Productive Disciplinary Engagement in History: Understanding Teacher Growth in Facilitating Whole-Class Text-Based Discussion

• In Event: 14.014 - A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation About Productive Disciplinary Engagement

Abstract

Done well, whole-class text-based discussions in history classrooms are examples of productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) (Engle & Conant, 2002; Engle 2011). Unfortunately, the literature on disciplinary history instruction suggests that such discussions are quite rare (Author, 2015). This study explores how four middle school history teachers who received professional development and coaching in a document-based history curriculum develop in their practice of whole-class text-based discussion facilitation over the course of two years.

Conceptual Framework
The four key principles in the PDE framework—problematizing, authority, accountability, and resources— characterize learning in disciplinary history classrooms: teachers present historical accounts as contested and invite students to collectively construct accounts grounded in documentary evidence. Missing from the PDE framework, however, is a conceptualization of the knowledge, understandings, and dispositions that the teacher must embrace in order to enact such sophisticated instruction.
This study uses the lens of adaptive expertise (Bransford et al, 2000; Hatano & Inagaki, 1986; Yoon, Koehler-Yom, Anderson, Lin & Klopfer, 2016) to capture teacher growth in whole-class discussion facilitation of historical texts. We adopt the three analytic categories used by Yoon et al 2016: flexibility (in modifying the curriculum in response to students’ needs), deep understanding (of the purpose of text-based discussion in history), and deliberate practice (that identifies, targets, and reflects upon discrete teaching practices that foster discussion). We also consider the role of feedback in the development of adaptive expertise (Bransford & Schwartz, 2009).

Method
This two-year comparative case study followed four teachers in two middle schools located in a suburban mid-Atlantic county (see Table 1). All four teachers attended 5 full days of professional development in Fall 2014. Data collection across both years included videotaped classroom observations (4 in YR1 and 3 in YR2), debrief interviews following each observation, video-recall interviews, artifacts collection, and student assessments of historical thinking.

Results
Preliminary analyses reveal a number of compelling findings. First, all four teachers grew in their facilitation of text-based, whole-class discussion, albeit from different starting places and along varying trajectories. The two sixth grade teachers (T1 and T2) engaged in far more disciplinary discussion throughout than the two seventh grade teachers, even though they had less teaching experience, shorter class periods, and their students’ reading and language skills were far lower than those of the other two teachers. Although the two 7th grade teachers did not engage students in text-based historical discussion in Year 1 of the study, they did at moments in Year 2. We conclude that although deep understanding of the curriculum is not sufficient to facilitate disciplinary discussion, it may be a necessary precondition before teachers can demonstrate flexibility and engage in deliberate practice.

Implications
This study is the first to explore teacher growth in disciplinary discussions in history and contributes to our understanding of the dispositions and understandings required to support productive disciplinary engagement in history.

Authors

• Abby Reisman, University of Pennsylvania

• Elizabeth Simmons, University of Pennsylvania