Educative or Not: How Teachers’ Framing of Activities Impacts Their Learning From Curricular Materials

• In Event: Developing and Studying Educative Science and Mathematics Curriculum Materials

Abstract

Purpose
Though attending to student ideas is important in science learning (AAAS, 1994; NRC, 1995), it is not common partly because teachers find it difficult to understand and utilize student ideas. In this design study (Confrey, 2006), we investigate what supports are needed to support teachers’ learning to attend to student ideas in a curricular unit on Mendelian genetics. We argue that how teachers frame activities that involve the curricular materials influence how they view and use the curricular materials and what they learn from them.

Theoretical Perspective
A frame refers to an individual’s interpretation of the on-going activities. It is often tacit and can be inferred from how the person acts and talks (MacLachlan and Reid, 1994). In our conceptualization of frames, there are cognitive aspects to a teacher’s frame, such as epistemological and knowledge resources (Hammer, et al 2005) and interactional aspects, such as a person’s position in the activity (Engle, 2006).

Data Sources and Methods
Data come from videotaped observations of and audiotaped interviews with teachers as they attend PD sessions about and then implement a novel unit (Mendel Unit) that utilizes probability concepts to support student learning of Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance. The curricular materials included student guides, teacher guides, and “facetlets”. Facetlets were modeled after the assessment tool Facets of Student Thinking (Minstrell, 2001), descriptions of student thinking intended to help “teachers as they make instructional decisions” (p 415). Whereas facets are curriculum neutral, the facetlets were developed to help teachers identify and utilize student ideas as they used the Mendel Unit.
Data were coded to identify how teachers framed the activities in the PD and classroom settings and positioned the materials in each of these settings as they worked with them. Additionally, we analyzed what features of the materials were salient to the different ways teachers framed those activities.

Results
In the paper, we illustrate how features of the curricular materials took on relevance in varying ways depending on how the teacher framed the PD or teaching activities, leading to differential learning from the materials across teachers. Some teachers framed PD and teaching such that the big ideas of the lessons were salient to their work in both spaces (PD as exploring pedagogical content knowledge and teaching as helping students learn the big ideas). Other teachers framed matters such that big ideas were only relevant to PD (PD as exploring content) and activity structures were relevant to their teaching work (e.g., teaching as helping students accomplish tasks) thereby limiting the learning potential of the materials to guide classroom teaching.

Significance
Research on teachers’ use of educative curriculum has not, to our knowledge, investigated the potential impact of differential frames on what teachers notice and take up from educative materials. An implication of this study is that the extent to which curricular materials fulfill their educative potential may depend on how teachers frame activities when using the materials.

Authors

• Matty Lau, University of Pittsburgh

• Mary Kay Stein, University of Pittsburgh

• Birdy Susan Reynolds, University of Pittsburgh

• Christian D. Schunn, University of Pittsburgh

• Rebecca Ruppel, University of PIttsburgh

• Charles David Cox, The Pennsylvania State University

• Sophia Bender, University of Pittsburgh