Supporting Expansive Learning in Preservice Bilingual Teacher Education: Methodological Innovations in Change Laboratory Interventions

• In Event: Change Laboratory Interventions as Collaborative Inquiry in Norwegian, Finnish, and U.S. Teacher Education/Leadership Programs

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes
The roles of cultures and languages in preservice-teachers’ reflective thinking processes are less explored in the phase of student teaching. In this paper, we share findings from a multi-year qualitative study that examined the potential of CL methodologies (Virkkunen & Newnham, 2013) for promoting socioculturally-specific reflective thinking (Luria, 1979, 1981) among bilingual preservice-teachers in the context of a CL student teaching practicum seminar.
2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
CL methodologies cycle through seven expansive learning actions (Engeström, 2014) starting with questioning the major historically developed contradictions of a particular organization/activity leading to the development of a new model collaboratively developed by the CL participants for their activity, in this case, bilingual teaching. Two major CHAT-informed principles based on the Vygotskian concepts (Sannino, 2015, 2020) and Illyekov’s (2019) dialectical materialism tradition guide a CL: (1) double-stimulation; (2) ascending-from-abstract-to-concrete. By offering CL participants various mediating artifacts that are repurposed, we seek to stimulate CL participants’ socioculturally-specific reflective thinking while probing into the historical contradictions as manifested in their day-to-day practices and their search for expansive solutions.
3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
The use of CL methodologies in this study is contextualized in a student teaching practicum seminar course during the same semester the preservice-teachers completed their teaching experience. The instructor of the course was the bilingual teacher educator who was also the “research-interventionist” supporting the participants as they socialized into the profession of bilingual teaching. In this study, we examine the data sets collected from three cohorts (2016-2018). The empirical analysis followed CL/CHAT analytical tools, focusing on the interactions of our meta-level instruments and expansive learning actions.
4. Data sources, evidence, object, or materials
A total of 48 teacher candidates participated in the CL course aspiring to learn how to teach bilingually. Individual daily logs kept for 12 weeks by the participants documenting their surprises and disturbances, written post-video reflections of lessons taught and discussed with their peers, and individually-generated-four-field models from three cohorts of preservice-teachers provided the data for the study.
5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/points of view
The CL seminar proved to be a context where the participatory analysis and design tools helped the participants see new possibilities for meeting the goals of bilingual education. A close metaphor analysis of the movement (Engeström & Sannino, 2016) within the quadrants of four-field models illustrates the participants’ socioculturally-specific reflective thinking. The CL participants gained resources and materials to facilitate transformational change in their instructional practices, empowering them to embrace ambiguity.
6. Science or scholarly significance of the study or work
Our study seeks to further the development and adaptive potential of the CL methodology to promote expansive learning through its mini-learning action cycles, preparing for culturally responsive/relevant/sustaining/efficacious teachers as needed to transform bilingual education while supporting bilingual teachers’ socioculturally-specific reflective thinking (Luria, 1979; 1981) in their participatory analysis of language teaching/learning process (Leontiev, 1981).

Word count: 489 words

Authors

• Sharon Chang, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Carmen M. Martinez-Roldan, Teachers College, Columbia University