Pivoting in the Long Arc of Research: A Dialogic Perspective

• In Event: NPD (National Professional Development) Grant-Generated Challenges: Moving the Field of Effective MLL (Multilingual Learner) Instruction Forward

Abstract

National Professional Development (NPD) grants aim to improve the schooling for multilingual learners (MLL) by offering teachers professional development. Such programs are rarely stand-alone; instead, they emerge as iterations informed by previous implementation and research efforts. Narratives of research progress often pose it as the accumulation of findings (Bird, 2022) or as a dialectic in which knowledge is continually synthesized toward greater truth (Cronenberg, 2020). In this presentation, we draw on dialogic theory (Wegerif, 2008) to tell the story of a longer arc of research spanning 21 years and five NPD grants to improve MLL achievement.
This paper advances a model of teacher professional learning based on a coherent and aligned set of critical sociocultural principles in practice (or praxis). A dialogic orientation is fundamental. By dialogic, we refer not only to interactional form (Wells & Arauz, 2006) but also a stance towards meaning making and development (Bakhtin, 1982; Wegerif, 2008) in which actors in dialogue grow and enrich each other through and across differences in an open-ended process rather than dialectically undoing difference through synthesis.
This dialogic orientation can be applied to research methodology (Wegerif et al., 2019) as a post-hoc analytic lens to understand how research shifts in response to conditions and results of professional development interventions. We explore how the researcher's experience, reflection, and interpretation of micro-findings and macro-perspectives inform research development.
We use insights from two empirical studies to focus on the long research arc afforded by NPD-funded professional development programs. A repeated measures study in 2004 (N = 26) and a quasi-experimental study (control group) in 2014 (N = 36) relied on pre-post intervention changes in teacher pedagogy as measured by classroom observations using the Standards Performance Continuum (Doherty et al., 2002).
This presentation argues for a dialogic interpretation of research-informed pivots in professional learning practice. The findings from empirical pre-post intervention studies warrant this interpretation on a micro-scale. Dialogic theory supports the coherent interpretation of shifts in a longitudinal arc of research on a macro-level. For example, the 2004 study demonstrated on the micro-level that seven university courses could change teacher thinking but did not significantly change teaching practice. This led the researchers to pilot a follow-up intervention based on instructional coaching. With only four coaching cycles, these coached teachers implemented sociocultural practices with high fidelity, leading to a pivot to coaching in subsequent NPD proposals and studies. The 2014 coaching study moved solely from an external/expert coach to preparing school-based coaches. Findings demonstrated that school-based coaches were less effective than the external/expert coach in shifting teacher practices. This led to a pivot, developing a shadow-coaching model to support the development of school-based coaches.
As research projects develop across years and careers, they produce discrete micro-findings and macro-lessons learned, theories refined, and pivots in practice. Understanding pivots as part of a dialogic arc of practice is valuable in advancing teacher preparation for MLL.

Author

• Annela Teemant, Indiana University - Indianapolis