Opening Windows on the Classroom: Professionalizing Discourse in Teacher Collaborative Groups

• In Event: “Professional Language” in Education: Enhancing Communication Within and Across Research, Teacher Education, and School Settings

Abstract

Objectives

We present a conceptual framework for understanding teachers’ professional talk. Our research seeks to understand how collegial talk contributes to professional learning. On one level, language provides the means for increasing intersubjectivity about the work of teaching, laying the groundwork for professional learning (Vygotksy, 2012). We argue for a view of professional language that highlights not simply technical terms but, more broadly, professional discourse. Critical to professional discourse are the activity settings that render teachers as more or less agentic in their work, thus serving professionalizing or bureaucratizing functions.

Educational Context

Academically rigorous and socially inclusive forms of teaching remain rare in schools (Cohen, 2011). Such “ambitious instruction” is uncommon, in part, because it is a risky form of practice, heightening professional uncertainty (Lampert et al., 2011). Despite its rarity, ambitious instruction still exists in some settings. It tends to occur in schools with strong norms of experimentation (Little, 1982) or teacher collaboration (Bryk et al., 2010) –– cultures that support the risk-taking necessary for ambitious instruction to succeed. Yet not all teacher collaboration serves these goals equally. We seek to specify the conversational processes that stand to support teachers’ ongoing learning.

Conceptual Framework

Over numerous studies, we have used discourse analysis (Goffman, 1974) to study videos of secondary teachers’ conversations. The emerging conceptual framework relates collaborative talk to teachers’ professional learning (e.g., Authors, 2012). Briefly, the metaphor of windows on the classroom summarizes how conversations contribute to professional learning. As teachers talk, they illustrate aspects of classroom life, opening different windows on their work. For instance, some conversations simply focus on teacher performance, ignoring details of the content or students. Richer talk, in contrast, opens conversational windows onto relationships among students, teaching, and content, providing greater learning opportunities.

Contribution

As we study teachers’ conversations, we see workgroup interactions as existing on a spectrum from professionalizing to bureaucratizing. Although other scholars have drawn distinctions across teacher cultures (e.g., McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001), our focus on the nature of the discourse elaborates earlier frameworks. At the level of interaction, we see that professionalizing discourse:
(1) de-privatizes practice by opening windows that delve into specific aspects of teaching, content, and student thinking;
(2) arises in a positive environment, normalizing risk taking and experimentation;
(3) positions teachers with intellectual authority;
(4) supports shared sensemaking;
(5) reflects and reconstitutes professional commitments.

Bureaucratizing discourse, in contrast, emphasizes collaboration as compliance and de-emphasizes teachers’ agency in their work.
We use examples from our data corpus to illustrate this spectrum, arguing that analyses of professional language need to extend into activity structures that account for teachers’ agency.

Scholarly Significance

If educators wish for the investment in teacher collaboration and its promise of instructional improvement to bear fruit, the field needs better tools for understanding the relationship between collegial talk and teachers’ learning. This conceptual framework, along with its illustrative examples, provides a means for understanding the ways conversations play a professionalizing or bureaucratizing role for teachers, thus supporting or hindering the development of ambitious instruction.

Authors

• Ilana S. Horn, Vanderbilt University

• Britnie Delinger Kane, Vanderbilt University

• Mollie H. Appelgate, Iowa State University