How and Why to Assess Interpretive Authority Balances in Exploratory and Problem-Solving Learning Experiences

• In Event: Teaching Toward Equity: The Teaching-Learning Research Stance and Its Practices

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
To offer a rationale and heuristic for assessing interpretive authority balances (blinded)
in exploratory and problem-solving learning experiences. I argue that this heuristic
reveals a crucial dimension of the work of opening up dialogic spaces in classrooms,
namely the roles students assume in the construction of classroom understandings, and
that it can in this way support teachers in this challenging work.
Theoretical framework
Critical Exploration in the Classroom (CEC) is a powerful pedagogical practice that
originated as a form of developmental learning research. One way to speak of the
power of CEC learning experiences is to consider their distinctive interpretive authority
distributions (Author 2, 2012, 2024). As a curricular practice, CEC positions students as
fully authorized agents in classroom knowledge construction processes; teachers shift
to supporting those processes by inspiring and sustaining students’ engagement with
material artifacts or phenomena and orchestrating their thoughtful, respectful, and
evidence-based exploration of these materials and each other’s ideas. Rather than
teacher or text providing evaluations or confirmations of the students’ ideas, students
are redirected to the focal materials and to various of the thoughts and ideas their
classmates have offered.
Although many problem-solving or exploratory pedagogies invite students’ open
exploration and discussion in response to materials provided, few completely eliminate
the evaluative role that teachers generally assume. Experience has shown that, when
successfully managed, this radical recasting of student and teacher roles tends to
scramble established classroom dynamics, with students addressing each other
directly, thinking aloud, and students rarely heard from becoming animated.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
I present the heuristic along with a brief history of its development and demonstrate its
use in an analysis of a portion of a classroom transcript.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
A portion of a transcript from a middle-school humanities class in a mixed income
suburb in New England. The teacher had studied and become an accomplished
practitioner of CEC.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
A structural analysis of interpretive authority can support teachers in the work of
opening up classroom discussions and explorations by clarifying the underlying
authority dynamics at work. To what extent and in what ways are students actually
being relied upon to contribute to the construction of classroom understandings? How
might different students respond to being asked to take on different types of
responsibility in classroom knowledge construction processes?
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
While some students will be more comfortable with classroom processes that do not
introduce the risk and uncertainty of exploratory learning experiences, experience has
shown that others respond willingly, and at times with surprising levels of enthusiasm, to
the challenge of thinking through academic challenges on their own terms. This latter
group can often be seen to include students who have seemed less engaged during
more traditional teacher-led presentations and reasoning processes, repositioning them
as valued participants within these and related forms of learning experience.

Author

• Susan Jean Mayer, Critical Exploration Press