The Complex Conversation of Professional Development School

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Praxising Complexity

Abstract

The focus of this presentation is to offer a story of a PDS project that includes both teacher education and professional development as a series of reciprocal relations in which the traditional power structures of presenter/audience, evaluator/student, and cooperating teach-er/student teacher shift toward more dynamic, coemergent exchanges of teaching and learn-ing. By drawing on complexity and chaos theories as a lens for examining this PDS project, we may consider different ways to engage in pedagogical relations and professional development that provides a counternarrative to models of professional development and student teaching that reify pedagogical relations of power privilege and supremacy that privilege "experts."
The theoretical underpinnings of complex conversations include a hermeneutical per-spective of interactions, complexity as a dynamical interpretation of emergence, and a shift in interactions that view power relations as an exchange. One project in which this has been en-acted for which I had the privilege of being a part is a PDS project this connected secondary teachers with university faculty.
A 22-year veteran math teacher and I began a working relationship out of mutual re-spect and interest in improving student success in mathematics. We worked through a spring and summer together to analyze the curriculum and adapt it to better meet the needs of the high school students. I offered some professional development that granted the teachers in the department credit of hours that was specifically designed to meet the needs of their needs and address questions they had provided. In the fall a student teacher was placed in this teacher's classroom, first as a field experience then as student teacher. She was also a student in a uni-versity course with me, and I was her supervisor. Throughout the year we worked together in a unique dynamical manner. When I was required to perform an "observation," I would not sit in the back as an evaluator. I jumped in and we all three would circulate through the room and offer assistance to students as they worked through the tasks given to them.
It was obvious to me that this was a special situation. I believe this could be considered a series of complex conversations. We worked in triangulation with each other, and it was a wonderful learning experience for all. It appeared as a coupling between each of us as pairs in different power relations yet working together in a pedagogical dance of teaching and learning.

Author

• Sarah Smitherman Pratt, University of North Texas