Studying Changes in Teachers’ Group Conversations: A Methodological Literature Review

• In Event: Understanding Change Within Discussions of Mathematics Teacher Professional Learning Communities: Methodological Frameworks

Abstract

This paper reports a methodological literature review of studies of conversations in PLCs, to support researchers in developing methodology for tracing change. We included papers about PLCs that used any methodological or theoretical frameworks if teachers’ conversations were analyzed. We conducted electronic searches of terms for PLCs (e.g. teacher learning communities, critical friends groups), hand searched AERA and other top-tier journals, and traced the references of relevant articles. We excluded papers if they did not directly study group interaction (e.g. only used surveys or interviews eliciting participants‘ perceptions) or focused only on pre-internship teachers or on online discussions.


We have located 54 articles meeting inclusion criteria and analyzed them regarding the following: records analyzed (e.g., video, transcription, fieldnotes), unit of analysis (e.g., turns, timed intervals), substance and nature of coding schemes, criteria for ‘good’ discussions, theoretical frameworks, conceptions of knowledge, outcomes anticipated and/or studied, and ways the validity of methodology was evaluated. We sorted the papers in multiple ways to look for patterns within and across categories including: content areas, frameworks guiding methodological choices, whether they were looking at change over time, in what sense, and over what time periods.


Eight of the articles discuss changes in discussions over time (seven in mathematics teacher PLCs). Some described the evolutions in types of teachers’ work (Pfeiffer & Featherstone, 1996; Schechter, 2010), while others described changes in the character of talk during specific learning activities, either showing growth over time (Borko, Jacobs, Eiteljorg, & Pitman, 2008; Kazemi & Franke, 2004) or differences between sessions (Taylor, 2011). One reported changes in roles (van Es, 2009). Two reported changes in conversations that indicate changes in particular knowledge: teachers’ understandings of the idea of revoicing in leading discussions (Herbel-Eisenmann, Drake, & Cirillo, 2009) and professional vision (Sherin & Han, 2004). Together these articles describe parts of a possible learning trajectory for PLCs, in which conversations become increasingly detailed and intertwined with talk about practice, more inquiry-based and student-focused, and less hesitant regarding problem-sharing. The remaining papers, while not tracing change, also provide methodological and theoretical resources for researchers interested in doing so. For example, several provide theories or coding schemes analyze particular aspects of teachers’ group participation, such as patterns of interaction among participants (Chamberlin, 2005), kinds of inquiry (Crockett, 2002), or forms of storytelling (Crespo, 2006; Horn, 2010). The paper describes these studies and their possible contributions to research on change over time in greater detail. One next step toward understanding the trajectories of groups could be to analyze how these features evolve.

The paper concludes by exploring relationships between methodological choices and the kinds of research questions that have been addressed. We consider what different approaches contribute to theories of change in PLCs, what they suggest about how the information might be put to work in enhancing the work of PLCs, and what they suggest about next steps for research in this area

Authors

• Joy Ann Oslund, University of Michigan

• Pamela A. Moss, University of Michigan