Papers by Shakhnoza Kayumova
In this paper we use practice theory, with its focus on the interplay of structure and agency, to... more In this paper we use practice theory, with its focus on the interplay of structure and agency, to theorize about teacher engagement in professional learning and teacher enactment of pedagogical practices as an alternative to framing implementation research in terms of program adherence and fidelity of implementation. Practice theory allowed us to reconsider assumptions about characteristics of effective teacher professional learning, and to rethink our own notions of agency. Using data from our three-year middle school science teacher professional learning project, Language-rich Inquiry Science with English Language Learners (LISELL), we discuss how individual teachers negotiated power structures of schooling and exerted their agency in ways that were influenced by their project participation. Framing our work in terms of engagement and enactment, we theorize about how a structure-agency dialectic challenging assumptions about effective teacher professional learning can support new ways of thinking about implementation research in education. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 52: 489–502, 2015
Toward re-thinking science education in terms of affective practices: reflections from the field
Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2016
The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore and map the “espoused theories” (Argyris and S... more The purpose of this conceptual paper is to explore and map the “espoused theories” (Argyris and Schön 1978) of agency used in educational contexts. More precisely, we limit the focus on the normative view of student agency assumed within dominant school practices, desired by educational practitioners, leaving out non-normative emerging agencies such as student agency of resistance. Agency is a “tricky” concept, and often scholars who use the concept of agency do not define or operationalize it (e.g., Archer 2000). One reason is that there is no consensus among scholars about the notion of agency, especially when applied to educational contexts (Hitlin and Elder Sociological Theory, 25 (2), 170–191, 2007). Moreover, the recent neoliberal framing of individuals’ agency as fully autonomous, flexible, and self-entrepreneur is adding the dilemma of agency manipulation in the sphere of education (Gershon 2011; Sidorkin 2004). To tackle this dilemma in educational contexts, we suggest to further interrogating the normative notion of agency in all its modes and develop a more nuanced conceptualization. We hope that such conceptualization would produce an understanding of the diverse manifestations and definitions of agency within a human ideal, educational content, behaviors, and social settings. We observed diverse uses of the normative term “agency” in educational discourse. We examined the term as used by researchers and practitioners. We also looked at the different ways it has been used in philosophical discussions of education, political framing of the civic role of schooling, disciplinary policy statements, school mission statements, and in everyday common use. It is worthy to note that our categorization of the use and meaning of the normative term “agency” depends on the scholars’ epistemological paradigmatic assumptions, socio-political and historical situatedness, and ontological projects being translated into diverse scholarships of education. As a result of our research, we suggest four major normative conceptual frameworks related to agency mainly being adopted in educational contexts that we labeled as: 1) instrumental, 2) effortful, 3) dynamically emergent, and 4) authorial. In this paper, we discuss these normative approaches to agency as we compare and contrast the assumptions and their consequences for the current field of education, mostly from a point of view of authorial definition of agency (our bias).
In this paper we report research with an innovative program designed to promote the development o... more In this paper we report research with an innovative program designed to promote the development of adolescent Spanish-speaking immigrant students' knowledge of general academic English vocabulary and the academic language of science through the vehicle of bilingual family science workshops. Development of English as the Lingua Franca (ELF) among these young adolescents, their parents, their teachers, and university students and faculty is one of the primary goals in this educational setting. However, a secondary goal is to also develop all players' awareness of the families' mother tongue, Spanish, as an important resource, both for learning academic English and for developing bilingual and crosscultural communication skills for science learning. Three case studies, based on parent-child interviews and analysis of assessments of student writing with academic language in response to open-ended prompts, are examined to gain perspective on the learning outcomes linked to the bilingual family science workshops from the perspectives of students and their parents. The results of the study are discussed in relation to the findings of other research on pedagogies associated with ELF . Implications for educators working with ELF learners of all ages in a variety of settings where bilingual pedagogical strategies grounded in academic content learning, such as in science, could be beneficial, are outlined.
Building on previous research regarding family engagement and using perspectives drawn from Chica... more Building on previous research regarding family engagement and using perspectives drawn from Chicana/Latina feminist theory, in this ethnographic research we explored how Latina mothers and their young adolescent daughters negotiated and contested multiple identities during Steps to College through Science bilingual family workshops. Our research illustrated the ways of knowing that Latina mothers and daughters brought to spaces intersecting family, school, and community contexts and how they navigated aspects of (in)visibility, language, and womanhood identities as they envisioned processes of being and becoming in their lives and schooling experiences.
Background and Rationale School-determined English as a Second Language (ESOL) levels may not be ... more Background and Rationale School-determined English as a Second Language (ESOL) levels may not be the best measure for researchers or teachers who wish to understand students' functional usage and comfort with their home language and the language of instruction in classroom contexts (Solano-Flores, 2008). There are a number of psychological and sociological factors, as well as questions of prior academic background in and support for the home language, that influence the linguistic choices that students make regarding academic communication (Levine, 2011). By providing a bilingual constructed response assessment and tracking the language(s) in which students both read the questions and wrote their responses (combined with basic demographic information), we attempted to create a more useful functional measure of student ability in using home and school languages for academic purposes (Shaw, Bunch, & Geaney, 2010). Such a resource could be used to support teachers in exploring the potential benefits of building on first-language resources to support science learning through writing (Rosebery & Warren, 2008). We conceptualize science learning as mastering a combination of practices, core conceptual ideas, and communication skills that are developed across a broad range of life-wide learning contexts (National Research Council, 2011, 2009). From this perspective, a primary goal of science learning is to gain competence in applying critical thinking processes used for problem solving during science tasks (Kuhn, 2005). For Kuhn, these critical thinking processes include generating and testing hypotheses, using cause-and-effect reasoning, learning to control variables, and arguing from evidence. We extend Kuhn's ideas by focusing on science tasks that prompt students' science talk, writing, and action in ways that support development of critical communication practices as well as critical thinking practices. Duschl and Grandy (2008) have argued that worthwhile science learning tasks make student thinking visible to help teachers improve students' scientific thinking. Writing about science investigations can serve this purpose (Gunel, Hand, & Prain, 2007). We developed a bilingual constructed response assessment that asks students to write about science investigations (Buxton et al., 2013) as part of our Language-Rich Inquiry Science with English Language Learners (LISELL) Project to support a more robust measure of students' scientific thinking as expressed through writing. There is a limited but growing body of research on the value of teachers attending to the science writing of emergent bilingual learners as a way to both understand and improve these students' science learning experiences. For example, Huerta, Lara-Alecio, Tong, and Irby (2014) developed and tested a science notebook rubric to measure both the conceptual understanding and the academic language skills expressed in upper elementary grade second language learners' writing. Similarly, Furtak and Ruiz-Primo (2008) compared middle school students' written responses with their oral discussions about the same formative assessment prompts and found that the written responses elicited a greater range of students' science conceptions. Further, one of us was involved in an earlier study that used emergent
This study explores the role of competing discourses that shape current practices in U.S. schools... more This study explores the role of competing discourses that shape current practices in U.S. schools and how professional development efforts can support teachers and researchers in finding ways to reinsert more democratic processes into their collaborative work. We examine the case of one research and professional development project with the goal of supporting middle school science and ESOL teachers in fostering more meaningful science learning for all their students but especially their English language learners. Using Gee's notion of big-D discourses and Fairclough's notion of interdiscursivity, we trace how the Discourse of accountability, the Discourse of science teaching, and the Discourse of education research, each constructed by different stakeholders for different purposes, may become interdiscursive and hybridized through interaction over time. Excerpts from interviews and conversations with participants during the various components of our project highlight both the challenges and the possibilities of teachers retaining or regaining agency in their classrooms within and against the structures of the accountability Discourse. At the same time, we explore how our researcher Discourse also became hybridized in order to better work with a system where an undemocratic accountability Discourse continues to be dominant.
Critiques of the quality of America’s teachers are nothing new (Labaree, 2008; National Commissio... more Critiques of the quality of America’s teachers are nothing new (Labaree, 2008; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). Such critiques have returned to the spotlight in recent years as states attempt to develop measures of teacher effectiveness tied to merit pay systems and other types of incentives and consequences (Berliner & Glass, 2014; Koedell & Betts, 2011). At the same time, college and university programs that engage in the preparation of teachers have come under similar scrutiny from legislators, the media, and groups such as the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), all advocating for reforms and increased accountability for the performance of a program’s teacher-graduates (Cochran-Smith, Piazza & Power, 2013; Fuller, 2014). Less attention has been paid, however, to the preparation of the teacher educators who staff these college, university, and alternative teacher preparation programs. To respond effectively to the critiques, it is important to understand what specific kinds of preparation and practice these individuals have had for doing teacher education as part of their own professional preparation.
In this paper we use practice theory, with its focus on the interplay of structure and agency, to... more In this paper we use practice theory, with its focus on the interplay of structure and agency, to theorize about teacher engagement in professional learning and teacher enactment of pedagogical practices as an alternative to framing implementation research in terms of program adherence and fidelity of implementation. Practice theory allowed us to reconsider assumptions about characteristics of effective teacher professional learning, and to rethink our own notions of agency. Using data from our three-year middle school science teacher professional learning project, Language-rich Inquiry Science with English Language Learners (LISELL), we discuss how individual teachers negotiated power structures of schooling and exerted their agency in ways that were influenced by their project participation. Framing our work in terms of engagement and enactment, we theorize about how a structure-agency dialectic challenging assumptions about effective teacher professional learning can support new ways of thinking about implementation research in education. !
Teacher agency and professional learning: Rethinking fidelity of implementation as multiplicities of enactment
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 2015
In this paper we use practice theory, with its focus on the interplay of structure and agency, to... more In this paper we use practice theory, with its focus on the interplay of structure and agency, to theorize about teacher engagement in professional learning and teacher enactment of pedagogical practices as an alternative to framing implementation research in terms of program adherence and fidelity of implementation. Practice theory allowed us to reconsider assumptions about characteristics of effective teacher professional learning, and to rethink our own notions of agency. Using data from our three-year middle school science teacher professional learning project, Language-rich Inquiry Science with English Language Learners (LISELL), we discuss how individual teachers negotiated power structures of schooling and exerted their agency in ways that were influenced by their project participation. Framing our work in terms of engagement and enactment, we theorize about how a structure-agency dialectic challenging assumptions about effective teacher professional learning can support new ways of thinking about implementation research in education.
Using Educative Assessments to Support Science Teaching for Middle School English-language Learners
Journal of Science Teacher Education, 2013
ABSTRACT Grounded in Hallidayan perspectives on academic language, we report on our development o... more ABSTRACT Grounded in Hallidayan perspectives on academic language, we report on our development of an educative science assessment as one component of the language-rich inquiry science for English-language learners teacher professional learning project for middle school science teachers. The project emphasizes the role of content-area writing to support teachers in diagnosing their students’ emergent understandings of science inquiry practices, science content knowledge, and the academic language of science, with a particular focus on the needs of English-language learners. In our current school policy context, writing for meaningful purposes has received decreased attention as teachers struggle to cover large numbers of discrete content standards. Additionally, high-stakes assessments presented in multiple-choice format have become the definitive measure of student science learning, further de-emphasizing the value of academic writing for developing and expressing understanding. To counter these trends, we examine the implementation of educative assessment materials—writing-rich assessments designed to support teachers’ instructional decision making. We report on the qualities of our educative assessment that supported teachers in diagnosing their students’ emergent understandings, and how teacher–researcher collaborative scoring sessions and interpretation of assessment results led to changes in teachers’ instructional decision making to better support students in expressing their scientific understandings. We conclude with implications of this work for theory, research, and practice.
Uploads
Papers by Shakhnoza Kayumova