Utilizing Equity-Oriented Pedagogy To Support Teacher Learning
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Jackson, Jennifer
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 15, 2024
- Committee Members:
- Scott Mcdonald, Program Head/Chair
Tiffany Nyachae, Major Field Member
Scott Mcdonald, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Tanner Vea, Outside Unit & Field Member
Kathleen Hill, Major Field Member - Keywords:
- Equity
Professional learning
Professional vision
Teacher identity - Abstract:
- Using qualitative methods, this study seeks to understand the impact of a professional learning environment on teacher learning to examine communication that occurs between the teacher participants, specifically when thinking about ways to support students in the classroom. The problem that this study addresses is the lack of diversity in the teacher education workforce vs. the demographic shift amongst the student population (Butler et al., 2014). Right now, the student population across the nation is becoming more diverse, which has created a cultural mismatch amongst the teachers and students within our schools. Due to this mismatch, teachers need to be better prepared to teach Black and Brown students effectively. To do this, teachers need to receive professional development on how to implement equity-oriented pedagogy (Bang et al., 2017; Gay, 2002; Tzou et al., 2021). Teachers also need to immerse themselves in identity work. By exploring their own identity, teachers can examine how their identity may influence their teaching style in the classroom thus finding potential ways to impact their approach for addressing issues of equity within the classroom. This research study focuses on an Earth and Space Science (ESS) Professional Development (PD) that took place during the summer of 2022. While the PD presented geoscience content (e.g., rock genesis and formation), teacher participants were introduced to equity-oriented pedagogy and challenged to consider supportive methods for teaching marginalized students. Various data sources were collected which included, but were not limited to, video recordings, audio recordings, and teacher artifacts. A year after the PD, the teacher participants were interviewed via Zoom to consider their overall perception of the PD as well as how they were considering issues of equity as a science teacher. By applying the theory of Professional Vision (Goodwin, 1994), this study presents findings for how teachers negotiated the topic of equity. Findings show how the features of the PD impacted how the teachers were thinking about equity, specifically using material representations to inform their thinking. In addition, the findings show how features of the PD supported teachers’ understanding for how to engage in supportive questioning while considering language support for their students. Video segments were coded that reflected the following actions from the professional vision framework: highlighting, coding, and the use of material representations. For context, the act of highlighting refers to how teachers are attending to an idea, coding refers to the act of meaning making, and the use of material representations involves making sense of an object while engaging in highlighting and coding. Content codes were applied to the video segments to capture occurrences of teachers discussing inclusive learning and equity. Additionally, information gathered from the teacher interviews served as supplementary data to determine areas of connection between the interview and the video data gathered from the professional development.