Frameworks at Work: Analyzing Candidates' Out-of-School Learning With a Range of Theoretical Tools

• In Event: Context-Specific Teaching Practice: Collaborating With Children's Families, Communities, and Community-Based Organizations to Support Equitable Teaching

Abstract

Purpose and Perspectives
Over the past seven decades, scholars have argued the importance of facilitating opportunities for candidates to learn from and in social and geographic communities outside of schools (e.g., Flowers, Patterson, Stratemeyer, & Lindsey, 1948). While conceptual rationale for this work has been quite strong, empirical investigations have not often utilized explicit theoretical grounding in analyses of candidates’ learning until quite recently. This has made it difficult to aggregate knowledge across studies in this relatively small but growing body of literature, or to consider how findings may apply to other contexts or to theory (McDonald et al., 2011).

Recent investigations of candidate learning in community organizations have improved the knowledge base in this regard. In an effort to leverage some of these theoretical contributions, this methods-forward paper examines theoretical tools that have been used to analyze learning in these kinds of out-of-school contexts.

Mode of Inquiry and Objects of Analysis
Four studies with well-defined theoretical tools are the objects of analysis for this paper (Author, 2013; Author, under review; McDonald et al., 2011; McDonald et al., 2013). These are all inquiries of one teacher education program’s field experiences in community-based organizations (CBOs). This consistency of context lends well to the main purpose of this paper: foregrounding the analytic utility of theoretical tools themselves.

Conclusions
Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (e.g., Engström, 2008); Billett’s framework for professional learning (2003), and Rogoff’s planes of sociocultural activity (1995) are the three tools of interest. CHAT, a tool that attends to structures that shape activity (and thus, shape learning), was utilized in all four studies—albeit in different ways. Billett’s (2003) framework, utilized in a study by McDonald, Bowman, & Brayko (2013), allows for analytic attention to 1) contextual factors that shaped a group of candidates’ learning opportunities as well as 2) individuals’ propensities and histories. Finally, in an in-depth examination of one CBO context (Author, under review) gave a close analytic focus to three interconnected planes of sociocultural activity (Rogoff, 1995), which allowed for a comprehensive investigation of activity and learning at the institutional (contextual factors, language patterns), interpersonal (roles, social exchanges between educators and children), and personal dimensions (individuals’ conceptions, self-efficacy, etc.).

In the proposed paper, I explain each tool, share the kinds of research questions each best engages, demonstrate how each was employed in analysis efforts; and discuss affordances and limitations. A brief summary of these ideas can be found in Table 1 (attached).

Significance
Complimenting the four well-conceptualized empirical papers in this symposium proposal, this analytic methods paper aims to promote conceptual clarity in research on context-specific teacher education, and thereby: 1) support teacher educators looking to literature for guidance in understanding, building, and/or evaluating such collaborations and innovations; and 2) prompt an explicit discussion of theoretical tools that could support researchers as they frame their own inquiries (thus allowing for further aggregation of knowledge).
 

Author

• Kate Brayko, University of Montana - Missoula