Learning to See in Classrooms

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Learning to See in Classrooms

• anne.edwards_at_education.ox.ac.uk

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Schools as Figured Worlds

• Student teachers learn to navigate the orderly
  social practices of schools with the help of
  other teachers
• They learn to navigate the unpredictable figured
  worlds of classrooms largely alone
• What are they learning?
• Holland, D., Skinner, D., Lachicotte, W,
  Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural
  worlds. Cambridge Mass Harvard University Press.

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Outline

• A Vygotskian view of learning
• Evidence of student teachers learning from some
  research in schools
• Sociocultural approaches to supporting student
  teachers as learners
• Relational agency in professional practice and
  its implications for ITE

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A Sociocultural Approach to Understanding Learning

• Learning involves internalising the ideas that
  are culturally valued and externalising what is
  learnt in actions on our worlds
• We are shaped by our social situations of
  development but also shape them by our actions
  in and on them
• What are student teachers internalising and
  externalising?

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Vygotsky and Tool Mediated Action
Mediational Means
Object
Subject
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The Sociocultural View learning as recognition
and response

• Mind is outward-looking and pattern-seeking
• Learning is evident in increasingly complex
  interpretations of phenomena e.g. recognising
  that a childs behaviour is part of a wider set
  of problems she is facing
• Learning is also evident how we respond to those
  more complex interpretations

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An Information Processing Model of Mind (the
everyday version)

• Mind is a store of facts which we can call up and
  apply
• It encodes information and stores it efficiently
• Mind and environment need to be seen as distinct
  and separate
• Knowledge is carried in the mind and is context
  free
• Learning is efficient knowledge acquisition
• Underpins notions of knowledge transfer and some
  models of ITE

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A Sociocultural Model of Mind

• Based on connectionist models of mind, it is a
  locus of inner structures that act on the world
  in a process of sense-making
• Mind interprets the potential for action
  available in an environment
• It decodes the environment while seeking patterns
• It recognises the complexity of the task and the
  potential of the resources available to assist in
  action on the task
• Mind is revealed in action on the world

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A Sociocultural Rationale For School Experience
in ITE

• Gaining experience of recognition
• Increasing the complexity
• Unpacking the complexity
• Jointly experiencing the complexity
• Mentors can model expert responses
• Being quickly responsive
• Discussing selected responses to make explicit
  the expertise involved
• Being jointly responsive

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But not in our Studies in England

• Student teachers very rarely worked alongside
  teacher mentors
• They planned with their mentors and they got
  feedback on their performance from them
• Mentoring was based on an application of
  knowledge model
• As the time spent in schools by university tutors
  decreased the mentors took over their roles -
  observing performance and giving feedback

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Implications for Student Teachers

• They avoid complexity to ensure a good
  performance according to their plans
• Q. Can you talk me through when you helped a
  child to learn in the last lesson?
• A. Daniel asked me at one point- it wasnt
  plannedhe couldnt work out why one page had a J
  and a K on it but K started halfway down. And I
  explained that to him

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Implications for Student Teachers

• They become good at delivering the planned
  curriculum (but not the same as responsively
  supporting learning)
• Q. What have you learnt?
• A. I can see when they have written an answer
  that is wrong and I can see when it is an answer
  which is good stab

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Implications for Student Teachers

• Joint teaching was seen as a failure to perform
• They disliked teacher mentors helping them while
  they were in charge
• This prevented teacher mentors from managing the
  amount of complexity student teachers were
  exposed to

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Mentors and Student Teachers an ambivalent
relationship

• Mentors guided and assessed the student teachers
• But their main focus was their pupils
• Mentors used feedback to student teachers to
  teach by proxy
• A serious case of the past shaping present
  practices in ITE
• Mentors left with a dual focus student teachers
  and pupils

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The Way Forward Student Teachers as Learners

• Clarifying the purpose of ITE a focus on student
  teachers as learners
• Examining how their learning trajectories are
  supported by schools and universities
• If student teachers are seen as learners and not
  teachers it is legitimate for them to work
  alongside more expert practitioners to learn to
  interpret classrooms through their expert eyes

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Contriving Student Teachers Learning some
lessons from childrens learning

• Learning to interpret the world with a more
  capable other focusing on events outside the
  parent child relationship (Schaffer)
• Learning from adults who talk about what they are
  doing (Wells)
• Gradually increasing the complexity of the task
  (Saxe)

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Focusing on events outside the mentoring
relationship

• On pupils as learners
• On how pupils can be supported as learners
• On what resources can be used to develop pupils
  as learners
• On how resources can be managed to shape pupil
  behaviour
• To examine the de-centring of teaching
• To see teachers as parts of a set of resources

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Learning from adults who talk about what they are
doing

• Chuntering
• Describing while observing
• Describing while doing
• Asking opinions
• Demonstrating flexibility
• Being in the teaching situation alongside
• Withdrawing and returning teaching as
  collaboration

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Gradually increasing the complexity of the task

• This occurs by starting to work with small groups
• But the task of whole class teaching is highly
  unpredictable
• The mentor who is working alongside can highlight
  specific elements in the teaching task, can take
  over some aspects to sustain the original focus,
  can ensure that the student teacher is not
  overwhelmed by complexity

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The Way Forward Pupils as Learners

• Teaching is a responsive and negotiated
  accomplishment of the task of promoting pupil
  learning
• It involves recognition and response
• Responses involve being able to work
  relationally with others (and the resources
  which carry their knowledge)
• Edwards, A. (2005). Relational Agency learning
  to be a resourceful practitioner, International
  Journal of Educational Research, 43(3) 168-182.

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Relational Agency

• Relational agency involves being able to align
  ones own interpretations of a problem of
  practice with those of others, and in so doing
  expand the object of professional activity.
• It then involves aligning ones own professional
  responses to those interpretations with the
  specialist responses of other practitioners.
• The enriched object acts back on the
  subjectivities of the collaborating
  practitioners.
• Helpful for practitioners in high risk work

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Subject 1
Tool
Tools?
Object
Tool
Subject 2
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CHAT is a Transformatory Psychology

• As we work on objects they change and slip away
  from us so we may need to use new tools to work
  on them
• Runaway objects (Engestrom)
• Conceptual agency having some long-term sense
  of where we are going (Pickering)

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Relational Agency as Resourceful Practice

• Possible to contest interpretations of the object
  while working within sets of professional values
  and knowledge
• The mobility or changing nature of the object
  calls for informed responsive action
• Expanding objects are to be found within
  co-evolving systems

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Implications of RA for Professional Learning and
Practice

• Professional learning needs to include a capacity
  for interpreting and approaching tasks (including
  pupils learning trajectories), contesting
  interpretations, reading the environment, drawing
  on resources to be found there, being a resource
• That takes us to an agentic version of
  professional practice

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Implications of Relational Agency for CHAT

• A new emphasis on object-oriented action and
  object motive (2005 special issue of Mind,
  Culture and Activity)
• But too little is known about the micro-level
  negotiations that in turn form the evolving shape
  of the collective as the object is worked on and
  changes
• Relational Agency tries to open up the nature of
  fluid agentic object -oriented joint action
  within changing systems

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Reprise Recognition and Response
Ideas, Artefacts, Strategies made
Explicit in Mentoring
Student Teacher and Mentor
Pupils as Learners