Teacher Learning as Curating: Professional and Institutional Notions of Justice and Inclusivity as Catalysts for Expansive Learning

• In Event: 16.043 - Applying Cultural Historical Activity Theory to Resolve Long-Standing Inequities at the Intersections of Dis/ability, Race, and Language in Education

Abstract

This paper builds on the concept of curating (Waitoller, 2014; Waitoller & Artiles, 2016) to understand how (a) teachers learn (or not) to work with students who experience intersecting forms of exclusion (e.g., students of color with dis/abilities), and (b) how notions of justice and inclusivity can serve as catalysts for expansive learning (Engeström, 2001). The presentation illustrates the concept of curating with examples from research on teacher learning for inclusive education amid school/university partnerships.

We conceptualize school/university partnerships as a boundary-zone activity (Konkola, 2001). Teachers working and learning within such partnerships can experience quaternary contradictions (Engeström & Sannino, 2010), which embody the potential for learning. As participants in activity systems engage in a dialogue and negotiate their understandings of artifacts and the object(s) of their activities, new objects may emerge and artifacts may take different forms (Engeström, 2001). Thus, we defined teacher learning as the resolution of contradictions that involves the reformulation of the elements of the activity system in which teachers work

I draw from a broader project that comprised a partnership between a Southwestern state university in the U.S and three elementary schools located in an urban district. Participants included the school principals and language coaches, site professors, and teacher residents. Data collection lasted a year and a half and included interviews with participants, videos of teacher practice, video-stimulated recall interviews, field notes, and school artifacts. I analyzed these data sources using analytical tools from grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), CHAT (Engeström, 2001), and participant structures (Phillips, 1972). In this paper I compared the cases of two teachers.

I found that quaternary contradictions (i.e., contradictions between activity systems) were evident on Wednesdays, a day when site professors and a language coach observed the teachers in their classroom. At the core of these quaternary contradictions, there were underlying and competing claims for justice and inclusivity. Teachers resolved these contradictions by curating a bricolage of pedagogical artifacts. In other words, as museum curators select specific works of art over others to compose an exhibit, teacher residents privileged certain pedagogical artifacts over others. In the same manner curators make meaning of and interpret art works and display them with other pieces of art creating a particular experience for the viewer, pedagogical artifacts were appropriated creating an educational experience for students. I compare two cases of teacher learning as curating that resulted in diluting the notions of justice and inclusivity informing artifacts and practices.

The concept of curating can contribute to better understanding how teachers learn to work with students who experience intersecting forms of exclusion, which is missing in the research on teacher learning for inclusive education. This important multifaceted problems call for complex responses in which teachers question their own practices and create new cultural forms that in turn generate new contradictions and forms of understandings.

Author

• Federico R. Waitoller, University of Illinois at Chicago