is the class for today. This is the text we will talk about and this is the activity we are going to do through it.” I could send it to her by email. But I was planned, I had my lesson there. So then, it’s a matter of what you and how you want to achieve that your students learn. In sharing this example, Lideily emphasized that planning needs to happen with attention to detail and ahead of time. She highlighted the fact that she had to sit down and make up a story that would be useful to help her teach the topic for the day (emotional intelligence). Making up the story, in other words, letting her creativity flow in order to design her lesson, is something that takes time and thoughtfulness. When she indicated that the students learned about emotional intelligence from the story, she reiterated, “me planifiqué para eso” (I planned myself for that), linking student achievement with thoughtful, detailed, and creative planning. Her summary returned to that theme “Es cuestión de tener claro qué tú quieres y cómo tú quieres lograr que tus estudiantes lo aprendan” (it’s a matter of what you and how you want to achieve that your students learn). It is interesting to note that she highlighted the importance of being prepared ahead of time, and crafting planning that is detailed, as matter of being prepared in case of emergencies. Part of what Jeanne, the Academic Director, seeks to develop in the teachers is a deep sense of commitment and responsibility for their work, a deep sense of dedication where CREAR teachers feel responsible for covering their classes if they are unable to attend school. Based on my experience working with CREAR, there have been many incidents in which teachers are tardy to work or need to be absent from work (to take care of family situations, handle personal errands, lack of appropriate public transportation, etc.) and they need to rely on a substitute teacher for their classes. Unfortunately, teachers do not always have the idea to 95 notify ahead of time or make alternative arrangements. The fact that Lideily linked planning to teacher absence in case of an emergency speaks to how the value of well-crafted planning extends the development of a professional identity as a teacher beyond the impact of lesson plans on classroom organization and into teacher’s personal responsibility. Curriculum As a Double-Edged Sword The teachers had multiple definitions for the word “curriculum” corresponding with multiple notions about what curriculum is for. On the one hand, curriculum was described as monotonous, something rigid and fixed, something to be followed. On the other, curriculum was described as fluid and filled with possibilities, something which the teacher enhanced. These various uses of the term “curriculum” provide insight towards how the CREAR teachers see their agency in terms of what is taught and how student-centered the curriculum is and can be. Se va rigiendo por un currículo (They are guided by a curriculum) Lizbeth used the term curriculum much more frequently than the other teachers. She used the term to mean the content, the official substance that is taught. Often, Lizbeth was referring to what should be taught in curriculum (what could be termed the intended curriculum). Sometimes she used the term to indicate specifically the mandated curriculum, what the Ministry of Education or CREAR intended to be taught. Other times, she used the term to indicate how she has seen teachers trying to implement these mandates. Interestingly, Lizbeth did not use the term curriculum to refer to what teachers teach specifically, activities they added to the mandated curriculum from the Ministry or interpretations of guidelines in 96 the mandated curriculum. She did not reference what could be termed as the enacted curriculum. Lizbeth's comparison of CREAR teaching and public school teaching hinged on the area of curriculum – the fact that both “se rigen por un currículo” (are guided15 by a curriculum). [S]e trabaja un currículo tanto en la es-. La escuela tiene su currículo, [CREAR] tiene su currículo. Entonces es algo que no solamente [CREAR] viene o la escuela-- “Vamos a dar esto,” sino se va rigiendo por un currículo. Eh, se enfoca también por áreas curriculares. A curriculum is used, both in the sch-. The school has its curriculum, CREAR has its curriculum. So it is not something that CREAR comes, or the school says “We’re going to teach this,” but it is being guided by a curriculum. It focuses on curricular areas. In this anecdote, we see Lizbeth indicated that both CREAR and the schools use a “curriculum,” and she indicated that teachers should not simply make up what they wish to teach. In using the phrase “Vamos a dar esto” (We are going to do/teach this), she conveyed the image of someone with an authoritative decision of what will be done. In addition to authoritative, this phrase indicates a willful exercise of independence. Opposite this image, Lizbeth presented that teachers “se rigen por un currículo,” meaning the teachers follow, are guided by, are directed by, a curriculum. By contrasting the phrase “Vamos a dar esto” with the phrase “se rigen por un currículo,” she conjures a contrast between two logics about teaching and teachers: a teacher having autonomy and authority to determine what is taught and a teacher who follows and adheres to a mandated curriculum. She proceeded to indicate that 15 It is important to note that the word “rige” related to verb “regir” are more accurately translated to the terms govern or rule. The connotation conveys stronger elements of mandate than perhaps can be interpreted from the translation “guide.” 97 teachers in both CREAR and public schools follow a curriculum, which emphasizes her stance that teachers should not haphazardly or carelessly decide what to teach. Both Yessica and Lideily referenced the use of curriculum to highlight in a similar fasion, highlighting the importance of planning and not improvising lessons. Yessica stated “[H]ay [maestros] que básicamente llegan al aula como, “¿Dónde es que vamos hoy? ¿Qué es lo que vamos a hacer?” (There are teachers that basically get to the classroom like, “Where are we today? What are we going to do?”). Lideily shared her perception that “[M]uchas veces el maestro va… improvisando en la escuela. Como, “Okay, yo me siento en cinco minutos, saco dos o tres preguntas de este libro y se las doy al estudiante” (Many times the teacher is improvising at school. Like, “Okay, I sit down in five minutes, write two or three questions from the book and give them to the student”). To substantiate that teachers need to have wellcrafted planning, their starting point is the notion that a curriculum, being external to the teacher, guides the teacher’s planning. Innovador (Innovative) While the CREAR teachers spoke about curriculum as the content that should be taught, characterizing it as coming from a source outside the teacher, they spoke about instances in which the teacher needed to intervene on the curriculum. When Lideily was describing her vision of an excellent teacher, she spoke about the importance of the teachers’ role in selecting curriculum content, arguing that the teacher needs to be innovative and creative in planning content and strategies. Bueno, para mí [lo que hace a un maestro excelente] es como la dedicación y no hablo como la dedicación sólo lo que tú, en lo que tú haces, “Okay, yo me dedico a hacer esto.” Pero yo hablo en la dedicación en el tiempo que tú tomas para hacer esto, no sólo que yo me dedico a enseñar y yo voy a ir al aula. Yo voy a 98 enseñar lo primero que se me venga a la cabeza o lo primero que yo vea en mi planificación eso yo voy a hablar. O de lo que me dice el curriculum que yo voy a hablar. No. Sea novedoso, innovador, eh, sin salirse de los límites. Well for me [what makes an excellent teacher] is the dedication, and I don’t mean what you do for a living, “Okay, what I do for a living is this.” But I mean the dedication of time that you take to do something, not just that my job is to teach and [so] I will go into the classroom. I go, and I teach the first thing that pops into my head or the first thing I see in my lesson plans, that’s what I will talk about. Or what the curriculum says I will say. No. Be novel, innovative, eh, without stepping out of bounds. In Spanish, the word dedicación which can be translated as dedication or commitment is also used to describe employment. Lideily uses the multiple meanings of the word dedicación to highlight that a teacher should see themselves beyond the employment status, which entails showing up to the classroom, having a lesson plan, and following a curriculum. Instead, she calls the teacher to be innovative and creative, novel, within a set of boundaries. She posed the following story to exemplify what she understands as innovation and creativity, and in so doing provides an example of the teacher having agency in how curriculum is implemented. Una profesora estaba enseñando a contar y no tenía recursos para enseñar a contar a los niños. En el patio de la escuela, había, o hay, una mata de cereza. Ella se llevó sus niños, y los puso a recoger cerezas. Estaban los niños felices recogiendo cerezas. Cuando llegaron al aula, los puso a contar las cerezas que ellos mismos habían recogido. “A ver, cuántas cerezas tiene cada quien?” Y ellos contaron. Y con poca cosa ella fue novedosa, eh, innovadora, perdón, y pudo enseñar a sus estudiantes a contar, como…. Eso es algo que va a marcar a los estudiantes para el resto de su vida. Entonces para mí eso es ser un maestro ejemplar. No sólo quedarse con las cosas cuadradas como digo yo. Como, saber que hay más figuras, a pesar del cuadrado, que hay un triángulo, que hay, que se puede hacer una estrella, que hay un penta, un pentágono, como no sólo hay un cuadrado. 99 A teacher was teaching counting and did not have the resources to teach children to count. In the schoolyard there was, or still there is, a cherry tree. She took the children, and she put them to pick up cherries. The children were happy picking up the cherries. When they got back to the classroom, she put them to count the cherries that they had collected themselves. “Let’s see, how many cherries does each person have?” And they counted them. And with very little she was innovative, and she was able to teach the students to count, like…. That is something that will mark the lives of the students for the rest of their lives. So for me, that is being an exemplary teacher. Not just staying with the squared things, as I like to say. Like, knowing that there are more shapes, besides the square, there is the triangle, there is, you can make a star, there is the pentagon, you don’t just have the square. Lideily’s story carries the style of a parable, presenting a moral to teachers about how they should enrich the mandated curriculum, for which a lot of resources are not necessary. On the contrary, she pointed to how much can be done with very little. However, her use of the adjective “square” and her phrasing of “squared things” evokes the notion of thinking outside the box. In this case, the mandated curriculum is a box that teachers should escape. Fulfilling the minimum responsibilities – getting to the classroom, pulling out a mandated lesson plan and talking at the students – is another box. Setting learning for the goal of living pushed Lideily to enrich the mandated curriculum, to do more with her lessons than is required, to be creative and innovative beyond the expectations of the mandated curriculum. While earlier we discussed how Lizbeth articulated the importance of following a curriculum, she also problematized a blind implementation of the mandated curriculum, recognizing the limits such blind following imposes on pedagogy. She talked about the instructional strategies to which teachers are exposed in teacher preparation – reading the text and answering questions – and she argued those are the strategies that teachers bring with them to their classrooms. Additionally, she argued, managing between curricular mandates and 100 textbooks compounded the problem of teaching solely these official texts. She called it “siguiendo el libro religiosamente” (following the textbook religiously). Entonces el currículo es el que nos va guiando cuándo vamos a trazar el contenido. Entonces [en] la práctica, es como muy tedioso quisás, usar el currículo en la planificación, eso es un problema que ocurre en las escuelas que a veces es más fácil como guiar el libro, llenar lo que dice el libro, que sentarse a planificar de acuerdo al currículo. So the curriculum is what guides when we give the content. Then in practice, it is like very tedious perhaps to use the curriculum in planning, that is one problem that happens in public schools that sometimes it’s easier to follow the textbook, go along with the textbook, than sitting down to plan according to the curriculum. Talking about the commonalities between CREAR and public school curriculum, Lizbeth said, Como, [CREAR] no está muy divorciado de lo que se enseña en las escuelas, especialmente ahora cuando trabajan en las comunidades. Eh, son cosas, ¿ves?, que ayudan al currículo dominicano. Y se enfocan en ayudar a los estudiantes para su desarrollo académico, como, el enfoque principal es ese, tanto en la escuela como en [CREAR], el desarrollo académico del estudiante. Like, CREAR is not very divorced from what is taught in the schools, especially now that they work in the communities. They are things, you see?, that help the Dominican curriculum. And they focus on helping the students in their academic development, like, the main focus is that, both in the school and in CREAR, the academic development of the student. In this anecdote, Lizbeth further explained that the CREAR curriculum encompasses different areas, all geared towards the academic development of students, and that this goal is a point of convergence between CREAR and public schools. Lizbeth also points out that CREAR’s academic programs being taught in partnership with local schools has made the two converge even more around curriculum, seeing them as complementary. The participants who work in the CREAR program at a public school site—Lideily, Yessica, and Navarro—confirmed this as they shared the discuss how they exchange ideas with the public school teachers on practices 101 that they share in common – classroom libraries, Drop Everything and Read, and group work to name a few. While some of the teachers argue they have taught these strategies to the public school teachers, some of the other teachers mention these policies are coming from the Ministry of Education in addition to CREAR professional development. These anecdotes show us that while the CREAR teachers recognize the importance of following a curriculum, they also acknowledge the limitation that narrowly adhering to a mandated curriculum places on pedagogy. This narrow allegiance to a mandated curriculum is counter-productive to student-centered instruction because the teacher does not enrich the curriculum with additional topics. Libertad de hacer varios temas (Freedom to teach different topics) It is important to recognize that the CREAR teachers acknowledge a freedom to plan that distinguishes them from public school teaching. The requirement that CREAR teachers have to plan their curriculum based on students’ needs and interests entails a freedom to plan that CREAR affords its teachers that is not necessarily characteristic of other teaching situations, such as public schools. More importantly, Yessica recognized that CREAR offers something related but different from schooling. Speaking about the importance of innovating, Yessica acknowledged this characteristic freedom. Entonces no es como clases tan monótonas, que el estudiante vea “Ay, yo estoy en la escuela va” Y cosas. Y luego fue al escuela y también…. Y reciben muchas clases, por ejemplo en base a temas interesantes y que le puedan servir para su futuro, pero de forma más divertida vamos a decirlo así. Y la diferencia es que la escuela pública lo que se guía es por el diseño curricular. Puede integrar sus ideas pero no pude decir “Yo no voy a dar este mes. Yo voy a dar un mes un tema sobre el espacio. Sobre los planetas.” No puede decir eso porque tiene que guiarse por el currículo. Esa es la diferencia. Porque el sistema curricular tiene que seguir unos parámetros y cosas así. Y en CREAR no, tenemos como la libertad de hacer varios temas y todo eso. 102 So it is not having such monotonous classes, where the student sees, “Oh, I am at school, and that’s--” And things. And then they went to school and also—And they receive many classes, for example in interesting topics that might serve them in the future, but in a more fun way, to put it that way. And the difference between public school is that it is guided by the curricular design. It can integrate ideas but one cannot say “I am not going to give this month’s lessons. I am going to teach about space this month. About planets.” One cannot say that because one must be guided by the curriculum. That is the difference. Because the curricular system has to follow the parameters and things like that. But in CREAR, you don’t, we have, like, the freedom to do various topics and all that. Yessica’s acknowledgement that CREAR affords its teachers creative freedom to plan is important. Her recognition that CREAR’s purpose is different from public schools is also significant, as she unknowingly identifies CREAR as a third space for students themselves. She balances that both CREAR and public schools are sites of learning, but she argues the type of learning should be different. She argued CREAR should not follow the public-school curriculum, that it should be different, even though students should still be learning in CREAR. Thus, Yessica shows us the role that CREAR plays as a third space for situated learning not only for teachers and their learning but also for students and their learning. The teachers’ multiple uses of the term curriculum reveal a typical understanding of curriculum as something fixed—mandated—which governs teaching and binds teachers to a predetermined dictated set of standards. Against this typical definition of curriculum stands another notion linked to CREAR teaching – the teacher’s agency in crafting what goes on in the classroom during the planning process. When participants spoke of Dominican teachers’ use of curriculum, they spoke about acts of following the curriculum, and the dangers this following posed when teachers focused solely on covering the curriculum and not student learning. When 103 participants spoke of CREAR curriculum, they emphasized student needs as determinants of curriculum, even as some references to the notion of curriculum as a standard set for content was used. Planning Materials Planning for materials is an important component of a complete lesson plan, of being a well-prepared teacher. Yessica stated that a good lesson plan is not complete without accounting for materials. Lideily noted that the CREAR lesson plan template contains a box to indicate materials to be used. Lizbeth noted that planning materials ahead of time is an important part of the planning process, especially as a classroom management tool. Tienes que tener los materiales (You have to have the materials) Planning for materials to be used in class is seen as such an important part of teaching, so part of the teaching culture of CREAR, that all of the participating teachers mentioned lack of planning or not being well-planned as a failure of teaching, or by contrast, good planning as the mark of a good teacher. When she finished reading the Yelling Teacher anecdote, Lideily showed absolute displeasure and disapproval, with a deep frown and a grimace. When I noted the facial expressions, she laughed and pointed to a popular song’s verse, “¿Y qué hizo? ¡No hizo na’!” (And what did they do? They did nothing!). She continued to explain, Lo primero es que tú tienes que tener todos los materiales para poder satisfacer las necesidades de tus estudiantes. Y yo no puedo venir donde mis estudiantes y decir “Yo necesito que ustedes me hagan un dibujo de la cena que tuvieron anoche” si yo no le doy la hoja donde ellos me van a hacer un dibujo. Lo primero es que mis estudiantes no van a trabajar. Lo segundo es que me van a hacer eso, se van a poner a molestar a quien sí está trabajando, el que está trabajando se va a incomodar y va a querer pelear, va a querer reaccionar de alguna otra manera. Eso es como un globo. Si tú lo dejas tranquilo te va a durar todo el día pero si tú te pones a puncharle se te va a explotar. Entonces, ahí no estoy 104 teniendo el control de las situaciones. No me estoy enfocando en los estudiantes de lo que están aprendiendo. Ni le estoy prestando atención a los pequeños problemas […]. Como maestra, si yo estoy pendiente de qué materiales yo voy a necesitar durante la actividad que tengo programada y cómo los voy a dividir, cómo voy a tener el tiempo de mis estudiantes aprender ocupado. The first thing that you have to do is to have all the materials to be able to satisfy the needs of your students. And I cannot come to my students and say “I need you to do a drawing for me about the dinner you had last night” if I don’t give them a sheet where they can draw a picture. The first thing is that the kids will start messing around with whoever is working, those who are working will be uncomfortable and they will want to fight, they will want to react in some way. This is like a balloon. If you leave it alone it will last all day but if you start to hit it, it will burst. So, there I am not in control of the situations. I am not focusing on what the students are learning. Neither am I paying attention to the little problems [...]. As a teacher, if I am paying attention to what materials I am going to need during the activity I have planned and how I will divide them, how I will occupy my students time. First, Lideily described that not planning the necessary materials would cause students not learning because they would not be working on the task at hand. Second, Lideily pointed out that not having materials would lead to student distraction, arguing and fighting (a sort of “Idleness begets vice” type of argument). Most importantly, Lideily used the CREAR cultural logic “No me estoy enfocando en los estudiantes de lo que están aprendiendo” (I am not focusing on what the students are learning). She tied planning materials ahead of time to students as a priority for CREAR teachers. Later on in the interview, she built on this notion of students as a priority when she indicated, “Si mi estudiante me pide una hoja, yo tenga de dónde agarrar la hoja, rápido sin perder tiempo de la clase, sin hacerlo perder a él porque como todo lleva un tiempo” (If my student asked for a sheet of paper, I need to have where to get it from, quickly, without wasting class time, without wasting the student’s time because everything has its time). Not wasting the students’ time was important to Lideily, which elevates the traditional status that 105 students have in classroom dynamics—being at the disposal of the teachers well-timed lesson plans. Timing is typically controlled by the teacher according to their timeline, but Lideily’s statement speaks to the cultural logics of teaching in CREAR that emphasizes an active role for students. This statement builds on the earlier statement of not wasting time because wasting time—the teacher’s and the student’s—is poor planning, the implication being that it begets vice, student misbehavior. Precision and completeness in planning was echoed by Lizbeth when she said, “No, nada de imprevisto. Que los materiales, todo lo que necesita lo tiene como a la mano. Porque eso es otra cosa que también va a dificultar el manejo de aula si no tenemos preparado los materiales” (No, nothing is improvised. That the materials, everything that is needed must be available at hand. Because that is another thing that makes classroom management more challenging, if we are not prepared with the materials). This attentiveness to materials and classroom management are distinctive of CREAR teaching expectations. The CREAR teacher evaluation rubric benchmark for an excellent teacher indicates: “Todos los estudiantes saben dónde están ubicados los materiales que necesitan, y los consiguen de una forma rápida y organizada (les toma menos que 20 segundos)” [All students know where needed materials are located and can reach them in a quick and organized way (it takes them less than 20 seconds).] The Cultural Logics about Teaching in CREAR This chapter sought to address the research question: What cultural logics about teaching can be found in the CREAR professional teaching culture? We began by considering the most typical characteristics of CREAR’s professional teaching culture: “the spotlight is on the students;” positive student-teacher relationships, especially utilizing positive 106 reinforcement; and developing critical thinking skills that prepare students for the real world. These characteristics reflect the ideas about teaching grounded in learner-centered pedagogies which CREAR seeks to enact and teach its teachers. When asking teachers to describe their teaching practices and beliefs about teaching, their answers reflected these CREAR principles . As teachers spoke of their experiences working with CREAR, their stories contained clear indications for what they saw as the role of the teacher and students, what they reported as their cultural logics about teaching within CREAR. These roles that fit within the CREAR professional teaching culture of learner-centered pedagogies contrasted a more teachercentered model of education than what teachers had experienced elsewhere, and the teachers highlighted such differences. We see in this chapter the teachers taking on the learner-centered professional teaching culture of CREAR in the way they think about the role of the teacher. They shift their mentality from the teacher in front of the room delivery knowledge to a facilitator that puts students in charge of learning. They utilized classroom management techniques, like democracia guiada, that seek to empower students with choice, putting students first. Even planning materials puts students first. They note that curriculum should be innovative and respond to the needs of students, rather than respond to teachers’ mindset. It is important to see that these CREAR teachers are not simply following a packaged set of instructions, a scripted lesson plan that has procedures for them to follow, in order to enact learner-centered pedagogies. Instead, the teachers must reflect on the underlying logics guiding such pedagogies, and when the teachers adopt these logics, they practice the corresponding strategies. In the next chapter, I consider how these CREAR cultural logics about 107 teaching learner-centered pedagogies interacted with prior cultural logics that these teachers held, in order to answer the question, “How do Dominican teachers navigate different cultural logics about teaching?” 108 Chapter 5 Exploring Teachers’ Various Cultural Logics about Teaching As we saw in Chapter 4, CREAR’s professional teaching culture is built around learnercenteredness; to achieve this culture, teacher development envelopes teachers into a certain vision of the role of teachers. Chapter 4 introduced us to some of the CREAR cultural logics about teaching that support a role of teachers to promote learner-centered pedagogies. However, CREAR pedagogies and professional development do not arrive into a vacuum; teachers bring with them beliefs, experiences, histories, much of which they share with groups to which they belong. In other words, teachers bring reservoirs of knowledge about teaching when they enter CREAR; they bring their own implicit understandings about teaching. In this chapter, I hope to introduce some of these culturally-constructed notions about teaching that three of the participating teachers brought16 with them to CREAR. More importantly, I discuss how these ideas mediated the teachers’ learning in CREAR, along with how the teachers perceived CREAR’s ideas of and approaches to teaching. I hope this chapter demonstrates the interactions between cultural logics about teaching that these three participating teachers have experienced in CREAR as they articulated them at the time of data collection. For this chapter I relied primarily on data from the three interviews which took place in April and August of 2016, only considering data from Lizbeth, Yessica, and Lideily. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first three sections provide a teaching profile for one of three focal participating teachers. For each participant, I first explain how they 16 I use the term “brought” loosely to indicate something that preceded their time in CREAR. I do not mean to imply that the cultural logics about teaching that teachers hold are squarely fixed. As with all human cultural ideas, logics about teaching are highly malleable and susceptible to change based on the cultural groups to which individuals belong. 109 became involved with CREAR, followed by a discussion of meaningful experiences in the teachers’ lives that partly shaped their notions of teaching.17 These personal experiences reveal ideas that are not articulated often because of their implicit nature, yet they serve as a basis for what is learned in CREAR. I make the case in this study that these cultural-constructed beliefs and values became intertwined with the cultural logics that the teachers have experienced during their work with CREAR. In other words, I explore how their work in CREAR made sense in light of the deeply held ideas about teaching and learning they possessed. Additionally, I discuss how the teachers perceived the work of CREAR, the salient characteristics they see about CREAR teaching. I seek to make the case that their perception of CREAR reveals a negotiated cultural logic about teaching. In other words, I explore how CREAR teaching added to their understandings about teaching. The chapter concludes with a discussion of what we can learn from the teachers’ multiple notions about teaching to answer the research question: How do Dominican teachers navigate different cultural logics about teaching? Lideily At the time of data collection, Lideily had been with CREAR for about two years. She started with CREAR through the teaching internship program. After completing the teaching internship, Lideily was hired as a teacher in the yearlong academic program, where she was paired with an international volunteer to teach literacy and math skills. Additionally, Lideily 17 Because I am discussing teachers’ life experiences, I will rely on narratives that encompass a range of ideas. To understand them well, as I quote the teachers, I have selected longer passages than in other portions of the dissertation, which I believe will help the reader get a better understanding of what the teacher is trying to say. I am inviting the reader to listen to the teacher as well as consider my own interpretive work so that the reader may enter a conversation with the teacher as well as with me as the researcher. 110 taught a project-based course called Pequeños Líderes (Young Leaders), which was a course geared towards older students with higher reading levels (students were between 12-15 years old and read at grade level or close to grade level based on Reading A-Z assessments). The purpose of this course was to build critical thinking and leadership skills in teenagers through community engagement projects. This course provided Lideily more curricular flexibility because the course was not structured within a specific curriculum or assessment; students pursued a project that interested them as a whole class and the teachers guided them through the process. Prior to working with CREAR, Lideily was a stay-at-home mom. Along with her teaching involvement in CREAR, Lideily got to know CREAR as the mother of a daughter in the CREAR Montessori program. Becoming a Teacher through Motherhood Motherhood was an important part of Lideily becoming a teacher. When working with Lideily it is impossible not to hear stories about her daughter, Veronica. Lideily is incredibly proud of her daughter. Lideily dedicates a lot of her time to teaching her daughter, and she is very proud of her progress in reading. During the Montessori graduation, Lideily told me all about her daughter’s accomplishments, about all the things that she could do even though she was only three years old. When speaking about her becoming a teacher and her teaching practice, Lideily emphasized the importance of being a mother; therefore, it is important to recognize that her ideas about teachers and teaching were guided in part by her sense of motherhood. When I asked Lideily what inspired her to be a teacher, she articulated a beautiful teaching philosophy statement that I believe is important to read in its entirety as it situates Lideily’s teaching self within this logic of motherhood. 111 A raíz de que yo fui madre fue que fui creando como esa— me fui dando cuenta de lo bonito que era enseñar porque como cuando iba enseñándole cosas a mi hija, y así como, ese proceso, me digo, “Pero, ¡enseñar es bonito!” [De ahí] fui considerando la educación para poder enseñar a más niños, y fui como estudiando el tema. Y luego me di cuenta “¡Pero la educación es un regalo!” Como esa es, como, mi filosofía de la educación, es que es un regalo. ¿Y qué más bonito cuando tú le das un regalo de calidad a una persona? Como, en vez de darle un regalo de cantidad, como yo le llamo, o sea un regalo de dinero, como que yo vaya a la tienda y compre algo. Pero si yo te enseño algo que tú vas a tener para toda tu vida, yo creo que eso va a ser, es mejor. Porque, por ejemplo, voy a usar los que están como la política. Un político te regala cien pesos para tu tener tu comida del día de hoy. Pero si te regala un puesto de trabajo, o te ayuda a conseguir un trabajo, pues él te está dando comida para todos los días. Entonces eso es, como, así yo considero la educación. Como…. Okay, yo te puedo decir cómo se escribe una palabra hoy, pero si yo te enseño cómo escribir todas las palabras, te va a servir para toda tu vida porque toda tu vida tú vas a saber escribir. Parting from me being a mother it’s that I started creating like that— I started to realize how beautiful teaching was because like when I would teach things to my daughter, and like, that process, I told myself, “But, teaching is beautiful!” [From there] I started considering education in order to be able to teach more children, and I started studying the topic. And later I realized “But education is a gift!” Like, that is, like, my philosophy of education, that it is a gift. And what’s more beautiful than when you give a gift of quality to someone else? Like, instead of giving a gift of quantity, as I call it, in other words, a gift of money, like me going to the store and buying something for you. But if I teach you something that you will have it for the rest of your life, I think that will be better. Because, for example, I will use the politicians. A politician gives you one hundred pesos to have your food for today. But if he gives you a job, or helps you get a job, then he is giving you food for every day. Then that is how, like, I consider education. Like…. Okay, I can tell you how to write one word today, but if I teach you how to write all the words, it will serve you for the rest of your life because all your life you will know how to write. In this beautiful articulation of a teaching philosophy, Lideily grounded her vision of education in her sense of motherhood. First, she noted that teaching her daughter awoke in her the idea that teaching was beautiful. The deep love and care she felt for her daughter, and the personal satisfaction she felt when she taught her daughter, sparked in her a curiosity and a desire to teach other children. Therefore, Lideily’s first notion of teaching is a sense of drive to 112 teach out of love and care for children. Lideily found beauty in seeing learning happen, and such beauty was tied to her connection to this love and care. Second, Lideily linked the beauty of education to education being a gift, an enduring gift. I think it is important to contextualize Lideily’s notion of education as a gift within the discourse of education as a tool to lift up from poverty. Lideily grew up in Antúnes, a very small community where the majority of people do not finish primary school and literacy rates are among the lowest in the communities of the region. Some of CREAR’s programming takes place at Antunes’s primary school. To give an example, of 250 students registered in CREAR’s summer academic program in 2016, 64 were categorized as completely illiterate (i.e. they could not recognize a majority of the sounds of the letters of the alphabet). Of these 64, 11 were 6 or 7 years old, meaning all others were between 8 and 14 years old. Of the 250 students, only 6 had above a first grade reading level (while all children enrolled in first grade could be considered illiterate or at kindergrarten reading level). Education does not have a great value in the community – most people do not complete it. Employment needs in this community are much more immediate; “cien pesos del político” (RD$ 100 from the politician)18 are immediate rather than the investment in education whose payoff comes later in time. Lideily’s conception of teaching as an enduring gift is meant to push back against individuals in her community who do not think education is valuable or helpful in their lives. She transfers that same desire she has to give the best to her child, a gift that endures, to the children of her community who should 18 In the summer of 2016, RD$100 was equivalent to US$2.22. For context, RD$100 was the cost of one lunch at a comedor (eatery/small family restaurant). However, this amount could also feed a family of six a very simple dinner of mangú (mashed plantain) and fried eggs and salami. 113 aspire to more than the immediate needs. We can see from Lideily’s statement a notion that education is empowering; we see a similar stance in her strategy to discuss assessment results with students (see Chapter 4). If students know what they are lacking, their needs, then they are in a better position to work to change or to receive help. I see in Lideily’s last comment a fascinating statement on teaching strategies. CREAR often critiques teaching students to arrive at specific answers; as mentioned earlier, one of the key cultural logics about teaching in CREAR is developing critical thinking. Critical thinking deals with the ability to apply information to new situations, to solve problems that have not been encountered before, which entails solving complex problems rather than problems with only one solution. Lideily’s last comment critiques teachers who give students the one answer needed, “te puedo decir cómo se escribe una palabra hoy” (tell you how to write one word today) just to get through the lesson plan, move on to the next thing, and without ensuring true learning. Teachers in CREAR often find students who want the answer right away “Profe, ¿cómo se escribe esta palabra?” [Teacher, how do you write this word?], to which the teacher might respond by spelling out the answer. Lideily argued against that, noting the value of education as enduring is in helping students “a escribir todas las palabras” (to write all the words). Lideily’s sense of motherhood, of desiring what’s best for her daughter, extends to her students, a deep desire to give what is best for them. In addition to teaching students what is enduring for a better future, as she wished for her own daughter, Lideily’s sense of motherhood impacted her approach to building relationships with students. In response to a question about what an excellent teacher should not do, Lideily argued that an excellent teacher should never deal with their personal problems 114 and take them out on the students. Doing so was equivalent to mistreating students or abusing them, and she viewed respect as an essential component of being an excellent teacher. She was not the only participating teacher who spoke about teachers doing just that. Lideily said, Si no tengo respeto por mis estudiantes, por lo que estoy haciendo, no podría ser una maestra ejemplar porque en vez de estar pensando en lo que sería bien para él, en lo que él necesita, y cómo me necesita y por qué me necesita, voy a estar pensando como en mis cosas. If I don’t have respect for my students, for what I’m doing, I could not be an exemplary teacher because instead of thinking about what would be good for him, what he needs, and how he needs me and why he needs me, I will be thinking about my own things. There is an interesting dynamic in the phrasing that Lideily used in this response. Without respect, a teacher cannot be an exemplary teacher. The following premise is that an exemplary teacher focuses on the student, their needs. The phrasing here indicates a concern for the student, which resonates with CREAR’s professional teaching culture of learnercentered, student needs as priority. However, the second part of this premise is reflexive, the action goes towards Lideily as a teacher: “cómo me necesita y por qué me necesita” (how he needs me and why he needs me). She used a very motherly phrase, to be needed, the way that children need their mothers. I think it is important to recognize in Lideily’s statements of motherhood how her upbringing and her community, what she comes to assume about life, impacted her ideas about being a teacher. Lideily’s identity as a mother was not formed independently. She was not born knowing how to be a mother. Ideas about how to raise children are socio-cultural constructions to which she has been enculturated throughout her whole life. Lideily brought these cultural values into her vision of what teaching should be. Arguably, she is constructing ideas and values 115 about teaching based on her notions about motherhood. Giving what is best for your child, and being there for a child who needs one, are deeply cultural values of motherhood, which she transposed into her teacher self. Lideily’s selection of teaching strategies is also grounded in her experiences of motherhood. She developed the democracia guiada (guided democracy) concept through her experiences teaching her daughter. Democracia guiada is referenced in Chapter 4 in regards to a vision of teachers as guiding students, but beyond revealing how Lideily considered the role of the teacher as guiding students a cultural logic about teaching typical of CREAR, this concept helps us see how she fit together various culturally-constructed principles about teaching as they fit within her experiences and visions of teaching, which were linked to her identity as a mother. She spoke candidly and lovingly about how she treated her daughter with love and respect in the teaching process, and these were the terms and approaches that she used to reference her students. Speaking about what she had learned in her time with CREAR, Lideily shared some lessons from a conference CREAR teachers attended on teaching reading and writing. Lideily began by describing how much she learned at this conference and how important it was to her to experience so much professional development. However, it is striking to see that Lideily linked her learning at the conference to very personal views of teaching, which arose from her experience as a mother. Entonces, como, algo que aprendí es como a no forzar el estudiante, como, y es que dejarlo como que él se vaya guiando. Es más como [con] niños más chiquitos. Como, por ejemplo, dejarlo ser libre, es lo que quiero decir, como la libertad de expresión que puede tener un estudiante y hacer la, como, le digo yo, la democracia guiada. Yo le digo como la democracia guiada. Como yo lo llevo por el camino que ellos quieren ir. Por ejemplo, el ejemplo no es tanto en 116 educación pero lo voy a hacer como yo lo hago en mi casa. Mi hija, mi casa es totalmente democrática y mi hija tiene derecho—tiene tres años—y puede elegir lo que ella quiera. ¿Pero cómo ella puede elegir lo que ella quiera? Yo le pongo dos o tres opciones de lo que yo quiero que ella elija. Es igual con mis estudiantes. Yo quiero que me hagan un resumen. Yo pongo dos o tres opciones de cómo ellos pueden hacer un resumen. Ellos eligen la manera más fácil para ellos. Como, es la democracia guiada. Tú vas a escoger cuál tú quieres usar, cómo tú lo quieres hacer, pero está bajo mi control porque yo te di las opciones. Eso fue lo que más aprendí en [esa conferencia] y cómo era, como todos los talleres que iba y todas las cosas daban como en ese mismo punto. Deja al niño ser niño y desarrollarse…. So, like, something I learned is like to not force the student, like, and it’s just leaving him, like, that he guides himself. It’s more like [with] the younger children. Like, for example, letting them be free, is what I mean to say, like the freedom of expression that a student can have and do the, like, as I call it, the guided democracy. I call it the guided democracy. Like, I guide him on the road that they want to go on. For example—the example is not so much in education but I will do it the way I do it in my house. My daughter, my house is completely democratic and my daughter has a right—she’s three years old—and she can choose whatever she wants. But how can she choose whatever she wants? I offer her two or three choices of what I want her to choose. It’s the same with my students. I want them to make me a summary. I put two or three options of how they can make a summary. They choose the easiest way for them. Like, it’s the guided democracy. You will choose which one you want to use, like how you want to do it, but it is under my control because I gave you the options. That was what I learned most [at the conference] and how it was, how the workshops I went and all the things came back to this same point. Let the child be a child and develop…. This passage is really important in helping us see how Lideily made sense of professional development she received through her work in CREAR. First, Lideily pointed to a guiding principle that she learned at the conference: no forzar al estudiante (not to force the students). This is significant in that we see her learning not just immediately applicable “teaching strategies,” a set of steps to do with students or a way of getting students to do something different. Principles behind teaching practice are deeply connected to our cultural notions of teachers and teaching (Tabulawa, 2013). Therefore, this is a key moment where we see Lideily 117 learning what is arguably a new cultural logic about teaching. She embraced this guiding principle for teaching, though she inserted a caveat: for younger children. While I cannot completely verify whether the workshop contained the caveat that “libertad de expresión” (freedom of expression) was intended only for younger children, I believe it is noteworthy that Lideily mentioned it because she immediately connected it with her own experience as a mother. She spoke about engaging in such a strategy with her daughter, allowing her the freedom to choose within the realm of possibilities Lideily provided. I see in her story that she incorporated the idea of student freedom into her teaching by building it on top of her experience as mother, a central component of her identity which helps her define herself as a teacher. Implementing the freedom of expression principle made sense to Lideily in terms of what she practiced with her daughter. There is a contradiction between the notion of ”letting the child be a child and develop” and the teacher setting the options that students can choose. Yessica also spoke about this aspect; her response will be discussed in more detail in the next section. Either the child is free to develop or the child is responding to the teacher’s authority projected as freedom. Given my experience as a teacher educator and working in the United States and Dominican Republic, I would posit that the type of choice that CREAR teachers are offering is a departure from typical teacher practice, certainly in the Dominican Republic but also in the United States. One can argue that even offering students such limited, teacher-constructed choices might be radically different from what students are even used to; indeed, Jeanne and I spend a lot of time talking about such ideas and how we can help CREAR teachers increase student choice in the classroom while also preparing students to make choices that are conducive to their learning. 118 However, I think it is noteworthy in Lideily’s case that her connection is to her prior experience as a mother of a three-year old. In this case, Lideily does not just respond to foster independent thinking in her students; the positionality that a mother holds, an authority figure especially in a single-parent home, is much more absolute. I argue that Lideily negotiated the cultural logic of student freedom in light of her positionality as a mother; both logics interact to lead her in her teaching decision-making. CREAR Teaching as Creative, Interesting and Fun In addition to how Lideily sees herself as a mother, other aspects of herself play a part in her teaching practice in CREAR. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Lideily considered important that a teacher should not teach the “traditional” way. She emphasized that teaching should be creative, interesting, and fun. In Chapter 4 we read an anecdote of Lideily being very creative about the types of lessons she planned for her students, making up stories that had supposedly happened to her in order to make real-life situations in which students could apply their learning. This is especially necessary in the Pequeños Líderes (Young Leaders) project-based learning class that she taught, where the curriculum was led by students to learn leadership and critical thinking. Lideily uses the phrase “típica matemática cuadrada” (typical squared math) to refer to repetitive arithmetic exercises that students must do in math classrooms. She argued that students often get bored with math because they see the same topics over and over and over, which lead students to feel upset and frustrated and give up on learning. She argued, “No vamos a darle a ellos lo que no quieren saber, porque sería como llover sobre mojado” (We should not give them what they do not want to know because it would be like raining where it’s 119 wet). This pointlessness in teaching is an indictment of experiences she had in school. Instead, she presented different ideas that would be innovative and fresh, that students have not encountered before. Many of these ideas come from professional development workshops and group planning meetings that CREAR teachers develop in groups. For example, Lideily and the CREAR teachers attended a writing workshop presented by visiting professors at the University of New Hampshire who were volunteering with CREAR for a week. This visiting group of professors came to stay in Lares around their spring break time, and they offered to provide writing workshops for the CREAR teachers. Throughout the week, the teachers participated in workshops about writing, many of which were practice-based; the teachers were completing the exercises. After a workshop on creative writing using students’ names for acrostic poems, Lideily adapted a lesson for her students that asked them to think about the origin of their names and write a poem. Lideily noted that she had never seen something like that in her experience as a student, indicating that sometimes her teachers could not even remember her name due to the large number of students. Lideily remembered having a class of 60 students in one classroom when she was in 4th grade. In response to the Drop Everything and Read anecdote, Lideily spoke about the importance of having some structure for students to report on their texts, arguing that if the teacher asks students a question that is too open-ended, like the one used in the anecdote: “Tell me about your book,” students will not make good sense of what is expected of them. She argued that structure is important in the classroom and in the activity, but Lideily indicated that she uses manipulatives to help make story telling more fun. She uses popsicle sticks to call out random student names and guiding reading comprehension questions, and students get to 120 choose sticks of names and sticks of questions to share in the activity. Another way in which Lideily said she makes this sharing time fun is to have a roulette that students can spin to get their questions. She argued that having fun is important to avoid repetitive routines. This avoidance of repetitive routines in reading time is very personal to her; she spoke about hating reading until she was about 20 years old and came to work for CREAR. She recognized that her experiences in CREAR led her to develop a love for reading, but that she recognizes that students live in a world filled with distractions, games, cell phones, the Internet, which she believes students are drawn to more than books. As a result, she believes it is important to draw students through activities that are not repetitive in order to help them have fun. In these examples of Lideily’s teaching experiences, we see that she assimilates CREAR cultural logics about teaching to her prior experiences. The logic around student freedom is influenced by her positionality as a mother. Creativity in lesson planning is influenced by her transition from hating books due to poor instructional strategies to loving books due to good instructional strategies. Lideily’s personal leaning towards having creative, interesting, and fun classrooms appears to adjust seamlessly to CREAR’s expectations of learner-centeredness. Yessica At the time of data collection, Yessica had been working with CREAR for three years. Like Lideily, Yessica started with CREAR through the teaching internship program. After completing the teaching internship, Yessica was hired as a teacher in the yearlong academic program, where she was paired with an international volunteer to teach literacy and math skills. Prior to working with CREAR, Yessica had been a teacher with the adult literacy program 121 Quisqueya Aprende Contigo created and managed by the Dominican government as part of its agenda to fight poverty and unemployment due to lack of education. Philosophy of Teachers To understand Yessica’s take on the CREAR professional teaching culture, we must look at how she embodied the character of a teacher. While she did not use the terms “emprendedor” or “emprendedora” I find this term to be extremely fitting for the vision of teachers that Yessica not only described but also embodies. This term emprendedor/a19, which can be translated as enterprising, alludes to the way in which teachers overcome great odds to accomplish their goals. I do not use the term enterprising, with its economic character in the English language; rather, emprendedora entails resourcefulness, drive to defy the odds, commitment to achieve, passion, and dedication. Yessica embodies this espíritu emprendedor (entrepreneurial spirit), which is characteristic of all the teachers in CREAR. Yessica’s drive and commitment are a key building block that we must understand in order to understand her commitment and dedication to professional development in CREAR. This commitment and dedication, in turn, speak to her dispositions to negotiate the CREAR professional teaching culture around learner-centeredness. Prior to working with CREAR, Yessica taught in Quisqueya Aprende Contigo (QAC)20. This program was instituted by the Dominican government primarily to combat adult illiteracy; by 19 Given that Spanish is a gendered language, the adjective emprendedor indicates masculine gender and emprendedora indicates feminine gender. Emprendedor/a is short hand for the reader to read both gendered words: emprendedor or emprendedora. To disrupt this gendered language dynamic, I use the adjectives interchangeably. 20 Quisqueya Aprende Contigo is the real name of the program. Quisqueya is another name for the island of Hispaniola, often used as a name to refer to the Dominican Republic. The name of 122 teaching adults to read and write, the program prepared them to complete their education (primary and secondary) with the goal of leading adults towards finding employment or finding a better employment opportunity. Individuals enrolled in the program come from the most marginalized populations in the country. For example, during her work with QAC Yessica worked with adults living in the hills near Lares. People who lived in La Loma, the Hills, do not have running water or electricity. The only way to get there is on a motoconcho (motorcycle taxi) up the dirt roads. In communities such as these, there are no schools; children walk or take a motoconcho down from the hills to the larger communities in order to attend school. Due to distances and accessibility, children in these areas often drop out from school, leading to the low literacy rates in these communities. Adults in Quisqueya Aprende Contigo similarly face these challenges of accessibility: in addition to distance, they juggle different types of informal employment in the neighborhoods and communities near them, manage small farming production, and other challenges of life in hard-to-reach, low-income communities, and the participants sometimes cannot attend classes. Yessica similarly juggled a variety of responsibilities. She had a full-time job in addition to teaching in QAC, and she also attended university evening classes. To make these home visits required her to leave her job early to travel to the homes of the participants, and then travel from the homes to her university courses. Public transportation often added an hour or more to her commute. She said, “[E]ra, como, mucho trabajo para mi corta edad. Y mi cerebro a veces no funcionaba como debía. Entonces eso fue un poco difícil.” [It was too much work for my the program translates to “Quisqueya (Dominican Republic) learns with you,” as in “Quisqueya learns as you learn.” 123 young age. And sometimes my brain did not work as it should. So that was somewhat difficult.] Yessica demonstrated the espíritu emprendedor (entrepreneurial spirit) to push forward and use the resources at her disposal despite the logistical challenges; she made incredible sacrifices to assist the absent participants, juggling her schedule and transportation to visit the homes. Indeed, even after coming to work for CREAR, Yessica still juggled teaching full-time in CREAR and her full-time university evening classes. All the CREAR teachers were enrolled in university courses; they worked for CREAR during the school day, then leave for university in the evening several times a week, sometimes weekend courses. In addition to juggling the logistics of getting to work and classes on time while managing the public transportation, CREAR teachers struggled with completing their own work. Most of the teachers did not have reliable internet connections at home, some did not have computers at home either, which meant they had to do their school work through the computer and internet resources at CREAR or spend additional time on campus. While Yessica’s statement “mucho trabajo para mi corta edad” is very true – the CREAR teachers work incredibly hard to juggle all their responsibilities – they are a testament to the espíritu emprendedor, their drive to learn, and their commitment to teaching as a vocation. Yessica was distinctly aware of what she did not know as a teacher and what she needed to learn. She used the metaphor of the foundation of a house to describe this lack of knowledge: “Al principio cuando inicié no era que tenía como toda la base, como la zapata, como la casa construida. No era que tenía eso.” (At first when I started, it wasn’t as if I had the base, like the foundation, like the house built. It wasn’t as if I had that). We can see in this metaphor her attempt to portray her lack of teaching expertise as something that would be 124 acquired over time, through experience teaching and through learning. Yessica indicated that working for QAC was very challenging partly due to the logistical concerns; however, she also emphasized her lack of knowledge and preparation for teaching. YESSICA: Algo que me acuerdo de [QAC] es que había que alfabetizar a personas adultas. Ya tú sabes, como, ya tienen cierta edad que no sabía[n] todavía, como, escribir ni siquiera su nombre y apellido. Entonces yo, como, no tenía mucho conocimiento como cuáles son las estrategias que yo debo utilizar para dar la clase. Realmente, yo no sé. Entonces eso me, me, me sacó un poco como de contexto, primero en pensarlo, y después cuando tenía que planificar la clase. Aunque tenía, como, las herramientas, pero no sabía, ejemplo, cómo iniciar eso. Y las personas también estaban un poco, a veces, como, [titubea, hace una mueca con la boca]. ¡Claro! estaban a veces como [pausa] GERARDO: ¿Difícil? YESSICA: Que tenía que respirar [inhala y exhala dramáticamente] YESSICA: Something that I remember from [QAC] is that I had to teach reading and writing to adults that had a certain age and did not know yet how to write even their name and last name. So I, like, did not have much knowledge, like, what are the strategies that I should use to teach the class. Really, I don’t know. So that [like, like, like sent me off kilter], first to think about it, and then when I had to plan the class. Even though I had, like, the tools, but I did not know, example, how to start it. And then the people were sometimes, like [Yessica hesitated, makes a negative facial expression]. Of course! They were sometimes like [Yessica pauses] GERARDO: Difficult? YESSICA: That I had to breathe [inhales and exhales dramatically] In her description of working with QAC, Yessica highlighted challenges she faced as a teacher in the program: identifying learning goals (“first to think about it”), planning (“then to plan the class”), instructional strategies (“how to start the lesson”), classroom management (“people were sometimes difficult”), along with student absenteeism. For Yessica, coming to CREAR also served as an important avenue to further her development as a teacher, supporting the university instruction she received and her prior experiences with QAC. Her involvement in CREAR relied on an incredibly open disposition to learn. She often reflected on the many 125 opportunities to learn that CREAR offered, especially these areas that greatly concerned her: different instructional strategies, the implementation of instructional strategies, and most importantly classroom management. Taking in CREAR’s Classroom Management As we saw in Lideily’s case, Yessica’s prior experiences provided a foundation on which she built her CREAR experiences. Yessica was especially drawn to CREAR’s classroom management style and policies. She talked a lot about being positive with students and about students’ self-expression. Yessica made sure to include the aspect of being firm. It is particularly interesting to see the way in which Yessica invoked similar images when describing her favorite teachers and what she does in the classroom: she gives students choice, she recognizes that they have a voice, she gives them the opportunity to express themselves, and she emphasizes the importance of the teacher being positive with students. These same traits she described of her own teachers growing up.21 Being positive with the students was a highlight of Yessica’s understanding of teaching in CREAR. Yessica highlighted the importance of having student work on the walls of the classroom, managing the physical environment of the room to promote student work. She pointed out that seeing their work on the walls motivates students “para que el estudiante vea, 21 It is interesting to note that when asked about what inspired them to become teachers, Lizbeth and Yessica both talk about public school teachers they loved and wanted to imitate. When describing their teaching, they used similar terms to describe their practice. Navarro and Lideily did not speak positively of their experiences with public school teachers; instead, being a mother inspired Lideily, and Navarro’s mother, who was a teacher, inspired him. Navarro and Lideily actually use opposite terms to describe their school teachers from how they describe their teaching practice. 126 que sí se sienta importante y vea que todo lo que él hace tiene reconocimiento” [for the student to see, to really feel important and to see that everything he does has recognition]. For Yessica, this recognition is about highlighting the value of students as individuals so that students will feel proud of themselves and feel that they are important to the teacher. In addition to showing the value of students through posting their work on the classroom walls, Yessica also believed that teachers must provide students with choices. By providing students with choice, Yessica argued, students feel more at ease in the classroom and that increases their opportunities to learn. Si tú no eres bueno en esto, […] vamos a buscar otra opción. La cuestión es que siempre hay que hay que darle la opción al estudiante o le damos opción para que él se sienta libre de hacer pero sin perder la firmeza. Por ejemplo, yo quiero que un estudiante haga algo, que escriba o lo que sea. Yo lo que hago es, como, “Escribes aquí conmigo o escribes allá con Pedrito o fulano.” Entonces al final, él va a estar escribiendo, pero por lo menos le di como dos cosas que él pueda hacer. Entonces eso, que el estudiante se sienta a gusto, libre, y como un ambiente de que no se sienta obligado o reprimido. If you are not good in this, […] we’ll find another option. The thing is that we must always give the student the choice, or we give them a choice so that he will feel free to do but without losing firmness. For example, I want a student to do something, to write or whatever. I do it like, “You can write here with me or you can write over there with Pedrito or someone else.” Then in the end, the student will be writing but at least I gave him like two things he could do. So, the student can feel at ease, free, and like in an environment that they don’t feel forced or repressed. At first glance, we see that Yessica valued offering students a choice in how to accomplish learning tasks. She linked giving choices to the students with making a comfortable and free environment, one where students are “a gusto” (at ease). This quote is preceded by Yessica explaining that students have needs extending beyond content acquisition; if these needs are not fulfilled, then “el estudiante va a estar mal” [the student will be in bad shape]. 127 She critiqued that public school teachers often overlook these needs and simply pigeonhole students, as Yessica put it, “’Él es malo’ y ya” [‘He is bad’ and that’s it]. Yessica presented the use of choice as an example of the CREAR professional teaching culture around student-teacher interactions: attention to the socio-emotional needs of students as well as the positive studentteacher relationships. In Yessica’s understanding, the alternative to a student performing poorly or misbehaving is not to insult them or to dismiss them; instead she argued for the teacher giving the student choice. We can trace Yessica’s argument as follows. First, choice empowers the student (“he will be free to do” and “in the end the student will be writing”). Second, choice creates a supportive classroom climate, one of ease and freedom. Yessica’s use of libre (free), a gusto (at ease), obligado (forced), and reprimido (repressed) is significant to establish the importance of valuing students and doing so through the use of choice. One critique that all CREAR teachers made of their experiences in public schools was that too often they experienced teachers telling students they are bad. As a result, one of the first things that Jeanne teaches CREAR interns and teachers is that in CREAR classrooms, a teacher should never call a student “stupid,” “dumb,” “slow” or other similar dismissive insults. Through the use of obligado (forced) and reprimido (repressed), Yessica really highlighted the up-ended balance of traditional classroom dynamics where students have to do what teachers say, no matter what. Instead, she offered the term a gusto. While a gusto is translated at ease, this term evokes pleasure, satisfaction, ultimate comfort, the type of comfort that comes from eating a favorite meal, playing a favorite sport, or engaging in a favorite hobby. Yessica shows us that the CREAR’s professional teaching culture strives to make classrooms a place where students feel pleasure, especially as they feel acknowledged and their 128 socio-emotional needs are met. She also showed us that she deeply integrated these values into her teaching practice. It is important to recognize that Yessica did not speak to the role the teacher plays in generating the choices. In the example she provided, the student was not asked to generate options, though one could argue Pedrito or someone else would be appealing choices for the imaginary student she addressed. More importantly, Yessica reinforced that there was a limit, and that the teacher remained the enforcer “sin perder la firmeza” (without losing firmness). Firmeza reminds the teacher they are in charge, and the student’s agency in the classroom is given and regulated by the teacher. These instructional strategies, student work recognition and student choice, fit Yessica’s implementation of the CREAR professional teaching culture. However, they are built not only on her CREAR learning; they are linked to how she remembered her favorite teachers in Dominican schools. When Yessica talked about her favorite school teachers, she mentioned how they posted student work in the classrooms. She described them as follows: Había como dos [maestros] en especial que eran, como, muy amorosos, tiernos, y trataban bien a los compañeros. Y yo siempre decía, “Bueno, quiero ser como ellos.” Entonces eso fue lo que me motivó a estudiar educación.” There were two teachers especially who were, like, loving, tender, and they treated my classmates well. And I always used to say, “Well, I want to be like them.” So that is what motivated me to study education. Later in the interview she reinforced this vision, Ellos fueron mi inspiración para estudiar educación ya que eran, como, muy dedicados. Siempre estaban tratando bien a los estudiantes, con amor, con cariño, a diferencia de otros maestros que lo hacían como—le hablaban mal [a los estudiantes] y todo eso. Entonces siempre veía que eran como muy positivos y eran buenos. Y eso yo quería, como, ser como ellos cuando fuera grande en un futuro. 129 They were my inspiration to study education because they were, like, very dedicated. They always treated students well, with love, with care, unlike other teachers who did like—they insulted [the students] and all that. So I always saw that they were very positive and they were good. And that is what I wanted, like, to be like them when I grew up in the future. As Yessica pointed out in these descriptions of her childhood teachers, being positive with students is a key value she holds dear. Such a value aligns closely with CREAR’s professional teaching culture. While we cannot distinguish whether maintaining a positive attitude towards students came from her experience with positive teachers, her university teacher preparation, or her work with CREAR, the alignment between her experiences reinforced in Yessica her approach to teaching. We can say that CREAR’s approach builds on common ground, and Yessica is informed by all these experiences as she navigates her work with CREAR. Lizbeth At the time of data collection, Lizbeth had been working with CREAR for four years. Her first CREAR teaching experience was in CREAR’s teaching internship program, and she was one of the first pre-service teachers to be part of this program. However, her first involvement with CREAR was through CREAR’s Montessori program. Lizbeth’s enrolled her daughters in the Montessori program, which requires parents to volunteer in the classrooms with the children. This volunteer experience was Lizbeth’s first introduction to the teaching culture in CREAR, which Lizbeth indicated was one factor in her decision of choosing to become a teacher. After her internship, Lizbeth was hired as a teacher in CREAR’s yearlong and summer academic programs. She worked in that capacity for three years. In the fourth year, Lizbeth was promoted to Program Coordinator of the yearlong academic program. Given this range of experiences, we 130 can see that Lizbeth’s exposure to CREAR’s professional teaching culture is wide-ranging: parent, volunteer, intern, teacher, and coordinator. As with Lideily and Yessica, Lizbeth’s story tells us about how the personal journeys of the teachers towards becoming teachers formed in them ideas about teaching that deeply influence how they respond to the CREAR professional teaching culture. Unlike the first two teachers discussed in this chapter, we will focus on how Lizbeth’s becoming a teacher was deeply tied to her social networks, a key characteristic of situated learning (learning is social). Her teaching practice is keenly centered on the learners, but this motivation is rooted in a profound sense of calling. This connection to a social network continued after she became involved in CREAR, where the work with students deeply affected her motivation to continue her work and development as a teacher. Teacher’s Work as Missional Lizbeth indicated multiple experiences that led her to choosing education as a career – volunteering with the CREAR Montessori program, her drive for self-learning as a child, the encouragement of friends and family who saw her potential, and the inspiration of childhood teachers. However, she started speaking about her inspiration by noting her own resistance to the profession, which revealed interesting notions, or logics, Lizbeth had about what it means to be a teacher. Si supieras que a principio no era, no era como…. No quería [estudiar educación]. Le huía mucho a la carrera. Como, cuando yo terminé el bachillerato, mi padre quiso inscribirme a que estudiara educación y yo no quise. Como, mis compañeras fueron y yo duré (piensa) como cuatro años fuera que no fui en la universidad. Después fui, pero fui a estudiar turismo porque yo decía “Yo no tengo paciencia para bregar con esos muchachos” [se ríe]. Sin embargo, después como mi esposo siempre me decía, “Yo creo que tú das para maestra. Tú eres maestra” [énfasis original]. Entonces yo sentí después, empecé, como, me puse a 131 estudiar educación. Iba a estudiar contabilidad, pero una amiga me dijo, “Ve a estudiar matemáticas,” y fui a estudiar matemáticas. If you only knew that at the beginning, it wasn’t like…. I did not want to [study education]. I ran away a lot from it. Like, when I finished high school, my father wanted to enroll me to study education, and I did not want to. Like, my friends went and I lasted [thinks] like four years that I did not attend university. Afterwards I went, but I went to study tourism because I used to say, “I do not have the patience to deal with those kids” [she laughs]. However, after, like, my husband would always say to me, “I think that you have what it takes to be a teacher. You are a teacher” [emphasis original]. So then I felt later, I started, like, I put myself to study education. I was going to study accounting, but a friend of mine told me, “Go and study math,” and I went and studied math [education]. Lizbeth’s path towards becoming a teacher wound between her fears of skills and attitudes she believed teaching required but did not see in herself and the encouragement of friends and family who recognized the skills and attitudes they believed teaching required and did see in her. There is a vital link between the individual and the social network in the way in which the social network encouraged Lizbeth to pursue teaching because they recognized in her those values and dispositions they identified as necessary for teachers. This verbal iteration of ideas of teaching built a discourse community that helped Lizbeth learn about teaching outside of any formal schooling into teaching. In Lizbeth’s part, we see the indecision and the challenge of seeing in herself the qualities of a teacher that she believes are necessary. Lizbeth’s father, her friends, and her husband—her discourse community—all insisted that they saw in her the skills of a teacher, specifically patience. Lizbeth identified patience – her perceived lack of patience – as a factor that prevents her from becoming a teacher. It is interesting, then, to see the logic of the patient teacher emerging in the negotiation of whether Lizbeth “da para maestra” (has what it takes to be a teacher). The support of the social network becomes crucial in this teacher’s becoming. The individual learned about teaching (i.e. 132 developed her cultural logics about teaching) through her discussions with the social network: the notion of teachers as patient individuals that different members of Lizbeth’s network articulated for her shaped Lizbeth’s becoming a teacher. Lizbeth’s husband played a key role in helping her see herself as a teacher, highlighting the characteristics of a teacher that he believed in and saw in her, characteristics that she did not always see in herself. Reflecting on her experiences in becoming a teacher, Lizbeth talked about a trajectory of teaching in her life, starting with teaching herself to read, tutoring her older siblings in their school work even before she was in school, and teaching her daughters to read even before she enrolled in university teacher preparation. Her activities were simple; she used to sit with her siblings and trace letters in the sand, prompting them the names and sounds of the letters. She would sit down with her siblings and also with neighbors and help them do their homework. She would later use these early literacy strategies with her daughters before they were in pre-school, to the point that when Lizbeth’s oldest daughter was three, she could recognize the vowels and certain consonant sounds. Considering this history of “teaching practice”, Lizbeth summarized: Entonces él decía, “Tú tienes el don para ser maestra, tu das para maestra. Tú dices que no tienes paciencia, pero eso tú lo logras después.” Y era como las cosas que él veía que…. Porque él decía, “Yo soy muy práctico.” Él es muy inteligente en la práctica, como él puede saber un poquito de mecánica, electricista, de todo eso, pero en la práctica. Pero no le des que tenga que estudiar un libro porque eso no es lo de él. Entonces cuando él estudiaba también, cuando éramos novios, él estudiaba, y también yo lo ayudaba a él. And then he would say, “You have the gift to be a teacher, you have what it takes to be a teacher. You say that you do not have patience but you can achieve that later.” And it was the things he saw that…. Because he would say, “I am very practical.” He is very intelligent in practical matters, like he knows a bit about working with cars, electrician, all about that, but in a practical way. But don’t 133 give him to study a book because that is not his thing. So, when he was a student also, [back] when we were dating, he was a student, and I also helped him. The way in which Lizbeth frames her conversations with the people in her life is evidence of a discourse community or a social network. Putnam and Borko (2000) indicated that discourse communities provide the “cognitive tools—ideas, theories, and concepts—that individuals appropriate as their own through their personal efforts to make sense of experiences” (p. 5). In analyzing Lizbeth’s stories about the people in their life and the encouragement they provide, especially her husband, we can see how she formulated a narrative about the nature of teaching that arises from her conversations with others. The expression “das para” can roughly be translated to “having what it takes to.” Lizbeth shared that her husband, along with family and friends, encouraged her to become a teacher because they recognized that she had what it takes to be a teacher. In so doing, they relied on and created a collective imagination of what a teacher is and recognized it in Lizbeth. This is the collective imagination that Lizbeth relied on to fuel her journey of becoming a teacher. Teaching herself to read, excelling in school, tutoring her siblings, neighbors, and husband, teaching her daughters to read, all of these actions revealed the image of a teacher. Moreover, Lizbeth possessed a type of knowledge that was different from what non-teachers possessed, exemplified in the juxtaposition between Lizbeth’s husbands “practical” knowledge versus the type of knowledge that Lizbeth possessed. Lizbeth and her husband saw his knowledge about cars and electrics as “practical” and different in nature from “knowledge acquired from books.” It might be more accurate to describe the distinction they make as applied knowledge— required to do (i.e. work with cars)—and theoretical knowledge—required to teach. In the eyes of the social network, Lizbeth possessed this type of theoretical knowledge to teach, she 134 possessed this type of “intelligence,” a type of intelligence that her husband did not possess or perhaps did not want or perhaps was unable to achieve; these are all possible connotations for the expression “eso no es lo de él” (that’s not his thing) that counters the statement “Yo soy muy práctico” (I am very practical). However, the social network recognized in Lizbeth not only a different type of knowledge; they also recognized something more intrinsic and value-laden. In referencing “el don,” Lizbeth’s recollection of her husband’s motivation pushes further than recognizing that someone has achieved a set of skills and dispositions for a profession; this statement alludes to something natural and something missional. The word “don” is more than gift, the way we might speak of talent. Don (pl. dones) has Biblical roots, used to refer to the gifts that God bestows on people; in turn, people should not let dones go to waste, but instead use them to extend the Kingdom of God. Given that Lizbeth’s Christian faith is very important to her, I recognize in her use of this term this distinct Christian ethos when she puts the word “don” on her husband’s lips. Spirituality and religious beliefs are factors influencing Lizbeth’s notions of becoming a teacher: it is like being given a gift to make a difference in the world. Her husband’s statement that she had a don is not just encouraging for her to recognize the extent of her abilities but an admonition to ensure that she does not waste this gift. This missional component to being a teacher, linked to an inner and innate sense, can be seen as more important than some of the skills and dispositions that can be acquired later; while Lizbeth protested becoming a teacher due to not having the patience, her husband’s reply is that patience can be learned later because she already had what it takes. 135 The missional nature of teaching is present in another aspect of Lizbeth’s multiple experiences prior to enrolling in teacher education. Lizbeth stated that volunteering led her to see the needs of students and what she could contribute to society. Venía también a sustituir en Montessori y me fue como interesando la manera cómo iba al proceso. Como, cuando iba de mi casa y los niños me decían en la calle, “Profe, profe!” Ya eso fue como más emocionante para mí. Y como sentir que también yo podía ser parte de la solución de la sociedad. Entonces de ahí fue donde nació el amor ya por la educación. Lo que yo veía eran los niños. No era lo que yo tenía en mente primero, sino al tratarlos yo me di cuenta que eran personas con mucha necesidad, que ahí era donde en verdad yo, como, me necesitaban en esa área para yo trabajar. Y todavía, como, salgo y [me llaman los niños], “Profe!” Todo el mundo me conoce. “Profe, profe!“ Entonces eso es, como, no tiene precio. Como, es algo que de verdad, como, uno cada día dice “Vale la pena porque me levanto y amo lo que hago.” I used to come to substitute [teach] in Montessori [CREAR program], and I started to become interested in the way the process unfolded. Like, when I would go home and the kids would call out to me on the street, “Teacher! Teacher!” That was the most exciting thing for me. And to feel that I could be part of the solution to society. So that is where my love for education was born. What I saw was the kids. It wasn’t what had come to my mind at first, but treating them I realized that they were people with great need, that there was where I truly, like, in this area is where I was needed. And even now, like, I go out and [kids call out to me] “Teacher!” Everyone knows me. “Teacher! Teacher!” So that is, like, that is priceless. Like, it is something that truly, like, [I say to myself] every day “This is worth it because I wake up and love what I do.” As we can see in this quote, Lizbeth saw her work as a teacher from a standpoint of making a difference in society by addressing the needs of the children. However, “personas con mucha necesidad” draws a particular picture about the type of need that she references. This expression is often used to speak about the needs of people in extreme poverty, the way that World Vision might speak to raise funds for work in Africa. Christian missionaries use this phrase to speak about people who need to be saved. Tener necesidad (to have need) is a euphemism for poverty. These meanings of the phrase are behind the meaning that Lizbeth 136 invokes when she recognized the needs of students through her volunteering work. Seeing the needs of students broke down her resistance and also pushed her to see herself as fulfilling a mission to society. While Lizbeth did not clearly articulate that her teaching is a spiritual mission, though I believe she brings her spirituality into her teaching practice as evidenced by the terminology she used, she did present herself as a civic “missionary:” “ser parte de la solución de la sociedad” (being part of the solution to society). Personas con mucha necesidad (people with great need), solución de la sociedad (solution to society), and even tener paciencia (having patience), are phrases that represent visions of teaching as something beyond content delivery, with a transcendent character. After all, patience is a virtue, just as the dedication to be a public servant is a moral commitment beyond a professional responsibility. Beyond a moral commitment, there is a passion that drives the teacher, who reaffirms herself that “Vale la pena porque me levanto y amo lo que hago” (This is worth it because I wake up and love what I do). I think an important lesson in Lizbeth’s experience is how her social network, especially her family and her husband, became a discourse community which served as a space where ideas about teaching were negotiated: what teaching is, what teachers do, what teachers know, and how teachers are formed. In other words, they believe there are dispositions and skills for teaching that are learned versus others that are innate, there are different types of knowledge, the knowledge teachers have is different than the knowledge of non-teachers, and the knowledge of teachers is somehow not “practical” (i.e. applied) but “book” (i.e. theoretical). These understandings of teaching are foundational to understand Lizbeth’s process of learning to teach because she did not begin to learn to teach when she stepped into the university 137 teacher preparation course or when she stepped into the CREAR internship. Instead, these two points were road markers on a journey of becoming that had begun much earlier when Lizbeth negotiated with her social network what it means to be a teacher and what it would mean for her to be a teacher. Patience, Teaching, and Making Sense of CREAR Teaching Underlying Lizbeth’s ideas about teaching—possessing or being granted a gift, a missional purpose to make a difference in the world, even Lizbeth’s resistance to the profession due to a lack of patience—is the notion that something is hard about teaching. Why is patience needed? Patience is needed because working with kids is difficult. Patience is needed because teaching others is not straightforward; having to re-teach when others do not understand requires patience. The needs of students are challenging, especially because there are many needs. Education is a cornerstone of building a better society, and building a better society requires effort because it is challenging. Lizbeth running away from the profession was a response to a perception of teaching as challenging. Her embrace of the profession was a response to feeling called to something greater, to tackle the challenges. Her work as a teacher, then, fits within the description of teaching as a vocation. Given this missional or vocational nature of Lizbeth’s perception of teaching, one forged in the negotiation of logics about who teachers are and what they do, we must understand Lizbeth’s understanding and contributions to CREAR’s professional teaching culture from that missional and vocational perspective. We must consider the ways in which CREAR’s student-centered professional teaching culture fits Lizbeth’s teaching worldview – her cultural logics about teaching. 138 However, we must also understand the way in which CREAR’s mission aligned with Lizbeth in such a way as to foster an environment for her to grow. CREAR’s purpose as an organization is “All children and youth in the Dominican Republic will have equal opportunities to learn and realize their full potential through transformative education programs that combat the effects of poverty.” CREAR brings together a wide range of community development programs and education support to accomplish this goal of improving the lives of children and, by extension, the Dominican communities where they work. Therefore, CREAR provides Lizbeth not just an opportunity to follow her don and become a teacher; CREAR fosters an opportunity for Lizbeth to be a teacher who is a change agent, which is very much a part of how CREAR sees its mission and sees the role of the teacher. In 2015, Lizbeth and I served as directors in the main summer academic program site. Since then, Lizbeth has been serving as the coordinator for the yearlong after-school academic program. I know firsthand that her patience is tried every day, in her role with students (which involves a heavy dose of attending to discipline issues), working with staff (and enforcing policies and procedures), and in responding to the changing requirements and priorities that arise as a member of the CREAR administration. Lizbeth brings to CREAR a sense of commitment that comes from having a personal mission to make a difference in the world. However, when Lizbeth started working with CREAR, she was very shy. She was passionate about helping kids, but standing in front of a group was difficult for her. Over the years she has worked with CREAR, she has come out of that shell, especially as she has stepped up to leadership roles. She commands the attention of students, staff members, and administrators with incredible grace, a beautiful quality she brings to CREAR. In return, I believe CREAR truly 139 has opened great possibilities for growth in her sense of mission, allowing her to come out of her shell and exercise leadership in making a difference in the lives of children. Making Sense of Teachers Negotiation of Cultural Logics In this chapter I set out to make two cases. First, I argued that teachers bring a set of cultural logics about teaching to their work in CREAR. I use three teachers’ experiences to show how notions of motherhood, entrepreneurial spirit, and a teacher’s social networks defined for them what it meant to be a teacher. Considering the professional and practice-oriented nature of the role of the teacher described in Chapter 4, the teachers’ stories in Chapter 5 push us to see teaching beyond the boundaries of the classroom and the lesson plan, leading us to see underlying guiding principles that define our notions of what teaching is for, which underlie how teachers conduct their teaching practice. The second case I hoped to make in this chapter was that teachers’ learning to teach in CREAR involved a process of negotiating these existing ideas about teaching with the cultural logics about teaching they encountered in CREAR. These three teachers give us three sets of experiences; with the idea of culture as a web of meaning, we note how the three develop new cultural ideas of teaching that draw on deeply personal experiences such as motherhood, character traits such as emprendedora, or spiritual and social experiences such as having the gift and mission to serve others. The teachers navigate different cultures, from cultural images of motherhood, to the government economic development program for adult learners, to literacy strategies and U.S. university professors, to a community that clamors “¡Profe! ¡Profe!” when one walks the streets. All these experiences offer different ways of envisioning and doing 140 teaching, all with their own specific languages and practices for achieving goals, and all these cultures leaving something with the teachers, and the teachers leaving something in return. Most importantly, we see two characteristics in the embrace of the CREAR professional teaching culture. First, the teachers demonstrate a willingness, a deep commitment to learn the pedagogies presented in CREAR. They recognize their own prior experiences as limited and seek to improve. Second, the teachers experience an alignment between their own logics about teaching and the CREAR teaching logic. In other words, these teachers have a pre-disposition to learn and welcome rather than resist the CREAR pedagogies; they have also had prior opportunities that match the opportunities they are learning through CREAR. I acknowledge that there are individuals who have worked with CREAR in the past who have had varying degrees of alignment with CREAR’s professional teaching culture. Unfortunately, my knowledge of these individuals is anecdotal. During my time with CREAR, I have worked with a couple of teachers in our summer academic program who were unsuccessful in adopting and adapting to CREAR’s professional teaching culture, the role of the teacher in learner-centered pedagogies as well as the different expectations for students and the active learning pedagogies. During our work together, Jeanne and I have spoken about these types of teachers as well. However, due to logistical limitations during data collection (reaching out to former CREAR teachers, being able to include them in the study), I was not able to systematically include their experiences in this study. Such experiences are outside the scope of the present study but would be important directions for future research as they offer a different set of stories of how teachers draw on life experience in their navigating of CREAR culture. 141 As this chapter examines teachers making sense of different cultural logics in professional development by revisiting their prior experiences, it is important to see how such negotiation occurs as a process over time, over many experiences. Therefore, the next chapter will explore the question: How does CREAR’s professional development program acculturate Dominican teachers into its professional teaching culture? 142 Chapter 6 Learning to Teach as Acculturation The previous chapters described the cultural logics at play in CREAR. Chapter 4 introduced the professional teaching culture of CREAR around learner-centered pedagogies. Further, we saw how practices of this teaching culture were undergirded by cultural logics about teaching that CREAR teachers recognize and utilize in their instructional decision-making. In Chapter 5 we looked deeper at how three of the participating teachers made sense of the logics of teaching they encountered in CREAR in light of other cultural ideas about teaching they possessed. In these experiences, we saw elements of negotiation, or the teachers making sense of some ideas about teaching in light of other ideas they held. This chapter examines the process by which the teachers learned CREAR’s ideas and expectations about teaching and how CREAR led the teachers to opportunities that put into communication, sometimes into tension, CREAR’s ideas about teaching with other logics about teaching that the teachers held. In other words, the goal of this chapter is to explore, through the lens of acquiring a culture, or acculturation, the process by which the teachers learned to teach in CREAR. I begin the chapter by briefly re-visiting the conceptual frameworks that guide my understanding of learning to teach as a cultural process. Then, I present two avenues through which CREAR acculturates its staff: acculturation through pedagogies of learning to teach and acculturation through identity building and branding. This chapter incorporates interview data from the participants with which we are familiar—Lizbeth, Yessica, Lideily, Navarro, and Jeanne—along with an interview with Alejandro, a Dominican teacher who works in New York City and served as a PD Coach in the summer of 2016. However, because of my administrative role in professional development in CREAR, this chapter will rely substantially on my own 143 experiences working with the teachers, especially as noted in field notes. Conscious of the hierarchical role that I play, I rely on critical reflexivity (Savvides, Al-Youssef, & Garrido, 2016) to critically examine my role and problematize how Jeanne, PD staff, and I conduct our supervisory and professional development roles. Situated Teacher Learning: Re-visiting the Problem of Learning to Teach The previous chapters have focused on showing the CREAR teaching culture, so I want to begin this chapter by admitting that the process of acculturation is a complex one. One of the biggest challenges that CREAR faces in doing its work is actually preparing new staff members before the summer academic program begins. In other words, this acculturation process is not easy. Examining how this happens will help us better understand the process of acculturation in learning to teach that CREAR carries out. Every summer, CREAR brings together approximately 75 to 85 staff members working in different portions of the program, from PD Coaches/Lead Teachers and Assistant Teachers who are in charge of curriculum planning and delivery in the classrooms, to Academic Assistants who provide classroom support, to extra-curricular activities facilitators, to administrative and logistics support staff that take care of our food, facilities, and administration logistics. Many of the teaching staff, a little over half of the staff members, are new to the organization and/or 144 new to working with the teaching teams.22,23 We have one week when all these staff members are together and tasked to set up their school sites (four sites in 2014 when I began, seven sites by 2016) to function for students for four weeks. We need to get everyone on the same page on curriculum, instruction, classroom management, logistics, instructional materials and resources, student assessments, and a myriad other things involved in running a school program. During this orientation week, we bring together teachers with a wide range of backgrounds and exposure to CREAR’s professional teaching culture. Orientation week, therefore, is an intense time of covering a substantial amount of information regarding the summer academic program, and in that process delivering the CREAR professional teaching culture, while also providing teachers with time to build relationships with their teaching teams, set up classrooms, and create routines and procedures for their future students. Every year, the team of directors spends significant amounts of time planning this orientation week, selecting what things about CREAR are most important and immediate for new staff members to learn in a short period of time. We rely on as much input as possible from different stakeholders as well as feedback from past year’s evaluations to develop this academic program. Still, one consistent comment we get from participants, year after year, is, “I wish you had told us…” and they proceed to indicate things like their roles in the classrooms, 22 In 2014, a great majority of these staff members were completely new to CREAR, including me, the Director in charge of putting everything together. By 2016, the impact of the Teaching Internship program has generated a pool of returning staff members that have drastically reduced the number of new staff members to the organization. For the 2017 summer academic program, a great majority of staff members will be returning staff members. 23 Teaching teams: PD Coach or Lead Teacher, Assistant Teacher, two Academic Assistants. See Chapter 3 for a more detailed description of the teaching team composition in CREAR classrooms. 145 the curriculum to be used, or the students’ reading levels, or the needs of the students, or the classroom management strategies we use, or the staff members involved. My internal response is always, “We did!” Prior to the summer, when staff is hired, and especially during orientation, we explain the goals of the summer academic program. We explain the roles of each team member in the classrooms. We explain how curriculum should be developed, the guidelines we have, and also the freedom that teachers have for planning. We provide information about needs of students and their reading levels. Yet, no matter how engaging the workshops are, how many simulations we make, how many exercises we run through, it is not until the end of summer when participants can articulate the CREAR professional teaching culture and not during or after the orientation week. The fact that teachers seem to “get” CREAR’s teaching culture at the end of the summer, after having experienced it once, raises questions about the way in which they learn to teach in CREAR; the chapter takes up a discussion of this later on. While teachers are not failing in fulfilling their duties to students throughout the summer, they do struggle with juggling the changes in environment, in practice, in expectations, and in definitions for practices that they must enact; after doing it one summer, they “get it.” Over the years, Jeanne and I have resorted to calming staff members’ nerves with, “You’ll see. It’ll all make sense once you’re doing it.” That piece of advice feels absolutely terrifying. We make this recommendation relying on teachers’ abilities to transfer their teacher knowledge, practice, and experiences into this new situation, and that by being immersed in the new situation teachers will find enough things familiar (along with the supporting materials provided) to help them make the transition into teaching in CREAR, according to the CREAR context. 146 This learning curve that teachers and staff members experience when they come to CREAR is deeply linked to situated learning. Teachers have learned how to be teachers in teacher preparation programs or in continuing education workshops during their teaching career. Traditionally, teachers have been expected to apply to a variety of new situations the learning they acquire in these spaces. Teacher learning scholarship has pushed our thinking to recognize other components of the continuum over which teachers learn to teach, such as the apprenticeship of observation and induction programs, which call attention to spaces outside of formal “schooling” into lived experiences and practice-based opportunities to learn. The idea of situated learning helps us to see the ways in which all of these spaces in which teachers learn offer different types of knowledge due to the spaces, the people, and the tools available to learn at each site. For the summer academic program, CREAR’s expectation that teachers new to the organization can fully transfer their prior knowledge and experience into this new setting, with its own set of values and logics, is incredibly demanding; it is a tall order. Yet, even in this short amount of time, teachers adopt and adapt to the expectations and ways-of-being in CREAR, its professional teaching culture. There is something important about the fact that at the end of the summer, the teachers are able to articulate things they wish they had known prior to the start of summer, things that it turns out, we had usually taught. The acculturation process that Dominican teachers who work in the yearlong programs go through is significantly longer and more in-depth. Building on Putnam and Borko’s (2000) understanding of learning to teach as situated, social, and distributed, I argue in this chapter that the process of acculturation into CREAR 147 involved two approaches that were situated (deeply contextual to CREAR, the Lares community, and its environment), social (relied on the networks of the organization), and distributed (learning was built on the roles played and the tools used). First and foremost, the teachers were part of a coordinated professional development program with numerous components including places to acquire multiple types of knowledge. Secondly, CREAR’s institutional identity and branding played an instrumental role in integrating teachers into the organization, further building a cultural network, a sense of place and belonging that influenced dispositions towards growth and learning in a mutually dialogical relationship. Acculturation through Pedagogies of Learning to Teach Lizbeth, Yessica, and Lideily’s experiences navigating cultural logics about teaching point us to the ways in which CREAR’s pedagogies for learning to teach embed teachers into the teaching practices expected in the organization. The participating teachers spoke fondly of a range of professional development experience, many of which have been discussed throughout the dissertation: Jeanne’s modeling, mentorship from colleagues and co-teachers, weekly and monthly PD workshops, the feria pedagógica (teaching strategies fair), the Latin American Reading Association Conference, the writing workshop from the University of New Hampshire, and the teachers’ reading clubs. Professional development was continuous, and it set the expectation that teachers should always be learning and improving, as reiterated by all the participating teachers in this study. CREAR’s pedagogy for teacher learning, how the organization leads teachers to learn, and in so doing, acculturate into its professional teaching culture, involves two types of approaches for professional development: cognitive-based approaches and practice-based 148 approaches. In line with its goals for students, CREAR’s pedagogy for teacher learning seeks to produce teachers who emphasize active teaching and learning strategies focused on student needs which develop critical thinking and engage community. To accomplish these goals, CREAR’s pedagogies for teacher learning combine into a process of acculturation starting with cognitive-focused activities like onboarding training and continuous professional development events. These strategies emphasizing cognitive-based knowledge are complemented with multiple forms of practice-based knowledge opportunities, including modeling, monitoring, and evaluation. As such, CREAR relies on a combination of what could be considered traditionally academic or theoretical knowledge as well as what can be considered practice-based or practical knowledge. As Zeichner (2010) argued, “third space” affords an “equal and dialectic relationship between academic and practitioner knowledge” (p. 92). The range of CREAR pedagogies for learning to teach described below afforded teachers this connection between academic/cognitive-based and practitioner/practice-based knowledge. Cognitive-Based Opportunities Onboard/Orientation As the summer academic orientation anecdote earlier in the chapter indicated, before the start of all programs, CREAR staff participate in an orientation training or onboarding. These workshops discuss CREAR teaching, organizational goals and logistics, along with professional expectations for all staff members, but most importantly for new staff members. Specific workshops include the curriculum, instructional strategies and tools, classroom management practices and principles, staff networks and relationships, community contexts, along with organizational goals and structures. For the summer academic program, these workshops 149 happen over the course of three days the week before the program starts, mixed in with team building activities, classroom and school building preparation, and other curriculum planning for the term. For the yearlong academic program, orientation occurs over the course of a week. I use the term onboarding training hesitantly given its connotations in the business world; however, reflecting on the word “onboard” as one who comes aboard presents an image that reflects what coming into CREAR represents. When you work with CREAR, you must be fully in, fully embrace the culture, what it means to be a part of the organization. This onboarding is reinforced in the first activity in the first workshop of orientation: ¿Por qué estás aquí en CREAR? (Why are you here in CREAR?) This activity, which Jeanne and I lead as the Directors, gives us an opportunity to have people connect their sense of purpose with the mission of CREAR and the goals for the summer academic program. In this activity, having a sense of purpose is critical and invites individuals to think of themselves as connected to the organization, as part of the organization, and the organization as part of them. Another component of the orientation training is the articulation of professional norms expected in the community. As I referenced in Chapter 4, developing staff members’ professionalism is part of learning in CREAR. Examples of professional expectations include punctuality, wearing the CREAR uniform t-shirts and appropriate clothing, maintaining positive interpersonal relationships and avoiding romantic relationships with colleagues. Most importantly, the principle that is communicated is: Lares is small, and students, parents, and community members will recognize you as being a staff member in CREAR. All staff members are told, “When you are out there, you represent us.” The impact of this institutional culture will be further discussed in the next section, but the direct instruction of such requirements and 150 expectations within CREAR come directly during this onboarding, where staff members jump all into the CREAR boat and take their part. As mentioned earlier, these orientation workshops can have mixed results depending on how much the participants are able to absorb in the short period of time, the concerns they have for what is expected of them, and how similar or different their prior experiences are from CREAR’s work. Professional Development Workshops As we have seen throughout the dissertation, CREAR continuously hosts professional development for teachers. Teachers in CREAR gather for professional development workshops often: during both the summer and yearlong academic programs, teachers spend one hour a week in professional development. These workshops respond to needs identified during teacher observations, new strategies that the PD staff seeks to incorporate, and topics that teachers request. Some of these opportunities come up based on available resources. For example, the Latin American Reading Association Conference was held in Santo Domingo, so CREAR coordinated for CREAR teachers to attend the conference. Some PD is led by volunteers with the organization such as U.S. researchers conducting research in Dominican Republic who volunteer their time with CREAR. By and large, Jeanne leads the PD workshops based on issues she has identified in the teachers’ observations. We know from references in the dissertation that Lideily, Yessica, and Lizbeth speak highly of their experiences in professional development; so much so that they report recognizing continuous professional development as an expectation of exemplary teachers. An important sign that CREAR teachers value professional development and that they have taken on the culture of professional development is the rise in teacher book clubs. While 151 Jeanne brought the idea to the teachers to promote a culture of reading among the teachers that they would model for their students, the CREAR teachers built their own reading clubs above and beyond what Jeanne intended. Moreover, a group of the teachers began a writing group as well, a way for them to express themselves, their experiences, and seek out new opportunities for writing for their students. Practice-Based Opportunities Mentoring Of the three types of practice-based knowledge professional development, mentoring is the most distinctive form in CREAR. First of all, teachers in CREAR work in teams, with a lead teacher or PD Coach who has more teaching experience and an Assistant Teacher who has less teaching experience. During the summer academic program, the lead teachers are Professional Development Coaches, who are U.S. certified public school teachers who travel to Dominican Republic for five weeks to mentor Dominican teachers, both pre-service and in-service teachers. During the school year, lead teachers might be international (mostly U.S.-originated) volunteers who lead the classroom with Dominican pre-service teachers serving as co-teachers. The team-teaching structure of CREAR intends for constant collaboration from teachers, a constant companion to reflect about classroom situations, share in ideas and strategies for successful teaching, and support classroom management to increase student attention. The three focal teachers spoke highly of their experience working with a lead teacher. All three reported still employing strategies that their mentors taught them. Both Lizbeth and Lideily also reported that the relationship between their mentors and them were friendly, collegial, they trusted each other, so when they had any doubts, they felt they had someone to 152 talk to. More importantly, these mentoring relationships afforded the teachers opportunities to collaborate on building strategies together. Lizbeth remembered that during her internship time, her mentor would teach the morning shift of students, and model for her how to carry out the lesson which she would repeat in the afternoon and received feedback from her mentor. She described this as an important point of feedback for growth as a teacher. Modeling As a non-profit organization mobilized by its U.S. connections, the expertise and interests of CREAR administrative staff strongly drive and shape the programs conducted in the organization. In the academic arena, Jeanne has played a pivotal role in shaping the direction of CREAR for the past five years. Her deep commitment to practice-based teacher preparation has entailed that she herself monitors teacher’s development. She routinely conducts informal observations of teachers during the yearlong academic program, as often as every other week. Through these observations, Jeanne engages in reflective conversations with teachers to develop their teaching practice. She fosters a spirit of reflection and metacognition, so these observations are conversations about practice more than categorical evaluations of what teachers did right and what they did wrong. Every so often, Jeanne and her PD staff carry out model lessons of different strategies for teachers to enrich teachers’ teaching styles. All CREAR teachers in this study mentioned Jeanne’s commitment to their development and expressed gratitude for her dedication to modeling for them and providing them formative guidance through her visits. In these visits, Jeanne and the other PD staff identify teacher needs to select potential topics for PD workshops. Jeanne explained that when she visits teachers in their classrooms, she focuses on modeling strategies that teachers can mimic and replicate. She 153 greatly values topics and lessons that teachers can easily understand and implement in their classroom. In so doing, we can see that Jeanne reinforces the practice-based approach to teaching because she focuses on teaching teachers specific teaching practices. Monitoring As referenced in Chapter 4, monitoring and evaluation are a critical characteristic of CREAR because of its nature as a non-profit organization. In addition to providing data for sources of funding, monitoring and evaluation in CREAR impacts how teachers learn; monitoring makes evaluation formative. Informal observations that Jeanne and other PD staff conduct provide immediate feedback for teachers. During formal observations teachers are assessed according to a CREAR-generated rubric of teaching practices. This tool helps teachers see where they fall in terms of stages of teaching proficiency, and provides teachers their progress and areas they need to improve. The tool explicitly states the expectations of the CREAR professional teaching culture. Through the tool, teaching is defined as a set of practices in six areas: classroom environment, classroom management, lesson planning, academic rigor, student participation, and assessment. Additionally, all categories are subdivided into two sets: observable actions of the teacher and observable actions of the student. All components of the rubric refer to actions rather than knowledge statements or expectations. Thus, by emphasizing the actions that teachers should take, along with actions that students should take, teachers’ work is measured in practice rather than cognitive terms. Additionally, the teachers’ are assessed by what they can do and how these actions impact students, under the basic principle that teachers’ work should be measured in consideration to their impact on students, bringing another layer to the emphasis on student-centeredness. Furthermore, the CREAR assessment 154 rubric does not request that teachers know content matter in a discipline or even in literacy or mathematical development. Rather, teachers are assessed on how they implement curriculum materials. In these ways, we see the evaluation of teachers setting the agenda of CREAR pedagogies for learning to teach, emphasizing student-centeredness. These pedagogies for learning to teach that CREAR employs are important examples of situated learning to teach for two reasons: they are strongly situated in practice and they are highly relational (Putnam and Borko, 2000). CREAR’s teaching culture is designed to occur in teams, from the pair of teachers that typically lead a classroom, to the small group activities that occur during PD, to the book club groups that foster continuing education, to the coordinator teams that plan and execute summer academic programs. A great part of CREAR’s work happens in collaboration and in groups, which affords many opportunities for individuals to contribute and shape the professional teaching culture of the organization, just as they are acculturated into the organization. First, we see the balance between teachers’ learning time in workshops with fellow teachers and in classrooms with students. Learning in this case happens in practice, in the spaces, with the tools, and with the people with whom teaching ultimately happens. In addition to leading the workshops, where knowledge is delivered to teachers, the mentoring and modeling components of professional development afford great opportunities for teachers to learn in practice, as they see the impact of pedagogies on students in real time. Second, learning to teach in CREAR is deeply social. As part of her modeling strategies, Jeanne sits with every teacher to reflect on their learning, what is positive and what needs improvement, and both Jeanne and the teacher come to agreements as to next steps. CREAR teachers learn from a variety of people who lead professional development on a range of topics 155 related to teaching. However, CREAR teachers spend a lot of time learning from each other in the mentoring relationships and with other colleagues. I remember sitting in Yessica’s classroom during a moment of down time, when she received a WhatsApp message from Soledad, a teacher in one of the other CREAR sites, confirming the details of an activity that they had been planning together. Third, learning to teach is also distributed. For example, la Feria Pedagógica, the Pedagogy Fair, was an event to promote collaborative learning between the teachers. They worked in groups to come up with a strategy to share with other CREAR teachers, then made science fair displays to share their learning. Acculturation through Identity Building and Traditions In addition to these pedagogies for learning to teach meant to guide teachers into learner-centered teaching, CREAR has a range of tools that define and re-affirm its identity and traditions. Throughout this dissertation, I have used the term “culture” to refer to different types of cultures. We have seen that CREAR has a teaching culture, the ideas and beliefs and practices the organization promotes. We have also seen that cultural understandings that any teacher brings—those beliefs and values they possess by virtue of their ethnic, national, linguistic backgrounds (which in CREAR are many given that staff members come from multiple backgrounds)—influence their pedagogy. However, I would like to discuss in this section a different part of the CREAR institutional culture, one that is not explicitly about teaching but that operates in such a way that affirms an individual’s belonging to this group, this CREAR culture. We must recognize that acculturation to CREAR is not just about practicing a set of strategies, but also about practices that extend beyond the classroom that re-affirm an assumed and embodied cultural identity. 156 Like a Family The CREAR teachers involved in this study have spent several years working with the organization; therefore, time has played a role in the process of building relationships of mutuality and respect that I argue lead to acculturation. Teachers build relationships with each other over the time they spend together. Lares is not a large area and CREAR volunteers bump into each other in social settings consistently, whether at the ice cream shop, the few restaurants in town, the tourist souvenir shops, or at the bars and clubs. The teachers socialize often, going out together, traveling on excursions together, and inviting each other to important family and social events. The teachers have occasionally had disagreements, strong arguments, with each other, the way a family does. There have sometimes been tensions between teachers—“I don’t want to work with her” situations. There are cliques formed around affinity, and tensions sometimes arise between these cliques, which affect the workflow. These aspects of the organization are difficult to quantify or describe in much detail without “airing the family’s dirty laundry.” However, like a family that argues and is subsequently strengthened by difference, personal growth and development in CREAR has come from these tensions, arguments, and disputes. As the previous chapters and the previous section have alluded, CREAR teaching does not happen in isolation; there is rarely a situation where a teacher closes the door to the classroom and is completely on their own. Planning happens in groups, PD happens in groups, teaching happens in groups, Jeanne’s modeling and mentoring provide a sisterly or motherly figure of follow up. The teachers’ build close relationships with each other, they get to know each other well. There are plenty of opportunities in which teachers socialize with each other, they get to 157 know one another. The lunch hour is sacred; it is rare that anyone works during lunchtime. This time brings people together over a meal. There is usually a mid-afternoon walk to the colmado (small grocery store) across the street from the CREAR School, a moment to catch a break, chat and bond, before continuing with the tasks of the day. During the summer academic program, with the intense work schedule and the 95* heat, lunch time is also a time to take a nap together, with a little bachatita (typical Dominican music) playing softly in the background. In the first 20 minutes of the day, the doorman makes the coffee and teachers gather to share a shot of coffee before beginning the day. The close relationships are in the “¡Buenos Días!” greeting that cannot miss when one walks in. I have been guilty of walking into the school completely immersed in the preparations for the day and forget to greet the staff, all the staff. I have been reminded, sometimes not so subtly, that this is not acceptable. The CREAR culture, influenced by the Dominican culture, requires this family-like relationship building. Interpersonal relations among the staff are close and proximal, unlike the typical culture of schools where teachers socialize with each other during school hours, and perhaps some might be friends outside of work, but generally an air of “professional distance” surrounds typical work relationships among educators. However, the geographical size of the Lares community, the social networks of this community or the fact that teachers live in very close proximity to their students, the fact that students and teachers invite each other into their lives, all contribute to develop social networks that are interrelated to learning to teach. Knowing the lives of students and the students knowing the teachers’ lives are a fact of life. Parents are part of the community that teachers run into taking the public transportation, or at the market, or at church, or at the hair salon, for good and for bad. Sometimes this proximity 158 causes elation – students are thrilled to see their teachers. Sometimes these encounters cause tension depending on how parents feel about a teachers’ actions towards their student, or concerns that teachers have for students’ home lives. All these opportunities to live together are part of working together. Knowing each other in a personal and familial way aside from knowing our teaching styles and preferences, strengthens the network of teachers. These interactions also afford personal support, growth, and development. Jeanne reported that over time, she recognizes the growth in maturity in the teachers as they interact with each other. I think it is important to see the ways in which the staff, especially the teachers, bond with each other. Bonding with each other strengthens their identity as CREAR staff members. Roles and Contributions Within this relationship building and bonding, I want to highlight that the CREAR teachers are given leadership opportunities for professional and personal development and as a way to help them experience other types of roles within the organization. Teachers engage in a variety of activities when they work with CREAR, giving them access to develop a range of skills and perspectives on the work of teaching and in getting to know the organization. For example, Lizbeth, Yessica, and Lideily have all served as Co-Directors for the summer academic program as a way to help them build their leadership skills. As I referenced in Chapter 5 regarding Lizbeth, serving in leadership roles helped her gain confidence in herself and become an incredible leader as well as a better educator. Through these roles, the teachers have had to envision teaching in more expansive ways – they had to identify and implement the goals for the program that teachers in the classrooms, in turn, enacted. They also had to supervise 159 classrooms, and see teaching from a different perspective and lens. As Directors, they had to consider a different side of classroom management. When student behavior escalates in the classroom, students are sent to the Directors’ office; conflict resolution and decisions for discipline lead these teachers to consider student needs and abilities differently. Rather than knowing the context of the situation well enough as a classroom teacher, with immediate exposure to an incident, Directors have to rely on reports of what happened to make their decision on how to proceed. Directors have to exercise a lot of personal discretion on how to stand behind the teachers’ understanding of the situation along with fairness for the students’ circumstances. Being “on the other side” builds the teachers understanding of the organization as a whole and their return to the classrooms during the yearlong academic program is enhanced by having come to know the school system more deeply and intimately. CREAR Traditions Building this CREAR family, one where individuals know each other beyond their teaching abilities and where teachers contribute their talents in a variety of roles, involves a set of traditions. I want to call attention to these traditions to show how partaking in the traditions reaffirms the sense of belonging and dictates expectations in and outside the classroom. One of the most protected rituals at the beginning of the summer academic program is the distribution of the poloches (t-shirts). Everyone wants a CREAR poloche—staff, students, parents, and other people from the community—and if we do not keep track of them, people take them. CREAR poloches are very distinctive because of their logo and their bright colors. Staff members can track their time of service with CREAR based on the colors of the poloches they own; students can track their time as well through the colors of their poloches. Walking up 160 and down the callejón (small road) that serves as the main way into the Lares community, one cannot escape the distinctive bright poloches of CREAR staff and students. The bright poloches are a part of the Lares landscape, just as the CREAR school building and the baby blue vans that transport staff members and the mobile library. Wearing the poloche involves an additional level of representing the organization. At orientation and during staff meetings, we remind everyone what they are allowed to do while wearing the poloche and what they are not allowed to do. Teachers are not allowed to engage in activities that might not be viewed positively by community members towards the organization while wearing their poloches; this includes drinking alcohol. No one is exempted from these rules. At one point, different rules about using motoconchos, motorcycle taxis which are often seen as dangerous modes of transportation, applied to staff members if they were wearing their CREAR poloche versus if they were not. The CREAR poloche invites people out in the community, parents or relatives, to ask the individual about CREAR events, about whether they can get their child enrolled, or when the summer academic program starts. For a time, it provided a discount at one of the local eateries because it is so popular for CREAR staff to eat there. The poloche is a visible mark of being a CREAR teacher. The expectations that come with it transcend being in the school; they sometimes transcend wearing or not wearing it. We can compare it to a priest wearing the collar. Because of the visibility of CREAR in Lares, seeing the poloche begins conversations, invites questions, and sometimes, it causes scrutiny. The poloche reminds the teacher of the role they play in the community, to be mindful of their actions; as such, it is a visible reminder that one is always a CREAR teacher. 161 Besides distinctive poloches that make staff members in the town distinctive, CREAR programs are also highly visible in the communities where CREAR works. One important way for this visibility is in the classrooms, encouraging teachers to have students conduct projects that involve the community. Additionally, CREAR carries out different events throughout the year to bring members of the local communities to the school and to take students out into the community. Two such events occur during the summer: the desfile (parade) and the Noche de Familia (Family Night). Figure 5: Students from the CREAR School site, which I lead, walking along the Lares Beach at the conclusion of the community parade. Summer 2016 On the first Friday of the summer program we have the desfile (parade). The desfile is meant to allow the community, especially sponsoring businesses who partner with CREAR, to see the students, to see it outside the school. It is a way to build positive relationships with the 162 community. It is an incredibly challenging event to prepare because it takes students through a main highway and stops traffic for a period of time. The logistics are complicated to take approximately 80-100 students in the 95* weather, under the sun to walk for 25-30 minutes to the beach. However, this is an event that must always be done to build positive relations with the Lares community. La Noche de Familia (Family Night) is an event at the CREAR School in which parents, relatives, friends, and other people in the Lares community come to see what students have learned. These events are fixed in the minds of people in Lares; they expect them. They are a part of life in Lares, as they are a part of life in CREAR. In this living, CREAR staff members also bond with each other. There’s nothing like sweating profusely while worried that students are getting out of line and possibly be hit by a car or a motoconcho during the parade to bond you and your teacher colleagues for life. I make sure the staff get an ice cream popsicle after. This is a part of our bonding process. In summary, CREAR possesses a distinctiveness that goes above and beyond its teaching practices inside the classroom. Its events, its people, its logos and uniforms are all instantly recognizable in Lares (even all the way to the billboard close to the international airport or the hamburger named The CREAR at one of the Lares restaurants). CREAR staff is recognized in the community as CREAR teachers whether or not they are wearing these shirts. Given the aspect of CREAR as a non-profit organization with deep U.S. ties, the teachers are also recognized by the community as volunteers, as people doing service to the community and not just a job. These community interactions, therefore, are integral parts of the acculturation into being a part of CREAR. 163 Being a CREAR teacher is about forming a community, a family; it involves building relationships that surpass teaching strategies and professional development. Being a CREAR teacher is recognizable in the community, the potential for recognition and interactions leads teachers to embody their CREAR teacher self in and outside of school, even when not working. This set of expectations that transcend the 8am-5pm work schedule or the planning classes, teaching, and grading papers component of teaching, reaffirm the CREAR culture even when the teacher is not in school. More importantly, these relationships, this caring for one another—despite the tensions and personality clashes—all of these build good will, build commitment, and they build a shared experience that facilitate the process of acculturation into being in CREAR. Learning to teach in CREAR involves committing not only to a specific set of strategies but also to a CREAR family community. Time and The Process of Acculturation Sam and Berry’s (2010) framework of acculturation leads us to look at the reciprocity of the acculturation process. Additionally, it helps us see that there are a variety of ways in which groups, and individuals within groups, acculturate into new cultures. Therefore, acknowledging the space for individual meaning-making does not negate the process of acculturation. I want to highlight how acculturation takes place as a process in CREAR. I want to briefly make the case that acculturation involves a process, one that involves negotiation, and therefore, time. Integrating into the CREAR institutional and teaching cultures requires time and effort. If we return to the anecdote opening this chapter, we encounter a group of teachers new to CREAR who have very little time to engage in the processes described in this dissertation: adopting the CREAR teaching culture, negotiating their personal cultural logics 164 about teaching, and assimilating a set of family-like traditions beyond classroom responsibilities. This is difficult to convey in meetings and workshops before summer begins. Teachers in the summer program receive the cognitive-approach to teacher learning during orientation. We go over all the information that they need; all is explicitly included in handouts, guides, and PowerPoint presentations. Yet, the reminders in the morning and afternoon meetings that directors lead every day, the modeling we conduct in observations throughout the days and throughout the duration of the program, the professional development workshops, and the teachers’ own experiences in practice (including trial and error), all lead them towards learning in a way that makes the teaching come alive. Practice, experience, and follow up all contribute to learning. At the end of the summer, the teachers come to articulate what they have learned, and they do so by indicating what they wish they had been told before. I think it is important to see how a combination of activities—both cognitive and practice-based—allowing time and follow up, are part of the CREAR summer teachers’ acculturation into CREAR. These activities address the three areas of human life that change during acculturation: affective, behavioral, and cognitive (Sam & Berry, 2010). At the end of summer, teachers have bonded with their peers, they have enacted strategies with their students, and they have acquired new knowledge that combined yield the acculturation into CREAR. At the end of the summer, when they look back and reflect on the experience, the learning they acquired throughout their practice becomes visible. Now, this does not mean that staff members are failing in their responsibilities throughout the summer. However, they do struggle in making sense of a wide range of aspects of the CREAR teaching culture—how to implement learning stations, how to prepare reading materials for older students with really 165 low reading skills, how to keep students motivated, what classroom management strategies are most efficient. More importantly, it is after the summer academic program is finished that they “got the hang of it,” “it makes sense,” and they wish they had had certain information prior to the start, despite the fact that most of that information was indeed provided. However, I do not intend to argue it takes a summer for teachers to become acculturated to CREAR. The summer is an intense bonding experience, for sure, a sort of trial by fire. A lot of learning takes place over the summer. However, we see that the longer that teachers are involved with CREAR, the more comfortable and confident they are with teaching practices. Lizbeth’s responses around the CREAR teaching culture were more articulate, much more succinct, and cited the guidelines of the organization more than Yessica or Lideily. This is partly due to her role as coordinator. However, Yessica similarly articulated CREAR pedagogies more distinctly than Lideily did. While I do not intend to overgeneralize based on the three focal teachers’, I do want to use them as an example of how time has allowed the teachers more opportunities to grow in the teaching culture of CREAR. The interns who leave the organization at the end of their internship do not become acculturated in this way, they do not display the same sense of knowledge of the organization. Previous chapters discussed the teaching culture of CREAR and how the participating teachers made sense of it, including negotiating their own cultural logics about teaching in light of CREAR’s pedagogies. This chapter began by exploring the CREAR pedagogies of learning to teach, that is, CREAR pedagogies to help teachers learn, or acculturate to, the CREAR way. However, working in CREAR involves much more than the time spent inside the classroom with students; it extends as long as the teachers wear their CREAR poloche, and even when they do 166 not but encounter people who still see them as distinctly CREAR. CREAR staff form a family, one that relies on traditions to define and re-affirm its identity inside and outside the gates of the school. The CREAR acculturation process extends beyond professional development; it situates learning to teach in close relationships to fellow teachers and to the community at large. Considering this process of acculturation, the next chapter provides an overview of implications and recommendations of this work. 167 Chapter 7 Implications and Recommendations This study came about in part because Jeanne wondered, “Why didn’t the in-service teachers learn?” in reference to the workshops and professional development that she conducted at local public schools. Her solution was to focus on working with pre-service teachers by developing a teaching internship program. She posed a problem of when and why teachers learn. In this dissertation, I sought to use the lens of culture to help us see the problem as a matter of what and how and where. Rather than seeing lack of learning as a matter of career progression and disposition, I have brought a cultural lens to this problem to make the case in this dissertation that teacher educators need to pay attention to our work as a process of acculturation, one in which the teachers with whom we work are engaged in a process of negotiating their cultural logics in order to acquire a new set of cultural logics. Throughout the dissertation, I have intended to show through the voice of the dedicated and committed teachers of CREAR what they believe about teaching, how they carry out their practice as teachers. They have graciously shared their thoughts and experiences through personal narratives which have helped me see the way in which CREAR’s professional teaching culture has shaped their learning to teach. However, the teachers are not the only ones who have been acculturated into CREAR; I have been acculturated as well. As Summer Academic Director and as a researcher in this organization, I have taken on a part of the CREAR professional teaching culture, just as I have also been a part of shaping it for the past four years. Therefore, this study and what it helps us see is important and personal to me – telling the stories of how my friends have been working together to become even better teachers. 168 Therefore, I would like to conclude this dissertation in the personal narrative style that characterizes it. I want to share implications and recommendations for future work by speaking to two people who have been incredibly influential in the development of my thinking and my research. First, I write a letter to Jeanne, the Academic Director at CREAR. As you will see, the letter is not intended to narrow the scope of implications of the dissertation to CREAR alone. Instead, it is intended to honor the tangible impact that research must have on practitioners, especially those who so intimately collaborate with us in uncovering and producing knowledge. While the letter to Jeanne closes the research loop from the conceptualizing of an idea while working with CREAR in 2014, conducting the research study in 2016, writing this study in 2017, and sharing the results with the most immediate beneficiaries (the staff in CREAR), this letter is also meant for professional development staff and teacher educators working in cross-cultural settings throughout the Global South. I believe the recommendations found here will be important and applicable in these situations as well. Second, I write a letter to Dr. Joseph Tobin, lead researcher in the Preschool in Three Cultures project. In this second letter, I build on a conversation Dr. Tobin and I had about cultural logics, a concept he coined, and culture more broadly as a lens for understanding teaching, teachers, and most importantly, learning to teach as a process of acculturation. I share with him implications for scholarship on culture and teacher learning. 169 Letter to Jeanne June 4, 2017 East Lansing, Michigan My Dear Friend and Colleague Jeanne, I still remember the day we were sitting at the CREAR office and you told me how frustrated you were that public school teachers struggled a lot to adopt the learner-centered teaching strategies, both in the La Union school PD and as a result of summer camp. My immediate thought then was, “Well, of course! They teach in Dominican ways and we teach in U.S. ways.” In my mind, I kept thinking of how if you have a MacBook computer and you try to insert hardware for PC, there might be some things that are compatible, but by and large, the hardware is not going to work. I think there is definitely something to when and why a teacher learns that influences their learning; the openness that pre-service teachers have to learn is greater than in-service teachers. However, I think this has to do with acculturation, the way that a child can learn a new language rather quickly while us older folks have a more difficult time learning a new language. We have too many shortcuts in our language already. Thank goodness, the human brain is more malleable than computer motherboards! However, learning a new culture, like learning a new language, is almost like having to adjust the ports and build new electrical connections in the motherboard in order to fit different parts. I know you have said you wanted to read the dissertation, so let me share the synopsis here. This dissertation brought the lens of culture into a problem of learning to teach, finding that learning to teach involves a process of acculturation. Further, the process of acculturation takes place as individuals negotiate their cultural logics with those of the new culture they enter. I interviewed CREAR Dominican teachers, observed their classrooms, and relied on my own roles as Academic Director to identify what distinguishes the CREAR professional teaching culture, how the teachers’ cultural logics about teaching interact with the CREAR culture, and how CREAR acculturates the staff. As you know, there are three characteristics of the CREAR professional teaching culture, and the CREAR teachers in this study can identify them and speak about how they implement them in practice. However, they did not simply accept the pedagogies because the workshops or the mentoring were good (though I know you rocked it!). Teachers were able to take in the CREAR cultural logics as they aligned or extended their own cultural logics. When Lideily brought her sense of motherhood, that caring and caretaking figure into teaching, she evokes Dominican notions of how mothers should be based on her experiences. Yessica brought el espíritu de emprendora as you know she is, and this commitment to learning carries her in every opportunity to learn to teach in CREAR. For Lizbeth, her journey of becoming a teacher leads towards making a difference, and CREAR affords her that exact space for making a difference in the community. 170 Acculturation takes time and sustained effort. The teachers are constantly trying new ideas and strategies with their teaching partners, you are constantly giving them new strategies and modeling for them, and their chance to present to the rest of the group; these are all key and important parts of situating learning to teach. Learning to teach is situated in a context, it is social, and it is distributed; the CREAR pedagogies for learning to teach through mentoring, modeling, and monitoring as supports for workshops are promoting this type of learning. Additionally, the focus on practice-oriented programs to support the more cognitive-based learning of workshops is generating a third-space, which means that teachers can bridge the theoretical knowledge they have about teaching—especially the one they get at the university—with the practical knowledge that comes from practice. So, what can we learn from this? What does it offer the future of CREAR and other organizations involved in teacher learning in cross-cultural settings? First, there needs to be space for all members involved to explore their cultural lenses and make them visible. Consider one’s own experiences with teaching and how they build what we know and expect about teaching allows us to navigate difference. It is not simply a matter of bringing a “best practice” from elsewhere and go through the steps. It is even not just about having the teachers practice it. They must have the opportunity to fit it within their own understandings about purposes and goals. We start orientation by asking individuals to think about what motivated them to come to CREAR for the summer, and then we ask them how their goals align with the CREAR goals for summer. This is the same principle we should consider with professional development and the introduction for new strategies. Second, pay attention to how CREAR defines its identity and its culture. The process of acculturation is a two-way street, so providing a space for teachers to be involved in bringing their perspectives is essential, just as it is important to reveal for them the cultural expectations. Cultural expectations are tacit until they are different, at which point they usually cause conflict. Therefore, make more space for Dominican teachers’ contributions on what CREAR should be in the future. The strength of CREAR is not solely on the quality of continuing professional development; it is in the relationship building that welcomes people into it and makes them more willing to learn. Of course, because acculturation takes time, building opportunities for continuity is important to reaffirm that cultural identity. The situated nature of learning to teach in CREAR’s professional development, especially considering the impact of mentoring and modeling, calls our attention as teacher educators to foster stronger mentoring programs for teachers in practice-based settings. However, CREAR’s approach to acculturation in identity building helps us see that learning to teach and becoming a teacher extend beyond the lessons learned in formal workshops and programs that draw our attention towards teaching. Activities and expectations that affirm a distinctive identity inserts a cohesion that not only glues expectations of professionalism but also catches the learning to teach. 171 I would like to end by encouraging you to think about success in teacher learning differently. I wouldn’t say Lizbeth, Yessica, and Lideily are successful because they do what the teacher rubric says. They are successful because they have taken on the ideas behind the expectations in the rubric and in the workshops, and they have related these cultural logics to their own. Therefore, spend time in activities that allow teachers to make strategies their own. Additionally, provide time and space for the teachers to focus not on “how to do the strategy right” and more on the process of building the strategies, the justifications behind them. I am honored to have had the opportunity to learn and serve with you and the amazing teachers in CREAR. I hope we may continue to learn together. Sincerely, Gerardo 172 Letter to Dr. Tobin June 4, 2017 East Lansing, Michigan Dear Dr. Tobin, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have co-presented with you at the Comparative and International Education Society Annual Conference earlier this year. I was really inspired by our conversation on cultural logics, especially the implicitness of the cultural influence in the practice of teaching. At the time, we discussed some criticisms that have been raised against the notion of implicit teaching cultures. I want to briefly share with you some thoughts based on my dissertation work that build the case for the impact of culture in teaching. First, I draw attention to learning to teach as a process of acculturation, acknowledging that a professional teaching culture teaches its new members the traditions and know-hows of being a part of the group. In the case of the many organizations world-wide engaged in exporting and importing educational policies and practices, we cannot study the impact of these pedagogies isolated from the cultural origin that produced them or the cultural context in which they are implemented, but more importantly, we must consider the setting in which they are learned. Situated learning theories help us consider the ways in which space, people, and tools impact learning. The example of CREAR presents us with a cultural and learning third space. As a cultural third space, CREAR bridges cultures defined in national, ethnic, or linguistic terms. As a learning third space, CREAR bridges theory and practice. This site, therefore, is important to foster negotiation of cultural logics about teaching. Based on the experiences of the participating teachers, we see that this process of acculturation involved a negotiation of cultural logics about teaching, a consideration of ideas and beliefs about teaching that teachers brought from their experiences considered in light of the ideas and beliefs about teaching that substantiated the learner-centered pedagogies of CREAR. However, what is really important to consider is the immersion experience of working with CREAR, as that framed this negotiation, not only in explicit professional development programming but also in the formation of an institutional culture. This formation of an institutional culture I believe is critical to considering cultural logics about teaching. While culture impacts the values and beliefs and know-hows we hold, our identities are intersectional, and the small scale of institutions leads to characters that might slightly depart from the broader culture. Therefore, the process of acculturation is not just between U.S. or Dominican, in this case, but also about more, less, or no CREAR culture. Becoming more CREAR teacher involves recognizing Dominican, U.S., along with a series of intersectional identities that help individuals negotiate the practices they take on. Finally, educational reform and policy leads us to think about teaching and learning to teach as a matter of doing teaching practice. The formation of a professional teaching culture in CREAR through the interaction of cultural logics leads us to see learning to teach as an acculturation 173 process which extends beyond “knowing” and “doing” to “being.” Dar para maestra (having what it takes to be a teacher), as Lizbeth said in this study, reflects such an embodiment and enactment of cognition. The CREAR teachers are not simply very knowledgeable on set teaching strategies; they embody cultural logics about teaching that deeply inform their curriculum and instructional decision-making. This embodiment is influenced by Dominicanness, Americanness, but also, by CREARness. I look forward to continued conversations on these important issues in our work as teacher educators. Sincerely, Gerardo 174 APPENDIX 175 APPENDIX INTERVIEW PROTOCOLS AND TASKS Interview 1 The teacher’s beliefs – Traditions of schooling The purpose of this interview is to get a sense for what you value in teaching and learning. In other words, it is an opportunity to consider what you believe schooling should be like and different experiences throughout your life that have informed that. • What inspired you to become a teacher? o Thinking about one or two inspirational teachers, what characteristics do/did they possess that make them outstanding? • What things (ideas, characteristics, experiences) have been most important in preparing you to become a teacher? o Share a significant experience while in university and how it impacted your teaching • What positive experiences do you have about being a teacher? What do you like about being a teacher? o What negative experiences do you have about being a teacher? What do you dislike about being a teacher? • In the classroom of an outstanding teacher, o What does the classroom look like? o What happens inside that classroom? o What doesn’t/shouldn’t happen? • Tell me about one specific lesson you have taught that you feel incredibly proud of. o What did you do? What did the students do? What made you proud of it? 176 Interview 2 Comparing visions of teaching to pedagogical practices and experiences at CREAR and public schools The purpose of this interview is to explore how you relate your vision for teaching you’re your experiences as a student and a teacher in public schools and CREAR. Part I • Let’s create the profile of an outstanding teacher. Use the handout as a guide. o What does their classroom look like? o What happens inside that classroom? o What doesn’t/shouldn’t happen? • I teach at a university in the United States and my education students asked me to share with them information about Dominican schools. What would you have me say to them about what Dominican schools are like? o What does the classroom look like? o What types of teaching activities are used? o How do students and teachers interact? • How would you describe a typical CREAR classroom for public school teachers and/or parents who are not familiar with this organization? o What does the classroom look like? o What types of teaching activities are used? o How do students and teachers interact? • Name three similarities and three differences between teaching in CREAR and teaching in public schools. o Why do these similarities and differences exist? o Are these similarities and differences positive, negative, or neutral? Why? • What overlap do you find between the typical Dominican classroom, the typical CREAR classroom, and what an outstanding teacher does? Use the Venn Diagram to describe this overlap. Part II For the next part of the interview, I will share three anecdotes with you. Please read them out loud and share with me your impressions of the teacher and their teaching. 177 The Profile of an Outstanding Teacher What can you see an outstanding teacher do? What can you hear an outstanding teacher say? What does it feel like to be with an outstanding teacher? Word Bank Students, parents, administrators, classroom, school, subject, strategies, teaching, materials 178 Public School Teacher Outstanding Teacher CREAR Teacher 179 Anecdote 1 The following anecdote describes the end of Drop Everything and Read. Read the passage out loud and tell me your impressions of the teacher’s use of this teaching strategy. “I will count to three and find all books at the center of the table.” As the teacher gives the instruction, students move their books around to place them in the center of the table. The teacher praises the quickest table; he says, “I like this table.” When students are done, the teacher instructs them, “Hands on your legs” and cold calls some students not following the instruction. “Who would like to share their books?” the teacher asks. Different students share the plots of their stories. “I didn’t read much” one of the students admits. After several others share, one girl shares what she learned about Mars, and then admits that she forgot the rest. The teacher then shares what he learned from his book, a college-level math book. After sharing his book, the teacher instructs “If you hear my voice, clap once” and kids clap once. Then, “at the count of three, books and pencils at the center of the table. Three people to pick them up.” The teacher calls on three volunteers with their hands up. Open-ended questions: • What do you notice about this teacher’s teaching? • Is there anything here that looks like something you would do? Is there something here that you’re familiar with? (Tell me about that; have you always done that? Why did you start doing that? Anything else?) How does this reflect your own teaching? • Why would you do this strategy? (Why not?) • How would you describe this teacher’s interactions with students? *Look for the words used (and words missing) Potential follow-up, prompting questions: • Tell me more (with short answers) • Is there anything else? (prompt for more examples) • What is missing in this scenario? • What do you notice about the students’ responses? 180 Anecdote 2 The following anecdote describes a student asking for materials from a teacher. Read the passage out loud and tell me your impressions of the teacher’s use of this teaching strategy. During independent work, three kids go to the teacher’s desk to ask for blank paper to write on. The teacher answers, very loudly, “I said there is no paper! Go back to work!” As they go back to their seats, one of the students teases a student who is working. The student working swings a punch in retaliation (without hitting him). The teacher gets up from her desk and begins the review of the independent activity. Open-ended questions: • What do you notice about this teacher’s teaching? • Is there anything here that looks like something you would do? Is there something here that you’re familiar with? (Tell me about that; have you always done that? Why did you start doing that? Anything else?) How does this reflect your own teaching? • Why would you do this strategy? (Why not?) • How would you describe this teacher’s interactions with students? *Look for the words used (and words missing) Potential follow-up, prompting questions: • Tell me more (with short answers) • Is there anything else? (prompt for more examples) • What is missing in this scenario? • What do you notice about the students’ responses? 181 Anecdote 3 The following anecdote describes a learning stations activity. Read the passage out loud and tell me your impressions of the teacher’s use of this teaching strategy. The learning station begins when the teacher calls the students attention with “If you hear my voice, clap once.” The teacher waits until all students are listening to her before continuing with the instructions for the activity. She raises a paper for the students to copy the questions on their notebooks. After the instructions, all students in the station copy down the questions, including the blank spaces to answer the questions. The questions are comprehension questions based on a text written on a separate sheet of paper. Ten minutes after, the teacher begins the review – answering the comprehension questions. The kids re-tell the story and then share their answers; each student takes a turn. After sharing, students turn in their pencils to the teacher and she collects the notebooks. Open-ended questions: • What do you notice about this teacher’s teaching? • Is there anything here that looks like something you would do? Is there something here that you’re familiar with? (Tell me about that; have you always done that? Why did you start doing that? Anything else?) How does this reflect your own teaching? • Why would you do this strategy? (Why not?) • How would you describe this teacher’s interactions with students? *Look for the words used (and words missing) Potential follow-up, prompting questions: • Tell me more (with short answers) • Is there anything else? (prompt for more examples) • What is missing in this scenario? • What do you notice about the students’ responses 182 Interview 3 LCPs in practice at CREAR The purpose of this interview is to explore what you think “learner-centered pedagogy” means and how you relate it to your work and learning at CREAR. You may use the anecdotes from Interview 2 for reference. Part I • What have been the top three lessons you have learned in CREAR? o Did you expect to learn those things? o Was it easy to learn them? o Has it been easy to apply them? Why or why not? • What things do you wish you had learned with CREAR (that you have not learned)? • If you could continue a program or PD workshop that CREAR has done, which would it be? Why? • If you could change a program or PD workshop that CREAR has done, which would it be? Why? 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