Pedagogy Labs and Education-Intended Students

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Pedagogy Labs and Education-Intended Students
Understandings about Teaching and Learning
Learning Network - Teachers for a New Era
October 29-31, 2007 Denver, Colorado

• Barbara Bales and Jennifer Mueller
• Co-Leaders of the UW-Milwaukee TNE Professional
  Sequence Design Team

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Mentor Teacher Guidance, Advanced Licensure using
PDP District or School Staff Development,
Graduate Coursework
Disciplinary-based Courses, Intro to Teaching
PPST/Praxis I Exam Basic Skills
Praxis II Exam Content Knowledge
Learning to Teach at UWM
Graduation
Student Teaching
Complete Standards-based Portfolio
Certification Initial Licensure
Courses in Pedagogy, Pedagogical Content
Knowledge, Clinical Experiences
Pre-Professional Program Learning
In-service Professional Learning
Professional Program Learning
Figure 1. Pre- and In-Service Professional
Learning
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Professional Program Learning In the School of
Education
Disciplinary-based Courses, Intro to Education
Learning to Teach at UWM
Pedagogy Lab
Pre-Professional Program Learning In the College
of Letters Sciences and Peck School of the Arts
Courses in Pedagogy, Pedagogical Content
Knowledge, Clinical Experiences
Figure 2. Building Bridges with Pedagogy Lab
Learning
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Pedagogical Content Knowledge Identifies the
distinctive bodies of knowledge for teaching. It
represents the blending of content and pedagogy
into an understanding of how particular topics,
problems or issues are organized, represented,
and adapted to the diverse interests and
abilities of learners, and presented for
instruction" (Shulman, 1987, p. 4).
Disciplinary-based Content Knowledge Knowledge
that emerges through a process of critical
analysis that is guided by both the substantive
and syntactic structures of a discipline.
Substantive structures are the paradigms or
frameworks within a discipline that guide the
focus of inquiry, dictating, in many ways, the
questions researchers ask and the directions they
pursue. The syntactic structures of a discipline,
on the other hand, consist of the tools of
inquiry within a discipline, the canons of
evidence and proof through which new knowledge is
admitted to a field and current knowledge claims
are deemed less warranted. (Grossman, Wilson
Shulman, 1989).
Pedagogy Lab
Pedagogical Knowledge Represents what a teacher
understands about the principles and strategies
that are designed to guide class instruction,
organization, and management (Shulman, 1987). It
is central to the development of expertise
(Berliner, 1988, Dodds, 1994 Siedentop Edldar,
1989, and it matures with experience (Houstoner
Grieffey, 1985. The degree to which it is
incorporated into lessons may be influenced by
teaching context and significant individuals such
as the pupils whom the teacher encounters
(Graber, 1995) (cited in Handbook of Research on
Teaching, 2002, p. 485).
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2007 Pilot Pedagogy Lab Models
One Credit Pedagogy Lab Discussion Sections

• Currins 579-001 Current Topics Pedagogy Labs -
  The Pedagogy of Writing Conferences
• Linked with ENG 440 Introduction to Peer
  Tutoring and Practice
• Currins 579-003 Current Topics Pedagogy Labs
  Linking English Content with Pedagogy
• Linked with ENG 201 Strategies for Academic
  Discourse
• Geo Sci 694 Seminar
• Linked with Geo Sci 185
• Currins 579-002 Current Topics Pedagogy Labs -
  Linking Multiculturalism Content with Pedagogy
• Linked with CURRINS 100 Introduction to Teaching
  
• Consultant Model

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2007 Pilot Pedagogy Lab Models

• Integrated Pedagogy Discussions
• Letters and Sciences Faculty with School of
  Education Faculty in Methods Courses

CURRINS 323 Teaching of Social Studies in the
MCEA program CURRINS 323 Teaching of Social
Studies in the EAA program CURRINS 504
Teaching of Reading and Writing in the ECE
program
Integrated Pedagogy Discussions One time
Seminar HIST 293 Seminar in Historical Method
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Research Questions

• How and what are students experiencing in these
  pedagogy labs?
• How and what are instructors experiencing in the
  development and teaching of these pedagogy labs?

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Methodology and Analysis
Observations 3-5 Observations in
Foundational and Ped Lab Courses
Interviews Group Interviews with Ped Lab
Students and One-on-one Interviews with
Instructors
Pre- and Post Assessments Of Student
Learning Praxis Pedagogy Exam
Scores or Teaching Case Study Analysis
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Five Preliminary Findings

• Placement of the Lab along the Professional
  Sequence resulted in different learning and
  development opportunities for students.
• Labs, early in the sequence, provided
  enthusiastic students opportunities to examine
  the complexities of being a teacher.
• Integrated Methods Labs, later in the sequence,
  offered students opportunities to produce lessons
  with richer connections to disciplinary-based
  content.
• A concurrent field placement helped students to
  make richer connections
• Field experiences allowed students to transfer
  their theoretical understandings from their
  content courses to their Lab and view them
  through a classroom setting.
• New ideas and questions that arose from field
  experiences were brought back to the Lab, which
  enriched the groups learning.
• Praxis scores were lower on the post-test than
  they were on the pre-test.
• May suggest that students in the early Labs have
  not yet acquired either the content or the
  pedagogy in a specific discipline to sufficiently
  bridge the two.
• Assumes the Praxis Pedagogy Exams were an
  appropriate tool to measure what students learned
  in the Lab.

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Five Preliminary Findings cont.

• Faculty participating in all the labs openly
  shared their professional growth
• Faculty talked at length about pushing their
  professional boundaries
• Faculty participating in the Methods course
  discussions pointed out the importance of making
  explicit links between content and pedagogy in
  their teaching and modeling effective pedagogy
• Tell me what you learned in lab yesterday. How
  would teach that same content to your students?
• Today I want you to engage in some curriculum
  design work related to the Founding of our
  Country. Like we did in class, I want you to
  design a curriculum to help students actively
  examine the enduring understandings and
  significant human issues
• What are some of the teaching strategies you see
  Sandy use?

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Issues and Challenges

• Teacher candidate learning and development
• How can we disrupt students assumptions that
  disciplinary-based content knowledge, pedagogical
  content knowledge, and pedagogy are independent
  entities?
• Implications for restructuring candidate
  preparation to better support content/pedagogy
  fusion
• How might we restructure and better align
  disciplinary-based courses with methods courses?
• How can multicultural content be infused across
  disciplinary-based and methods courses?
• Implications for restructuring teacher education
• How might we institutionalize the pedagogy lab
  experience across the learning-to teach sequence?
• How might we provide similar experiences as
  professional development for practicing
  teachers?
• Institutional Barriers related to Ped Lab
  implementation
• How can scheduling and registration issues be
  resolved?
• How can concerns around faculty load be
  addressed?

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Issues and Challenges cont

• Instructor learning and development
• How might we support faculty in learning to make
  their pedagogical decisions transparent and
  explicit to students?
• Implications for going to scale
• How might we connect with other TNE initiatives
  at our site to develop a more cohesive, systemic
  change in teacher preparation?
• How might TNE partners with similar projects
  network to support a larger research base?
• Unknown issues and challenges?