E2 Teachers’ Characterization of Interactions with Stamatis

Since I spent a bunch of time watching an interaction between Stamatis and a group (see posts 1-4 here, here, here, and here), and given the host of questions that were initiated by my thinking about that (see reflections here), I think I’ve become particularly sensitive to how teachers might themselves characterize the instructional styles of Leslie, Stamatis, and Costas. My ears totally perk up when the teachers spontaneously say something to or about an instructor and what they are doing or did. So…below are a few episodes from Wednesday morning in which a group (consisting of John, Nina, Christina, and Rebecca) commented on Stamatis’ behavior or on something he had said.

To put things into context: Wednesday morning began with Leslie prompting the teachers to reflect on the previous day's activities and to make (individually) two separate lists: one that was comprised of “new ideas/theories/facts/possibly-true-statements we learned about F and E," and a second list that was composed of "statements we're trying out...possibly onto something about F and E.” After several minutes, the teachers split into two groups, and each group was instructed to come up with two whiteboards, one for each of the lists.

The group that I was observing had written a few statements on their boards (e.g., “gravity transforms energy”) and was negotiating a statement about energy transfer being related to motion. They spent a while talking about whether energy transfer results from motion, or whether motion results in an energy transfer (“did the chicken or the egg come first?”) and then began talking about contact forces (do they always transfer energy?). Here’s the first episode (named E2 110817 SV reflection 1 on the server; starts at 59.19 in E2 110817 0841 R Mic 2):




Something that stuck out to me about this episode was that Stamatis sort of flitted about for a while (maybe this is why Nina says he’s dying to say something), sat down, asked a question, and then left almost immediately. (Which made me wonder whether the question was something he wanted them to answer for him…or he just wanted them to answer for themselves.) But what I’m most curious about is whether Nina’s statement says anything about what she thinks of Stamatis’ instructional style – does she get the feeling that he is bursting to say something regularly? I’m not sure.

The second clip is from about 25 minutes later. In the meantime, the group has continued to discuss whether the motion comes first, then the energy transfer, or vice versa. Then they begin to discuss where/if the word ‘contact’ should be used to modify their statement, to something like: “If contact forces result in motion, there is a transfer of energy.” Then Nina reflects on something Stamatis had said to them earlier. Take a look. (This movie is entitled E2 110817 SV reflection 2 and starts at 1.26.11 in the original file E2 110817 0841 R Mic 2.)



I think I’m coming to see one of the hallmarks of Stamatis’ “instructional style” as checking for consistency: asking oneself whether the idea/whatever being proposed works for something else. Nina summarizes this as something like “making statements that are absolutely true” and values that about his question. Interestingly, she goes on to ask herself whether what they just came up with is always true --- whether it works with another example from the day before. I wondered whether she was mimicking the way that he interacts with them, or whether this is more something that she does regularly. I'll have to watch her more closely!