Reframing Tensions Between Informal and Formal Educators as Productive Space for Professional Development

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

Abstract

Introduction
Afterschool educators from an East Oakland school serving nondominant students, and researchers from the Exploratorium and University of Washington, came together in a research-practice partnership (RPP) to understand how STEM learning in informal Making programs can support the school day. RPPs are sustained, mutual, and pragmatic collaborations that review data together in order to gain deep yet practical understandings of program implementation (Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013).

Yet tensions existed in this school where in-school educators characterized afterschool educators as “babysitters” who were inconsequential to student learning, despite afterschool programming showing important impacts on students’ academic and socioemotional growth. Recognizing that afterschool education is important for youth (Afterschool Alliance, 2015) and that professionalization of informal educators has been a challenge due to high turnover rates (Fleming, 2012), our partnership structured its inquiry within the context of professional development for afterschool educators that directly shaped in-school professional development.
This paper addresses the following research questions: How were the tensions between informal and formal educators used to create space for dialogue about student learning across contexts? What did formal and informal teachers gain from the experience, if anything?

Theoretical Framework
Third-generation cultural historical activity theory (CH/AT) explores how individual activity systems are part of a network of activity systems forming human society (Engestrom, 1999; Roth & Lee, 2007). This project explored third-generation CH/AT goals to “make it a priority to ascertain the role of dialog, multiple perspectives, and issues of power when dealing with interacting activity systems as networks” (Roth & Lee, 2007, p. 200) through the formation of both an RPP and professional development meetings connecting informal and formal learning.

Methods & Data Sources
This study included participant observation (Erickson, 1986) of monthly meetings between researchers and afterschool educators in which student learning data from afterschool programs were jointly analyzed. Data sources (audio recordings, photographs, fieldnotes, teacher reflections, and interviews with formal and informal educators) were collected over six meetings and a “learning walk” during which in-school teachers/staff reflected on student learning as described in program posters created by afterschool educators. Data sources were analyzed multiple times using a grounded theory approach that involved reading through the data corpus to identify common codes, themes, and categories, as well as lines of contrast emerging across the data sources (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).

Findings & Implications
Results describe how both informal and formal educators gained new perspectives about student learning through dialogue with one another. While educators recognized the differences in learning contexts between their programs and classrooms, these differences served as a productive tension through which to surface new ways of thinking about student learning across contexts. Findings suggest that important opportunities for professional development can be made possible when informal and formal educators are brought in conversation with one another. In this way, bridges between in and out-of-school learning can be supported by addressing the tensions that exist between them.

Authors

• Jean J. Ryoo, Exploratorium

• Bronwyn Bevan, Exploratorium