Framing is everything to me. Whether I'm participating in a conversation or a research meeting, I want to understand (and jointly negotiate) "what is going on here," and my answer to that question deeply influences how I participate.
I observed E1 yesterday morning, and there were a number of times when I struggled to understand "what was going on there." Several times, I wrote, "It's not clear to me why Lane is asking the teachers to do this," or, "I think the meaning of this exercise is lost on the teachers." Other times, I felt that the teachers took up Lane's framing of an activity in different ways than he intended. For example, in the midst of negotiating features of energy that are common to any scenario (e.g., a ball rolling down a hill, a person jumping up and down, etc.), Lane suggested that they should avoid using terminology that has not been agreed-upon by the group -- that using "science words" like "radiation" can sometimes be "excluding" -- and the teachers took this up as an opportunity to define and discuss what radiation means. This taking things up in different ways than intended suggests to me that Lane and the teachers weren't framing their participation in the same way.
Today, watching Kara and Susan's field notes, it struck me that maybe what's happening is that the EP instructional staff is introducing tools and representations that we have developed in response to former EP teachers' needs -- negotiation of energy features, Energy Theater, a forms table, etc. -- in ways that are not responsive to where the current teachers are. Thus, our long-term curricular responsiveness is constraining our in-the-moment responsiveness, and it feels inorganic.
I went back to our field notes from yesterday, and, sure enough, most of the times that I noted that I did not understand what was going on correspond to moments in which the classroom activity shifted toward an activity or representation that we've (EP folks) developed, rather than attending and responding to what is going on in the moment.
I've never attended to this phenomenon, so maybe it's the norm; maybe enforcing shared representations and shifting teachers' attention toward particular ways of participating supports the development of a classroom community in which teachers work together and put their thinking on display and thus promotes in-the-moment responsiveness. (So maybe this way of doing things promotes in-the-moment responsiveness in the long term.)
Kara has expressed interest in looking back at how ET was introduced in past years to see how this fits in... I'll look forward to her post!
Very nice observation on an "issue" that I was feeling as well but was struggling to put into words. Your post has helped me to develop my thoughts in a little more detail. I would like to throw into the mix a few ideas I just had.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, all of Monday I was thinking to myself "what are the teachers being asked to do here?" and "I really don't get what this activity is all about and where it's leading." The activities were lost on me. While I did not read the teacher's homework assignment on Monday night, the word on the street was that most of day one's activities were modified and implemented directly from the Algebra Project. Are those activities known to be tried and true? If so, does that mean some floundering and confusion and taking wrong turns is all part of the learning process and will lead somewhere fruitful in the end? I have no idea. But I'm hoping that after 5(?) years of Energy Project classes that somebody has a sense of this.
Likely, we've all had activities that work better with one class than another, maybe even just hours apart. Maybe what we are seeing is par for the course. We might find other activities are more effective with this group. Or we might find that this curriculum isn't as good as it could be. (Is that part of what we scholars are looking for?)
Secondly, I've heard this idea of "not using terminology that we haven't agreed upon" before. Modeling Instruction relies and thrives on it. But from my limited experience of teaching just a few years, I feel that this message needs to come early if you really want to stress it. One must question every single word used and come to consensus before moving on - in Energy Project that means Energy should also be "defined"...probably on the first morning. (I'm well aware that energy doesn't really have a good definition...and it all depends what metaphors you are looking to stress...).
What I'm saying here is that I don't blame the teacher students for immediately wanting to define words. They hadn't defined anything, and now they were being asked to not use certain words unless they had agreed upon definitions. I'd want to agree on some defs quickly myself, too! If one asks the teacher students to only use agreed upon words, then one must probably carefully define activities that allow that to unfold in a semi-controlled way. (Although Carolina said something today about the hippy way of teaching that goes on at SPU...so maybe control is frowned upon!)
My response is really long! I'm going to shut up now. Hope my stream of consciousness can lead to some fruitful discussion.