Using a Theory of Role Identity to Design Professional Development Around Discussion Facilitation for Social Studies Teachers

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

Abstract

Purpose
Researchers have called for teacher professional development (PD) designs that move beyond programmatic features (e.g., Desimone, 2009) and build intentionally upon theories of teacher learning (e.g,. Kennedy, 2016; Sims & Fletcher-Wood, 2021). We present findings from a summer PD for novice social studies teachers around discussion facilitation that took the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) as its theory of change (Kaplan & Garner, 2017). The DSMRI, which accounts for the myriad factors contributing to teacher decision-making, serves as a useful analytical framework given the complexity and stakes in social studies classrooms. The 5-day PD was designed around activities that were hypothesized to facilitate teachers’ integration of discussion facilitation into their future teacher role-identities. We present the salient features of the PD design as well as evidence of teacher learning.

Theoretical Framework
The DSMRI posits that an individual’s socially situated role-identity (e.g., teacher) comprises four continuously emerging and reciprocally influencing components: (1) ontological and epistemological beliefs; (2) purpose and goals; (3) self-perceptions and self-definitions; and (4) perceived action possibilities. The DSMRI attends to the role identity’s three facets of content, structure, and process of formation; emphasizes the central roles of knowledge and emotion in identity; and highlights the interdependence of elements.

Method
PD Design. The PD was designed around activities that map onto the components of the DSMRI: (1) the central goal was for teachers to design discussion-based lessons to be taught in the fall; teachers were grouped into content teams to achieve this goal; (2) PD facilitators were presented as “teachers down the hall,” experienced colleagues available to support teachers if they sought assistance; (3) optional workshops on action possibilities were offered as “drop-in” sessions, to be sought as needed; (4) 60 high school students joined teachers mid-week for a first round of rehearsals and then again at the end of the week to offer feedback on teachers’ lesson revisions. The students’ feedback served to prompt reflection on teachers’ ontological and epistemological beliefs about student learning; (5) teachers continuously reflected on their current and future teacher role-identities through regular memoing and collective video analysis.

Data Sources and Analysis. All sessions were video recorded, and we collected teachers’ reflective memos. These were coded according to the DSMRI methodology (Kaplan & Garner, 2020). This comparative case study (Yin, 2011) focuses on 3 teachers in the U.S. history content group, who entered the PD with a range of facility and experience with discussion facilitation.

Findings
Preliminary analysis suggests that PD activities did support role-identity shifts in all three teachers as they moved from preservice teacher role-identities to future-teacher role-identities, with minimal evidence of their occupying PD-participant role-identities. We saw less evidence, however, of explicit integration of discussion-facilitator into their future-teacher role-identities, especially among teachers who entered the PD with less experience facilitating discussions.

Significance
Using the DSMRI to design PD allowed us to center authenticity and teacher agency. However, in future iterations we need to build in scaffolds that focus teachers’ attention on the affordances of discussion facilitation.

Authors

• Andrew del Calvo, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author

• Andrew J. Schiera, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Abby Reisman, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author

• Tim Patterson, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Lightning Jay, Binghamton University - SUNY
  Presenting Author