Building the Bridge: Anchors and Tensions Between Collaborating Designers of Teacher Professional Learning

• In Event: 66.055 - Suspension Bridges: Cultural Historical Activity Theory as a Tool for Understanding Productive Tensions Across STEM Learning Communities

Abstract

Purpose
This paper examines the development of a teacher professional learning program—Designing for Discourse (D4D)—intended to support teachers designing with the Next Generation Science Standard for English language learners. D4D is a collaborative design-based research (DBR) project (e.g., Barab & Squire, 2004) between the Institute for Inquiry (IFI) at the Exploratorium—a teacher professional learning institute—and researchers (a post-doctoral learning scientist and an associate educational linguistics professor). This paper explores shared commitments that drove collaborative work, and tensions that arose between interpretations of those commitments.

Methods
As a participant observer (Erickson, 1986), I took detailed notes during 12 four-hour planning meetings. Based on analysis of notes, I developed representations of shared commitments to equity. I used tensions in interacting activity systems (or “contradictions”, Engström, 2001) as a sensitizing concept (Blumer, 1954) to identify segments wherein conceptualizations of discourse were negotiated.

Findings
IFI and researchers shared the goal of supporting teachers to “develop an understanding of discourse at a deep enough level so that they can attend to it in their planning and classroom” (2/23/16), and commitments to (1) direct experience with phenomena to “build the confidence and skills to understand the world around them” (Allen, 2004, p. S18) so that “everyone can approach a new phenomena and have some ideas of what to do with it” (2/23/16), and (2) discourse as central to equitable engagement with phenomena and science ideas. However, they conceptualized discourse differently. IFI conceptualized discourse as talk (e.g., Michaels & O’Connor, 2012; Worth, Winokur, Crissman, Heller-Winokur, & Davis, 2009), while researchers conceptualized discourse in relation to the people, purposes, materials, activities, and semiotic and sociocultural resources in discourse arrangements (e.g., Gee & Green, 1998).

These tensions affected the D4D design. IFI knew addressing talk and science practices challenged teachers (2/23/16). Drawing attention to aspects of discourse arrangements (e.g., discourse forms, participants’ roles, groupings) was seen as layers of complexity that introduced “a level of unknown” and a fear of “trying to do too much” (3/22/16), including concerns about “cognitive load” (3/22/16) and activity pacing (4/19/16). The assumption that D4D needed to reduce complexity to support productive teacher learning (3/22/16, 5/10/16), led the team to identify these layers as fodder for future iterations. The team agreed to “incremental” refinement of the design to address these concerns (5/10/16) based on observation of teachers’ workshop participation (4/19/16).

Discussion
The IFI practice-based institute and the DBR researchers operated as collaborating activity systems with the goal of supporting teachers Designing for Discourse. Shared commitments to phenomena first and discourse as central to equity drove collaborative work, anchoring the teams together. Tensions in the design process reflected differing conceptualizations of discourse. This multi-voicedness created tensions that served as focal points for innovation efforts (Engström, 2001) in bridge building; understanding tensions focused DBR iterative efforts to better address the needs of teachers drawing on discourse and NGSS to support ELLs’ science learning.

Author

• Danielle Keifert, University of California - Los Angeles