Using Theory to Unpack Evidence of Teacher Learning and Identity Vis-à-Vis Informal Science Education Resources

• In Event: 25.059 - Desettling Evidences of Learning in This "Post-Truth" Era Through Informal Learning Environment Research

Abstract

Considering “democratizing evidence” in this post-truth era, it is important that our research captures the complexities and inequities of teaching and learning. This desettles knowledge production in ways that describe the nuances of learning and elucidate basis of inequities in order for us to move towards more just and equitable teaching, learning, research and policy. This poster describes our process for collaborative analysis of a 3-year qualitative project using different analytical frameworks that each researcher brought to the data.

Conceptual approach
To “confront the struggles for public education considering the times in which we are living” qualitative research must advance “an agenda of social critique, social justice, and opportunity” ( Luttrell, 2010). This requires researchers to move beyond monological knowledge that silences the data and unpack the cultural, discursive, ideological, and epistemological subjectivities embedded in social life (Kincheloe, 2005). Beginning with Jackson and Mazzei’s challenge to “avoid being seduced by the desire to...[be] bound by themes and patterns,” we endeavored to engage with our data in ways that allowed us to use multiple perspectives that made the data dynamic, mirroring the participating teachers and their teaching contexts. We engaged in a “constant, continuous process of making and unmaking...arranging, organizing and fitting together” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2011) in ways that allowed us to ask questions about the teachers’ identities as well as the contexts that shape their identities, notions and practices. We thought diffractively (Barad, 2007) about our data, allowing us to attend to the “rich account of the complexities and fluxes that permeate” (Benavente, 2013) research in education. Specifically, we examined antiBlackness and pedagogical choices; race, politics and identity via dialectical materialism, and teacher-learner identity and practice through diffractive analysis. We individually and collectively uncovered knowledge about teacher identity in ways that forefronted issues that contribute to longstanding inequities education.

Methods/data sources
Thirty urban, public-school teachers who took credit-bearing informal science courses, participated in semi-structured interivews about their learning to teach and teaching experiences. The interviews lasted for 45minutes to 1hour and were recorded and later transcribed. Additional data sources include focus groups and teaching artifacts (i.e. lesson plans and student work).

Findings
The poster will elucidate key findings from each researcher, however the overarching findings confirm that teacher identity is complex, further complicated by the historical, political and sociocultural context of education; how a teacher describes, redefines, accesses and appropriates resources, such as ISE, provide important information about teacher identity and correspondingly their relationship to/with and perceptions of students, and teachers develop identities and corresponding agencies related to how they define, adapt, and use resources in their classrooms.

Significance
This use of multiple perspectives revealed the complexities of STEM teacher learning, identity and practice while also allowing for more robust claims to be made about STEM teacher identity, pedagogical practices and informal learning science. The diffractive approach allows a diverse-perspective research team to “coalesce and tell powerful, empirically driven, and multimodal narratives” about the lived experiences of educators across multiple contexts.

Authors

• Susan McCullough, Queens College

• LaToya Strong, The City University of New York

• Atasi Das, Lehman College, CUNY

• Theila Smith