/)eural (/ortex Blog

Deconstructing Theoretical Frameworks

10/9/2018

The more time I spend reading about theoretical perspectives/frameworks, the more I’m frustrated by them. There are so many perspectives, each of which overlaps others and none of which is complete in its ability to describe the totality of experience (if there is one... please point me to it...for it must be the 'right' one). Some frameworks are broad - others heavily nuanced - in their application to context, their interpretation of phenomena, events, and construction of knowledge. It is no surprise to me, as Koro-Ljungberg, Yendol-Hoppey, Smith & Hayes (2009) have pointed out in their article, that the identification and/or appropriate implementation (instantiation) of theoretical frameworks is often found lacking in the literature; it seems it really takes experts in such things - like the authors - to be able to not only distinguish between some frameworks and their application, but also most accurately put names to them; these people are the experts who have spent years and, in some cases, built careers on doing precisely this.

Having just been exposed to Derrida’s deconstructionism makes this all worse, in so much as it forces us to reconsider the ideas we hold in privilege.

Can theoretical perspectives’ primacy in social research be deconstructed?

Koro-Ljungberg, M., Yendol-Hoppey, D., Smith, J. J., & Hayes, S. B. (2009). (E) pistemological awareness, instantiation of methods, and uninformed methodological ambiguity in qualitative research projects. Educational Researcher, 38(9), 687-699.

Different Perspectives of Social and Regulated Learning

9/30/2017

Hadwin, A., & Oshige, M. (2011). Self-regulation, coregulation, and socially shared regulation: Exploring perspectives of social in self-regulated learning theory. Teachers College Record, 113(2), 240-264.

Examples of Learning Activities by Mode of Engagement

9/28/2017

Chi, M. T., & Wylie, R. (2014). The ICAP framework: Linking cognitive engagement to active learning outcomes. Educational Psychologist, 49(4), 219-243.

Review: An Exploration of Teacher Learning From an Educative Reform-Oriented Science Curriculum: Case Studies of Teacher Curriculum Use

9/28/2017

Title:
An Exploration of Teacher Learning From an Educative Reform-Oriented Science Curriculum: Case Studies of Teacher Curriculum Use

Citation:
Marco‐Bujosa, L. M., McNeill, K. L., González‐Howard, M., & Loper, S. (2017). An exploration of teacher learning from an educative reform‐oriented science curriculum: Case studies of teacher curriculum use. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 54(2), 141-168.

Summary:
This study sought to examine the effective use of an educative curriculum - that is a curriculum designed to help teachers learn about their subject and pedagogy in addition to serving as the basis of classroom instruction. The study was a case study focusing on five middle school teachers with varying experiences with science teaching and educative curriculum. Grounded in the organizational theory of sensemaking, the methodology was mixed-method and included videos of teacher performance, interviews and a survey. The study concluded that an educative curriculum may be effective at increasing teacher learning, but varies dependent upon both professional development preparation and personal teacher attributes.

Research Question(s):
The research questions were explicitly described:

How did teacher PCK for scientific argumentation vary by curriculum use and enactment?
How did teachers use and enact a reform oriented educative science curriculum supporting the practice of scientific argumentation?
What influenced teachers’ sensemaking about argumentation based upon their instructional decisions and their use of curriculum?

Intent of the Study:
The study was designed to explore to components of educative curriculum use: to develop understanding of how educators use an educative curriculum - one that is designed help teachers learn, as well as form the basis of classroom instruction, and to develop an understanding of the factors influencing that use.

Theory Used to Support the Research:
Organizational theory’s sense making was clearly identified as the framework for the research.

Literature Review:
The literature review was moderately thorough. The review focused on three aspects: educative curriculum, scientific argumentation, and organizational theory’s conceptual framework of sensemaking. Of these three, sensemaking received the least attention, but this is perhaps because it is fairly well established. Nonetheless, it could have been more thoroughly elaborated. Both educative curriculum and scientific argumentation were described thoroughly and referenced with substantial literature.

Population:
Participants in the study included five middle school science teachers, across three schools, with varying experience levels and experience with the sort of educative-reform oriented curricula examined in the study.   The participants were selected with primary thought to their proximity to the researchers, however they were intentionally selected to produce variation in education context and teacher experience.

Research Design:
The study was a mixed-methods approach relying on five case case studies to explore the varied ways in which science educators utilize a piece of science curriculum to conceptualize instruction.   The study incorporate three forms of data collection: videos of teachers during instruction, interviews with teachers, and pre- and post- assessments.   Qualitative data was obtained via videos, interviews and open-ended survey questions, and quantitative data was collected via multiple-choice responses on the pre- and post- assessments.

Intervention/Assessment Methods:
Video analysis was used to code teacher activities with alignment of the curriculum, and inter-rater reliability was assessed using a two-way mixed average-measures intraclass correlation.   Interviews were analyzed and coded using three methods

Results:
The study had two primary conclusions: The first conclusion was that even given the opportunity to utilize a curriculum in which their own learning occurs, the teachers may instead only use the curriculum to support current student learning. This suggests that these teachers either willfully ignore the educative aspect of the curriculum or are unaware of it. Second, that educators who do actively engage in their own learning while modifying curriculum to suit the context of their classroom make learning gains.

Conclusion:
The results of the study suggest that educative curriculum can be valuable to increase teacher - and consequently, student - learning, however certain needs must first be met.   The authors suggest that teachers who are able and willing to engage with the educative curriculum need time to reflect and incorporate their learning into teaching practices, and that those educators who are not able and willing need further professional development to understand the value of educative curriculum in improving their practices. The results of the study suggest there are remaining questions about the viability of educative curriculum, and encourages further research into how appropriate professional development can best prepare teachers for its use.

This study aligns with my own Problem of Practice in three aspects. Firstly, the theoretical framework of the study is organizational theory’s sensemaking. At present, sensemaking is the theoretical framework that I’m intending to utilize in my action research study. Secondly, the context of the study is middle school science teachers, and their effective use of curriculum; my Problem of Practice is the effective implementation of the NGSS. Finally, the conclusion of the research suggests that appropriate teacher development practices are key the effective use of curriculum for the intended purposes.
Quality Analysis:

I feel the study has one significant weakness in that the case study utilizes a small sample size (n=5), that is not representative, and so consequently the results are not as generalizable as would be preferable. It should be noted that the authors describe an effort to diversify the sample, but the selection was still limited to a fairly small geographic region. Additionally, the two teachers who demonstrated the least enactment of the curriculum were also the two teachers with the least amount of experience in science and/or in science teaching - generally. The paper, I feel, does not adequately address this correlation which may bear significantly on the results.

The strength of the study is that it does demonstrate a variety of factors which influence the effectiveness of an educative curriculum. That the research is based on case studies allows for a more descriptive and nuances understanding of those factors. Additionally, the study has brought forward the understanding that teacher learning goals should be more explicit, and professional development aligned with better use of educative curriculum may prove valuable and worthy of additional research.

10 Criticisms of the Qualitative Research Interview

9/23/2017

Brinkmann and Kvale (2010) posit these 10 criticisms of the qualitative research interview in their text, InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Interviews.

The qualitative research interview is NOT:

scientific, but only reflects commons sense.
quantitative, but only qualitative.
objective, but subjective.
scientific hypothesis testing, but only explorative.
a scientific method, because it is too person dependent.
trustworthy, but biased.
reliable, because it rests on leading questions.
intersubjective, because different readers find different meanings.
valid, as it relies on subjective impressions.
generalizable, because there are too few subject.

Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. Thousands Oaks: Sage Publications.

On the Chasm that Divides: Why Education Researcher and Education Practitioner Don't Get Along.

9/2/2017

A few choice nuggets from Jay Lemke's 2000 article, Across the Scales of Time: Artifacts, Activities, and Social Meanings in Ecological Systems:

“We might say that it is a semiotic articulation of a person’s evaluative stance toward interactions.” (p. 283)

“Our ontogeny recapitulates their phylogeny, up to a point. But only up to a point, and less so as developmental pathways come to be guided more by social interaction and culture-specific semiotic information supplied after birth.” (p. 284) ← Lemke probably won a bet with this one, “I’ll bet you can’t sneak ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ into a peer reviewed journal article.”

“...even take a reflective perspective in the activity and see our own role in it; that is, we can frame a separated “me” from the viewpoint of this new dynamical “I.” Reflexivity is itself an instance of heterochrony.” (p. 285)

“Traditional macrosociology has resorted, after the manner of Latour’s “centers of calculation,” to assembling statistical data and to recognizing that it does so in a positioned way.” (p. 288).

Should anyone still be ignorant as to the reason of the perpetual divide between educational researcher and education practitioner?

I’d be hard pressed to find a single classroom teacher that would make it through the first two pages. Consequently, I’ll summarize the entire piece for the layman before proceeding:

The human experience exists of multiple and intertwined systems which interact over differing timescales.

Done. And, you're welcome.

The idea to consider time scales across ecosocial systems is an extension - or variation on the work of Karl Weick presented in his piece, Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled systems, published in 1979. Lemke, however, approaches the loose coupling of systems from a chronological perspective rather than from an organizational one. The end result is the same: Education is complex and there is no way - seemingly - to be able to anticipate or account for all interactions. Lemke (2010) states, “We cannot study such a system from more than a few of the many viewpoints within it, and we honestly do not expect all these viewpoints to fit consistently together.” (p. 288) whereas Weick asserts, “Loosely coupled worlds do not look as if they would provide an individual many resources for sense making…” (p. 13) which is to say that indirect parts of a system are extremely challenging to understand.

The adiabatic principle and heterochrony are fancy ways of communicating something that most educators who have been in the classroom for any significant period of time understand instinctively: Sometimes the things we do in the short term have little to no consequence on the long term (adiabatic principle), and sometimes long-time established (or large scale) issues have immediate impact on the short-term (heterochrony). An example to the former would be an explanation or instruction given by a teacher which - for whatever reason - does not result in consequential learning by a student, and in the former a large system reform which requires changes in pedagogy.

The application to the educator is that one must seek awareness of both the small and short scale events as well as the large and longer term events and consider their impact on the learning of an individual. Simultaneously, the educator must also consider how these events act in systems - both as parts of smaller systems themselves, but also as parts of larger systems. In the case of the classroom teacher, the chief concerns are the events and systems operating most directly on the student.

With my own PoP, the aforementioned example of heterochrony is apt. The NGSS is a large scale reform, expected to have both far-reaching and long-term consequences. The standards, themselves, though are such that adherence to the intent of the NGSS has immediate consequence for pedagogy (heterochrony). Which is the entire reason why it is a problem in the first place: while most educators have no problem with the long-scale shift towards inquiry based teaching, more concept-based and skills-based learning and assessment, in the short-term, they are faced with significant challenges to what they are already doing in the classroom.

Lemke, J. L. (2000). Across the scales of time: Artifacts, activities, and meaning in ecosocial systems. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 7(4), 273-290.

Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative science quarterly, 1-19.

Research Paradigms

8/27/2017

In the first chapter of her book Research and evaluation in education and psychology, D.M. Mertens presents four major paradigms of educational and psychological research. It can be appreciated that Mertens begins this section of her work with an indication as to the difficulty of trying to classify all of educational and psychological research into four distinct paradigms. She acknowledges that there are quite a few more paradigms, and perhaps it would be impossible to clearly identify all possible paradigms.

Key takeaways are as follows:

Firstly, Mertens piece is one of the general nature of paradigms, and they aspects of those paradigms which we might consider. For each of the four paradigms presented, Mertens identifies and describes the epistemological, ontological, axiological and methodological roots. These terms represent the nature of knowledge, reality, ethics, and procedural components of the paradigms. While he explains in some detail each of these four characteristics, I appreciate particularly the table he has provided which concisely summarizes each. In a very generalized way, one is lead to feel that as one shifts from positivism, to constructivism, to transformative and them pragmatic, there is a gradual shift away from the paradigms and methods of what would be known as the ‘hard sciences’. This is to say that post-positivism takes a stance more similar to that of the hard science (and Mertens alludes to this with a discussion of aristotle and others) where all of reality can be known and defined precisely, whereas transformative positions itself such that reality is mostly relativistic.

The second takeaway from the reading was way each aspect of the paradigms were intrinsically connected. That is to say, one could not take the ontology of postpositivism and interchange it with that of the pragmatic paradigm, for in doing so each of the other aspects epistemology, methodology, etc. would also change. Consequently, a research is pressed to understand the paradigm through with they are pursuing their study because it will have an affect on nearly all aspects of their research.

The third key point was, specifically, the importance placed on ethical considerations in each of the research paradigms. Though the paradigms themselves may approach the ethical considerations in slightly different ways, it’s clear that the ethical considerations have a significant impact on the research design in each of the paradigms. Mertens describes this specifically, but also alludes to the ethical nature or implications throughout the discussion on paradigms.

Intersectionality

8/26/2017

In Intersectionality as a Framework for Transformative Research, (Garcia 2013) the author presents an argument that the role of cultural and socioeconomic diversity (Discourses, as Gee might state it) existent in special education research have not been adequately addressed. He defines intersectionality as the refusal to accept unitary definitions and categorizations, and instead examine issues such as race, class, and gender as they are inherently intertwined and inseparable. It looks at their interplay.

It is in the point of this article, precisely, that the muddiest point - and indeed, the whole challenge of education, itself - exists.   Education is a complex problem, at both individual and social in nature, at times more so and at others less so.   Methods to study education, to be useful, must take into account not only a great number of variables, but must also take into consideration the interplay of those variables themselves. The authors quote Artiles et. all (2005) in stating that within each category of individuals to studied, there are subcategories of individuals, and within those categories, more subcategories.   Ultimately, each individual student is unique.

Further complicating matters, Garcia recognizes that traditional categories used to study differences rely on markers that are often times not static. That is to say a sort of marker - such as English Language Learner - used to identify an individual or group of individuals in one instance, may ultimately shift or change.   The markers upon which researchers use to categories groups are not static.   Consequently, the changing nature of the markers must be considered in addition to the continual interplay between them.

And finally, it is not just that individuals may fall into multiple categories or that the markers used to define those categories are fluid, but the categories and markers themselves, frequently hold unstated power or status connotations which also must be considered in their research.

All of these factors suggest that the study of educational problems in general (and in the case of the authors’ point - special education issues in particular) extremely challenging.   As educational researchers Jordan, Kleinsasser, and Roe might say, the wicked problems of education seem to have become even more wicked.

And muddy.

Why not just treat each individual as… individual? Increasingly, research is demonstrating that the multitude of factors which influence learning requires students to be treated as individuals.

As the author states, “...an intersectionality framework engages researchers in a multi-layered analysis that seeks to uncover the processes by which the experiences of subgroups within a larger identity category are marginalized, through understanding the cultural construction of identities within and across individuals, and uncovering how social, institutional, and political structures shape and reinforce identify formation, and influence identity salience across contexts.” (Garcia, p37) The intersectionality framework, then, encourages both the educational researcher and the educational practitioner with several questions to consider as they engage their topic of study or their students.   Among these are, “What are my perceptions, assumptions, and views of difference? Is my (our) cultural understanding sufficient to conduct culturally responsible research that will contribute to more equitable and accessible educational outcomes for all groups of learners?” (p37).

The educational researcher has an easier time dealing with these issues. They are not faced with making the minute by minute decisions that the educational practitioner is, and at the end of the day, the educational researcher can incorporate an escape hatch into their conclusion of their research, “..further research is warranted.” The classroom teacher, the practitioner, however is not afforded such novelties. To do her job well, the practitioner must consider the intersectionality in their decision making, and at the end of the day, their decisions have real consequences on real people. When the practitioner makes a misjudgement about the interplay between the various attributes of an individual and the interplay of those attributes and the attributes of another, or how the culture or context interplay (or, in Garcia’s terms - intersect), there are real people who lose out on the best learning experience possible.

References:

Jordan, M. E., Kleinsasser, R. C., & Roe, M. F. (2014). Wicked problems: inescapable wickedity. Journal of Education for Teaching, 40(4), 415-430

Garcia, S.B. & Ortiz, A.A. (2013). Intersectionality as a framework for transformative research in special education. Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners, 13(2), 32-47.

On Qualitative and Quantitative Research Processes

8/20/2017

Quantitative and qualitative processes are named as such primarily due to the type of data they chiefly collect. In the quantitative research process, the researcher is paramountly concerned with the collection of information which is more objectively quantified. That is to say, quantitative data is data which can be measured using objective, uniform, and universal units. Those sciences known as ‘hard’ sciences are chiefly concerned with such measurements. Traits such as height, length, time, etc. - which can be measured using recognized units - are good examples of quantitative data. In contrast, qualitative data is that which is less easily - or at least less objectively - assigned a numerical value. Emotional responses, attitudes, and values, for example cannot be described using a numerical value system alone; any numerical value system utilized to describe or measure such things, must be carefully described by the user and applied in highly contextual circumstances. To a large extent the ‘soft’ sciences are so called because they are heavily dependent on this sort of data collection.

Creswell describes quantitative data collection processes to be more close-ended (p. 19). That is to say, there are pre-defined outcomes (values) to responses. In the case of the ‘hard’ sciences, such pre-defined outcomes may be recognized frequently as the measurements of units, themselves. However, when quantitative methods are applied to ‘soft’ sciences, these pre-determined outcomes take on the form of categories which have been defined by the researcher. Qualitative research, in contrast, is open ended. The research concerns themselves chiefly with information that is difficult to apply numerical values to, or - as is frequently the case - is even able to predict potential outcomes. Consequently, the researcher is relegated to post-facto interpretation of results.

Creswell, J. W. (2002). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative (pp. 146-166). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.