Deepening Teacher Expertise Over Time Through the Use of Educative Materials

• In Event: Ecological/Sociocultural Approaches to Educative Curriculum Design and Assessment

Abstract

Objectives: This study focuses on four teachers’ experiences in implementing educative materials designed with a sociocultural/ecological perspective for 8th grade ELA students who are categorized as “Long Term” English Learners. Specifically, this paper analyzes the deepening of teachers’ pedagogical expertise over a school academic quarter implementation period as well as documents changes in their beliefs about the type of instruction that supports generative learning in their students, specifically English Learners.
Framework: Over their teaching careers teachers develop visions -or not- of pedagogy, their students, beliefs about how English Learners need to experience content, and motivation to learn. Commonly these dispositions and knowledge is reductivist and focuses on the teaching of isolated pieces of language as opposed to getting students to be able to accomplish things with words. The focus is on teaching, not on providing students opportunities to learn, as evidenced in, for example, the frontloading of vocabulary, a focus on grammar, their use of simplified texts, and the teaching of language separate and distinct from content, a problem that Valdés calls “the curricularization of language” (van Lier & Walqui, 2002; Bunch, Walqui, & Pearson, 2014; Valdés, 2019). The study uses Shulman’s model of teacher expertise (1995), adapted by Walqui (1997) to document and analyze teachers’ shifting notions of what constitutes quality learning experiences for English Learners through their use of educative materials. These educative materials, written with the goal of supporting and sustaining teacher learning over time, display features that lead to deep and ongoing learning as well as understanding of pedagogy (Davis and Krajcik, 2005; Davis et al. (2017).
Methods/Modes of inquiry: The paper draws from data collected over two one-quarter of an academic year of classroom implementations. Videos, classroom transcripts, interviews, and teacher artifacts were collected throughout the implementation. They were all analyzed to enrich our understanding of which elements of teacher expertise develop more easily and which are more resistant to change.
Significance:
These materials model for teachers the importance and pedagogical imperative of inviting students to engage in disciplinary concepts, and interact with themes and activities that, over time, build their capacity to work collaboratively and to have sustained discussions and conversations with their peers. By understanding and observing students interact and deepen their own understanding, teachers’ level of pedagogical expertise is developed and strengthened over time as they begin to adopt and use the ideas and practices articulated in the educative materials.

Author

• Mary K. Schmida, WestEd
  Presenting Author