Building Understandings of Practice(s): Facilitating Discussion Across Three English Language Arts Methods Courses

• In Event: Core Practices in Teacher Education: Preparing Teachers to Facilitate Whole-Class Discussion

Abstract

Even when teacher educators within a discipline agree on a common specification of a practice, approaches to taking up the practice with novices are situated in local contexts and modified according to local demands. This paper focuses on teaching the practice of facilitating discussion in English Language Arts methods courses across teacher education programs in flagship universities in three states, as guided by the following research questions:

• When beginning with a common specification of a practice, what variations emerge in implementation?
• What aspects of the practice are foregrounded or backgrounded in each site?
• What factors might account for variation across sites?

We drew on three primary data sources: video and fieldnotes of course sessions in which facilitating discussion was introduced and taken up; interviews with each teacher educator; artifacts related to a) the goals and structure of the course (e.g., syllabi) and b) the particular focus on specification of facilitating discussion (e.g., slides, agendas, handouts). Analysis included inductive and deductive coding using codes created and honed iteratively, first by the whole research team and then by smaller groups. Data from each site was coded by researchers from other participating sites; analyses were then responded to by researchers situated within each site. Fifteen percent of all data sources were double coded to ensure consistency in interpretation. High levels of agreement were established.

Although all three teacher educators drew on the agreed upon specification of practice, their implementations varied. We found four factors that seemed to influence variation:

• Program structures- Teacher educators’ approaches were influenced by the nature of the teacher education programs (e.g., undergraduate or graduate), design of practica, and how courses were situated in novices’ trajectory (e.g., first methods course or final methods course prior to student teaching).
• Grade level- We found that the practice was bounded differently in relation to common activity structures in elementary and secondary classrooms. For example, what counted as discussion looked very different in the context of an Interactive Read Aloud in elementary classrooms than in leading whole group discussion of a poem in a secondary English classroom.
• Local languages-. Although guided by a common specification, each teacher educator’s appropriation of the practice was inflected with local language. For example, one teacher educator highlighted “Into Through and Beyond” as a framework for thinking about discussion, while another highlighted “Talk moves” and the need to “elicit and respond to student thinking.”
• Content of Discussions- Text selection was an influential factor across sites, including whether discussions were modeled using K-12 or adult texts.

Given the field’s increasing focus on core practices of teaching, we need multi-site studies such as this to better understand the factors that account for similarities and variation in implementation of common specifications of practices situated within local contexts. Our work also points to how the process of specifying, honing, and studying a core practice across very different sites created opportunities for conversations about the complexities of practice(s).

Authors

• Chandra L. Alston, University of Michigan

• Katie Danielson, University of Washington

• Elizabeth M. Dutro, University of Colorado Boulder

• Ashley Cartun, University of Colorado - Boulder