The Analysis of Opportunities for Teacher Learning to Teach Difficult Histories: A Sociocultural Perspective

• In Event: Designing for and Studying Teacher Learning: Analyzing Recent Professional Development Initiatives for Social Studies Inquiry Teaching

Abstract

Objectives
Multiple scholars argue for the significance of teaching difficult histories in classrooms, and call for providing a safe space that cultivates trust and supports teachers’ risk-taking. They also call for researching the mechanisms that allow teachers to develop new practices in teaching difficult histories (Barton, 2019; Zembylas, 2017). This study weighed this call for research and practice, seeking to understand the process of teacher learning to teach a difficult history such as the history of school desegregation through interaction in an inquiry-based professional learning community (PLC). We analyzed teacher talk during small group sessions in the six-month-long PLC following one-week summer institutes on the topic of school desegregation. Our research questions are: What do teachers frame as problems in teaching difficult histories? How do they resolve the problems through interactions? What tensions arise during this process?

Mode of Inquiry
We used a naturalistic inquiry design strategy (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Conceptualizing teacher learning as social participation (Wenger, 1998), we used Tuning Protocol (McDonald et al., 2015, p. 28) for small group sessions to provide a structure for teachers to present their initial lesson ideas for peer feedback. The seven video recordings of the small group sessions served as the main data source. The remaining data, including pre-, and post-surveys, application essays, and lesson plans generated by the participants, were used to triangulate findings. Discourse analysis (Gee & Green, 1998) in conjunction with Wenger’s (1998) three modes of learning in a community of practice such as engagement (i.e., problem posing), imagination (i.e., resolving the problems through interaction), and alignment (i.e, aligning their practice with local and national contexts) was used to analyze the process of teacher learning through interaction in the PLC.

Findings
We found that 74% of teacher interactions devoted to imagination, 16% to engagement, and 10% to alignment. Specifically, teachers in the study tended to frame the problem of teaching school desegregation by relating it to the issues around the lack of curriculum on the difficult topics and the temporal and experiential distance students experience while engaging the difficult history. They resolved problems by sharing physical and conceptual resources (Lampert et al., 2011; Wenger, 1998) and by aligning their practice of teaching a difficult history with expectations of the state standards. Tensions arose when a) the conceptual rationales behind inquiry activities were not clearly communicated among the group members; and b) the school contexts did not align with the teachers’ goals and ways in which they wished to teach the history of school desegregation.

Scholarly Significance
This study explored interactional affordances for teacher learning, in particular, affordances for changing participation and practice, because “understanding a learner’s trajectory involves hypotheses about affordances that are available to the learner to participate in particular ways” (Horn & Kane, 2015 p. 172). Keeping a learning perspective as such informs the design of learning experiences and tools that are attentive to scaffolding teacher learning to teach a difficult history in history and social studies teacher preparation program and teacher professional development.

Authors

• Yonghee Suh, Old Dominion University
  Presenting Author

• Brian J. Daugherity, Virginia Commonwealth University
  Presenting Author