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DEVELOPING PROFESSIONAL VISION FOR PRACTICE: PRESERVICE TEACHERS USING
STUDENTS’ SCIENTIFIC IDEAS IN SIMULATIONS OF PRACTICE
By Amanda Benedict-Chambers A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Educational Studies) in the University of Michigan! 2014 Doctoral Committee Associate Professor Donald Freeman, Chair Associate Professor Elizabeth A. Davis Assistant Professor Matthew S. Ronfeldt Assistant Professor R. Brent Stansfield
ii Acknowledgements Completing this dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of my committee, my friends, and my family. First, I want to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Donald Freeman, Betsy Davis, Matt Ronfeldt, and Brent Stansfield. It has truly been a privilege to work with each of you. I have learned a great deal from you; I am grateful for your feedback that has challenged my thinking and improved my work. Donald, I thank you for your guidance, support, and mentorship for the last six years. I appreciate how you have always been an advocate of my work, and for the ways you always challenge my thinking about theory. I could not have finished this dissertation without your support and flexibility along the way. Betsy, I am grateful for the opportunity to work with you in the elementary science methods course and in the ELECTS project. Thank you for all of your support and for representing the kind of teacher educator and researcher I aspire to be. Matt, I appreciate your acute questions and insights into teacher education; thanks also for meetings with good coffee. Brent, I thank you for your encouragement and for exposing me to the richness of work in professional expertise. I have been blessed to work with amazing faculty and staff at the University of Michigan. I am particularly grateful to Debi Khasnabis, Beth Grzelak, Annemarie Palincsar, Magdalene Lampert, Cathy Reischl, Chris Feak, Liz Kolb, Joe Krajcik, LeeAnn Sutherland and many others who have challenged my thinking and helped me to become a better educator and scholar. I could not have survived this dissertation journey without the support of my friends. Dianne, you have enriched my life, our times together walking, drinking coffee, and discussing
iv certainly not least, I thank God for bringing amazing people to my life, and for giving me the strength and perspective to persevere and to enjoy this process.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements..........................................................................................................................................ii! List.of.Figures...................................................................................................................................................vii! List.of.Tables...................................................................................................................................................viii! List.of.Appendices............................................................................................................................................ix! Abstract.................................................................................................................................................................x! CHAPTER.1.INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................... 1! Study.Overview.and.Research.Questions................................................................................................. 5! CHAPTER.2.CONCEPTUAL.FRAMEWORK.AND.LITERATURE.REVIEW.................................. 9! Approaches.to.Studying.Teacher.Noticing............................................................................................... 9! Teacher!Noticing!Research!Informed!by!the!Nature!of!Expertise!.............................................................! 9! Teaching!Noticing!Research!Emphasizes!the!Topics!and!Stance!of!Noticing!....................................! 11! From.Noticing.to.Professional.Vision.and.Professional.Discourse................................................ 18! Professional!Vision!for!Practice!.............................................................................................................................! 18! Establishing!a!Professional!Discourse!................................................................................................................! 20! Articulation!.....................................................................................................................................................................! 22! Efforts!in!Teacher!Education!and!Science!Education!to!Establish!a!Professional!Discourse!......! 23! Pedagogies!for!Supporting!Novices’!Professional!Vision!...........................................................................! 25! ActivitySTheoretical.Illustration.of.Peer.Teaching............................................................................. 28! Summary............................................................................................................................................................ 31! CHAPTER.3.METHODS........................................................................................................................ 33! Overview............................................................................................................................................................ 33! Study.Design..................................................................................................................................................... 34! Study!Context!.................................................................................................................................................................! 34! Elementary!Science!Methods!Course!..................................................................................................................! 35! Peer!Teaching!Lesson!Feedback!Discussions!..................................................................................................! 37! Mediating!Tools!for!Science!Teaching!and!Learning:!EEE!Framework!and!Student! Misconceptions!.............................................................................................................................................................! 37! Study!Participants!........................................................................................................................................................! 48! The!Role!of!the!Researcher!......................................................................................................................................! 51! Data..................................................................................................................................................................... 52! Data!Sources!...................................................................................................................................................................! 53! Peer!Teaching!Lesson!Feedback!Discussion!Videos!.....................................................................................! 54! Peer!Teaching!Artifacts!.............................................................................................................................................! 55! Interviews!with!Focal!Participants!.......................................................................................................................! 55! Data.Coding.and.Analysis............................................................................................................................. 56! Analysis!of!Peer!Teaching!Feedback!Discussion!Data!..................................................................................! 57! Analysis!of!the!Secondary!Sources!of!Data!.......................................................................................................! 62! CHAPTER.4.MOVES.TO.NOTICE.AND.CHALLENGE.TOPICS...................................................... 64! Identifying.Challenges.of.Science.Teaching.and.Learning.in.Feedback.Discussions............... 65! Episodes!of!Attending!to!Challenges!....................................................................................................................! 65! Challenges!of!Science!Teaching!and!Learning!.................................................................................................! 69! Moves.to.Notice.in.Peer.Teaching.Feedback.Discussions................................................................. 74! Interactions.Focused.on.Investigating.Student.Thinking................................................................. 78! A!Novice’s!Perspective!on!Noticing:!Insights!into!Developing!Professional!Vision!........................! 83! Novices’!Noticing!across!the!Data!Set!.................................................................................................................! 86!
vii List of Figures Figure 2.1 Activity Theory Model ............................................................................................................... 29! Figure 3.1 Ecosystem lesson aquarium setup and webbing activity from STC, Ecosystems Unit 47! Figure 3.2 Ball and Track Apparatus Setup of the Motion investigation from Chicago Science Group, 2000- 2010 ................................................................................................................................. 48! Figure 4.1 Cade's Experience Feedback Discussion: Investigating a Challenge Related to Scientific Practices and Student Thinking about Motion .............................................................. 79! Figure 4.2 Sam’s Experience Feedback Discussion: Evaluating a Range Of Discrete Topics ........ 79! Figure 5.1 Ball and Track Apparatus Setup of the Motion Lesson Investigation ............................. 93! Figure 6.1 Developing professional vision for practice in simulations ............................................. 118! Figure 6.2 Activity Theory Illustration of the Peer Teaching Contradictions ................................ 126! Figure 6.3 Protocol for discussing instruction and identifying problems of practice .................... 135!
viii List of Tables Table 3.1 Teacher Education Program Course Sequence .................................................................... 35! Table 3.2 Peer Teaching Instructions for the Experience Peer Teaching ......................................... 39! Table 3.3 Assigned Alternative Ideas for the Ecosystems and Motion Lessons .............................. 40! Table 3.4 Ecosystems and Motion Lessons Scientific Practice Challenges........................................ 41! Table 3.5 Focal Participant Selection by Criteria .................................................................................... 50! Table 3.6 Novices in the Peer Teaching Teams ...................................................................................... 51! Table 3.7 Overview of the Initial Data Set ............................................................................................... 53! Table 3.8 Data collection timeline .............................................................................................................. 56! Table 4.1 Noelle’s Experience Feedback Transcript .............................................................................. 67! Table 4.2 Episodes of Attending to Challenges Across the Data Set ................................................ 69! Table 4.3 Categories of Challenge topics ................................................................................................. 71! Table 4.4 Categories of Moves to Notice in Episodes of Attending to Challenges ....................... 75! Table 4.5 Novices’ noticing across the data set: The presence of identifying challenges related to student thinking ..................................................................................................................................... 87! Table 4.6 When two or move novices attend to challenges about student thinking ..................... 88! Table 5.1 Cade’s Experience Feedback Discussion, Excerpt 1 ............................................................ 94! Table 5.2 Cade’s Experience Feedback Discussion, Excerpt 2 ............................................................ 99! Table 5.3 Cade’s Experience Feedback Discussion, Excerpt 3 .......................................................... 101! Table 5.4 Lori’s Explain Feedback Discussion........................................................................................ 104! Table 5.5 Lea’s Experience Feedback Discussion ................................................................................. 109! Table 5.6 Noemi’s Experience Feedback Discussion ........................................................................... 112!
x Abstract Learning to teach science is difficult for preservice elementary teachers. It involves adopting the practices and principles valued in the teaching profession. A central challenge novice teachers face is learning to interpret students’ ideas as they construct explanations of phenomena. The particular ways that teachers see and understand instructional interactions has been referred to as professional vision (Goodwin, 1994). This dissertation examined the ways in which a simulation of practice called “Peer Teaching” supported the development of novices’ professional vision in the context of an elementary science methods course. Designed as an approximation of practice, the Peer Teaching lessons provided novice teachers with an opportunity to practice science lessons and to receive targeted feedback. Each novice teacher role-played a “teacher” and taught three science lessons to a team of novices and a teacher educator who acted as “elementary students” with the help of research-based science misconceptions. The central research question in this study was: How do preservice teachers develop professional vision for practice in the context of Peer Teaching feedback discussions? Qualitative data were collected from 16 novice teachers in four Peer Teaching teams. These data included 48 videos of Peer Teaching feedback discussions, Peer Teaching artifacts, and interviews with one novice teacher from each team. The findings of the study suggest that developing professional vision in simulations involves learning to notice and use what is valued in the profession, the professional Discourse. Specifically, my analyses indicated that opportunities for developing professional vision occurred as the novices and the teacher educators (1) established a professional Discourse through tools; (2) approximated the professional Discourse through roles; (3) identified challenges of
xi the professional Discourse; (4) used the professional Discourse to articulate thinking about the challenges; and (5) used the professional Discourse to envision alternatives to the challenges. Novices’ noticing was supported and constrained by the features of the Peer Teaching as located in the interacting contexts of the course and the teacher education program. This was evident in the ways novices expressed a contradiction between two competing objects of developing professional vision: identifying problems of practice and affirming peers’ practice. The concepts of professional Discourse and interacting contexts have implications for the design of practice-based opportunities in teacher education. In particular, these concepts have implications for the design of teaching simulations to support novices’ development of professional vision. .
is unusual (M. G. Sherin et al., 2011). Moreover, questioning someone’s ideas, when you know those ideas, is not common in daily life. Listening to and probing others’ ideas to identify relationships and misunderstandings entails a level of attention to others that most normally do not give to friends or family members (Ball & Forzani, 2009). Further, learning how to attend to student thinking in elementary classroom settings is difficult for teachers who are faced with a “blooming, buzzing confusion of sensory data” to make sense of (B. Sherin & Star, 2011, p. 69). Even experienced teachers struggle to attend to and make sense of student thinking in elementary classrooms (Jacobs, Lamb, Philipp, & Schappelle, 2011). For novice teachers in teacher education programs, they have few opportunities to practice attending to students’ scientific thinking. In their school field placements, they may be paired with mentor teachers who dedicate a limited amount of time to teach science each day (McMurrer, 2008). When novices do have an opportunity to teach science, many may be so overwhelmed by the complexities of simultaneously teaching science and managing student behavior, that they fail to notice student thinking in relation to features of inquiry-oriented science instruction (Zembal-Saul et al., 2000). To address these challenges, the field of teacher education is undergoing a major shift in the ways they prepare novices for professional practice (McDonald, Kazemi, & Kavanagh, 2013). In particular, teacher educators are rethinking the pedagogies they have relied on in the past to foster novice teachers’ learning. Pedagogical approaches such as case methods, computer simulations, or practitioner research have emphasized the acquisition of knowledge for teaching over an emphasis on teachers’ professional knowledge and practice (Grossman, 2005; McDonald et al., 2013). In learning to teach, novices teachers have struggled to use these approaches to make meaningful connections across course and classroom teaching experiences (Kennedy, 1999).
To enhance novices’ preparation, teacher educators are taking steps to re-conceptualize the ways “practice” is emphasized in teacher education course settings. Lampert (2010) recommends four ways to conceive of using “practice” to help novices learn to teach. First, she asserts that focusing on practice should entail teaching theory in a way that is situated in practice, rather than an approach to teaching theory (in university courses) separate from practice (in field placement experiences). Second, she argues that teacher education could be organized around doing and studying a core set of teaching practices that teachers routinely use during instruction, such as ways to orchestrate classroom discussions (Hatch & Grossman, 2009), or pressing students for evidence-based explanations (Windschitl et al., 2012). Third, she suggests that preparing novices for interactions with students in classrooms could involve teaching simulations like “rehearsals” where novices practice a task and receive targeted feedback. Fourth, she concludes that like the practice of medicine, preparing novices to learn the practice of teaching should center on learning the work that teachers do as professionals. Learning to teach in this way does not suggest going into one’s classroom, shutting the door, and learning through a process of trial and error (Lortie, 1975); rather, it entails learning “what teachers do in common…it is about more than acquiring skills or best practices. It involves adopting the identity of a teacher, being accepted as a teacher, and taking on the common values, language, and tools of teaching” (Lampert, 2010, p. 26). This process of learning to teach then involves drawing on professional knowledge and skill to make interactions with students around content productive for student learning (Ball & Forzani, 2009). This movement to better prepare novices for professional practice is also redefining what it means to prepare novices to teach in equitable and rigorous ways. Learning to engage all students—across ethnic, racial, class, and gender categories—in opportunities to reason
of information to help teachers continually improve their teaching practice (Franke, Carpenter, Levi, & Fennema, 2001), it should be emphasized in teacher education. Towards that end, in this study I employ a teaching simulation called “Peer Teaching” to help novices learn to attend to and make sense of students’ scientific thinking. Using simulations of practice in methods course settings has recently attracted attention in terms of their affordances for preparing novices for professional practice (e.g., Grossman, Compton, et al., 2009). While the literature base for studying practice-based approaches in methods course settings is growing (Ghousseini, 2008; Nelson, 2011; Shah, 2011), the particular ways in which these approaches could foster novices’ professional vision for practice has not been fully investigated. Study Overview and Research Questions This study capitalized on the existing work being done in a teacher education program (Ball, Sleep, Boerst, & Bass, 2009) and an elementary science methods course (Davis & Smithey,
- to emphasize practice-based learning opportunities. In particular, the elementary science methods course had been engaged in innovative work to foreground opportunities for novices to practice science teaching in the context of the course (see Nelson, 2011). Building on the contributions of prior research conducted in the elementary science methods course (Beyer & Davis, 2009; Forbes & Davis, 2010), this study focused on a particular practice-based pedagogy referred to as “Peer Teaching.” Peer Teaching lessons were simulations in the methods course setting where novices took turns teaching reform-oriented science lessons (NRC, 2012). Novices were placed in Peer Teaching teams of four novices, and they remained in these teams throughout the course to facilitate collective knowledge building and camaraderie. During the three methods course sessions dedicated to Peer Teaching, each of the four novices had a chance to teach a 20-minute science lesson to his or her peers and the teacher educator who
acted as “elementary students.” When the novices were in the role of a “student,” they role- played misconceptions. These misconceptions were derived from research and enabled novices to learn about the kinds of ideas students might have about particular science concepts. In addition, role-playing the misconceptions contributed to the authenticity of the instruction, and provided the teachers an opportunity to practice eliciting and probing students’ misunderstandings. After each 20-minute Peer Teaching lesson, the teacher educator and novices engaged in a group feedback discussion, in which they offered targeted feedback to the “teacher” about his or her lesson. During the science methods course, novices taught three Peer Teaching science lessons and offered feedback to peers nine times. This study specifically focused on the feedback discussions that occurred after the Peer Teaching lessons. The purpose of this study was to contribute to current work in teacher education focused on exploring the affordances of practice-based experiences in novices’ teacher preparation. In particular, this study sought to examine how the innovative features of the Peer Teaching design, including tools such as the student misconceptions and shared language of science teaching, might foster novices’ profession vision. Peer Teaching feedback discussions were investigated to examine the mechanisms through which novice teachers could develop professional vision for science teaching in simulated settings. Guiding my study was the following research question: How do preservice teachers develop professional vision for practice in the context of Peer Teaching feedback discussions? Three sub-questions drove the analysis: (a) What challenges of science teaching and learning are noticed in the Peer Teaching feedback discussions? (b) What is the process through which novice teachers notice the challenges of science teaching and learning in the Peer Teaching feedback discussions?
Discourse in teacher education program settings. Finally, I discuss the limitations of the study and outline directions for future research.
CHAPTER 2
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter begins with an overview of research in teacher noticing. The extant literature has studied noticing through a cognitive perspective, which identifies noticing as one of several aspects of expert teacher cognition. I outline the contributions of these scholars, and I suggest that employing a sociocultural theory to study teacher noticing could extend the literature base. I then use sociocultural theory to conceptualize the process of developing professional vision. I conclude this chapter by drawing on Activity Theory to explain how the Peer Teaching lessons could provide opportunities for developing novices’ professional vision in the elementary science methods course. Approaches to Studying Teacher Noticing Teacher Noticing Research Informed by the Nature of Expertise In this section, I summarize the research on teacher noticing to situate this dissertation study in the current literature in order to justify its contribution to the existing research base. I argue that research on teacher noticing has primarily taken a cognitive approach to noticing. The cognitive perspective of noticing emphasizes the role of an individual’s attention, and minimizes other aspects, such as the social and situated nature of learning (Rosaen, Lundeberg, Cooper, Fritzen, & Terpstra, 2008; van Es & Sherin, 2002). As such, I explore the ways in which the methods and findings of the studies have overlooked the role learners and their learning contexts play in influencing teacher noticing. The early work on teacher noticing was informed by research on the nature of expertise. Noticing scholars (e.g., van Es & Sherin, 2002) used identified features of expert
