Cultivating the Rhizome: Coaching (Through) Assemblage

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Instructional Coaching as Theory-Driven Professional Development

Abstract

Purpose
As a form of professional development and school reform, instructional coaching is often based on a model of teacher learning wherein static knowledge (best practices) are provided by coaches and adopted by teachers. Yet, as Strom (2015) notes, there are alternative ways to conceptualize the educational endeavor. The theories of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) can be used to frame teaching and learning as complex, shifting, nuanced, and multifaceted. This presentation uses interactional data to illustrate the value of Deleuzoguattarian theory for understanding how coaches are uniquely positioned to take account of their teachers’ professional assemblages, and so provide more holistic and individualized guidance in their process of becoming.

Theoretical Framework
The theoretical centerpiece of this presentation is the Deleuzoguattarian concepts of assemblage and becoming as they relate to the endeavor of professional development. Assemblages can be understood as “complex constellations of objects, bodies, expressions, qualities, and territories that come together for varying periods of time to ideally create new ways of functioning (Livesy, 2010, p. 18).” This concept allows professional development specialists to take into account the complex and nuanced influences that are a part of a teacher’s professional transformation. Furthermore, it serves the analytic purpose of highlighting aspects of a teacher’s process of professional development (becoming) and the contextual material and non-material influences present in teacher/coach interaction.

Methods
This presentation focuses on explication and illustration of theory rather than presentation of empirical evidence, with the data employed in an illustrative capacity. Furthermore, the data is used to demonstrate an approach to interactional analysis based in Deleuzoguattarian concepts of assemblage and becoming. This assemblage analysis entails a tracking of material and non-material elements over a period of time in a given interaction.

Data Sources
In order to illustrate applications of Deleuzoguattarian theoretical concepts to real world coaching situations, as well as data analysis, this presentation draws on video recorded and transcribed teacher/coach interactional data drawn from a longitudinal study of a Critical Sociocultural coaching intervention at an elementary school in the American Midwest.

Results
The presentation illustrates the different foci that a Deleuzoguattarian approach can entail, emphasizing shifting relationships between multiple actors (human and non-human) over time. The epistemological and ontological assumptions of this approach differ radically from more traditional modes of inquiry, necessitating illustration.

Scholarly Significance
Broadly, this presentation makes a case for the importance of theory in guiding, understanding, evaluating, and refining professional development. Specifically, it illustrates the value of Deleuzoguattarian theoretical concepts (assemblage, becoming, lines of flight) for making sense of teacher/coach interaction. It highlights features of teachers’ contexts that coaches must account for when supporting transformative growth, and shows examples of how this might be done. This is accomplished on a macro (whole school) and micro (interactional) scale.

Author

• Brandon Sherman, Indiana University - IUPUI