Article: Practice-based inservice teacher education : Generating local theory about the pedagogy of group work.

Higgins & Eden (2015) Practice-based inservice teacher education: Generating local theory about the pedagogy of group work. In Mathematics Teacher Education and Development, 17(2). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1085887.pdf

Pg 84

They suggested, “we need a pedagogy that is holistic, flexible and complex, which will allow children to present their multiplicities and complexities and their individual and collective diversities” (p. 13). A common response in practice settings to answer this challenge is to label pedagogies as culturally responsive; in this paper we prefer to use the term culturally adaptive. This positions the teacher as less of the lone hero fixing the problem of underachievement through a mismatched pedagogy, to working with students to adapt pedagogy through the generation of local theory.

pg 85

At the macro level, cultural responsiveness is taken to mean being responsive to Māori and Pasifika as broad ethnic categories of the New Zealand population underserved by the schooling system.

…an increasingly common critique from Māori and non-Māori educators is that not all Māori are the same; the term culturally responsive can only describe pedagogical practices in broad terms.

That is, inappropriate assumptions about ethnically-based learner needs can maintain the least effective learning opportunities for these students.

Grouping as arranging for learning

pg 86

… grouping is discussed in relation to task structure (group work), organisational tools (group teaching, group organisation), emotional environment (small supportive environment), make-up (mixed-ability group) and processes (small-group discussion).

The prevalence of groups in New Zealand classrooms, particularly for mathematics and reading instruction, draws on the influence of a British child-centred approach as a means of catering for individual needs of students.

the term target group for those at risk of not achieving the standard. Such groupings are based on the assumption that more homogenised groups facilitate focused teaching (Ministry of Education, 2008) and can be seen as arrangements for teaching which are aimed at better targeting students’ specific needs and making teaching easier for teachers (Lamy & May, 2014).

…such grouping…can serve to “replicate existing social and economic inequalities” (OECD, 2013, p. 76).

pg 87

Group work structured to provide opportunities for multiple explanations of mathematical concepts assumes that providing a learner with different explanations of mathematical concepts will benefit the development of student understanding, both collectively and individually for group members. As a group member there are opportunities to both explain and listen to others’ explanations. Highlighted within the communities of practice work are specific pedagogies such as using talk moves for orchestrating discussions (Chapin, O’Connor, & Anderson, 2009) aimed at promoting students’ mathematical reasoning.

…McDonald and colleagues (2014) use the term ambitious mathematics teaching in their work to “develop a pedagogy of practice” aimed at promoting children’s thinking and engagement in robust, meaningful mathematics “and disrupt[ing] longstanding assumptions about who can and cannot do math” (p. 502).

Theorising group work

pg 89 We contend that our understanding of formal learning environments can be enhanced through examining student-initiated collective group work structures for learning mathematics.

A key question is how learning environments are arranged to facilitate learning from each other?

Local theory in context: Weaving multiple threads

pp90

This case draws on an inservice teacher educator’s work in five classrooms across two schools, each with a high proportion of Māori students aged between eight and 12 years old. He taught alongside the teachers over a five week period in a co-teaching arrangement with the researcher. The inservice teacher educator and the teacher participated in shared reflective sessions at the conclusion of each co-teaching session.

PG 91 For instance, in discussing ways to promote learning for Māori students, the teachers and the inservice teacher educator drew on their knowledge of successful ways of working with Māori students based on many years of experience while the researchers built on their knowledge of group work derived from the literature, other research studies and their experience as classroom teachers and facilitators of professional learning. The inservice teacher educator’s experience, noted by one of the principals, focused on his ability to contribute to “how we best go about meeting the needs of Māori” is particularly salient to the research. “

Co-generating local theory about groups: Three stories

Creating space in teacher education settings for local theories about practices to emerge can be a useful approach to take, with related space in parallel spheres of influence of the teacher educator, the teacher, the students and the researchers who all have the possibility of engaging in the activity of developing local theory.

Well, who do you learn maths from?

…groups of students during whole class mathematics sessions on the mat. The teacher reflected:

I haven’t gone into groups as much as I thought I would because the lower kids are listening and watching what the more capable ones are doing and I think that’s where they are learning the most.

pg 92 She explained how the inservice teacher educator’s observation in her classroom led her to notice the ways in which students were listening to each other.

Through co-teaching with the inservice teacher educator as part of his work in her classroom the teacher was able to identify who was watching whom in the mathematics instructional sessions.

“William who do you learn from in maths?” and William said, “I learn from Chris” and then she said to another kid, “Who did you learn from?”…I think the kid was Evan or something…and Evan said that he learnt from William…and of course she said William got such a huge grin and then she started saying to the kids, “Well, ok who do you learn maths from?” And she actually made a little map on the board about who were the learners and so she was nearly into socio-graphs and when we start thinking about that and we start thinking about putting kids together who provide a good model and they feel that they can learn from them … then that’s a different kind of grouping structure in the classroom.

What is interesting here is how the students without the teacher’s knowledge created for themselves a hierarchy of explainers which we suggest is an example of a student-initiated adaptation.

Hitch-hiking and Mirroring

The second illustration of local theory was using groups as a source of emotional support for students….the Māori notions of whānau (extended family structure), waka (canoe), and tuakana/teina (older sibling/younger sibling) to develop the collective responsibility aspect of the local theory.

Pg 93

One of the teachers explained groups as a frame for collective responsibility using the metaphor of waka where it is important that all paddlers on the waka work together. “It’s regarding everybody … yeah. I mean the waka is the focus of its own”. She explained how she saw the class in mathematics sessions “as being all on the same waka, but they don’t have the same skills”. She talked about how she uses the analogy of waka to explain this to the students by saying “some of them are not paddlers and they can see that it brings them all together and we all help each other to get to the end”. Some of her consistent messages to the class were, “just letting everyone in on the secret of where everyone is going”, and “remember, we’re all responsible for everyone else’s learning”. The key point is that this teacher was not just thinking of the expert as an individual but the expert as being a collective – the group as a whole. “I could have one group … helping out another group, so you can expand it … not just a one-on-one”. She conceptualised emotional support using a growth metaphor of plants needing protection to flourish:

In the Māori sense I sort of see it as this little koru growing … part of a whole tree, some are further ahead and shelter the winds … but they are part of the whole.

Becoming reliable experts

The third example of local theory is about the generation of a collective of interconnected groups operating at multiple levels of the classroom. In this example, one teacher working alongside the inservice teacher educator and one of the researchers generated a local theory of her classroom groups as a collective of interconnected groups, rather than seeing and managing them as separate entities.

Through reconceptualising group work, the teacher was able to change her practice in ways that promoted learning for the Māori students she taught. In reflecting on how she had changed her teaching, she relayed how in a previous class, “they were not allowed to share, they had to do it in their books, so it reduced it down to an individual”. She said:

the one key strategy that I’ve learnt … is building up that lead group. That is the key to it … because they set the model for thinking … they become the leaders.

Theory in the practice space: Adaptations of pedagogy

Pg 94. Promoting teacher change so that those working with Māori learners have opportunities to develop local theories about what works best for Māori is of critical importance to Aotearoa New Zealand.

Pg 95 Situating the local theory in the practice setting highlighted the importance of using Māori constructs of whanau and tuakana/teina to extend the notion of group. The co-teaching process and associated reflective sessions provided opportunities for participants to draw on shared experiences in the classroom, such as the students’ hierarchy of explainers.

Grouping as a mathematics education pedagogy needs to be challenged as part of the socio-political justice agenda because it is the predominant “structure that sorts and labels children” in terms of their capacity to learn (McDonald et al., 2013, p. 381). With challenges such as the need for more complex, holistic, and flexible pedagogies, investigations of high leverage practices for teaching primary mathematics have increasing urgency. Our understanding of formal learning environments can be enhanced through examining student-initiated collective group work structures for learning mathematics.