Cartographies of Transformation: Rethinking Action Research Curriculum for Change Agency in an Online Transnational Community

• In Event: Preparing Social Justice Teachers: Rethinking Action Research Curriculum for Transformation

Abstract

The guiding research question for this study is how do educators committed to equity in an action research course articulate change in a transnational virtual classroom community? The study explores the discursive space within one action research course where students are participating in real-time classroom conversations while physically located in different communities and nations. This research builds upon one locus of change that educators engaged in action research, “…will be changed as we were as a result of our dialogue” (Peters & Gray, 2007, p. 330). The design of an action research course with the intent to foster change agency requires careful deliberation in design and teachers voices are centrally important (Price, 2001). Action research curriculum for teachers must account for both, being-in the world and doing-in-the world and teachers cannot, “come to this knowing without the aid of others and otherness” (Ragland, 2006, p. 181).

This work is situated at the nexus of sociocultural and critical theory, which presupposes teacher candidate’s change agency is constituted by power dynamics, community and social interactions in a given community of learners and institution (Lewis, Enciso, & Moje, 2007). These frameworks support the examination of teacher’s engagement in action research curriculum and their process of developing change agency for the ways power dynamics are articulated through dominant ideologies and discourses (Gutiérrez, 2005).

The guiding methodology for this study is interpretive; the content of interest was the meaning perspective of the participants within a critical sociocultural context (Erickson, 1985; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Following Miles and Huberman’s (1994) guidelines for qualitative data analysis, the researcher purposively chose to look within and across teachers’ articulation of change within course interactions and course work that address the challenges to change agency for equity.

Data sources were drawn from two action research courses in a series. Findings were triangulated with student work, classroom talk, and student interviews (Gillham, 2000). The students met online weekly for synchronous (real-time), video-streaming class discussions, and asynchronously (delayed-time) through forum posts, distinguishing it from most current online courses that rely on asynchronous posts and/or synchronous chatting via text only (e.g., Smith, 2006; Williams & Soper, 2006). The students and professor see and speak to each other in the virtual classroom, which mimics a traditional classroom.

Participants claimed that their change agency is increased when they analyze broader structures of power and dominant ideologies when engaging in conversations about action research with peers in different national and cultural contexts. It is claimed that teacher’s conceptualization and practice of change in the operational curriculum of action research is dynamically articulated on individual, community, national and global level through their discussion of their own change agency that took on novel dimensions of international comparisons of local problems of practice (Price & Valli, 2005). Considering the ways that change get articulated in transnational contexts in an action research course allows us to begin, “to prepare teachers in a multicultural society…[and]…articulate a vision of teaching and learning in a diverse society” (Villegas & Lucas, 2002, p. 30).

Author

• Jenifer Crawford, University of Southern California