Making Sense of Theoretical Concepts: The Contribution of Participating in Collaborative Intervention Research to Educators’ Incorporation of Theory Into Educational Practice

• In Event: Lessons About Teachers’ Motivation From Teacher-Researcher Collaborative Research on Student Motivation

Abstract

Objective and Perspective

In this presentation, we describe an approach to motivational intervention research in which theoretical concepts and their implications for educational practice constitute the content of an open collaborative dialogue among researchers and educators aiming to design practice that would promote adaptive student engagement. The collaborative dialogue affords the educators’ voice, knowledge of the context, and perspectives on teaching and learning equal status to the researchers’ conceptual and empirical knowledge in the interpretation of theoretical understandings and the design of educational practice for their own context (Kaplan, Katz & Flum, in press). The process of collaboration along research-intervention lines, including the data collection and their analysis and interpretation, aims to promote educators’ ownership over the conceptual understanding and practical design, with the potential for enduring adoption of any change in conception of teaching and educational practice. In turn, the process aims to promote researchers’ insight into the way the theoretical processes manifest in different educational contexts with the potential for theory-development.

Methods and Results
We will present data from two such projects. Both projects focused on the promotion of students’ exploratory orientation in relation to a specific learning area (Flum & Kaplan, 2006). The first project was a collaborative researchers-educators intervention aiming to integrate students’ identity exploration into environmental education curriculum in four Junior-High schools. We will present findings from discourse analysis of a collaborative researcher-educators meeting protocol, in which participants brainstormed over data that indicated failure of the intervention, and which highlighted the way by which the open collaborative exploration involved the construction of a more sophisticated understanding of the theoretical concept of identity exploration and the re-design of the educational practice that aimed to promote it. Importantly, the process involved the educators reflecting on their own identity exploration as adolescents, and engaging in a collective identity exploration of their role and practice as educators, thus mirroring the motivational process the project aimed to promote among the students.

The second project was a collaborative researcher-educator intervention aiming to integrate students’ identity exploration into a Junior-High literature curriculum in one large high school. Analysis of data from a set of researcher-educator meetings and a summative interview with the teacher pointed to the ways by which the theoretical concepts and processes provided the teacher language to conceptualize and elaborate on practices she engaged in already prior to the intervention and a foundation for the design of new practices. The collaborative exploration also encouraged the teacher to transfer these understandings to new contexts within the school.

Significance
Analysis of data from both projects contributed significantly to theoretical understandings concerning identity exploration in educational context and its promotion among students and educators.

Authors

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University

• Hanoch Flum, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

• Mirit Sinai, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev