The Process of Change: Teacher Growth in Dialogic Pedagogy

• In Event: 53.026 - Broadening Opportunities for Classroom Learning With Dialogic Pedagogies

Abstract

Introduction:
We present an analysis of the process of teacher growth in dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic pedagogy refers to instruction where teachers lead students in collaborative conceptual development through argumentation and discussion. There has been growing interest in teacher professional development (PD) regarding dialogic pedagogy. This follows from recent educational reforms and evidence that shows that dialogic pedagogy can produce steep increases in student learning (c.f., AUTHORS, 2015; NGSS, 2013).

While PD interventions on dialogic pedagogy have proliferated, “the problem of enactment” persists –the gap between what teachers know and instructional enactments in the classroom (Hammerness et al, 2005). Several studies have shown that while teachers gain declarative knowledge of argumentation facilitation strategies in PD, it takes years to see substantive changes in classroom dialogue (e.g., AUTHORS, 2013; Osborne et al, 2013). Some studies point to teachers’ challenges in recognizing oral and written student reasoning (McNeill & Knight, 2013), others suggest that competing demands on teachers’ attention impacts the extent to which they can attend to student ideas (Levin et al, 2012). In this poster, we report analysis that traces the process of a teacher’s professional growth in enacting dialogic pedagogy in high school science. We argue that understanding the process of change in dialogic pedagogy can provide insight into where support may be needed to address “the problem of enactment”.

Conceptual framework:
This study is framed within the view that situations structure cognition and learning is socially mediated (Brown et al, 1989; Vygotsky, 1978). Therefore, we examine teacher learning in act of teaching itself. We take the view that to study teachers’ cognition and its development, we need to study the activities in which thinking processes are engaged.

Methods:
We report on a microgenetic analysis of enactments of dialogic discussions to trace the transformation of discussion facilitation schemas over time (Siegler & Crowley, 1991). We present a single case study of Mr. Nelson, a 9th grade biology teacher in an urban high school in the US. Mr. Nelson is a critical case because he participated in a 3 year PD intervention on dialogic pedagogy and underwent a transformation his discussion facilitation. We sampled 18 lessons from three years of his teaching, at three time points each year. Discourse analysis was employed to code turn-taking structure, quality and type (Veel & Christie, 1999).

Findings and Significance:
The findings show three distinct trajectories of development in dialogic pedagogy over the 3 years: 1) for knowledge building, 2) fostering reasoning, and 3) thinking together. The findings show that as Mr. Nelson’s beliefs about what students’ could do in dialogue shifted, Mr. Nelson shifted what he asked students to do in dialogue. He began eliciting student reasoning at the end of Year 2, and thinking together only in year 3.

The findings point to specific challenges in enacting dialogic pedagogy. Supporting teachers in shifting their beliefs about the nature of student ways of knowing may be a critical first step to tackling the ‘problem of enactment’ of dialogic pedagogy.

Authors

• Sherice Clarke, University of California - San Diego

• Lauren B. Resnick, University of Pittsburgh