Teacher interactions and educational change: Nurturing the integration of theory and practice through peer-supported action research

“How do peer-interactions nurture teachers’ integration of research and practice?”

First level of coding – for when people talk about the PROCESS of each learning experience

P. interactive course maps
P. blogging
P. peer-to-peer interviewing
P. action research process
P. stimulated recall video debrief
P. final presentations/conference

Another set of codes: Using Research

UR.understanding – working to understand a particular idea
UR.in defense – to support an idea or action
UR. Describe – describe or label a certain practice or idea
More?

If you haven’t hit your 10 hours (or whatever your commitment is), and you want to work on something the project really needs, here are some ideas:

* interview a GRS graduate and email Chris Penders a description of the innovative practices they have been playing with, where they are teaching, how others could engage with that person, and a picture.  It would be great if we could spotlight a teacher a month, wouldn’t it?   It would be posted somewhere here: http://www.rochester.edu/warner/getreal/Researchers/people.html

* update ANY section of our grs blog!!

* Collecting and scanning “implementation” data (digital and binder) for the most recent of our core ongoing projects:

1. implementing 486 08
2. implementing Camp 08
3. implementing STARS 08
4. implementing 474 07

* Helping with current projects as needed… Currently, these are:

• Liz & Michael with STARS RSRB and grant applications.
• April & Jeremiah with IHSE chapter
• April with NSTA presentation

What have I forgotten?

You are all such an amazing group of people!  I am so thankful to be working with you!

*April

“I…followed a golden rule that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought  came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a ememorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape my memory than favorable ones.  Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views that I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer” (Darwin, 1958, p.123).

How do we make this a systemmatic part of our practice – do we keep a separate file for each projct – and this file is part of our database?

*A-

Here is a working agenda for next week. Don’t forget that we were going to

1. post research questions we might have for the Freedom school and
2. add to Liz’s list regarding the 474 data that we have and might want to look at
3. review the Wilson Grant description and be ready to talk about how stars would fit into that.

If you get a chance, Liz found this possible complementary funding opportunity for STARS:

“There is grant money available through the Spencer Foundation that I think is perfect for STARS.”

Might be good to look at Wilson and Spencer side by side.

Agenda:

• Highs and lows
• Debrief from events
  • Wed’s luncheon
  • Michael’s Geneva trip
• Stars
  
  • Further STARS development with Rachel’s involvement
  • Stars and wilson grant
• Quick next steps for freedom school
• Calendar
  • our storage room (as per Judi’s request)
• Data issues

Interactive course maps
Weekly blog posts (already in Atlas TI)
Peer-to-peer interviews (arranged by topic)
Action research
          final papers
          pics of final posters
          final focus group transcripts
          video from final presentations
          Michael’s informal interviews from final day
Simulated-recall of reform-based lesson
         plus and arrows sheets from participants
         interview transcripts from observations

Interested in looking at the process, series of experiences that led to action research projects. Everyone does action research, but how we did it, the process behind it, is unique – what is the story?

Why we rock, let me count the ways…

The way in which we are genuinely happy to see one another.
The way we take pride in one another’s accomplishments.
The way we make food a part of almost every meeting.
The way we each contribute something unique.
The way – okay, I’ll stop now and get down to the stuff.

Seriously though, why we rock:
* Who we are and what we do
          as mentioned previously, we rock
          work together, blog, hold weekly meetings, update progress
          share responsibility, data analysis, data management,
          proof-reading, birthday cakes, research proposals, hell, we do
          it all.

* Personal connections
         sharing highs and lows
         sharing personal progress (comps progress, research 
         opportunities, disseminating exciting stuff from class)

* Mentorship
          all around (but especially April
          all projects are shared, community of learners

* Authentic participation
          Situated within long-term contexts
           learning over time, all pieces contextualized

* Opportunity for whole experience
          from data collection (conducting interviews, focus groups,
          administering surveys) to data analysis (developing code book
          sharing and finding agreement over analysis) to developing an
          academic argument to final piece (presentation, publication)
          and beyond (learning from mistakes, working on resubmits)

Wow – seriously. Thanks for letting me into such a great group. You guys are the greatest! Thank you April for bringing us all together and helping us to build this amazing learning community.

Agenda for our meeting today

•    Highs and lows – 10 mins
•    Discussion of research questions to study the 474 participants: starting point would be Dr Luehmann’s blog post regarding the matter – 40 mins
•    Brainstorming on Freedom School research, preparing for RSRB – again we can begin from the blog posts of Dr. Luehmann, Jeremiah and Kankana’s comment on Jeremiah’s post – 30 mins
•    Brainstorming on STARS – 20 mins
•    Fill out the calendar – comprehensive exams, date for storage room, etc – 10 mins
•    Filler tasks – 10 mins

The paper we are going to write next will serve two complementary purposes:

1.  Preparation for the panel / interactive poster at NARST that is part of a session called “Engaging with Teachers around Science Education Research.” – I will bring a document that describes what everyone promised to speak about to our meeting tomorrow.

2.  A chapter for a book called “Educational Change.” - I will bring the call for chapters I received to our meeting tomorrow.

Bottom line – this manuscript needs to look across the 5 core elements for 474:

• Interactive course map
• Weekly blog posts
• Peer-to-peer interviews
• Action research
• Stimulated recall of a reform-based lesson

So what questions could we ask that would cut acorss these five data sources and look at the question organzing the panel/poster session?

• In what ways were each of these experiences successful or not at engaging teachers in making connections between research and practice?
• To what extent to teachers’ stated priorities, instructional design, and day-to-day implementation align with research-based principles?
• What research do these teachers make most use of as they engage in these efforts to implement reform?

*A-

I think it would good to start this conversation here, but after tomorrow, I think a very good “next step” would be to just spend some time there… and talk with people… making notes about things we see and hear.  Then, after we get a few initial ideas, I think it would be great to invite George in for an hour to chat about his thoughts.  What do you think?  Maybe we could have a couple research group meetings at the Freedom School.

Possible foci/themes/questions:

• Scaffolding agency in school learning
• The impact of learning on students who have damaged school-based identities
• Gendered engagement in science
• Culturally-relevant science pedagogy – how students vote for what matters to them
• [some technological intervention we might want to advocate for?]

Looking forward to hearing what you all are thinking!

*A-

So, some ideas of what to present/talk about on Wednesday:

• We collaborate on work as needed.
• We engage in project work and research work in balance to move our work forward and have learned much from both types of work.
• Meetings are weekly, have an agenda, and are facilitated in a rotating fashion. All members have a voice and we are comfortable bringing up questions and critiques as well as ample kudos.
• Meetings begin with “Highs and Lows” which sets the tone for the meeting and lets us know where each of us is personally.
• Our research work has yielded publications in multiple journals, conference proceedings (AERA, NARST, ILS (is that right?) Israel) and…
• Our project work greases the wheels of our research and the teacher preparation part of GRS.

There is more I could add but I wanted to keep it shorter. Please add more including details.