Collaborative Research and Joint Activity Within Making Settings as an Expansive Context for Teacher Learning

• In Event: Reimagining Teachers as Critical Mediators and Theorists of Learning Within Complex Political and Ethical Ecologies

Abstract

There is a growing interest in making and tinkering as cognitively and materially rich forms of STEAM learning (Martin, 2015; Martinez & Stager, 2013). Research on making has emphasized activity design, individual learning experiences and trajectories, and increasingly, the role of facilitation. In prior work, we argued that in order for the maker movement to advance equity in substantive ways, close attention to the pedagogies that shape making environments, and the forms of relationality or subject-subject relations cultivated therein, are crucial (Third Author et al., 2016). This argument stems in part from our observation that educators and researchers committed to developing more authentic, liberatory forms of learning wrestle with what Paradise et. al. (2014) call the “pendulum swing” between adult-centered and child-centered pedagogies. Though grappling with when to be “hands on” or “hands off” as a facilitator, or when to offer versus withhold an explanation, can be important aspects of teacher learning, we argue that the terms through which we interpret and develop alternative pedagogical models are often overly constrained by a persistent form of binaristic thinking. We are particularly concerned with the ways the binary of adult- versus child-centered learning sets educators up to avoid—or under-design—generative forms of pedagogical assistance and joint activity.
This paper therefore foregrounds pedagogies that have sought to theorize teaching and learning beyond the binary of adult vs. child centered education (e.g. Freire & Macedo, 1995; Rogoff, 2003). More specifically, we offer analyses of what it can look like to develop such pedagogies of joint activity in the context of a unique learning environment that brings together Black and Latinx middle school youth, out-of-school educators, teacher residents/pre-service teachers, community partners and university faculty. Drawing on collaborative ethnography (Erickson, 2012), social design methodologies (Gutiérrez & Vossoughi, 2010) and participatory design research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) we look closely at cognitive ethnographies and daily professional noticing sessions designed to help educators closely examine their pedagogical practice in ways that support generative structures, collaborative mediation and expansive interactions with youth.
Our findings trace the emergence of locally meaningful vocabularies of relationality and joint activity, and illustrate the new orientations towards young people and pedagogical practice such discourse supported. We analyze the how of professional noticing sessions, including the specific ways researchers and educators were mutually positioned as co-analysts and theorists of learning, as well as the axiological attunements that supported deepening intersubjectivity and joint activity with youth (Bang, et. al., 2016; Muñoz, In preparation). Finally, we examine the specific arcs of learning that emerged for both pre-service teachers and informal educators in this context, and how the interactions between multiple activity systems (an out of school makerspace, young people’s family and community contexts and teachers’ classroom practice in schools) hold important potential for disrupting and transforming ongoing contradictions that belie expansive and humanizing forms of educational practice (Engeström, 2004). We conclude by considering the specific role of collaborative research with educators in supporting deeper connections across CHAT and Teacher Education.

Authors

• Shirin Vossoughi, Northwestern University

• Arturo Alonso Munoz, Northwestern University

• Paula K. Hooper, Northwestern University