Exploring Regional Design Collaboratives as an Implementation Strategy for Equity-focused Science Teacher Learning

• In Event: Surfacing Teacher Learning Needs from the Ground Up: Research-Practice Partnerships to Cultivate Innovative Practices

Abstract

Objectives: A major complexity associated with classroom teaching is coordinating various frameworks and policies that are institutionalized (at school, district, state, and national levels) while leveraging existing programs and resources to support sustained refinement of equity-focused teaching practice in response to ambitious educational standards (AUTHOR, 2018a). State science supervisors—who overwhelmingly start their educational careers as classroom teachers—are well positioned to design an instructional guidance infrastructure given those complexities. And yet, they are often not supported in engaging in infrastructuring work to support teacher learning opportunities within the constraints and resources of the educational system (AUTHOR, 2019). We explore the strategy of supporting multi-state collaboratives of state science supervisors and their implementation colleagues (classroom teachers, district staff, consultants) in the co-design of equity-focused professional learning resources and practices that align with educational systems.
Theoretical framework: Fourth-generation cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) allows us to study “coalescing cycles of expansive learning in a heterogeneous coalition of activities facing a critical societal challenge” (Engeström & Sanino, 2020, p. 12). We layer concepts of relational expertise and relational agency into this framing to account for perspective taking, collaborative expansion of possibilities, and attention to such in co-design work (Edwards, 2012). We theoretically view educational standards implementation efforts as materially infrastructuring professional learning, assessment, and instruction (AUTHOR, 2019; Penuel, 2019).
Methods & Data: As part of a sustained research-practice partnership, this design-based implementation research (Penuel et al., 2011) engaged the national network of state science supervisors in the collaborative design of this implementation initiative and in the regional, multi-state groups that developed professional learning resources about specific implementation priorities in science education (e.g., using GIS science data to support place-based investigations, standards-based grading systems, supporting classroom discourse). Using an ethnographic case approach (Emerson et al., 2011), we thematically analyzed about two dozen hours of co-design meeting transcripts (online and in-person) and the resulting drafts of multiple designed resources for each of six regional groups. Cycles of memoing, coding, and synthesis revealed patterns in the coalescing cycles of group activity.
Results: The analysis revealed a range of insights about this regional co-design improvement strategy. Co-design became a practice that supported: professional learning, distributed expertise, productive navigation of design tensions (Tatar, 2007), and extended implementation efforts beyond the project itself. There were significant complexities associated with how participants took up co-design practices. Co-design became a new implementation practice for many state leaders—and yet many individuals found the design work daunting (AUTHOR, 2018b). Given widely variable socio-political approaches to (in)equity in education across state contexts, sustained negotiation led to strategic approaches to the design of resources—in some ways were insurgent (Warren, et al., 2020) and in other ways embodied interest convergence (Bell, 1980).
Scholarly significance: We need to model implementation that supports teacher learning in ongoing and justice-centered ways within the circumstances of the educational system as it is. We need to develop theoretical knowledge about promoting coherence and equity in education through multi-level collaboratives focused on infrastructuring for educational improvement.

Authors

• Philip L. Bell, University of Washington

• Nancy Price, University of Washington

• Ximena Fabiola Gallegos Gutierrez, University of Washington