Learning to Teach Through Problem Based Conversations

Learning to teach is a challenging endeavor. Research studies show that similar quantities and types of problems are faced by novice and preservice teachers. Problems can confront beginning teachers related to classroom management, developing a conception of subject matter and how to teach it, understanding the ways students learn, assessment practices, working with colleagues to connect required work across courses, and a host of other predicaments (Bullough, 1989; Fullan, 1998; Hill, 2000; Mueller & Skamp, 2003; Richardson & Placier, 2001). Given that such problems are likely, it is sensible to examine learning contexts that encourage preservice teachers to approach, reframe, and make sense of these problems. A question that reframes these inevitable problems can ask, "What happens to preservice teachers' conceptions of teaching practice and student learning if their problems are systematically approached through peer-supported and evidence-based conversations?" In the past, we haven't found much to help us know how such a problem-based orientation might help (or hinder) these beginning professionals to develop more nuanced understandings of teaching and learning.

Examining Pre-service Teachers Problem-based Conversations
For several years, I've taught in a graduate level teacher education program. Given my witness to the cognitive dissonances experienced by the student teachers with whom I work, I wanted to understand whether problem-based conversations between teacher candidates would provide a way to make sense of the process of learning to teach. I also wanted to know whether and how teacher candidates would reference insights gathered from their formal teacher education experiences as they explored the problems that surfaced during student teaching. Though there is a heightened interest nationally in teacher collaboration and inquiry , there was little empirical research regarding teachers' (particularly, preservice teachers) conversations with each other about their puzzles and problems of practice as a mechanism for their professional development.

In my study, several groups of five to six student teachers met for conversations in student-run seminars throughout their 10-week student teaching internship. The participants employed a consultancy protocol (Anderson & Hudson, 2002; Bambino, 2002) to provide a structure for their problem-based discussions. The protocol steps require participants to ask clarifying and probing questions of each other, consider the presented evidence and talk with peers about their colleague's problem, allow the presenting teacher to take notes about aspects of the conversation,. Finally, it calls for the presenting teacher to voice any new understandings gained.

Data sources for this study included participant and course instructor interviews and elicited responses, observations, videotapes, and transcripts of the conversational sessions, and an analysis of documents such as lesson plans, reflective papers, and student work. These multiple forms of evidence made it possible to better understand the ways the conversations contributed to their professional growth. The examples featured below highlight how particular conversational features – questioning, specificity, and generalizing – allowed participants to approach the problems that emerged during their early teaching experiences in schools.

Questioning
Questioning was an important feature of the problem-based conversations. The participants first used questions to better understand the teaching and learning context surrounding the problem. Once they established the context, the participants moved to probing questions, questions that do not necessarily have a specific answer but are meant to get the presenting teacher to think more deeply about her problem (Anderson & Hudson, 2002; NSRF, 2003). These questions are meant to help the presenting teacher understand the problem and its possible solutions. In the following example, Susan employs a probing question that asks Erica to justify her use of a think aloud strategy in writing revision:

Susan: What's your main goal in doing [this revision activity] as a think aloud? What do you try to get out of it?

Erica: What I want to get out of it is because we were talking about revising as such a hard thing to really lay down, I just wanted to show what revising was for me that day. And it was just looking at it, what makes sense, what can make this clearer. That was why I wanted to do it. Because I wanted to show my own thinking, too . . . I have trouble with this. This isn't an easy thing. It's a hard thing to do . . .

Erica justifies a think-aloud strategy as a way to improve students' understanding. Her assertion is supported by literacy research on such transactional strategies between teachers and students (M Pressley, 2001; M. Pressley et al., 1992) and was also a consistent theme in her methods course. This idea is now grounded through her colleague's question; it enables her to justify her use of the strategy in light of her learning objectives and recent experience with students.

Toward the end of the session, Kelly asks Erica again about her goals in this revision lesson:

Kelly: When you went into it, you know, when you went into it, at that moment in time, what were you thinking of as your goal for the revising? Were you--, I think you articulated a very clear objective just now . . . Was that as clear in your mind then or wasn't it?

Erica: It was. I think, yeah, it . . . it was clear. I did really want them to really be describing their object. But definitely, it's easier for me to articulate that after this [discussion with you]. [laughs] Definitely easier . . .

With this comment, Kelly acknowledges that talking about her actions with her peers has helped her in revising her lesson. She acknowledges that the lesson was too difficult and her objectives may not have been as clear when she taught the lesson thus leading to some student confusion.

Specificity in Participants' Descriptions
The following exchange highlights how a more detailed and specific description of the presenting teacher's classroom context enables the teacher to frame a problem more complexly. Sally's preceding student problem focused on understanding better ways to scaffold descriptive writing for her students who were struggling with writing. After an introduction, where Sally laid out her lesson materials and the lesson's scope and sequence, Alicia asks how Sally might have involved the adults in the classroom in supporting these students:

Alicia: I feel like you've set it up really well ((S: Mm-hmm.)) particularly in terms of the type of pre-write you're doing to reach the lowest kids. ((S: Mm-hmm.)) What I'm wondering is if they need a little bit more hand-holding while they're working on it. Something that my teacher does sometimes, and this may be the luxury of having two people in the classroom ((S: Mm-hmm.)) sometimes three when we have the IA [instructional assistant] there too, is she pulls the lowest kids back to the table and works with them there while they're actually writing. That way, she can kind of push them along. So I'm wondering if in your classroom there are times when you're both available to do stuff like that and if writing in particular might be a time when you need that kind of thing, or if there are other times when you use that type of strategy.

Sally responds to Alicia's question about whether she can re-configure the adults to support the most struggling students:

Sally: Mm-hmm. Well, right now, there's me and the cooperating teacher, and then we also have a full time aide in the classroom for one student who definitely needs that help. They go to the resource room at times. But when she is in the classroom she definitely helps with the other students who need that additional support even though that's not what she's supposed to be there for ((V: Right.)).

But, our classroom is really diverse in terms of needs . . . So it's, it's hard to decide which students to pull back with you. So that was part of my concern; which students should I just let work on their own? How do I provide that support that they still need but not as much as the other students?

Sally acknowledges the need for creative ways to structure adult support, but this description of her students' specific challenges adds complexity to her problem. Though distributing her students amongst the adults for developmentally appropriate work is a common practice in her cooperating teacher's classroom, she still faces a challenge of meeting a range of student needs, given her students' many challenges.

With more detailed and specific information, the group re-engages in the conversation about different approaches that Sally could use to modify the assignment for struggling students. One group member, for example, suggests that the whole class may benefit from mini-lessons devoted to teaching students the steps for creating sentences and connecting them together, and that these steps could be posted in the classroom for the students to see. Another suggests she adopt formative checklists to check their progress in a more systematic way at the beginning of the writing block. Finally, members of the group talk about the need for Susan to prioritize her instruction. They suggest that the fact that some of her students cannot express their ideas and organize their thoughts should take precedence over the students who are struggling with writing conventions. As Sally returns to the group after hearing their ideas, she comments on their conversation about prioritizing her teaching interventions:

Sally: And choosing your priorities . . . I definitely, you know, this student [holds up paper] I can understand what he's trying to say and there's definitely some concerns there, but I'm more concerned with this student [holds up other sample] ((V: Yeah.)) who is more legible but he can't, he doesn't know how to organize a complete sentence. And that's more of a concern to me than this kid's spelling. So, I thought that was a really good point.

The suggestion that the organization needs to be prioritized over spelling in students' writing is supported by Spandel (2004) and other writing specialists who place a higher value on ideas and organization over conventions in the younger years. Again, this assertion is grounded through the specific references to the classroom context. Erica's ability to contextualize her situation through specific classroom examples enables her group to articulate a range of possible interventions that were more focused on their colleague's problem and its unique context.

The Specificity of Artifacts
Participants in the study drew-on teaching and learning artifacts as a way to ground their conversations-- samples of student work, lesson and unit plans, and teaching videotapes. These helped the groups justify or clarify the assessment criteria for student work and helped the participants make better sense of how particular teaching decisions supported or hindered opportunities for student learning. Student work artifacts provided a means for the groups to better understand students' thinking.

This example demonstrates a group examining a single student's solutions to fraction equivalency and percentage math problems (Figure 1). It shows how important understandings of students' thinking and misconceptions emerge through this process of collectively looking at student work:

Anita: So some of them, they were to come up with a whole fraction and some of them were given a denominator and had to come up-
Peter: Well in this first one, it's this step right here that's all weird. This is--
Voice: Two . . . with one twelfth.
Peter: This is fine.
Rene: But did she have 10 originally?
As the conversation continues, Peter generalizes that fifth-graders do not automatically know their multiples of twelve. The group also goes on to further explore the student's thinking:

Peter: And then that's times two. And this one, I mean, she was doubling that too, but that would be my guess for the first one and then she just didn't know what per . . . , how to figure the percent.

Anita: Right, she clearly doesn't know how to figure the percents and isn't relating them back to, does that make sense for one, one sixth? Does that make sense for one third? . . . I, I'm still clueless about what's happening--, this is what really kind of boggles my mind here. 'Cause she's, she spent actually a lot of time on this--, the "one third to 75%" is pretty perplexing for me.

Peter: Yeah, and she's not finding the right equivalent fractions there, although she did--, once she doubles it again, she does alright.

Mike now enters the conversation and wonders if the work sample fully explains the students' thinking. Mike and other group members suggest that they need more information to assess the student's thinking and the reasons for her errors.

In a follow-up interview with the presenting teacher, Anita, she acknowledged that the student's work sample did not tell her enough about the students' fractions reasoning, although it provided some insights. The next day back in school, after her group's problem-based session, she reported that she sat down with the student with a new problem set and asked the student to "think aloud" as she worked through the new problems. Mike's suggestion that he needed to know more to really understand the student's conception of fraction equivalencies and percentages provided a catalyst for Anita to design an additional instructional intervention to better assess the student's understanding.

The examination of student work, like the one featured in this case, helps the participants make better sense of assessment issues, served as a window into their students' understanding of concepts, and provided a way to better understand how the classroom context facilitates or hinders opportunities for teaching and learning. This finding is consistent with research devoted to practicing teachers (Lieberman, 1995; Lieberman & Miller, 2001; Little, 2003; Little, Gearhart, Curry, & Kafka, 2003).

Opportunities to examine student work provide a means for beginning professionals, who are very focused on questions about their teaching behaviors, to ask, "How does what I am doing impact my students' learning?"

Generalizing
The specificity employed in the groups' conversations provided a means for the group to discuss the problems more thoroughly and to generalize from conversations about specific problems to broader aspects of teaching and learning. Below, Susan reflects on a colleague's question about the purpose of a "writing chapter summaries" activity. She uses the question as an opportunity to consider a more general question about the purpose of assignments and activities and what they contribute to students' learning:

Susan: This brings up a really interesting dilemma, and one that I've been kind of throwing around in my mind is, why do we have kids do certain assignments? Like what is the purpose? What are we trying to get out of it? I have routines that I do with my kids. But why do I really do 'em? And why do I keep doing 'em? And why do . . . , what am I trying to . . . what do I want the end result for my students to be? And as I look at this (student work), it seems like they've got it, to me. They've got how to write chapter summaries, which is great because that'll set them up for all the work they'll have to do in fifth grade . . .

This reveals that Susan believes activities are to facilitate students' learning of new concepts and prepare them for future grades. She justifies her desire to move beyond a chapter summary activity because she believes her fourth-grade students understood the concept and were sufficiently prepared for the connected work in fifth-grade.

Maggie considers a colleague's challenge with student engagement and provides a more general "take" on the difficulties in engaging students:

Maggie: I think [the cause of] disengagement is so hard to identify because it's so different with all different kinds of kids. I often see kids who are disengaged . . . one, they're just habitually disengaged in the classroom, the academic setting, so they're just used to it, you know. A lot of times I see disengagement in most kids who are really smart who can do the work just fine without paying attention at all. So maybe they need more challenging work, or they need to be called on more to be presenting their work. It's can be pretty hard to figure out the reasons [for disengagement in any given student].

Maggie uses her colleague's problem as a springboard to the more general notion that student disengagement is not just "one thing," but is difficult to assess and fix because its causes are idiosyncratic.

As these examples demonstrate, a focus on a specific problem often created a venue for group members to expand the problem into discussions about broader issues that teachers face in schools. The data reveal how the participants frequently generalized from a specific problem to consider how the problem might inform their current and future teaching and the broader implications for student learning.

Implications for Teacher Education
The problem-based sessions here illustrate how the student teachers depict the highly complex environments in which they teach. The process of raising evidence-supported problems in a public space with peers provided an opportunity to voice how the various influences on their preservice education overlap, sometimes conflict and affect their emerging practice.

Through these conversations, the participants had multiple opportunities to think like teachers -- to ask questions of each other about how their teaching and students' learning were shaped by individual and contextual factors. The student teachers' problems are due to several factors: their limited practical experience; the different expectations from college instructors and cooperating teaches, and the power differential present when placed in another teacher's classroom. The participants frequently mentioned these constraints and their own limitations in viewing their developing practice.

This study suggests that problem-based conversations can play a critical role in the preparation of teachers. Using a socially-driven and problem-based orientation toward initial teacher preparation can create opportunities for the student teachers to engage in professional learning. It can enable them to make sense of complex teaching problems, particularly when their talk is structured to account for complexity, to include all voices, and to ground the participants' conversations in actual experiences in schools.

The real work for those who structure and teach in teacher education programs is to help their students to make a transition from being student-thinkers to pedagogical-thinkers. We can do this by providing venues that allow them to think about what teachers do that helps students learn. Here, the responsibility for teacher education becomes more distributed to include the preservice teachers themselves. Problem-based conversations with peers enhance their capacity to explore their choices and the repercussions of their choices. A key decision for teacher educators is how to carve-out spaces so teacher candidates have opportunities to use their own teaching problems as mechanisms for improving their teaching and their students' learning.

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Richardson, V., & Placier, P. (2001). "Teacher Change." In V. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (4th ed., pp. 905-947). Washington DC: American Educational Research Association.

Spandel, V. (2004). Creating Young Writers: Using the Six Traits to Enrich Writing Process in Primary Classrooms. Boston: Pearson.

Matthew Miller is an assistant professor in Elementary Education at Western Washington University. His areas of special interest include the design and pedagogy of preservice teacher education programs, the intersection of technology and teacher education, conversation-based learning, and arts-in-education. He can be reached via email at matthew.miller@wwu.edu

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