Educational Studies in Mathematics

Understanding Pedagogical Design Capacity Through Teachers' Narratives

The article Understanding Pedagogical Design Capacity Through Teachers' Narratives was written by Elizabeth Davis, Carrie Beyer, Cory Forbes, and Shawn Stevens and published in Teaching and Teacher Education in 2011. The article is available from ScienceDirect at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X11000060.

Abstract

Teachers need to develop the ability to adapt curriculum materials. Two elementary teachers, Maggie and Catie, were asked to write narratives about their use of and changes to particular reform-oriented science lesson plans. Maggie drew on her knowledge of and experiences with students, as well as other knowledge, experiences, and resources, to make productive changes to account for her students' prior knowledge and abilities. Catie based her curricular adaptations on her learning goals—but these were not aligned with the learning goals of the curriculum materials. The paper discusses implications for teacher education, professional development, and educative curriculum materials.

Outline of Headings

• Introduction
• Methods
  • Participants
  • CASES educative curriculum materials
  • Engaging teachers in writing narrative images of inquiry
  • Data sources and analysis
• Results
  • Maggie's pedagogical design capacity; attending to students at every turn
    • Maggie's curricular adaptations
    • The basis for Maggie's curricular adaptations
  • Catie's pedagogical design capacity: Meeting (different) learning goals
    • Catie's curricular adaptations
    • The basis for Catie's curricular adaptations
  • Summary of results
• Discussion, implications, and conclusions

Summary

Background

• Curriculum plays a central role in teachers' practice (Remillard, 2005), especially for newer teachers (Grossman & Thompson, 2004)
• Teachers' beliefs about and use of curriculum vary (Harrison, 2001; Li, Capraro, & Capraro, 2009; Lloyd, 1999; Shkedi, 1998; Wang, 2004)
• Teachers need to adapt even high-quality materials (Barab & Luehmann, 2003; Baumgartner, 2004; Davis, 2006)
• Teacher adaptations driven by teachers' contexts, student needs, learning goals, etc. (Drake & Sherin, 2006; Forbes & Davis (2010c); Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998; Nicol & Crespo, 2006; Pintó, 2005; Remillard & Bryans, 2004; Valencia, Place, Martin, & Grossman, 2006)
• Davis et al describe (p. 797) pedagogical design capacity as a "teacher's ability to employ personal resources as well as resources embedded in the materials themselves to make productive changes to curriculum materials" (Brown, 2009)
• Some teachers make unproductive changes to curriculum or fail to make needed changes (Collopy, 2003; Pintó, 2005; Remillard, 2005; Schneider & Krajcik, 2002; Schwarz et al., 2008)
• Teaching elementary science is challenging due to
  • Teachers' limited subject matter knowledge (Abell, 2007; Anderson & Mitchener, 1994; Davis, Petish, & Smithey, 2006) and scientific inquiry (e.g., Bryan, 2003)
  • A lack of confidence teaching science (Cochran & Jones, 1998)
  • Limited access to resources (e.g., Peers, Diezmann, & Watters, 2003)
  • Limited time for teaching science in U.S. schools (Marx & Harris, 2006; Morton & Dalton, 2007) and in other countries (e.g., Appleton, 2007; Fensham, 2008; Gustafson, Guilbert, & MacDonald, 2002)
• Educative curriculum materials are designed to promote both teacher and student learning (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Beyer & Davis, 2009a; Brown, 2009; Davis & Krajcik, 2005; Forbes & Davis, 2008; Schneider & Krajcik, 2002)
• Narratives are short accounts of a lesson
  • Can incorporate suggestions for making lessons student-directed (Davis, Smithey, & Petish, 2004)
  • Situating supports in teachers' accounts of the lesson may be useful (Putnam & Borko, 2000)
  • Can help teachers attend to student thinking (Dietz & Davis, 2009) and adopt instructional strategies (Beyer & Davis, 2009b)

Also

APA

Davis, E. A., Beyer, C., Forbes, C. T., & Stevens, S. (2011). Understanding pedagogical design capacity through teachers' narratives. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(4), 797–810. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2011.01.005

BibTeX

@article{Davis2011,
author = {Davis, Elizabeth A. and Beyer, Carrie and Forbes, Cory T. and Stevens, Shawn},
doi = {10.1016/j.tate.2011.01.005},
journal = {Teaching and Teacher Education},
keywords = {Curriculum materials,Educative curriculum materials,Elementary school teachers,Elementary science},
number = {4},
pages = {797--810},
title = {{Understanding pedagogical design capacity through teachers' narratives}},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X11000060},
volume = {27},
year = {2011}
}