Elementary Science Teacher Agency and Resistance Across Professional Development and School Contexts (Poster 11)

• In Event: Research on STEM Professional Learning Communities: Attending to Teacher Learning, Agency, and Equity

Abstract

Objectives/purposes: The purpose of professional development (PD) should not be to promote specific “core practices” (e.g., choral counting, Grossman et al., 2009) but rather to facilitate teachers’ judgment and improvisations so that they can devise localized solutions within their classrooms (Kennedy, 2016; Philip et al., 2019). Thus, we analyzed a case from a PLC in which, rather than adopting beliefs and practices from (a) a researcher-designed PD or (b) her school/district, a teacher instead demonstrated agency and resistance across both contexts.
Perspectives/theoretical framework: Research has acknowledged the nuanced ways that teachers’ judgements and improvisations enable equitable science teaching (Morales-Doyle et al., 2021; Tolbert et al., 2018). Equity-oriented PLCs often focus on engaging teachers in rich ideological sensemaking with colleagues (Scott & Philip, 2023; Louie, 2020). Through this sensemaking, teachers work toward “changes in collective meaning that challenge social forms of power” (Philip, 2011, p. 301) resulting in new interpretations of their classrooms and their students. In this poster, we use the lens of ideological sensemaking to analyze teacher agency and resistance in a PLC.
Methods: Data were collected from a PD for in-service teachers participating in PLCs. Teachers collaborated on lesson planning, and they shared and discussed student work and video recordings from their classrooms. In this poster, we focus on one participating Kindergarten teacher, Kwin.
Data sources: We consider Kwin’s ideological sensemaking as an exploratory case (Yin, 2014) of how teachers’ agency and resistance can lead to generative learning, both for teachers and researchers. Data sources are video recordings of PLC sessions. We analyzed these data using interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995).
Results: We analyzed a PLC episode in which Kwin responded to pressures from researchers and her administration. Kwin shared a video in which she taught a lesson dictated by an instructional coach that did not conform to the equitable science teaching principles presented in the PD. Kwin’s posture and tone were defensive as she presented the video. Yet, within the space of the PLC, she was able to share a story about how she later integrated PD principles about connecting with students’ cultural resources within her instructional coach’s learning sequence about “living and non-living.” Kwin described how she connected with a student classified as an “English learner.” Though Kwin and her student did not share many linguistic resources, they shared a faith-based (Christian) background. When asked to draw a living thing, the student drew God. Kwin accepted this answer because “God breathes, and God eats.” She created picture cards from a children’s Bible to help the student support her claim with evidence. Though Kwin believed that, from the perspective of the PD and her administration, she was not supposed to “do Bible in school,” she resisted this ideological stance to help build a connection between herself, her student, and science.
Significance: This episode illustrates how, in a PLC that welcomes teachers’ agency and resistance, researchers and teachers can learn from participants’ judgments and improvisations that support equitable learning opportunities.

Authors

• Ashlyn Pierson, The Ohio State University

• D. Teo Keifert, University of North Texas

• Bethany Daniel, Vanderbilt University