Sharing the Work: A Teacher–Researcher Collaboration to Develop Resources and Practices That Promote Historical Reasoning

• In Event: 72.018 - Teacher–Researcher Partnerships: Advancing Research, Practice, Ownership, and Agency in Disciplinary Literacy Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Purpose
This paper explores teacher, researcher and student learning resulting from collaborative design and implementation of an evidence-based argumentation (E-BA) unit utilizing multiple historical documents in a 10th-grade World History class. The unit was designed to shift the intellectual work of learning to students, and to support students in developing their facility with E-BA and historical reasoning with multiple sources. This paper focuses on the resources and supports necessary and the benefits accruing when teachers, researchers and students shared responsibility for the direction and focus of the unit. Utilizing discourse analytic methods we invite the reader into the spaces and conversations that illuminate the collaborative work this teacher-researcher partnership encouraged.

Theoretical Framework
The Common Core State Standards represent a dramatic shift towards holding students accountable for disciplinary reasoning and E-BA and thus require teachers to shift their instructional practices. New approaches to instruction enter the classroom through the deep understanding and ownership of teachers (Coburn, 2003b). Equitable participation in research projects, while challenging in the face of durable institutional forces (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990), have been shown to increase teachers’ sense of self-efficacy (Henson, 2001). Drawing on these principles and the framework of design research (Brown, 1992; P. Cobb, Confrey, DiSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003) , we collaborated with teachers as design partners. When teachers participated in the design of instructional practices and material resources, multidirectional learning emerged.

Data sources and Methods
The focus of this paper is on the work done by a focal teacher, her students and researchers for lessons of the unit focused on the 1953 Coup in Iran. The data come from four sources: Design meetings between a researcher and teacher, pre- and post-lesson conversations between the teacher and researchers, student-led classroom discussions during the lesson, and post-unit interviews with students. Using the discourse analysis (Bloome et al., 2005; Cazden, 2001; Rymes, 2009) we analyzed talk to illuminate the tools and practices that supported teachers and students to engage with texts and historical reasoning.

Findings
In working to find sources, develop a framework and construct pacing for the unit, researchers were better able to gauge what sorts of texts and tasks were reasonable given the real constraints of schools. In turn, the teacher expanded her tool kit to shift the work of historical reasoning from lecture and power point to student activity. Students initially rebelled against the shift in expectations, but as evidenced in their talk during the four days focused on in this paper, they showed a high level of engagement and intellectual stamina. Students, researchers and the teacher all confronted roadblocks that revealed challenges to implementing the types of instructional materials and practices needed to support disciplinary reasoning and E-BA.

Importance
Our findings show the benefits for students of sharing the work of designing learning engagements across students, teachers, and researchers. The data also provide a clear vision of some of the hurdles that the entrenched structures separating the work of teachers, students and researchers put before these collaborative efforts.

Authors

• Gayle Cribb, WestEd

• Crystal Maglio, San Mateo Union High School District

• Stacy A. Marple, WestEd