knowledge in motion: investigating how teachers connect institutional and everyday knowledge...
TRANSCRIPT
Knowledge in Motion: Investigating how teachers connect institutional and everyday knowledge practices in naturally
occurring classroom interactions.
Kenneth [email protected]
Aim and background• An interest in studying the continuities and discontinuities
between formal and informal contexts of learning (Barron, 2006; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave, 1988; Leander, Phillips, & Taylor, 2010; Resnick, 1987).
• Scholars have investigated how teachers can develop strategies for including students’ experience and knowledge in their teaching (Cremin, Mottram, Collins, Powell, & Drury, 2012; Dworin, 2006; Hogg, 2011; Hughes & Greenhough, 2006; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992).
Aim and background
• Fostering engagement and interest among students in classroom practice is not something that easily can be done with ready-made recipes and is a highly demanding task (Engle & Conant, 2002; Kumpulainen & Lipponen, 2010).
• We know surprisingly little about how teachers use student’s everyday experiences and knowledge as resources for learning in naturally occurring classroom interaction.
Aim and background
• Some studies do exist:– Moje and colleagues (2004)
• Studied everyday funds of knowledge that potentially could be used as valuable resources for engagement in scientific literacy learning (family, community, peer, and popular culture).
– Grossen, Zittoun and Ros (2012)• Have studied the occurrence of what they call “boundary crossing events” in upper-
secondary classrooms in the subject of literature, philosophy and what they call general knowledge.
Aim and background
• The main aim:– To describe, analyze and categorize what kind of talk
teachers employ when using students everyday experiences and knowledge that is part of their lives outside school as resources for students learning about subject knowledge in naturalistic school settings.
Theoretical framework
• We employ a sociocultural and dialogical approach to learning and meaning-making:– Learning is viewed as a social and contextual enterprise
(Brown et al., 1989; Ford & Forman, 2006).– Learning as a collaborative and dialogical achievement
(Kumpulainen & Mutanen, 1999; Renshaw, 2004).– Social interaction (teacher-student talk) as a unit of
analysis.
Research method and design• Context:– The project Knowledge in Motion across Contexts of
Learning.– Involves two local communities in a medium-sized city in
Norway. – We follow nine teachers and approximately 100 students,
distributed across two schools (one in each local community) and four classes (two at each school).
Research method and design• Context:– We follow the teachers and students over the course of
lower secondary school, from eighth grade until the end of tenth grade.
– We also follow selected students in three other domains than school; organized sports (such as soccer, hand ball and volleyball), the family and media use.
– In school, we follow different core subjects, such as mathematics, science, Norwegian, and social studies.
– In this paper we will focus on lessons in social studies.
Research method and design• Method:– Longitudinal case study (Yin, 2006). – We have collected different types of data, such as surveys,
documents, field notes, interviews, video data, artifacts created by the students etc..
– In this paper, video data of teacher-student interactions constitutes the foreground in the analysis.
– All video data from one semester have been taken into consideration; 13 lessons.
Research method and design• Method:– Thematic coding (Braun & Clarke, 2006). – Relevant episodes where subjected to interaction analysis
(Jordan & Henderson, 1995). – How participants respond to each other’s utterances turn-
by-turn in interactional episodes is an analytical focus; sequences of utterances.
– Through this analysis different categories of teacher intervention emerged.
Preliminary findingsActivities Time spent
Whole-class conversations 31,6 %
Group work 25,6 %
Instruction 15,6 %
Student presentation 15 %
Watching film or listening to audio recordings3,5 %
Drama 2,05 %
Individual work 1,47
Other 5,14 %
Preliminary findings
• Looking at the total video material of this semester in social studies we have been able to only identify 21 relevant episodes.
Preliminary findings• Categories:
– Teachers using student’s knowledge about and experiences from the local community as resources for students learning.
– Teachers using student’s experiences from extraordinary events.– Teachers using student’s identity dimensions as resources for
student learning.– Teachers using student’s emotional experiences as resources for
student learning.– Teachers using popular culture as a resource for student
learning.
Preliminary findings
• In contrast to Moje et al. (2004) we do find traces of students out-of-school experiences in teacher-student interaction.
• However, as our data also show it is often unclear how these resources become tools for learning.
1 Teacher: Do you remember we had (.) e:h natural household (.) do you remember 2 what that was 3 Student 1: Yes 4 Teacher: What 5 Student 1: It wa::s natural household (.) that you worked in the home? No 6 Teacher: Yes 7 Student 1: Yes 8 Teacher: Right (.) right (.) what is (.) what is the resources back then? 9 Student 1: Eh (.) things you find in the nature 10 Teacher: Yes? (..) and what is that then? 11 Student 1: N::atura (..) ne such (..) ah hold on. 12 Teacher: If you (.) you live at Redville 13 Student 1: Yes 14 Teacher: How are you going to survive (.) you do not have a job in Greenville or 15 anything 16 Student 1: Fishing 17 Teacher: You can fish? (.) yes? (..) maybe you take (.) e::h of you take a little like 18 focus now (.) ninetieth century? (.) and you can certainly take Redville as 19 a point of reference 20 Student 1: Yes 21 Teacher: There you have fishing (.) and what else do you have out here that is 22 very 22 Student 1: Farming 23 Teacher: Farming and fishing (..) and then you try to make it a little like concrete 24 Student 1: Yes
52 Teacher: Do you understand the word national feeling 53 Student 9: ((signals that she does not understand)) 54 Teacher: No (...) you are from Lithuania (.) I’m from Norway (..) I love my 55 country (.) you love your country (.) the feelings for the nation 56 Norway (.) the feelings for the nation Lithuania (.) right 57 Student 9: ((signals that she understands)) 58 Teacher: Yes (..) and in the 19th century (.) then Norway got (...) one started to 59 reflect upon what is the (.) very Norwegian (.) and in the book you can 60 find something about this (..) perhaps you can read a little bit and find it 61 out 62 Student 9: Mm
Conclusion and educational implications• The data show that connections to everyday practices as part of social studies
lessons do not happen very often. • It seems like it is easier to use the local community in general as a resource,
rather than other types of resources. • The findings show that teachers orientation towards experiences that students
have gained outside school can support students in dealing with curricular topic and issues, but it is also often unclear how these resources specifically become tools for learning.
• Knowledge about these types of aspects of teaching and learning in classrooms is important because it can guide us in findings ways of developing strategies that teachers can use in teacher-student interaction for making content within subject domains more available for both struggling and non-struggling students.
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