"Students drive where I go next": Ambitious practice, beginning teacher learning, and classroom epistemic communities

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2013This study examined the learning, practice, and classroom communities of five beginning secondary science teachers for one school year. To varying degrees, the participants attempted to enact ambitious practice, a framework for instruction focused on providing students with opportunities to engage in rigorous and responsive science activity. The purpose of the study was twofold. First, this study investigated the resources beginning teachers recognized, generated, and used to shape and learn from practice. Second, this study examined the epistemic classroom community and science practice negotiated between the participants and their students. By analyzing teacher and student interactions in a classroom context, this study filled important gaps in the field's understanding of teacher learning and classroom communities as spaces for students to engage in authentic science practice. This study pursued answers to two groups of guiding questions: * What resources for instruction do beginning teachers recognize, generate, and use in their school contexts? How do beginning teachers' differing use of resources shape their particular trajectories of practice and professional learning? * How and why is science framed as a "public" or "private" practice? Over time, how and why does the public or private framing of science influence actors' (teachers, students) participation in the epistemic work in classroom spaces? How do teachers and students negotiate "what counts" as a science idea in classroom spaces? How is value assigned to science ideas and by whom? How do teachers and students work on science ideas over time given the kind of epistemic community they negotiate? Using a situative framework, this study traced both beginning teacher learning and the negotiation of their classrooms as epistemic communities over time. Analysis of discourse during classroom interactions, artifacts created by participants and students, and interviews with participants afforded insights into how and why novices learned from practice using resources, and how their classroom communities supported particular kinds of opportunities for students to participate in authentic science activities