E2 Teachers’ Characterizations of an Interaction with Leslie

Yesterday, in the E2 debriefing meeting, someone mentioned that Stamatis had led a class discussion about Leslie’s facilitation of ‘rule-making with forces and energy’ (my paraphrase --- meaning that they were coming up with rules for how energy transfers and transformations are connected to forces). Apparently, there was a generally good feeling – among the E2 teachers – about how the day’s events had proceeded and the consensus that had been reached, and Stamatis took the opportunity to reflect on what had been happening in the classroom between the teachers and Leslie. Given my new fascination with this stuff, I just had to watch it for myself.

Stamatis started the discussion by making two different claims:

• Claim #1 is that Leslie already knew the laws (he calls them generalizations). (My interpretation of this is that Leslie knows the laws are RIGHT. Correct me if I’m wrong, Stamatis.)

• Claim #2 is that Leslie probably suspects that the way in which the laws have been written (by the class) is going to be problematic down the road. (My interpretation of this is that Leslie knows that the rules are NOT RIGHT, but they work – at least moderately well – for the examples that we’ve seen, and they’ll figure out the problems later.)

After making these two claims, Stamatis asks the teachers, “What is the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that Leslie needed to have or exhibit in order to do what she did?” And then he points out that by reflecting on this, they can think about how they might implement this type of effective instruction in their own classrooms.

I watched the whole discussion, and here are some of the things I heard teachers saying (in terms of Leslie’s knowledge, skills, and disposition):

1. Leslie (is effective because she) has ‘muddled about’ with this kind of facilitation. (Said by Derrick.) My interpretation: she has knowledge and skills in facilitating conversation.
2. Leslie (is effective because she) had made a plan for what was going to happen each day. (Also said by Derrick.) It wasn’t clear to me how structured he imagined her plan to be.
3. Leslie is ‘on-the-spot’ genuine and listened closely to what they said. (Said by Nina.) When asked what it would look like to be ‘not-genuine,’ Nina said something that I interpreted as (if Leslie were not genuine,) “she would have reinterpreted the statements we said to be more like what she was thinking, rather than what we were thinking.”
4. Leslie (is effective because she) is working with people who already know about forces and energy. (Said by Don.) She didn’t have to teach them about forces or energy. I’m going to post video of this, because I found it to be particularly interesting. The feeling I got was that Don felt that there were no ‘fallacies’ to correct, so Leslie was sort of ‘helping them to decide on words,’ rather than teaching force and energy. (I may be reading too much into what he said – let me know what you think when you watch the video!)
5. Leslie creates an environment in which it is easy to interact. (Said by Bruce.)

Below is the particularly interesting contribution by Don. (This episode is named E2 110817 Don's expectations and is at 1.42.19 in the original file E2 110817 1333 L Mic 2.)

I said here that I wondered whether each teacher’s own instructional style affected the way that they would characterize Leslie’s, Stamatis’, and Costas’ instructional styles. This episode brought up a number of questions for me. First, I wondered whether Don thinks that if Leslie writes something on the board (or if the class ‘votes’ on a ‘law’ and Leslie writes it down), it is correct (or in agreement with the scientific consensus) -- or that she thinks it is correct. It also sounds to me (from this single exchange) like he would not be comfortable letting his 'novice' learners walk down a path that was ‘incorrect’ or contained ‘fallacies’ (do you all agree with this synopsis?). So…is Don a teacher who values ‘getting to the scientifically-accepted answer,’ and, if so (or even if not), how is his own instructional style reflected in his assessment of Leslie’s interaction with the class?

Questions, questions, questions…. :)