Implementation as a Dynamic Process: A Case Study of Teacher Sensemaking of a Cross-Content Area Vocabulary Intervention

This investigation examined how middle school teachers implemented Word Generation, a cross-content vocabulary intervention and how the program affected student learning of academic vocabulary words. Participants included four content area teachers and their sixth-grade students. Students received vocabulary instruction in their social studies, science, and math classes. Results of the posttests revealed that students showed positive differences in their learning as compared with a comparison school and maintained those differences on a delayed posttest. In addition, teachers’ sensemaking was influenced by factors related to knowledge and experiences, policy initiatives, and the social contexts in which they worked. This investigation reveals the complex nature of intervention implementation in schools.

A perspective of teachers’ appropriation of educational innovations

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework describing teachers’ affective and cognitive thought processes, as well as the sensemaking and decision making ongoing within them, during the various stages of the appropriation of an educational innovation. Design/methodology/approach The Rubicon model of action phases, borrowed from psychology, is first used as a lens to understand teachers’ will. The model is subsequently adapted to reconcile it with existing literature on teacher beliefs, teacher sensemaking, and teachers’ resistance. Findings The proposed framework shows that teachers’ appropriation of an educational innovation is multi-layered and multi-dimensional. This contradicts appropriation as simply a procedural implementation of research recommendations, culminating in only success or failure. Originality/value The paper sensitises policymakers, school leaders, and teacher educators to the complexity of the appropriation process. The proposed framework serves as a starting point for school and reform leaders, to re-examine their school’s implementation of an educational innovation from a more human relations perspective.

Data Use Practices for Improved Mathematics Teaching and Learning: The Importance of Productive Dissonance and Recurring Feedback Cycles

Background A growing number of studies argue that data use practices in schools have not sufficiently attended to teachers’ learning about students, subject matter, and instruction. The result has been changes in instructional management (e.g., student grouping, assignment of students to tutoring) rather than instructional improvement. Further, there is a paucity of research on how teachers make sense of data and their ensuing instructional actions. Purpose We report findings from qualitative research on an intervention designed to put teacher learning about mathematics instruction center stage in data use practices. The research sought to understand what happened as teachers made sense of data in their professional learning communities (PLCs), what changes they made in their mathematics instruction, and why they made the changes. Research Design The theoretical foundation for the research is situative theory, which conceptualizes teacher growth as “a process of increasing participation in the practice of teaching, and through this participation a process of becoming knowledgeable in and about teaching.” A case study approach was chosen to illuminate the complex interrelationships among intervention components and their influence on teachers: (1) between individual teacher sensemaking about data and collective sensemaking in PLCs and (2) between sensemaking and instructional changes. Additionally, case study methodology facilitates theory building grounded directly in data by providing nuanced accounts of the phenomena under study that uncover concepts and coherently relate them to one another. Teacher interpretation of data is ripe for theory building. Findings The case study of Ms. Walker illustrates in rich detail the developmental nature of her growth and the important roles of dissonance, collegial discussion, and productive dissonance in that process. Due to considerable progress in both her questioning strategies and her ability to build on student thinking to focus on important mathematical ideas, Ms. Walker was able to move beyond surface instructional adjustments to demonstrate substantial instructional improvement. Conclusion/Recommendations We argue that a fuller understanding of how teachers experience dissonance, and the supports necessary to make that dissonance productive, can enrich the design and implementation of data use practices. The research also offers an example of the contribution that microprocess studies can make to research on data use practices. We encourage researchers to attend carefully to teacher sensemaking and interrogate the concepts of dissonance and productive dissonance in future theory building about data use practices.

Educator Responses to Migrant Children in Mexican Schools

A decade-long, five-state, mixed-method study of students encountered in Mexican schools with previous experience in the United States suggests there may be 400,000 such students in educación básica alone (elementary and middle school). The focus here, however, are data from 68 educators asked how they have responded to such students and their families. We offer an emergent taxonomy of teacher sensemaking about these students and teachers’ responsibilities to respond. We then assert that because they are at the interface between a national institution (school) and transnational phenomena (migration), educators can provide key insight into how migration is shaped and negotiated. Un estudio de una década, en cinco estados, y que utiliza métodos mixtos con estudiantes que se encuentran en escuelas mexicanas con experiencias previas en los Estados Unidos sugiere que se pueden encontrar 400,000 estudiantes de este tipo tan sólo cursando la educación básica (primaria y secundaria). Sin embargo, el enfoque aquí son los datos de 68 educadores a quienes se les preguntó cómo responden a esta clase de estudiantes y a sus familias. Ofrecemos una taxonomía emergente sobre cómo es que los maestros dan sentido a las responsabilidades de tener que responder a este tipo de circunstancias, enfrentadas por estos estudiantes y sus maestros. Procedemos a afirmar que, a causa de que se encuentran en el punto de contacto entre una institución nacional (la escuela) y un fenómeno transnacional (la migración), los educadores pueden proveer información clave sobre cómo es que la migración se define y se negocia.