Addressing Coherence, Conflict, and Ambiguity: A Case Study of Teacher Education Program Redesign Around Core Practices

• In Event: Exploring the Contours of Coherence in Teacher Preparation: Four Perspectives on the Concept, the Pathways, and the Challenges

Abstract

Objectives: Many factors limit coherence in teacher education programs.  This paper:

1. Reviews extant research to identify factors that hinder teacher education program coherence;
2. Uses three conceptual lenses from organizational theory to conceptualize how individuals experience shared organizational ends and means, contributing to a more complex understanding of coherence;
3. Uses data from a teacher education program to illustrate the relevance of the framework and demonstrate the possibility and desirability of promoting coherence.

Theoretical perspective: Martin (2002) proposes the desirability of adopting multiple—if conflicting—lenses to understand organizations. Following her lead, we conceptualize qualities that co-exist with and compliment coherence by looking within organizations to see three ways in which individual participants relate to the organization’s larger mission and shared processes:
1. UNITY; organizations can foster shared vision of outcomes (DuFour & Eaker, 1998), shared language (Little, 2003), and unified action, leading to coherence [an integrative lens]; 
2. CONFLICT; organizations can harbor internal divisions and tensions, leading to conflict and micro-political processes (Martin, 2002; citation deleted) [a differentiated lens]; and 
3. AMBIGUITY AND PARADOX; decisions and action in organizations may involve unclear or “problematic goals, unclear technologies, and fluid participation” by a variety of actors unaware of others’ work (Cohen, March, & Olsen, 1976, 25) [a fragmentation lens]. 

Data sources and methods: After introducing these lenses, we use documents and interview data from 15 teacher educators engaged in a process of redesign around core practices to further explore the possibility and nature of program coherence, and to identify pathways and obstacles towards using core practices to respond to the constant organizational realities of unity, conflict, and ambiguity.  
 
Findings: Data shows how intentional efforts can shift the nature of the unity, conflict, and fragmentation that exist in a teacher education program. Participants describe a “collaborative…bottom-up” process of reaching consensus on program-wide core teaching practices “where people had to put their differences on the table…and…we had to come to some kind of resolution”. This process “exposed conflict in a positive way” and revealed “fault lines” that had existed between departments and between groups of faculty (i.e., clinical and tenure-line). Differing views were not resolved into forced unity, and were addressed by including both sides in discussion and final documents. Interviewees most involved in the process of redesign describe the desirability of conflict and give evidence of shifting the content and pedagogy of their own courses in ways likely to promote coherent focus across courses and clinical experiences. The paper explores perspectives and implications of instructors at the periphery of the core practice redesign work who are not yet shifting courses and instruction as significantly, and considers participant-identified advantages of allowing some fragmentation.

Implications: Teacher education programs can intentionally foster coherence. Work with program-wide core practices may promote coherence by providing “a shared understanding across a broader group of people” that leads to changes in course content and, more slowly, pedagogy. Larger efforts to promote coherence in teacher education programs may require processes for harnessing conflict and tolerating some fragmentation.

Authors

• Thomas H. Levine, University of Connecticut

• Dorothea M. Anagnostopoulos, The University of Connecticut

• Rene Roselle, University of Connecticut

• Glenn Tatsuya Mitoma, University of Connecticut