Teacher-researcher collaboration as transformation - A case study

Sharada Gade

11:40 to 12:00, 30 September, ISCAR2014, Sydney, Australia

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Overview

Research domains

● CHAT perspectives

● Mathematics education

● Practitioner inquiry

Case study with one teacher

● Transformation since 2009

● From my being participant observer

● To her becoming theoriser and co-author

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Grade four in Sweden

Collaboration

● With Charlotta Blomqvist

● Lotta applies for funding

● I am taken for granted ...

● Mathematics and communication

● Many talk based interventions

● Lotta's pedagogy stands out

● Lotta picked up by Skolverket

● Lotta is now Rektor of a F-6 school

Classroom interventions

● Yes and No relating to place value

● Action research with the = sign

● Exploratory talk about measures

● Problem posing as developmental study

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Understanding transformation

Transforming experiment

● Bronfenbrenner (1977) an experiment that radically restructures the environment producing a new configuration activating unrealised behavioural potentials

● Dearborn – if you want to understand something, try to change it

● Leont'ev – tradition in USSR of striving for not how the child came to be what he is, but how he can become what he not yet is

● Thomas – experiments created as real are real in their consequences

Ascending to the concrete

● Luria (1979) The eye of science does not probe an event isolated from other events. Its real object is to understand the way an event relates to other things or events.

● The more we preserve the whole wealth of its qualities, the closer we come to the inner laws that determine its existence

● Blunden (2010) By abstract Hegel meant underdeveloped lacking in connections, thin in content and formal as opposed to concrete meaning mature, developed, with nuanced connections and rich in content

● Immanent critique – tracing the subject matter as it develops according to its own logic in the concrete, identifying its main problems and possible ways forward

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Unpacking collaboration – 1 of 2, CSSE

Relational knowing

● Hollingsworth et al. (1993)

● Relational knowing focuses on practitioners relating to themselves, one another and students as primary manner of knowing

● At intersection of social construction of knowledge, feminist epistemologies and the very fabric of self and other relationships

● Lotta and myself relate to each other. e.g. she speaks with Alex's mother, followed by her speaking with him, before I help out

Relational agency

● Anne Edwards (2010)

● A capacity to align one’s thought and actions with those of others to interpret problems of practice and respond to those interpretations

● An enhanced version of personal agency that involves looking across organisational boundaries so as to make possible aligned action outside institutional shelters

● The object of our joint activity shifted from classroom interventions to co-authorship

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Unpacking collaboration – 2 of 2, CSSE

Co-generative dialogue

● Roth & Tobin (2004)

● Paraxeology in classrooms, an alternative to abstract theory – contradictions faced by teachers can be hegemonic, internalised

● Lotta about our talk based intervention

● I wanted to create trust and make students comfortable because this was not an exercise from the textbook, but a new kind of lesson Next time I work with these questions I will be able to say, the goal for today is this and this and so and so

● It is hard work to make teachers comfortable with talk based lessons, for they have no way of assessing how such lessons progress ... But how will students show to the teacher the knowledge they have?

Expansive learning activity ?

● Yrjo Engeström et al (2014)

● Expansive learning produces new patterns of activity, creates new forms of work activity

● The theory relies on its own metaphor, expansion – learners learn something that is not yet there, construct a new object and concept which they implement in practice

● While traditional schooling is subject-producing activity and traditional science instrument-producing, expansive learning activity is an activity-producing activity

Gade (2014)

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Collective activity – CERME9

Formative intervention

● Whole classroom intervention based on one student's problem was unit of analysis

● Contradictions in instruction informed our design and conduct of the action cycle

● Agency of students, Lotta and myself was causal to the action cycle we conducted

● Mathematical equality – a concept formed and expanded with students' participation

● From being abstract and thin in content, equality became mature, nuanced, rich

Engestrom (2011)

In classroom practice

● Our collaboration generated new activities, was not reactive and had no prior template

● Development of our activity involved partial destruction of old practices, enabled us to move horizontally across our borders

● Change and transformation drew upon inner workings and contradictions – not dependent on external agents of change

● In the expansive nature of activity achieved in our journey, we did not fail

Gade (2015)

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Collaborative meta theory

Stetsenko & Arievitch (2004)

● CHAT school is a collaborative, multi-generational, value-laden, ideologically-driven investigative project that stretches far beyond traditional mentalist science

● Human knowledge shaped by goals that one sets out to achieve, based on ideals of human liberation and social transformation

● Combines practical intellect and action to go beyond neutral theoretical principles, blending dimensions of theory and practice

● Transformations of practical activity constitute the very reality of human development in all its forms

Self in CHAT

● Self in canonical CHAT sociocultural and historical – produced within and out of evolving activity that connects individuals to the world, to people and to themselves

● For Leontiev motives stem not from inside individuals but objects of a material world –yet this needs to meet today's challenges

● Self as real-life activity explicitly positions individuals to meaningfully contribute to social collaborative practices in the world

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Transformation

Self as leading activity

● Self a moment in ongoing social activity constantly re-enacted and constructed

● In collaborative practices, self appears as an instrument of transforming the world and of social change

● Self is the very engagement – doing self susceptible to issues of power, yet reveals what kind of world one contributes to

● Envisioning of the future self not separate from activities engaged in, but inherent in the totality of a person’s life

● Finally, self appears as ineluctably social and historically specific

Stetsenko & Arieveitch (2004), Stetsenko (2005)

Transformative activist stance

● People come to know themselves and their world in and through collaboratively transforming the world in view of their goals

● Purposeful transformation of the world is the core of human nature and the principled grounding for learning and development

● Transformative practice is inexorably linked to ideals of social justice and emancipation, as pursuits of common humanity

● The reductionist metaphor of separation is replaced with in-between-uity

● Makes historical becoming an ontologically, epistemologically and politically-ethically grounded position possible

Stetsenko (2008)

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Our case

Purposeful transformation

● Self is real work, born and enacted through ways in which we do and perform with the world at its very core

● Human subjectivity not an internal mental theatre but a meaningful activity out in the world partaking in its transformation

● Transformative ontology implies that people have to rely on collective experiences and efforts – to bring about changes in the world through their practice

Stetsenko (2010)

Our collaboration

● Leont'ev (1978) Consciousness is co-knowing, originated by society, subject for concrete psychological investigation

● Stetsenko (2007) Co-Being is an activist collaborative project of becoming ourselves through making a difference in the world

● Stetsenko (2012) Truth obtained in creating the world while overcoming its status quo, because no other world exists other than the one we create in collaborative social practices, just as these create us as well