Using a Teaching and Learning Model to Guide Curricular Decision Making: An Interactional Ethnographic Study

• In Event: 56.058 - The Discursive Construction of Learning Opportunities: Developing an Interdisciplinary/Interprofessional Ethnographic Research Agenda for Postsecondary Education

Abstract

Purpose/Objective
In higher education, sweeping change to instructional practices is rare. The context is an undergraduate General Chemistry course that transformed its curriculum and instructional practices in six months from a “traditional” pseudo-socratic discussion to a guided-inquiry approach impacting over 1000 students and 20 faculty. Critical to this process was negotiating and take-up of a teaching-learning model that provided a new language (Rorty, 1989) to conceptualize teaching and learning. Using an interactional ethnographic perspective (Green, Dixon & Zaharlick, 2003), this study traces the interactions that shaped how a teaching-learning model informed curricular decision-making in order to make visible the layers of work required to drive significant transformational change in the planned curriculum (Posner, 2004).

Conceptual Framework: Ethnography as Theory and Method
Discourse analysis from an interactional ethnographic approach (Green et al., 2003) is based in epistemological understandings of cultural practices from anthropology as situated, contrastive, and holistic (Agar, 2006; Heap, 1991) as well as language from sociolinguistic traditions (Bahktin, 1986; Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 2006, 2008; Hymes, 1972, 1977) as a sociocultural practice. This conceptual frame is the analytical lens used to examine how the discourse of a new teaching-learning model was co-constructed over time, actors, and events

Modes of Inquiry

Multiple forms of analysis and triangulation of perspectives and data were used to explore the traditional instructional approach guiding the original instructional design, and then trace the arguments for change presented to decision-makers. This mode of inquiry led to the construction of grounded accounts of how this iterative and recursive process led to buy-in from faculty, informed the institutional leadership about this change, and explained the instructional model to new faculty. Transcriptions of discourse among participants served as a basis for tracing changes in decisions and perspectives as the participants worked with new instructional processes.

Data Sources
The key data sources included existing instructional texts and text developed over time to frame the rationale for the change. Other key texts included institutional curricular documents, the institution’s student development strategy, academic program goals, course goals and outcomes, and interviews of key leaders guiding the change to gain understandings of instructor, department and institutional perspectives over time.

Results
In a series of contrastive analyses, this study traced how a change agent negotiated language with various actors over time that initiated a process of co-constructing common knowledge and understandings (Edwards & Mercer, 1989) that supported significant change to instructional practices. By taking a holistic perspective, analyses uncovers the decision-making system characterized by whole-part relationships, roles, and interests of the various institutional actors and how these influenced transformational change.

Scholarly Significance
This study contributes a warranted account of sweeping curricular change of instructional practices undertaken for an institution-wide undergraduate chemistry course that significantly impacted large numbers of students and instructors. This study also demonstrates how an interactional ethnographic perspective can be used to uncover the layers of work required to negotiate any change process especially within the complex social and cultural environments of modern large institutional systems.

Author

• Melinda Z. Kalainoff, United States Military Academy