Supporting Teachers’ Agency in Identity Exploration Around Instructional Practice

• In Event: Designing Professional Development Contexts for Teacher Agentic Identity Exploration, Motivation, and Learning of Instructional Practice

Abstract

Purpose
Despite strong theoretical and empirical justifications, discussion remains stubbornly absent from social studies classrooms (Lo, 2022). Supporting teacher agency to explore barriers to the practice is one way to support teachers enact more discussions (Li & Ruppar, 2021). In this comparative case study, we used the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017) to investigate two teachers’ identity processes in the context of a 5-day summer professional development (PD) designed to support participants’ agency in exploring their identity around facilitating discussions.

Theoretical Framework
The DSMRI views enacting a practice as emerging from the teacher’s role identity, which comprises four contextually emergent and interdependent components: ontological and epistemological beliefs (mental model of the lived reality), purpose and goals, self-perceptions and self-definitions, and perceived action possibilities available for pursuing the purpose and goals considering the lived reality and oneself in it. Learning and motivation for the practice involves change to the content and relations of these components (Garner & Kaplan, 2019). The DSMRI suggests that teachers’ identity exploration around identity tensions (e.g., a personal dilemma) promotes self-relevant conceptions and autonomous motivation towards a practice (Kaplan & Garner, 2017), and that identity exploration is optimal when negotiating tensions is balanced by a sense of safety and supported by identity exploration scaffolds (Kaplan et al., 2014). In this paper, we investigated the ways by which activities in the PD context triggered and scaffolded two participants’ identity exploration and change regarding facilitating discussions.

Methods
Context. The two participants, Kelly and Maddie, participated in the teams described in Paper 1. Both are white, female, and are rising second-year social studies teachers in a Mid-Atlantic urban district.
Data Sources and Analysis. Data for this study included: (1) field notes, video, and audio recordings of all activities, (2) team products, including plans and a Padlet page of team members’ emergent thoughts, (3) end-of-PD visual and oral narratives about the team’s journey of experiences and learning, and (4) individual reflections collected at 2 points via Qualtrics. Analysis was guided by the DSMRI and focused on the two participants’ identity content, structure, and process of formation.

Findings
Findings suggest that the design features of the PD context triggered and scaffolded both Kelly’s and Maddie’s identity exploration. The presence of students coupled with scaffolding by the PD facilitator supported Kelly’s exploration of tensions in her ontological beliefs about the incommensurability of disciplinary learning and authentic student engagement. Her exploration led to her understanding that the tension was not inevitable, and that disciplinary learning could align with students’ identities. Maddie’s identity exploration focused on a tension in her ontological beliefs between the PD’s emphasis on experimentation and improvisation and her view of good teaching as sticking with a plan. Constructively exploring this tension in PD activities led to role identity alignment between teacher goals and action possibilities of modifying to address students’ emerging concerns.

Scholarly Significance
The findings demonstrate how designing PD to scaffold participants’ exploration of identity tensions promotes identity change, motivation, and learning of instructional practice.

Authors

• Andrew del Calvo, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

• Jenni Conrad, Oregon State University

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University