Education Rounds as a Formative Intervention: A Methodological Perspective

• In Event: Rounding Out Teacher Preparation? Examining Education Rounds From Multiple Perspectives

Abstract

In this paper, I examine Education Rounds from a methodological perspective influenced by cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). CHAT is distinctive in its methodological commitment to fostering learning and development; CHAT seeks to develop its theoretical toolkit through methodological innovation. This theoretical-methodological synergy arises from Vygotsky's (1974) methodological interest in studying change through stimulating change and has been systematically advanced by Engeström (1987, 1999, 2007).

Engeström has developed a methodology of formative intervention known as Developmental Work Research (Engeström 2007) based on the Vygotskian principle of 'dual stimulation' (Vygotsky 1974), sometimes known as the double stimulation strategy or the instrumental method (Ellis 2010). This paper draws on Engeström’s theoretical insights concerning the instrumental method rather than the DWR approach specifically. The paper shows how Education Rounds might also be understood, theoretically, as a formative intervention, with associated benefits and also limitations. The paper draws implicitly on a very small set of observations or Education Rounds at work in the teacher education setting but does so in order to generate a theoretical discussion.

Education Rounds can be understood as a dialogic instrument for examining problems of the practice of teaching. The structure and language of Rounds (conceptualised as tools for teachers' learning) are donated to participating teachers with an invitation to appropriate them. In this sense, Rounds are a mediating tool that subjects (teachers) can use to work on the object of their activity - an aspect of classroom teaching. A set of ground rules for participation are set up within the community of teachers participating in Rounds, subject to a specific division of labour (essentially, observers and the observed supported by a facilitator or facilitators). Discussion of classroom data is the means by which the new tool is socially mediated in the multiple voices of participating teachers. An iteration of Education Rounds can therefore be interpreted as an activity system within a particular sociocultural tradition of professional development. Rounds, in this sense, are what Vygotsky referred to as a 'second series of stimuli' or 'auxiliary means' (Vygotsky 1974) that participants might use to work on the first stimulus or problem of practice.

The paper examines the great potential of the Rounds approach in identifying, recognising and reconfiguring problems of practice in the social world of classrooms. Rounds have been seen to work by drawing groups of teachers together in such a way that their professional creativity is stimulated and new tools produced collectively to address real problems. However, the paper also discusses three potential limitations commonly associated with formative interventions, including those in the Vygotskian tradition: first, the extent to which new tools developed through an intervention persist (even in the medium term) in the practices of the participants; second, the tension between the improvement of individual performance and wider collective development; and thirdly, the assumption that development occurs through rational choices between opposing, evidentially-warranted ideas with less recognition of the value-laden, affective dimensions of relationships in change contexts.

Author

• Viv Ellis, Brunel University