Teacher learning: Collaborations within and across three professional development activity settings.

This qualitative study is an investigation of the collaborations of two small groups of experienced teachers as they participated in three professional development activity settings in a one-week summer institute. The summer institute was one of several activities that were part of the work of the GIsML (Guided Inquiry supporting Multiple Literacies) Community of Practice. The purpose of the summer institute was for the teachers to enact Guided Inquiry science teaching, which they had experienced as learners earlier in the summer. Three activity settings: instructional planning, debriefing the microteaching, and reporting on the microteaching to the community were the centerpiece of the study. Analyzing transcripts from videotapes, field notes, and teacher journal entries, I reconstruct the experiences of the teachers using their dialogues and written reflections in addition to my observations as represented in the field notes. Using a sociocultural definition of tools as mediational means that scaffold learning, I consider the teachers' choices regarding tool use as the primary lens for the analysis. Thus, the question driving the analysis is: How does tool use influence the processes and outcomes of the teachers' collaborations? In narrating the cases, I analyze the teachers' individual and collective decisions about tool use, how the tools were implemented, transformed, and in one case, invented, and how the tool use influenced the collaborations. The findings indicate that the five experienced teachers in the study, who all brought a genuine commitment to their learning, had unique approaches to the collaborations. As a result, their contributions were enhanced based on their use of available tools as well as by mediated assistance from an expert. The analysis also raises questions about the ways in which teachers negotiate their individualistic approaches within collaborations. The implications that emerge from these understandings suggest designs for professional development activity settings that: (1) support teachers as they negotiate the tension between individual perspectives and the collective work; (2) offer guidance and mediation by experts; and (3) offer compelling and relevant subject matter.Ph.D.EducationTeacher educationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/132631/2/9977212.pd