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Cogenerative dialogues as spaces for teacher, student, and public learning: a design investigation into two instantiations
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i
COGENERATIVE DIALOGUES AS SPACES FOR TEACHER, STUDENT, AND PUBLIC
LEARNING: A DESIGN INVESTIGATION INTO TWO INSTANTIATIONS
By
John Luciano Beltramo
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(URBAN EDUCATION POLICY)
August 2016
Copyright 2016 John Luciano Beltramo
ii
Acknowledgements
This dissertation is guided in large part by concepts from sociocultural learning theory,
particularly its assumption that individuals learn and develop only through interaction with and
membership in various communities of practice—groups of individuals whose collective work
contributes to a shared experience. Thus, I find it appropriate to acknowledge those communities
of practice who’ve together pushed my learning and development—as a student, teacher, teacher
educator, and human being—to the point that I could finish my endeavors in graduate school.
I’d first like to express my gratitude to members of my dissertation committee, Dr.
Brendesha Tynes and Dr. Terry Cooper, for their keen suggestions for how I might hone my
dissertation research and for their generosity of time in reviewing this work over the past two
years. Thanks should be extended as well to the Graduate School of USC, who supplied me with
the Dissertation Completion Fellowship that funded this research.
I should also acknowledge the two school communities who made this dissertation
research possible, especially the exceptional teachers and students with whom I partnered to
conduct the study. I learned so much from Lorena and Ellen, as I have attempted to articulate in
this report, but the things that most stand out are their examples of deep care for and commitment
to students. I hope this dissertation underscores such characteristics of Lorena and Ellen—
characteristics that I will always admire and draw from for guidance in my future work. I also
want to thank the students who took part in this research; their comments and questions during
our time together contributed to my evolving understandings of “good” teaching and student
agency in schools.
Additionally, I’d like to share my appreciation for the community of USC graduate
students who’ve supported me while at USC: Joyce Gomez and Kathryn Struthers, thank you for
iii
partnering with me on our several writing projects and most especially for your willingness to
review the chapters here. Elena Son, thank you for your friendship and continually positive
spirit, from our first days in the program to our respective graduations.
A thousand thank-yous go to my faculty mentors at USC, especially Lauren Anderson,
for helping me recognize both the seriousness and levity of being a teacher educator/ researcher;
Paula Carbone, for allowing me to learn about and rehearse the practices of university-based
teacher education (while picking me up as I faltered on countless occasions during our classes
together); and, of course, my advisor Jamy Stillman, for her patience, acceptance, guidance, and
humor whiling teaching me what it means to live, write, research, and teach as an equity-oriented
scholar of teacher education.
Recognition also goes out to the people who most shaped me as a middle school teacher
and who helped me fall in love with teaching even before I began my program at USC: to Sr.
Judy Flahavan, for her humble and inspiring daily leadership; to Citlalic Federico and Antonio
Felix, for introducing me to culturally relevant and engaging teaching, and for being my friends
and colleagues for many years; and to the students of Nativity School, for accepting me into the
school community, for putting up with my many flaws as a teacher, and for helping me to grow
along with you in class.
Finally, I’d like to thank my first and forever community of practice—my family. To
those members who’ve moved on, especially my grandparents, I’m sorry I couldn’t have finished
this and shared it with you years earlier, but I hope you know the part you’ve played in it. To my
extended family, especially my brothers and sisters, as the people who’ve had to watch me my
entire life, you know that each step I took behind you was yours first, and so the same is even in
this work. To my parents, you’re my first teachers, you’re my best teachers. You taught me how
iv
to think and how to express myself, but I’m not currently, nor ever will be, capable of expressing
in words written or spoken my infinite and profound appreciation for everything you’ve done to
get me here, as a teacher and as a person. And to Jenn and Savannah, every day you teach me
about love, it’s a lesson I want to keep learning forever, and I think it’s the central lesson of what
we’ve tried to write here together.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................v
LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................................ix
CHAPTER 1 – Introduction ...........................................................................................................1
1.1 Learning about Students and Developing More Equitable, Student-centered Teaching ......1
1.2 Learning within and through Cogenerative Dialogues .........................................................4
Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Teacher Learning ..............................................5
Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Student Learning through Expanded Agency
and Participation .............................................................................................................7
Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for the Emergence of Collectivist Forms of
Accountability ................................................................................................................8
1.3 Aims of Dissertation Research .............................................................................................10
1.4 Methods of Dissertation Research ........................................................................................12
1.5 Three Papers of Dissertation ................................................................................................17
Summary of First Paper: Developing Adaptive Teaching Practices through
Participation in Cogenerative Dialogues ........................................................................17
Summary of Second Paper: ¡Con Ganas! Fostering Latina Students’ Active
Participation in Science Classrooms through Their Involvement in Cogenerative
Dialogues ........................................................................................................................20
Summary of Third Paper: Developing Mutual Accountability between Teachers and
Students through Participation in Cogenerative Dialogues ............................................22
1.6 Situating These Stories in the Discourse of Equity in Teaching and Teacher
Education ....................................................................................................................................25
CHAPTER 2 – Developing Adaptive Teaching Practices through Participation in
Cogenerative Dialogues ...................................................................................................................27
2.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................27
2.2 Sociocultural Learning and Adaptive Teaching ...................................................................32
2.3 Learning about Students through the ‘Reflective Contract’ of Cogenerative
Dialogues ..............................................................................................................................34
2.4 Methodology ........................................................................................................................36
Data Collection and Analysis .........................................................................................37
2.5 Findings ................................................................................................................................41
Metalogue A: Using Cogenerative Dialogues to Inform Teaching within a Lab
Dissection .......................................................................................................................41
Relevant student information revealed within the dialogue ...............................42
Vignette from following instructional period .....................................................43
Analysis of adaptive teaching practices captured in first vignette .....................45
Metalogue B: Using Cogenerative Dialogues to Inform Presentations of Student
Inquiry ............................................................................................................................46
Relevant student information revealed within the dialogue ...............................47
vi
Vignette from following instructional period .....................................................48
Analysis of adaptive teaching practices captured in second vignette ................48
Metalogue C: Using Cogenerative Dialogues to Inform Facilitation of Class
Discussions .....................................................................................................................49
Relevant student information revealed within the dialogue ...............................50
Vignette from following instructional period .....................................................51
Analysis of adaptive teaching practices captured in third vignette ....................53
2.6 Discussion ............................................................................................................................54
Learning about Students through Participation in Cogenerative Dialogues ..................55
Student learning needs ........................................................................................55
Student social needs ...........................................................................................56
Student interests and questions ...........................................................................56
Learning how to collaborate with students .........................................................57
Learning what ‘works’ .......................................................................................57
Learning about students as individuals ..............................................................58
Leveraging New Knowledge about Students through Adaptive Teaching ....................59
Supporting the Dimensions of Adaptive Expertise ........................................................60
Efficiency ...........................................................................................................60
Innovation ...........................................................................................................60
Affect ..................................................................................................................61
Expanding Teaching Practices through Reflective Contract and Open Theory .............62
Missed Opportunities and Barriers to Adaptiveness ......................................................63
2.7 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................65
CHAPTER 3 – ¡Con Ganas! Fostering Latina Students’ Active Participation in Science
Classrooms through Their Involvement in Cogenerative Dialogues ..........................................70
3.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................70
3.2 Review of Literature .............................................................................................................71
3.3 Sociocultural Perspective on Participation, Learning, and Identity .....................................74
3.4 Meaningful Participation through Educación ......................................................................76
3.5 Cogenerative Dialogues as Supports for Active Participation .............................................78
3.6 Methodology ........................................................................................................................79
Data Analysis .................................................................................................................82
3.7 Finding A: Parallel Expansion of Participation across Dialogues and Classroom
Activities ....................................................................................................................................84
Early Participation within Cogenerative Dialogues and the Anatomy Classroom ........84
Beginning Development of Participation across Dialogue and Classroom
Activities ........................................................................................................................87
Active Participation and Leadership toward Conclusion of Dialogues .........................91
Plateauing participation for male students .........................................................93
3.8 Finding B: Connections and Associations between Expanded Participation in Both
Contexts ......................................................................................................................................98
Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Fostering Community .......................................98
Teacher-student engagements ............................................................................99
Engagements and shared tools among student members ...................................101
Agency and collaboratively shaping student-centered classroom activities ......102
vii
Cogenerative Dialogues as Scaffolds for Expanding In-class Participation ..................104
Safe spaces for risk-taking in new forms of participation ..................................104
Confidence and New Science Identities .........................................................................106
3.9 Discussion ............................................................................................................................107
Cultivating a Spirit of Educación ...................................................................................109
Care ....................................................................................................................109
Confianza, co-intentional teaching, and personalismo ......................................110
Cogenerative Dialogues as Vehicles for Transcaring ....................................................111
Identity and Learning through Expanded Participation .................................................112
3.10 Conclusion: Cogenerative Dialogues as a Culturally Responsive Tool for Science
Teaching .....................................................................................................................................113
CHAPTER 4 – Being ‘Faithful to Each Other’: Developing Mutual Accountability between
Teachers and Students through Participation in Cogenerative Dialogues .................................119
4.1 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................119
4.2 A Typology of Accountability Structures in Education .......................................................121
Challenges Associated with Current Types of Accountability ......................................123
Mutual Accountability ....................................................................................................125
4.3 Learning Theory and Mutual Accountability in Education ..................................................127
Cogenerative Dialogues .................................................................................................129
4.4 Methodology ........................................................................................................................131
Framing the Cases ..........................................................................................................131
Data Collection ...............................................................................................................132
Description of Data Analysis Procedures .......................................................................133
Discussion of Trustworthiness .......................................................................................134
4.5 Findings ................................................................................................................................135
Responsiveness ...............................................................................................................135
Eliciting student perspectives on teaching .........................................................136
Sharing teacher reflections .................................................................................137
Developing intersubjectivity and perspective-taking .........................................138
Problem identification ........................................................................................140
Constraints within the responsiveness found among the dialogues ...................142
Responsibility .................................................................................................................143
Reviewing content ..............................................................................................143
Negotiating solutions ..........................................................................................144
Constraints on the responsibility found within the dialogues ............................146
Report and Review .........................................................................................................147
Encouraging follow-through ..............................................................................148
Responsive changes ............................................................................................149
Opportunities for reflection ................................................................................150
Constraints within the report and review found among the dialogues ...............151
Relationships ..................................................................................................................153
4.6 Discussion ............................................................................................................................154
Principles of Learning, Agentive Shifts, Trust, and Reciprocity ...................................155
Advantageous Conditions of Proximity, Informality, and Recursion ............................157
Constraints on the Mutual Accountability Emerging from Cogenerative Dialogues ....158
viii
4.7 Conclusion: Facilitating Space for Affective Labor of Teaching ........................................160
CHAPTER 5 – Conclusion: Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Teacher, Student, and
Public Learning ................................................................................................................................177
5.1 Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Teacher Learning ....................................................177
5.2 Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Student Learning .....................................................178
5.3 Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Public Learning .......................................................179
Policy Implications .........................................................................................................179
Preparation for Public Life .............................................................................................181
5.4 Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Challenging Inequity ..............................................181
5.5 Limitations and Directions for Future Research ..................................................................182
REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................187
ix
LIST OF TABLES
CHAPTER 1
Table 1.1 Teacher Participant Demographics, Experience, and School Information ...........14
CHAPTER 2
Table 2.1 Teacher Participant Demographics, Experience, and School Information ...........36
Table 2.2 List of Student Participants at Each Site ...............................................................37
Table 2.3 Cogenerative Dialogue Transcript Excerpt about Lab Dissection (Lorena) .........41
Table 2.4 Cogenerative Dialogue Transcript Excerpt about Student Presentations
(Lorena) .................................................................................................................46
Table 2.5 Cogenerative Dialogue Transcript Excerpt about Class Discussions (Ellen) .......49
Appendix 2A Examples of Codes Applied in Cycle 1 of Data Analysis: Analysis of Student
Information Gleaned from Cogenerative Dialogue Transcripts ............................68
Appendix 2B Examples of Codes Applied in Cycle 2 of Data Analysis: Analysis of Adaptive
Teaching Moments Found in Field Notes and Videotapes of Classroom
Instruction .............................................................................................................69
CHAPTER 3
Table 3.1 Teacher Participant Demographics, Experience, and School Information ...........79
Table 3.2 Student Participants at Each Site...........................................................................80
Appendix 3A Matrix Excerpts of Coded Data from Cogenerative Dialogue Observations ........115
Appendix 3B Matrix Excerpts of Coded Data from Classroom Observations and
Videotapes .............................................................................................................116
Appendix 3C Examples of Data Coding Across First Three Rounds of Analysis ......................118
x
CHAPTER 4
Table 4.1 Teacher Participant Demographics, Experience, and School Information ...........132
Table 4.2 List of Student Participants at Each Site ...............................................................133
Appendix 4A Examples of Codes Applied in Data Analysis ......................................................162
Appendix 4B Suggestions for Teaching, Environment, and/or Curriculum Improvements –
Lorena’s Cogenerative Dialogue...........................................................................163
Appendix 4C Suggestions for Teaching, Environment, and/or Curriculum Improvements –
Ellen’s Cogenerative Dialogue .............................................................................171
1
CHAPTER 1 - Introduction
1.1 Learning about Students and Developing More Equitable Student-centered Teaching
For teachers, knowing one’s students is essential for good teaching, even in the most
privileged of educational settings. To locate what students find culturally relevant and worthy of
learning, teachers need insight into the cultural practices and interests of their pupils (Banks et
al., 2005; Gay, 2000). Because learning is interconnected with identity, teachers must gain
access to how students see themselves in relation to a subject area content (Aschbacher, Li, &
Roth, 2010). Moreover, helping students make sense of material requires teachers to be familiar
with, leverage, and develop students’ linguistic practices, ways of knowing, and funds of
knowledge (Gonzales & Moll, 2002; Hammerness et al., 2005; Stillman, Anderson, & Struthers,
2014). Such a deep understanding of students is built most readily and in parallel with
developing meaningful relationships, and thus can bring with it a sense of mutual care and
support that fosters learning (Nodding, 1988).
Knowing one’s students in the urban schooling context of today, however, takes on even
more of an ethical imperative, given the lack of equitable learning opportunities facing so many
students from historically marginalized communities. Schools serving economically
disadvantaged children and youths of color often provide fewer opportunities for robust learning,
and frequently report lower levels of student achievement and graduation rates (NCES, 2012),
paired with reports of student disengagement (Ream & Rumberger, 2008) and lack of active
participation (Parker, 2015). These educational conditions and results stand in stark contrast to
those afforded to more privileged students from middle-class backgrounds (Kao & Thompson,
2003). In such a time of educational injustice for so many, students from historically
marginalized communities deserve teachers who understand them, as both individuals with
2
unique gifts, needs and perspectives, as well as members of communities with particular cultural
practices, sources of knowledge, and ways of knowing (Obidah & Howard, 2005).
However, for a number of historical, cultural, economic, and political reasons (Oakes &
Rodgers, 2006; Stanton-Salazar, 1997; Tyack, 1974), students from diverse households often
receive “assimilationist” instruction (Ladson-Billings, 2009)—teaching that ignores and fails to
respond to who they are, what they value and do, and who they want to be. This approach to
classroom instruction is reflected in prescribed and/or uniform curriculum and puts little
emphasis on differentiating teaching in response to students’ learning needs or cultural resources
(Obidah & Howard, 2005). Assimilationist teaching also tends to manifest in distant, formal,
and/or hierarchical teacher-student relationships (Ladson-Billings, 2009). Assimilationist
classrooms emphasize standardized notions of achievement and individualistic, competitive
success toward mainstream goals of escaping urban communities and attaining status and wealth
(Bartolomé & Trueba, 2000). When students, particularly those from marginalized communities,
fail to thrive in this type of environment, teachers who undertake an assimilationist approach find
solace in a belief that failure is inevitable, and even acceptable, for some students (Lee, 2001).
1
In contrast to assimilationist instruction, learner-centered teaching has been put forth as
an alternative approach that seeks to respond to the particular students found in a given
classroom. Moreover, studies demonstrate that instructional practices related to learner-centered
1
In discussing this assimilationist approach to instruction, it is critical to make two key points. First, while teachers themselves do play a role in
perpetuating assimilationist practices, I recognize that a host of sociopolitical factors have contributed to a current educational climate that applies
enormous economic and professional pressures on teachers to accept and adopt aspects of this instructional approach (Stillman, 2011). For
example, federal educational policies such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top seek to hold schools accountable for adopting standards-
based curriculum and demonstrating levels of student proficiency on standardized tests (Tanner, 2013). Many schools and districts, especially
those serving students from historically marginalized communities, have responded by cajoling teachers to carry out instructional practices that
center on preparing students for standardized tests rather than supporting teachers to adaptively respond to the funds of knowledge, learning
needs, and interests of students (Tanner, 2013; Valli & Chambliss, 2007). Thus, I acknowledge that traditional assimilationist approaches to
instruction are enacted in schools for a myriad of complex reasons, and importantly, my intent for describing these approaches is not to place
blame on teachers, but specifically to show how such teaching practices contribute to inequitable opportunities for learning. Second, scholars
(e.g. Ladson-Billings, 2009; Lee, 2001) recognize that assimilationist teaching represents an archetype of classroom instruction that relatively few
teachers exhibit in pure form, but more likely, one or several of these features appear (for reasons explained above) in the practices of many
teachers teaching students from historically marginalized communities. However, because literature describing elements of assimilationist
teaching often associates them with poor learning outcomes for such students (Ladson-Billings, 2009; Obidah & Howard, 2005), this archetype
serves an important function as a heuristic representation located at one end of a continuum of instructional approaches for students from
historically marginalized communities.
3
teaching have been especially effective in helping to close the “achievement gap” separating
historically marginalized student populations from their more socioeconomically privileged
peers (Cornelius-White, 2007; Reyes & Fletcher, 2003).
Interwoven within a learner-centered approach
2
to teaching are three overlapping
instructional traditions: constructivism, humanism, and equity pedagogy. With its focus on
student cognition, constructivism calls for instruction to build on students’ prior knowledge
through teacher-guided, project-based curriculum (Brooks, 1990). Humanism also stresses the
facilitator role for teachers, but puts greater emphasis on educating the “whole child” and
fostering student development of critical civic engagement (Sehr, 1997). Equity pedagogy adds
to this humanistic approach the call for instruction to respond to students’ cultural resources and
use these funds of knowledge (Gonzalez & Moll, 2002) – which are typically rendered invisible
by assimilationist approaches – to build bridges to and critique mainstream, more standardized
curriculum (Banks & Banks, 1995). Some scholarship on learner-center instruction has also
identified adaptive teaching as a critical piece of this pedagogical approach (Sawyer, 2004;
Vaughn & Parsons, 2013). Adaptive teaching emphasizes a teacher’s ability to improvise and
flexibly, creatively respond to students and their needs moment-by-moment in the classroom
(Hammerness et al., 2005; Lin, Schwartz, & Bransford, 2007).
In addition to knowledge of subject-specific instructional strategies and opportunities for
collaborative, ongoing, teacher-led professional development, literature on learner-centered,
adaptive teaching stresses that teachers undertaking this approach must have a keen
understanding of students, particularly their linguistic and cultural practices (Cornelius-White &
Harbaugh, 2010); learning, social, and affective needs (Weimar, 2013); funds of knowledge and
2
Like assimilationist instruction, learner-centered, adaptive teaching can be understood as an archetype that, while rare in its pure form, is an
ideal to be targeted by teachers. Thus, efforts toward this approach have the potential for offering quality instruction that facilitates learning for
students, especially those from historically marginalized communities.
4
ways of knowing (Reyes & Fletcher, 2003; Turner, 2011); and interests, aspirations, and
academic identities (Phillips, 2011). However, much of the research in preparing and developing
teachers for learner-centered, adaptive pedagogy has focused on helping teachers build their
pedagogical content knowledge and continually grow this knowledge through learning
communities (e.g., Little, 2002, 2003; Magnusson, S., Krajcik, J., & Borko, 1999; Van Driel,
Verloop, & de Vos, 1998). Less scholarly attention has been paid to the question of how
teachers can begin to develop their knowledge of students. Given the pedagogical importance of
knowing one’s students, and the ethical impetus today for learner-centered, adaptive teaching,
the following dissertation centers on cogenerative dialogues, a learning catalyst aimed at
developing teachers’ understanding of their students with the ultimate goal of promoting more
equitable learning opportunities in urban schools (Tobin & Roth, 2006).
In the section that follows, I introduce cogenerative dialogues by discussing their
examination in previous research, identifying gaps that exist within this literature, and framing
such scholarship from a sociocultural perspective on learning. I then situate this dissertation
within a conceptualization of cogenerative dialogues as spaces for teacher, student, and public
learning. Finally, I state the particular aims of this research.
1.2 Learning within and through Cogenerative Dialogues
In cogenerative dialogues, a teacher (typically at the middle or high school level) gathers
each week with a small group of her students outside of instructional hours to solicit their
feedback on her teaching and offer suggestions for the improvement of classroom learning
activities (Roth, Tobin, & Zimmerman, 2002). Participating students tend to represent the
variety of learners found in the classroom and often include individuals who have yet to
experience traditional notions of success in schools (Tobin, 2014). Within a dialogue, students
5
answer questions posed by the teacher, such as: What activities over the past week have helped
your learning and should be repeated in some form in the future? Which activities failed to
engage your interests and/or advance your learning? How can we improve on those activities, or
what kinds of learning opportunities should we try in their place? Here are some ideas for topics
and activities for next week’s classes; what are your initial thoughts about them? (Emdin, 2008).
To help generate conversation and provide more concrete reminders of classroom activities, the
teacher might also screen a short video clip of her teaching and ask students for general feedback
(Roth et al., 2002). As students comment on such videos and/or answer the teacher’s questions,
they are encouraged to respond to each other and justify their suggestions by relating them back
to their learning needs, preferences, and interests. For her part, the teacher typically probes
student responses for further details, takes notes on what students offer, and then concludes the
dialogue by reviewing these notes as a kind of ‘minutes’ of the meeting.
Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Teacher Learning
Much of the empirical research on cogenerative dialogues highlights their affordances in
helping teachers learn about their students’ cultural and linguistic practices (Beers, 2009). For
example, Beers (2005a, 2005b) and LaVan (2005a) suggest that cogenerative dialogues create
spaces for novice teachers, especially those unfamiliar with the community contexts of urban
schools, to learn about students’ lives outside of school and expectations for communication both
inside and outside the classroom. Other investigations demonstrate that cogenerative dialogues
serve as spaces for teachers to develop relationships and common understandings with their
students (LaVan, 2005b). In multiple studies, for instance, Emdin (2007a, 2007b, 2008) has
analyzed on his use of cogenerative dialogues as a chemistry teacher in a serving predominantly
African American students. In particular Emdin reports that, by engaging his students in these
6
dialogues, he was able to establish a classroom climate of communalism that fostered mutual
understanding among the members of his class (including himself).
From a sociocultural theoretical perspective, developing such knowledge of and
relationships with students is key for teachers in their development of effective learning
opportunities. Sociocultural theory proposes that individuals learn through engagement with
problems of cultural meaning and import (Rogoff, 2003). Thus, teachers seeking to create
meaningful learning events need a familiarity with those cultural practices that students engage
in outside of school and find valuable (Moje et al., 2004). Additionally, theorists from this
framework suggest that language is a central mediator of learning because it organizes and
provides the tools for thought and reflection (Vygotsky, 1980). Therefore, teachers must also
develop an understanding of students’ linguistic repertoires in order to plan instruction that
makes sense to students and their ways of knowing (Smagorinsky, 2012). Furthermore, a
sociocultural perspective on learning underscores the idea that learners build knowledge through
interaction with and guidance from a trusted, more advanced individual (Vygotsky, 1980). In
this sense, teachers seeking to guide students through a learning event must first establish in the
classroom the social connections and relationships that open students to learning (Smagorinsky,
2012).
Although research on cogenerative dialogues underscores their important affordances for
teacher learning, much of this literature focuses on the experiences of novice teachers and those
who are new arrivals to urban school contexts, particularly communities of African American
households located in the East Coast of the U.S. (e.g., Beers, 2005a; Emdin, 2007a). Fewer
investigations into cogenerative dialogues explore what veteran teachers and cultural insiders (or
teachers previously familiar with school contexts) can learn through their interaction with
7
students in cogenerative dialogues. Additionally, previous studies tend to emphasize how
cogenerative dialogues can mediate what teachers learn about students as members of particular
cultural communities (e.g., students’ cultural and linguistic practices outside of school), but little
attention has been paid to the knowledge of students as individuals (e.g., their learning needs,
preferences, and interests) that teachers might access by taking part in cogenerative dialogues.
Although helping new teachers gain familiarity with their students’ cultural practices is critical
for more equitable, learner-center teaching (Gay, 2000; Gonzales & Moll, 2002), scholars from a
sociocultural perspective also underscore the need for effective teaching to meet students’
individual needs. Sociocultural theory proposes that learners engage with questions that resonate
with their individual and authentic interests (Smagorinsky, 2012), and to facilitate their pursuit of
such knowledge, learners require individualized guidance, or scaffolding, that addresses their
particular learning, social, and affective needs (Rojas-Drummond & Mercer, 2003; Vygotsky,
1980). Given this importance of accessing students’ learning interests and needs, there exists an
opportunity for research to explore what teachers (particularly those who are experienced and/or
cultural insiders) could learn about students as individuals through participation in cogenerative
dialogues.
Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Student Learning through Expanded Agency and
Participation
Beyond being seen as catalysts for teacher learning, cogenerative dialogues have also
been conceptualized as spaces for students to develop knowledge through their expansion of
agency and engagement in the classroom. In several studies (e.g., Bayne, 2012; Emdin, 2010),
researchers briefly noted that students who engaged in cogenerative dialogues with their teachers
outside of instructional hours exhibited more active involvement within the classroom.
8
Additionally, students who collaborated with their teachers within cogenerative dialogues to
develop curriculum and plan instruction reported more ownership and control of their classroom
learning (Emdin, 2007a; Seiler, 2011). Such expansion of students’ participation and agency is
critical, both from a sociocultural perspective on learning and from a lens of educational equity.
Theorists note that, for students, ownership over and authorship of classroom events amplifies
the meaning they make and deepens the learning that results (Baxter-Magolda, 1999; Hodge,
Baxter-Magolda, & Hayes, 2009). Moreover, students from historically marginalized
communities have often been denied such agency in those classrooms dominated by
assimilationist teaching (Ladson-Billings, 2009), and thus scholars have called for learner-
centered, adaptive classrooms that create spaces (like cogenerative dialogues) for students to
share their voice and shape their learning opportunities (Apple & Beane, 1995).
Despite the importance of associating involvement in cogenerative dialogues with
increased classroom participation and agency, the research reviewed here only reports this as an
ancillary finding and provides little depth in its description or explanation. That is, important
questions remains as to what this student agency and active participation look like, the process
by which they develop, and perhaps most importantly, the conditions of cogenerative dialogues
that support such development. Thus, opportunities exist in further research on cogenerative
dialogues to explore in more depth how and in what ways these spaces foster an expansion of
student agency and participation.
Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for the Emergence of Collectivist Forms of Learning-
centered Accountability
In addition to conceptualizing cogenerative dialogues as catalysts for both teacher
learning and active student participation, research in this area has also examined such spaces as
9
fertile ground for new, alternative forms of teacher accountability in schools. In one of the
earliest investigations into cogenerative dialogues, Roth and Tobin (2001) explored
manifestations of teacher evaluation and accountability that emerged for novice and intern
teachers, who met with their cooperating teachers, university supervisors, and one or two
students from their classrooms in semiweekly cogenerative dialogues. The authors contrasted
this emerging instantiation of teacher accountability with those more traditional forms of
accountability, where typically an outside evaluator (i.e., an administrator) observes a singular,
“staged” teaching event, hands down a subjective score without input from others, and demands
growth through externally located professional development. On the other hand, cogenerative
dialogues—where teaching interns discuss their pedagogy with cooperating teachers, university
supervisors, and students—represent sites for more regular, authentic, and context-based
feedback, which can be put into practice by interns within the same setting in which it
originated—the classroom. Roth and Tobin conclude that cogenerative dialogues offer intern
teachers a learning-centered form of evaluation and accountability that engenders an ethos of
continual, meaningful growth through collective reflection, rather than a fear of possible
sanctions from hierarchical power structures.
A sociocultural perspective on learning proposes that such collectivist efforts at
accountability can indeed spur regular development for community members (Wenger, 1998).
However, a branch of sociocultural theory—cultural historical activity theory—suggests that any
type of collective endeavor—such as cogenerative dialogues or the accountability arising within
them—is mediated by important contextual factors like the local culture, history, and policies
surrounding schools (Engeström, 1998). These factors intersect with and influence what the
collective endeavor looks like and how it develops over time, and therefore should be studied in
10
conjunction with it (Sannino, Daniels, & Gutiérrez, 2009). While Roth and Tobin (2001) bring
important attention to the potential for collectivist forms of accountability to emerge from
cogenerative dialogues, their study downplays the mediation of contextual factors that likely help
shape the teacher learning that occurs within these spaces. Thus, an opportunity exists for
research to explore not simply teacher accountability forms that develop within cogenerative
dialogues, but also the surrounding contextual factors that can influence this development.
1.3 Aims of Dissertation Research
Taken together, the literature reviewed here portrays cogenerative dialogues as catalysts
for teachers to learn about their students, so that they might provide more learner-centered,
adaptive teaching in the classroom. Studies have also suggested that cogenerative dialogues can
contribute to educational equity in other ways as well, namely by affording students a chance to
expand their agency and participation, and by fostering new forms of teacher accountability
centered on communal support and learning. Yet within these three conceptualizations of
cogenerative dialogues—as spaces for teacher learning, student learning, and accountability
through collective learning—many questions still exist, thus creating opportunities for further
exploration into this potentially powerful learning catalyst. Given the current urgency for more
equitable learning opportunities in urban classrooms, however, I argue that such gaps in the
literature are more than simply research opportunities for the future, but rather, represent
directions of study that can and should be addressed today.
The dissertation reported here orients its attention in these particular directions.
Specifically, it:
11
Explores what veteran, cultural-insider teachers working in diverse high schools can learn
about their students, and how such teachers can leverage this new student knowledge to
engage in more equitable, adaptive teaching practices;
Examines the process and means by which involvement in cogenerative dialogues can
mediate the active participation of Latina students in high school science courses; and
Investigates the mutual accountability developing between teachers and students within
cogenerative dialogues, and to study how this form of accountability is mediated by
manifestations of other, more entrenched accountability policies found in schools today.
In the remainder of this chapter, I detail the methods I employed to conduct the research. I then
summarize the findings of three papers, which each adopt one of the aims identified above and
are presented in the proceeding chapters of this dissertation.
Before leaving this review of the extant literature and shifting attention to the
dissertation’s methods, I find it necessary to first discuss the ethical dimensions of research on
and practice of cogenerative dialogues. Scholars of cogenerative dialogues and other forms of
student voice research have identified several challenges and/or possible dangers that may arise
in these endeavors. First, when consulting with students (particularly those from historically
marginalized communities) about her/his classroom decisions, a teacher may (knowingly or
unconsciously) manipulate conversations or steer student comments so that the curricula and/or
instructional changes that are identified and agreed to in the dialogue reflect more the
standardized content and teaching that the teacher and/or school may desire and less the learning
opportunities and content that students actually need or seek out (Emdin & Lehner, 2006). Such
instances serve not only to reinforce assimilationist teaching practices, but also to enlist student
assent in validating them (Arnot & Reay, 2007). Additionally, a teacher may use the space of
12
student consultation such as cogenerative dialogues to effectively shut down student voice by
ignoring recommendations, or worse, retaliate against students who level criticism at his or her
teaching decisions (Fielding, 2004). To navigate these potential pitfalls, literature on student
voice recommends that researchers seek out teacher participants with the professional confidence
and dispositions necessary both to withstand and seek out student critiques as valuable moments
for reflection and growth (MacBeath, Frost, & Pedder, 2008; Rudduck & McIntyre, 2007).
Furthermore, scholars such as Roth, Tobin, and Zimmerman (2002) argue the importance of
providing pre-dialogue training for participants, as well as consensual norms of discussions, so
that students and teachers become more skillful in delivering and receiving critiques,
respectively, in ways that engender thoughtfulness, respect, and learning. Given these challenges
and corresponding recommendations, the methods section immediately following describes not
only my endeavors at data collection, but also my endeavors at maintaining ethical rigor through
(a) the intentional recruitment of caring, confident teacher participants and (b) my provision of
thorough preparation and ongoing guidance for all of my participants.
1.4 Methods of Dissertation Research
To begin exploring the teacher learning, student participation, and forms of
accountability mediated by cogenerative dialogues, I engaged in a design-research investigation
(Design-based Research Collective (DBRC), 2003) of these spaces beginning in the fall of 2014.
In my efforts at “intentional sampling” (Patton, 1990; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998), I recruited
high school teachers, who were recommended to me (by university-based teacher educators) for
their demonstration of particular dispositions deemed essential for participation in cogenerative
dialogues: an openness to professional growth, a deep respect for students in general, and the
level of confidence in his/her teaching and teacher identity necessary to sustain constructive
13
criticism from others. I also sought teachers who worked in urban school settings with students
from underprivileged Latino communities—students who historically have experienced
inequitable learning opportunities and have rarely been conferred by teachers about their
experiences in schools (Halx & Ortiz, 2011; Moreno & Gaytán, 2013). In particular, I recruited
teachers who had an emic perspective of their schools, that is, who had spent considerable time
in the communities surrounding their schools and demonstrated first-hand knowledge of the
cultural practices of students and their families. Finally, because much of the literature examines
the learning of novice teachers who engage in cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Beers, 2005a), I
sought the participation of experienced teachers, or those who are beyond the years of induction
and who have built up reserves of pedagogical knowledge that allow for experimentation,
consolidation, and mastery of teaching practices (Feiman-Nemser, 1991).
After meeting with multiple possible participants, I secured commitments from Ellen
Galván and Lorena Silva (all names pseudonyms), two veteran science teachers whose urban
charter high schools served almost exclusively students from low-income Latina/o households
(See Table 2.1). Ellen and Lorena shared multiple professional and personal characteristics that
offered this study special purchase. Both had been raised in the communities surrounding their
schools, and, as native Spanish speakers from Latino households, each shared the same ethnic
and linguistic backgrounds as the majority of their students. Thus, prior to the study, I
considered them cultural insiders
3
—teachers whose experiences have yet to be explored in
research on cogenerative dialogues. Furthermore, Lorena and Ellen each had taught in their
respective high schools for over ten years, and therefore likely had developed more pedagogical
and student knowledge than the majority of teachers highlighted in earlier scholarship on
3
Subsequent observations of and interviews with Ellen, Lorena, and their students confirmed this initial assumption. In nearly each of my
classroom observations, I documented moments when Ellen and Lorena code-switched between Spanish and English when working with
students, and also referenced student cultural practices when explaining new science concepts. Furthermore, student participants from both sites
commented in their interviews with me that they felt Ellen and Lorena had an intimate knowledge of students’ home lives.
14
cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Beers, 2005a). Perhaps most importantly, in my interactions with
Ellen and Lorena during the recruiting stage of this research, both teachers articulated strong,
confident professional identities, complemented by an equity-based philosophy of teaching and
an authentic care for their students. In these ways, Ellen and Lorena seemed to demonstrate the
dispositions essential for ethical enactment of cogenerative dialogues.
Table 1.1: Teacher Participant Demographics, Experience, and School Information
Teacher Gender Race/
ethnicity
Experience
in Teaching
(years)
High
School
School
Enrollment
Racial/ Ethnic
Makeup of
School
Enrollment
Percent
Qualifying for
Free/Reduced
Lunch
Ellen
Galván
Female Latina 13 Ambition
East
673 97% Latino, 3%
Black
97%
Lorena
Silva
Female Latina 11 Ambition
West
658 99% Latino, 1%
Black
92%
Working closely together, Ellen, Lorena, and I set a chronology for this project that fit
their academic calendars while allowing us to engage in the three stages of design research:
baseline data collection, intervention application, and comparative data collection (DBRC, 2003;
Reinking & Bradley, 2008). As part of the first stage, I collected baseline data at each school in
the weeks leading up to their winter break: I observed Ellen and Lorena teach across their five
class periods, conducted extensive formal interviews with them, and helped them determine
which particular class they would like to learn more about and involve in the dialogues. After
settling on one anatomy/physiology period at each site, the teachers and I explained the study to
and solicited student volunteers from those classes. I formally interviewed each student
participant—four from Lorena’s site and ten from Ellen’s.
As preparation for their participation in the dialogue, I met with the students from each
site every day afterschool for a week to teach them (and provide them spaces for practicing) how
to engage in dialogues. Early meetings focused on building rapport among the participants and
helping them learn several guidelines for delivering constructive criticisms. These guidelines
15
were derived from previous research on cogenerative dialogues (Roth, Tobin, & Zimmerman,
2002), and essentially called for each member to: (a) honestly state his/her experience of or
perspective on a learning event; (b) find and express compliments whenever possible; (c) begin
all comments with “I” statements (e.g., “I feel,” “I think,” etc.); (d) offer a suggestion aimed at
improving classroom learning; and (e) listen openly and actively to the comments of others.
During the third and fourth meetings, I screened for the students videos of my own classroom
teaching from my years as a middle school teacher. After viewing clips from the videos, I would
ask students to practice their developing skills in constructive criticism by soliciting their
feedback on the instruction they just watched. During the fifth and final meeting of preparation,
I invited the teacher from each site to join the students and myself in viewing and dialoguing
around a video clip of my classroom teaching. Across each of the five meetings, as a member of
the dialogue (a student, teacher, or myself) struggled to follow the guidelines of constructive
criticism, others in the group would offer immediate but supportive feedback for improving such
commentary. In these ways, the practice of offering constructive criticism itself became fodder
for future critique and dialogue.
Shortly after facilitating this week of participant training, I collaborated with the teacher
and students from each school to move our study into the second stage of design-research—the
enactment of the learning catalyst (Reinking & Bradley, 2008), or in this case, the cogenerative
dialogues. The participants from each school and myself gathered weekly to engage in a
cogenerative dialogue held afterschool. These dialogues—which typically ran 25-75 minutes in
length—occurred over sixteen consecutive weeks (excluding spring break) until mid-May, when
Ellen was required by her school to administer the California state life science tests for tenth
graders. While Lorena’s student group remained constant throughout the duration of the study,
16
Ellen’s students chose to split themselves up into two smaller groups, each of which took part in
eight cogenerative dialogues.
As a design researcher, I both participated in and collected data on each dialogue, which
was videotaped and described in my field notes (DBRC, 2003; Reinking & Bradley, 2008).
Early in the study, I was actively involved in the dialogues, often raising most of the questions
and directing many of the conversations. However, as the study progressed, and as students and
teachers took on more leadership roles in the group, I reduced my role, until ultimately I became
only a rare participant. Immediately following each dialogue, I would meet separately with the
teacher and student group to conduct debriefs (DBRC, 2003)—short, informal interviews in
which I asked the participants for their perceptions of the dialogues, as well as their insights into
any changes they noticed in classroom activities. These debriefs not only helped me identify
areas of instruction and learning to focus more closely on, but also gave me ideas for how to
refine the workings of the cogenerative dialogues themselves. For instance, in one debrief
toward the middle of the study, Lorena and I discussed how many of her students claimed to
have thought of a new suggestion for class improvement, only to have forgotten it during the
actual dialogue. In response, she suggested that I provide the participating students with pocket
notebooks in which they might record (and later present) their ideas for class improvements.
After consulting with the students from both sites about Lorena’s idea, I bought and distributed
the suggested notebooks, which several students used consistently for the remainder of the study.
Following each weekly dialogue, I observed (and videotaped) a block of instruction at
both sites in order to identify and examine (a) any instances in which student comments and/or
suggestions from a previous dialogue were responded to or taken up by Ellen or Lorena in their
teaching; and (b) any development in the participating students’ engagement in classroom
17
activities. When possible, I also conducted debriefs with the teacher and/or student participants
following teaching observations.
At the conclusion of the dialogues, the study moved into the third and final stage of
design research—the collection of comparative data (Reinking & Bradley, 2008). Here I
replicated my data collection efforts from the baseline stage by conducting in-depth, formal
interviews with each participant and observing a week’s worth of teaching at each site.
Throughout the study, but especially at this third stage, I also collected data via emails with the
teachers and some of the students, especially when I sought more detail and/or further
explanation of comments they had made in their final interviews with me.
1.5 Three Papers of Dissertation
Although I had begun exploring my data as I gathered it, I concentrated these efforts at
analysis once data collection effectively concluded in June of 2016. Early analysis focused
heavily on rereading, cleaning, and memoing around each piece of data. I then divided my
analysis endeavors among the research aims delineated above, which resulted essentially in three
respective studies. The particular analysis approach and resulting findings associated with each
aim were then written up and organized into a separate paper. The papers constitute the
following three chapters of this dissertation. Before I present those studies, however, I offer a
detailed abstract of each paper as a summary of the dissertation.
Summary of First Paper: Developing Adaptive Teaching Practices through Participation in
Cogenerative Dialogues
As mentioned earlier, the first aim of this research was to examine the kinds of student
information that veteran, cultural-insider teachers might be able to glean from cogenerative
dialogues, and how they might incorporate this new knowledge into their instructional decisions
18
through moments of “adaptive teaching” (Corno, 2008). Scholars of both teaching and learning
have for decades underscored the need for teachers to adapt their teaching and curriculum to the
particular students of their classrooms. Educators taking a sociocultural perspective on learning
have emphasized that teachers must flexibly respond to students’ individual learning and social
needs, areas of personal experience and interest, and zones of proximal development
(Smagorinsky, 2011; Vygotsky, 1980). Moreover, scholars of critical education have argued
that, for too long, students from historically marginalized communities have been subject to
“assimilationist teaching” (Ladson-Billings, 2009), which unfairly demands that students adjust
to the teaching preferences of teachers and standardized curriculum of school districts (Obidah &
Howard. 2005). In contrast, such researchers have called for teachers to adapt their teaching
practices to fit the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of students, so as to create more
meaningful and relevant opportunities for learning (Gay, 2002; Sleeter, 2012). Furthermore,
areas of teaching gaining increased attention and traction in research today—particularly,
ambitious teaching (Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2011)—emphasize the importance for
teachers to skillfully adapt “high-leverage” practices to the specific contexts and students of their
classrooms (Lampert et al., 2013).
Thus, scholars representing various areas of study (i.e., learning theory, educational
equity, and pedagogy) have suggested that adaptive teaching is essential for establishing
effective learning opportunities for students, especially those from historically marginalized
communities. Yet, few studies explore particular methods that can help teachers develop such
adaptive practices. In response, the first paper of this dissertation answers two research
questions: By engaging in cogenerative dialogues, what types of information can teachers like
19
Ellen and Lorena learn about their students? How do such teachers then undertake adaptive
teaching practices that leverage this new knowledge of students?
Findings indicated that, unlike the novice teachers of previous cogenerative dialogue
studies, who tended to report learning mostly about students’ cultural capital (e.g., Beers, 2005a,
2005b), Ellen and Lorena gained access to a host of individual student information, including
insights into students’ learning, affective and social needs, as well as their authentic questions
about science. In addition to learning how to adjust their teaching to meet student needs and
interests, the teachers also learned “what worked”—that is, they learned about the particular
activities already in place in their classrooms which the students perceived as particularly
supportive of their learning (and as worthy of repetition in the future). More than learning about
their students, Ellen and Lorena also learned how to interact with their students in new ways,
specifically around solving problems that emerged in the classroom.
Using this new knowledge of their students, Lorena and Ellen engaged in three types of
adaptive teaching: They displayed moments of micro-adaptiveness (Corno, 2008), where the
teachers employed knowledge of students (gained during cogenerative dialogues) to change
teaching plans in the moment of instruction. They demonstrated macro-adaptiveness (Corno,
2008), where they used information students shared during the dialogues to plan new aspects of
lessons prior to the act of teaching. Finally, Ellen and Lorena engaged in “responsive guidance”
(Hammer, Goldberg, & Fargason, 2012), a type of adaptive teaching that allows instruction to be
driven by the authentic questions of students, which were often shared during cogenerative
dialogues. However, instances also occurred when important pieces of student information
shared during dialogues went undiscovered and thus underutilized. Moreover, although adapting
to student individual needs and preferences helped move teachers toward more learner-centered
20
practices in general, the participating teachers did not necessarily eliminate all assimilationist
elements of their teaching, such as an adherence to curriculum standards. For this reason, I
conclude that if cogenerative dialogues are to be an especially effective tool for mediating
growth toward more adaptive and equitable teaching, the data produced in these spaces should be
examined by multiple, critical colleagues. The hope is that such professional peers can better
extract the more subtle but still important pieces of information that students reveal about
themselves in such conversations, while also helping colleagues like Ellen or Lorena brainstorm
new ideas for learner-centered teaching that leverages this student information.
Summary of Second Paper: ¡Con Ganas! Fostering Latina Students’ Active Participation
in Science Classrooms through Their Involvement in Cogenerative Dialogues
Literature on science education offers numerous studies highlighting the disengagement
and reluctant participation of students from urban schools, particularly female and Latino/a
students (Lee, Robinson, & Sebastian, 2012; Swanson, Bianchini, & Lee, 2014; Uekawa,
Borman, & Lee, 2007). Such research suggests that uninterest and nonparticipation in science
classes are often results of learning contexts that fail to incorporate students’ discourses and
cultural repertoires into classroom teaching and curriculum (Aschbacher, Li, & Roth, 2010;
Emdin, 2010; McLaughlin, 2014). In contrast, several studies into the experiences of student
members of cogenerative dialogues have reported patterns of more “active participation”
(Emdin, 2010) within science classrooms, particularly for African American students who took
part in the dialogues afterschool (e.g., Bayne, 2012). Thus, I contend that the potential exists for
cogenerative dialogues to mediate the active science participation of Latina students, as well.
However, few (if any) studies have explored this possibility. Moreover, the extant literature
21
remains silent on the process and means by which cogenerative dialogues may facilitate more
active participation among any students.
In response to the need for this research, I focused my second study of this dissertation on
the potential development of active participation for the Latina students who engaged in
cogenerative dialogues with Ellen and Lorena. In particular, I sought to answers to the following
questions: In what ways and to what extent (if any) did the active participation of Latina students
develop within both the cogenerative dialogues themselves and the anatomy classroom? What
conditions of the cogenerative dialogues likely mediated any change in participation exhibited by
the Latina student members?
Analysis of the data indicated that the focal students’ active participation in classroom
activities developed in parallel to their expanded involvement within the cogenerative dialogues.
While early observations demonstrated only superficial (or pseudo) participation (McLaughlin,
2014) of the focal students in both settings, by the midpoint of the study, each of the five female
student members began exploring new forms of participation in the dialogues, as well as in the
anatomy classroom. They more frequently shared their opinions when teachers asked questions,
raised their own queries, and offered new ideas and/or topics for discussion, often using the
discourse of science to demonstrate their expanding knowledge in the content area. By the end
of data collection, each of the female participants began taking on leadership roles in the
dialogues and in small-group projects in class; some even emerged as leaders during whole-class
discussions and debates. It was also noticed at Ellen’s site that as the participation of female
dialogue members expanded, the participation of some male students plateaued or contracted.
Further analysis revealed that the cogenerative dialogues mediated the expanded
participation of the female student members in several ways. First, the dialogues helped form
22
trusted, caring relationships between the teachers and female students, as well as among the
female members themselves. These focal students seemed to support one another’s participation
by responding to each other’s comments (in the dialogues and in class) and by seeking out
opportunities to work with and involve each other in small-group activities. The community that
formed through these relationships likely helped establish a space for educación (Valenzuela,
1999) among the Latina students and their teacher—a spirit which resonated with their cultural
expectations of schooling and provided a strong level of moral support in the expansion of their
active in-class participation (Un, 2013). Second, the cogenerative dialogues served as crucial
scaffolds that pushed the female members to take risks and helped them rehearse new forms of
participation, which could be later transferred to the classroom. This form of transposable
scaffolding reflected “transcaring,” a recent concept developed in scholarship on Latina/o
education (García et al., 2012). In instances of transcaring, responsive educators find ways of
replicating within the classroom those learning supports that Latina/o students encounter and
utilize outside the classroom. Because the dialogues seemed to represent a manifestation of
transcaring, while also cultivating the trusted, caring relationships of educación, I argue in this
second paper that the cogenerative dialogues represent one example of the culturally responsive
teaching practices that researchers in urban science education have long called for (Aschbacher
et al., 2010; Nelson-Barber & Estrin, 1995).
Summary of Third Paper: Developing Mutual Accountability between Teachers and
Students through Participation in Cogenerative Dialogues
Although the first two studies highlight instances of learning within the micro-settings of
cogenerative dialogues and the anatomy classroom, the third paper of this dissertation research
adopts a broadened analytical lens and explores how the cogenerative dialogues—or more
23
specifically, the instances of mutual accountability that developed within them—were mediated
by the broader policy context permeating each site of the inquiry.
The respective schools at which Lorena and Ellen taught belonged to the same network,
Ambition Charter Schools (Ambition). Three years before this research, Ambition adopted a
new teacher evaluation and accountability system wherein teacher performance was assessed
primarily through formal observations conducted by administrators and student standardized test
scores. Teachers who received high performance reviews were eligible for “bonus pay,” while
those with low evaluation scores were put on probationary status and offered additional
(although somewhat limited) professional development. If teachers’ test scores did not improve
after a year of probation, their teaching contracts were not renewed. Ambition’s system of
teacher evaluation and accountability closely reflected a growing trend in other U.S. school
districts, where teacher retention and tenure were often tied narrowly to standardized tests scores
(Dworkin, 2009). Scholars of education policy have characterized this approach as “high-stakes,
neoliberal” accountability (Ryan, 2005; Ranson, 2003), and although it was instituted to spark
improved teaching, it has been linked to a number of detrimental, unintentional consequences,
including teacher burnout, demoralization, and deprofessionalization (Ruben, 2012; Santoro &
Morehouse, 2011).
The pervasiveness of this high-stakes, neoliberal discourse extended into the setting of
my research, when a few weeks into the study, Ellen and Lorena began to discuss the
cogenerative dialogues (without prompting) in terms related to accountability. The teachers also
began contrasting Ambition’s system of teacher evaluation—which conjured fear and anxiety in
themselves and their peers—with a different form of accountability that they seemed to be
experiencing with their cogenerative dialogue students—one that seemed to center on mutual
24
responsibility and development. Support for this observation can be found in previous research,
which identified cogenerative dialogues as potential sites for alternative forms of teacher
accountability to develop (Roth & Tobin, 2001).
This possibility raised by extant research, coupled with my participants’ in vivo
comparisons between Ambition’s accountability system and their experiences in the cogenerative
dialogues, compelled me to explore the nature of accountability that had developed among
members of the dialogues and how it differed from (and was mediated by) the high-stakes,
neoliberal accountability discourse that surrounded the Ambition Charter network. Specifically,
I sought answers to a final question of this dissertation: To what extent and in what ways (if any)
can alternative forms of accountability develop among teachers and students in cogenerative
dialogues ensconced in today’s climate of neoliberalism?
Analysis of the data revealed that a strong sense of mutual accountability (Brown, 2007;
Merrifield, 1999) seemed to emerge among the students and teacher at each site. This sense of
mutual accountability was manifest through an iterative process, or cycle, that consisted of three
stages (Henderson, Whitaker, & Altman-Sauer, 2003): responsiveness, where students and the
teacher exchanged perceptions of classroom activities and identified potential obstacles to
student learning; responsibility, where members of the dialogues proposed alternatives to current
learning events and created plans for enacting these new possibilities; and report-and-review,
where participants held one another to account for their involvement in and execution of the
previously agreed upon plans for classroom improvement. This cycle of mutual accountability
promoted between teachers and students the development of intersubjectivity (Rogoff, 1990); an
active, collaborative reflection on teaching and learning; and deeper buy-in and stronger levels of
commitment to improved classroom experiences for all parties. Despite these affordances, the
25
discourse of high-stakes and neoliberal accountability still seemed to exert an influence on and
constrain the extent to which mutual accountability developed among the cogenerative dialogue
members. For example, while student members of the dialogues continually advocated for more
inquiry-based learning opportunities, the teachers—especially Lorena—felt pressure to adhere to
the standardized curriculum of her district, which was tested (and enforced) through monthly
standardized exams. Thus, although cogenerative dialogues helped strengthen mutual
accountability between teachers and students—a form of accountability tied to learning but often
neglected by policymakers and school leaders (Ranson, 2003)—these spaces were subject to
many of the same tensions found in other studies of high-stakes, neoliberal teacher
accountability.
1.6 Situating These Studies in the Discourse of Equity in Teaching and Teacher Education
While the studies above are conceptualized and presented as distinct papers, I argue that
they remain form a cohesive dissertation in several respects: They each explore and examine
participant learning through a common catalyst—cogenerative dialogues; they stem from a
single, in-depth, design-research project; and they each adopt a situated, sociocultural theoretical
lens to understand the experience of teachers and students in these dialogues (Lave & Wenger,
1991; Rogoff, 1990; Vygotsky, 1980; Wenger, 1999). Perhaps most importantly, these papers
collectively address a central question of equity that confronts the field of teacher education
today: How can teachers develop responsive, adaptive teaching that can provide diverse students
with equitable opportunities for learning, while also withstanding (and perhaps pushing back
against) the neoliberal discourse engulfing U.S. education today? Ultimately, I argue that the
advancement of teacher education depends in great part on how scholars begin to tackle this
26
question, and I present the following chapters with hope that they can make at least a small
contribution to this enterprise.
27
CHAPTER 2 – Developing Adaptive Teaching Practices through Participation in
Cogenerative Dialogues
2.1 Introduction
In many classrooms today, and for a number of complex sociopolitical reasons (Heilig &
Darling-Hammond, 2008), students from historically marginalized communities are often faced
with and underserved by traditional, “assimilationist” (Ladson-Billings, 2009) teaching. Such a
pedagogical approach tends to manifest in didactic, teacher-centered instruction that delivers
heavily structured and standardized curriculum with little differentiation and/or relevance to the
learning needs, cultural repertoires, and individual interests of students (Obidah & Howard,
2005; Ladson-Billings, 2009). Students are expected to “assimilate” to the chosen instructional
approach of the teacher, rather than the teacher adapting instruction to the learning needs and
cultural-linguistic backgrounds of students. This traditional instruction has been associated with
inequitable learning opportunities, particularly in the science content areas (Emdin, 2007a; 2010;
Moreno & Gaytán, 2013; Parker, 2014), as measured by decades of lower achievement scores for
diverse students (McWhirter, Luginbuhl, & Brown, 2014).
In response, scholars have proposed more student-centered forms of teaching, a number
of which have been described over the last several decades (e.g., Apple & Beane, 1995; Shor &
Freire, 1987; hooks, 2003). Two such approaches gaining particular traction within research on
teaching and teacher education are ambitious teaching (Sun & van Es, 2015) and equity
pedagogy (Hand, 2012). Ambitious teaching has been conceptualized as seeking “to get students
of all racial, ethnic, class, and gender categories to understand important ideas, participate in the
discourses of the discipline, and solve authentic problems” (Windschitl, Thompson, & Braatan,
2011, p.1315). To enact ambitious teaching, teachers employ within each of their content areas a
28
set of “core practices” —those high-leverage teaching moves that stimulate deep student thought
and engagement around central concepts of the subject (Lampert et al., 2012). Examples of core
practices within the science content area include “Engaging Students in Investigations,
Facilitating Classroom Discourse, [and]… Connecting Science to its Applications” (Kloser,
2012, p.1). In their efforts to reach every student, however, teachers guided by this approach are
called to flexibly adapt these core practices to exigencies of their particular contexts “based on
continually assessing and learning about students as they teach” (Lampert, Boerst, & Graziani,
2011, p.1366).
Like ambitious teaching, equity pedagogy claims to “help students from diverse racial,
ethnic, and cultural groups attain the knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (Banks & Banks, 1995,
p.152) necessary for success in school. However, equity pedagogy also seeks to foster within
students a critical awareness of social injustice (Nasir & Hand, 2006), a capacity for reflection,
and a spirit for informed activism that utilizes their academic knowledge “to function effectively
within, and help create and perpetuate, a just, humane, and democratic society” (Banks & Banks,
1995, p.152). Toward this end, teachers guided by an equity approach to teaching often use
culturally relevant strategies and curriculum (Lee, 2011), along with cooperative learning
techniques, such as group inquiry projects, class debates and discussions, and authentic problem
solving activities (Boaler & Staples, 2008; Cohen et al., 1999; Hand, 2012). Yet scholars of
equity pedagogy point out that this approach to teaching is less defined by any one particular set
of teaching strategies; rather, it is characterized by how teachers responsively adapt to students,
so that their strategies promote learning, dialogue, and active engagement for every classroom
member (Banks & Banks, 1995).
29
These two frames for teaching share multiple commonalities: a stated concern for
learning among all students, an emphasis on student-centered strategies, and a dedication to
authentic, meaningful tasks. Perhaps most importantly, equity pedagogy and ambitious teaching
both call for teachers to take on thoughtfully responsive and individually adaptive practices.
That is, these approaches to teaching encourage teachers to adapt their instructional plans to
individuals’ learning preferences, interests, and aspirations, as well as to their social and
developmental needs. Although each frame promotes certain practices over others—i.e., core
practices for ambitious teaching and cooperative learning activities for equity pedagogy—both
emphasize that such practices do not represent singular universal strategies to be plugged
uniformly into any classroom at any moment. Rather, these practices must be responsively
adapted to address the particular social and learning needs, cultural repertoires, and interests of
students so as to afford each student an equitable opportunity for meaningful learning.
In this way, literature on ambitious teaching and equity pedagogy has highlighted the
importance of teachers’ adaptive expertise—their ability to respond to knowledge about students
by adapting curriculum and teaching practices to promote better learning (Hammerness et al.,
2005; Hatano & Oura, 2003; Lin et al., 2007). Supporting this claim are scholars of adaptive
teaching, who have argued for nearly a decade that all teachers, regardless of their particular
teaching frame, need to be adaptive for several reasons: First, the work of teaching is situated
within complex systems of ever-changing factors that require a constant nimbleness (Sawyer,
2004). Second, the ways students react to and make meaning of new knowledge and experiences
(e.g., ask questions, develop misconceptions) must be addressed but can never be perfectly
predicted and thus call for responsiveness (Hammerness et al., 2005). And finally, adaptive
teaching is especially necessary in certain contexts. For example, scholars have argued for more
30
adaptive teaching practices are particularly warranted in classrooms serving diverse students,
whose participation, ways of thinking, and cultural and linguistic backgrounds have been
historically neglected by traditional, assimilationist teaching (Mascarenhas et al., 2011). Another
context particularly deserving of adaptive teaching are science classrooms, where, scholars
argue, students should be encouraged to pose their own questions, and teachers must flexibly
respond ‘on the fly’ by adapting their lesson plans and goals to address those questions
(Hammer, Goldberg, & Fargason, 2012).
For teachers to develop this adaptiveness, literature suggests that they need a strong base
of pedagogical content knowledge, a vision of ideal teaching, and, especially, a deep
understanding of and familiarity with their students (Fairbanks et al., 2010). Most studies in
adaptive teaching explore how teachers learn about their students through content-based
assessments, in-class discussions, and observations of the learning environment (Parsons, 2012).
While certainly necessary, such methods are still somewhat limited in that they typically do not
involve direct dialogue with students and thus are challenged in uncovering less visible types of
information about students (e.g., their authentic questions and interests) that are so crucial to
student learning, equity pedagogy, and, subsequently, adaptive teaching (Graue et al., 2014).
Recent scholarship in science teacher education has explored an emergent tool for
helping gain greater understanding of their students—cogenerative dialogues (Tobin, 2014).
Conceptualized as a learning catalyst for educators (Siry & Lang, 2008), cogenerative dialogues
represent a space where teachers meet with representative focus groups of their students on a
regular (usually weekly) basis outside of instructional time to generate, deliberate on, and
evaluate ideas toward improved opportunities for student learning (Tobin & Roth, 2006). These
conversations typically center on questions such as: How have activities and the classroom
31
environment supported or impeded student learning? What improvements should be made to
bolster student interest, engagement, and learning? Here are some ideas for future lessons; in
what ways can they be made more meaningful and accessible to students? (Emdin, 2007b).
The investigation here reports on a design study in which I collaborated with two high
school science teachers to establish and facilitate cogenerative dialogues with their students.
Specifically, I use this study to explore (a) the types of knowledge about individual learners that
these teachers may have gained from their participation in cogenerative dialogues and (b) how
those teachers may have leveraged this new knowledge to engage in adaptive teaching practices.
Through the study, I seek to expand what is presently known about cogenerative dialogues and
their potential for mediating teacher learning about their students. I also aim to better understand
how cogenerative dialogues can help teachers develop the type of adaptive practices that are so
necessary for approaches like ambitious teaching and equity pedagogy, which reportedly seek
out more equitable learning opportunities for diverse students.
In the following sections, I draw on theory from sociocultural learning, adaptive teaching,
and previous literature on cogenerative dialogues to explain how teachers might gain the types of
knowledge necessary to respond adaptively to their students. I next explain the study’s design
research-based methodology by recounting my collaboration with participants in establishing
cogenerative dialogues and by describing the cycles of analysis I used to explore the data we
generated. In the findings section, I present three metalogues, or narratives, that each illustrate
what one of the teachers learned about her students in a given dialogue and then describe the
course of adaptive teaching she later took in response to this new knowledge. I conclude by
identifying the patterns of student information and adaptive practices that are illustrated in these
32
metalogues, and discuss implications of these findings for developing teachers for adaptive,
equitable, and ambitious teaching.
2.2 Sociocultural Learning and Adaptive Teaching
Within this study, I conceptualize both teacher and student development from a
sociocultural theoretical viewpoint, where learning is understood as a collaborative process of
engagement with and meaning making around problems and questions that hold personal and
cultural value (Rogoff, 2003). Scholars working from this perspective explain that learners
engage with materials and activities that make sense with and involve their cultural repertoires
(Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003), funds of knowledge (Gonzalez & Moll, 2002), and “ways of
knowing,” or Discourses (Gee, 2001); at the same time, because they navigate multiple social
groupings—which each may have differing and/or competing Discourses—learners develop their
own individual values and interests that also shape what they find meaningful and how they learn
(Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003). Thus, from a sociocultural lens, teachers seeking to optimize
student engagement and meaning making will acknowledge students as both members of
communities and as unique individuals by creating learning opportunities that resonate with
students’ home Discourses, as well as their individual interests, social needs, and learning
preferences (Boyd, Brock, & Moore, 2003; Mascarenhas et al., 2011).
Thoughtfully adaptive teaching aims for similar ends. I understand such adaptive
teaching as the practice of attending to how students make meaning of academic content, the
social context of the classroom, and the broader world outside of school; and then appropriately
using such student information to reshape teaching toward improved classroom learning
(Hammerness et al., 2005). Adaptive teaching is characterized by several markers (Tusting,
2009), including: continual assessment and response to the substance of student thinking
33
(Hammer et al., 2012); differentiated support of student learning in relation to their social,
emotional, and intellectual needs (Howell, 2012); inclusion of students’ prior experiences and
funds of knowledge within the classroom (Graue et al., 2014); development of caring, thoughtful
relationships with students (Dozier et al., 2011); and establishment of learning goals that reflect
student interests and authentic questions (Vaughn & Parsons, 2013).
Early scholars of adaptive teaching posited that these markers typically appear in one of
two forms: macro- and micro-adaptations. Macro-adaptations represent a teacher’s efforts
outside the classroom to recraft instructional and curricular plans in light of new information
about student learning. Micro-adaptations occur when teachers flexibly respond to students in
the moment of teaching by improvising from previously established plans (Corno, 2008; Randi
& Corno, 2005). More recently, others (e.g., Maskiewicz & Winters, 2012; Vaughn & Parsons,
2013) have proposed that adaptive teaching is also demonstrated through responsive guidance,
where a teacher “works first to engage students in the pursuit of [their authentic questions], and
then to support them in their pursuit in ways that afford progress toward canonical practices and
ideas” (Hammer et al., 2012, p.55). In this third form of adaptive teaching, a teacher seeks out
the queries of her students, and then adaptively constructs learning activities that address these
student interests and curiosities, eventually tying them back to broader academic concepts (Lee,
2003).
From these theoretical and pedagogical perspectives, teaching is as much about teacher
learning as it is student learning; that is, to deeply engage students in meaning making by
responsively adapting class content and activities, teachers need to constantly learn about who
their students are in that moment—what their students can and want to do with guidance from
their teacher, and how and what their students think about the content. Thus, adaptive
34
teaching—and the broader pedagogical approaches like ambitious teaching and equity pedagogy
that draw on it—requires teachers to learn continually about students. I propose here that
cogenerative dialogues offer special purchase in this regard.
2.3 Learning about Students through the ‘Reflective Contract’ of Cogenerative Dialogues
From a sociocultural perspective on teacher learning, I assume that teachers develop their
practices by collaborating with others in the profession around meaningful challenges and
problems (Little, 2003). At times, however, learning may stall in professional collaboratives
marked by strong cohesion, where a lack of diverse perspectives hinders the identification of
problems within a shared practice (Wenger, 1998). On such occasions, groups may benefit from
perspectives of those familiar with but just outside the profession. In his concept of the
“reflective contract”, Schön (1983) argues that a potentially powerful outside perspective can be
found in one’s clients, or those whom a professional serves. Implied in Schön’s theory is the
idea that, through consultation with students, teachers might gain valuable knowledge that would
otherwise be inaccessible to them—knowledge, for example, of how students are (or are not)
making meaning of the content, what students would like to explore, how students see
themselves in relation to the content (e.g., their “science” identity), etc. Such knowledge is
understood as essential not only for addressing the complex, nuanced problems that teachers
encounter daily in their practices (Hammerness et al., 2005), but also for developing more
responsive, equitable learning opportunities for students from historically marginalized
communities (Banks et al., 2005). Schön explains that learning through the reflective contract
occurs recursively, through a cycle of reflective inquiry that echoes a Deweyan process of
information gathering, planning, experimentation, and evaluation through further reflection.
Thus, this study conceptualizes cogenerative dialogues as one potential form of a reflective
35
contract, where teachers might recursively access the perspectives of, reflect with, and learn
about the Discourses, interests, and needs of their students, all with the aims of using this
information to make efforts toward adaptive classroom practices.
Research on cogenerative dialogues supports this conceptualization, highlighting several
affordances for teacher learning and adaptiveness in relation to students’ cultural repertoires and,
in particular, their expectations for classroom communication (Tobin, 2014). For example,
previous studies have explored how teachers engaging in cogenerative dialogues with their
students have adopted aspects of their students’ speaking styles (Beers, 2009; LaVan, 2005),
reformatted classroom discussions to reflect more authentic forms of student discussions, and
employed culturally relevant analogies to help explain science concepts (Emdin, 2011). In each
of these investigations, along with others (e.g., Roth & Tobin, 2005), researchers found that
while much of the insights that teachers gleaned came explicitly from the verbal exchanges
between dialogue members in the moments of a meeting, other information was inferred later, as
teachers had opportunities to reflect on the transcripts of individual dialogues and began to notice
broader patterns of students’ Discourses.
Of less focus in the scholarship on cogenerative dialogues, however, are the ways in
which this space can help reveal individual students’ learning preferences, social needs, and
authentic interests—each of which is critical for teachers’ efforts to create the engaging learning
opportunities called for by ambitious and equity approaches to teaching. Further, while several
studies briefly mention the possibility for using cogenerative dialogues to promote more
responsive teaching (e.g., Wassell & LaVan, 2009), little if any existing research has specifically
explored how teachers participating in cogenerative dialogues might use this new understanding
36
of student needs and interests to adopt more adaptive teaching practices. Thus, I seek to expand
the literature on cogenerative dialogues by exploring the following questions:
What types of student information is made available to teachers through their
participation in cogenerative dialogues?
In what ways and to what extent can teachers leverage what they learned about students
to engage in adaptive teaching?
2.4 Methodology
To address these questions, I utilized data collected from a design-based investigation
(Design-based Research Collaborative (DBRC), 2003; Reinking & Bradley, 2008) into two
teachers’ experiences with cogenerative dialogues. In selecting participants for this research, I
recruited two teachers, Ellen Galván and Lorena Silva (all names as pseudonyms), both of whom
worked in high schools serving the types of diverse student populations that often lack access to
equitable learning opportunities (Obidah & Howard, 2005). These teachers also both taught
science, a content area where adaptive teaching is especially necessary for facilitating inquiry-
based learning (Maskiewicz & Winters, 2012). Ellen and Lorena were veteran
anatomy/physiology teachers, with each having more than ten years of experience in the
classroom (see Table 2.1 for more information). Both teachers were known within their
respective schools as teacher leaders, who had served on numerous district and school
committees related to teaching, curriculum, and teacher development.
Table 2.1: Teacher Participant Demographics, Experience, and School Information
Teacher Gender Race/
ethnicity
Experience
in Teaching
(years)
High
School
School
Enrollment
Racial/ Ethnic
Makeup of
School
Enrollment
Percent
Qualifying for
Free/Reduced
Lunch
Ellen
Galván
Female Latina 13 Ambition
East
673 97% Latino, 3%
Black
97%
Lorena
Silva
Female Latina 11 Ambition
West
658 99% Latino, 1%
Black
92%
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Over the five-month design investigation, I worked closely with Lorena, Ellen, and their
participating student focus groups to enact, continually develop, and learn from the weekly
cogenerative dialogues we established (DBRC, 2003; Reinking & Bradley, 2008; Siry & Lang,
2010). At each site, the teacher selected one of her anatomy class periods about which she
wanted to learn more. After presenting information about cogenerative dialogues to the selected
class period at each site, I then invited any interested student to join our afterschool meetings.
Four students volunteered to participate within Lorena’s dialogues (see Table 2.2). At Ellen’s
site, ten students asked to participate, a number quite large for a single focus group. To ensure
meaningful opportunities for each of these members to converse with their teacher, we asked the
students to divide themselves into two groups, who would each participate in eight dialogues
(see Table 2.2). Similar to previous studies on cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Tobin, 2006), I
initially led most of the discussions among our dialogue members during our early meetings at
each site. As the teachers and students became increasingly more comfortable with facilitating
the conversations themselves, however, I scaled back my participation until I was a rare
contributor, preferring instead to listen as discussions more naturally unfolded among other
dialogue members.
Table 2.2: List of Student Participants at Each Site
Ambition East Weeks 1 – 8: Alejandro, José, Lina, Patricia, & Vanessa
(Ellen) Weeks 9 – 15: Angel, Dylan, Maria, Melvin, & Nelson
Ambition West Weeks 1 – 16: Antonio, Carlos, Emmy, & Mateo
(Lorena)
Data Collection and Analysis
To understand how the cogenerative dialogues operated as catalysts for Ellen and Lorena
to learn about their students and then enact more adaptive teaching practices, I collected robust
ethnographic data, closely following procedures of previous design research into cogenerative
dialogues (e.g., Siry & Lang, 2010). In each weekly cogenerative dialogue, I took field notes on,
38
videotaped, and transcribed discussions among the teacher and student members, so as to capture
moments when students shared information about themselves. To note how Ellen and Lorena
later changed their instruction in response to this student information, I observed and videotaped
weekly blocks of their anatomy classes, as well as an entire week’s instruction at each site at
both the front and back end of the study to collect baseline and comparative data. Finally I
explored how teachers and students made sense of the dialogues and any subsequent changes in
classroom teaching by conducting weekly informal ‘debriefs’ (DBRC, 2003; Reinking &
Bradley, 2008) immediately following every dialogue, as well as multiple formal interviews held
with each participant at several intervals throughout the study.
The data presented and explored in this study grew out of three cycles of analysis, with
each cycle undertaking a slightly different process. The first cycle of analysis centered on the
student information revealed within the cogenerative dialogues. Here I conducted several rounds
of coding on each cogenerative dialogue transcript (Saldaña, 2013; Miles & Huberman, 1994).
While rereading the transcripts, I located points within dialogues where students revealed
information about themselves, which typically occurred when students shared their perspectives
on, gave a suggestion around, or talked about their needs in relation to an aspect of teaching,
curriculum, and/or classroom environment. I then labeled each of these points with a description
of the information being offered. Using concepts from sociocultural learning theory, I grouped
these various points of student information into related categories, first those found across
transcripts from the same site, and later those identified across transcripts from both sites (see
Appendix 2A for examples of coding from this first cycle of analysis). This analysis revealed
several patterns—or types—of information about students that was made available through the
cogenerative dialogues at both schools (see Discussion section).
39
In the next cycle of analysis, I examined field notes and videotapes from the instructional
periods that followed each cogenerative dialogue to explore if and how individual pieces and
broader categories of student information were somehow leveraged in moments of adaptive
teaching. This analysis also consisted of several rounds of coding. I began by matching the
pieces and/or categories of information students revealed about themselves in a dialogue (or set
of dialogues) to one of Ellen and Lorena’s later teaching ‘moves’ that seemed to respond to this
student information. I labeled such instances as adaptive teaching practices, and gave them their
own individual descriptors. I next used theory on adaptive teaching to classify these instances
into several categories, first those emerging within each teacher’s classroom and then those
found across both classrooms (see Appendix 2B for examples of codes used in each round of
analysis). This analysis of teaching uncovered several categories of adaptive practices found in
both Ellen and Lorena’s respective classrooms (see Discussion section).
I have chosen, however, not to structure my findings as a presentation of the types of
information students revealed about themselves on the one hand and the categories of adaptive
practices that teachers seemed to enact on the other. Doing so, I contend, would merely identify
general patterns on each side without showing the connections between them—the temporally
bound connections between what a teacher learned about students in a dialogue and what a
teacher chose to do in class periods immediately following the dialogue. I argue that although
individual pieces of student information and moments of adaptive teaching collectively
constitute the important overall patterns, it is their one-to-one, sequential connections that
demonstrate cogenerative dialogues’ potential to mediate teacher development toward adaptive
teaching.
40
Thus, in the following findings section, I present three metalogues (Roth & Tobin, 2001)
to illustrate how the participating teachers learned about students in a cogenerative dialogue and
then used this new knowledge of students to enact examples of adaptive teaching. In the
tradition of research on cogenerative dialogues, metalogues are commonly used to depict how
teacher and/or student learning within a cogenerative dialogue later spurs new classroom
practices (e.g., Emdin, 2007a; Martin, 2006). A metalogue generally consists of a raw datum
from a cogenerative dialogue (typically a transcript excerpt from the recorded conversation
among members), along with analysis and interpretation of the datum, a raw datum from or a
vignette describing later classroom practice, and an analysis and interpretation of this teaching
(Roth & Tobin, 2001). I present in the findings section three metalogues composed of data and
analysis from this research. For each metalogue, I offer a brief transcript excerpt taken from a
cogenerative dialogue. I then identify and discuss the individual pieces—along with any broader
types—of student information that can be interpreted from the transcript excerpt. I next offer a
vignette describing classroom teaching that followed the cogenerative dialogue, and I finish by
discussing the ways in which the teacher’s instructional decisions seem to have responded to the
student information offered the day earlier.
To select transcript excerpts and corresponding classroom vignettes, I conducted a third
cycle of analysis. I reread each cogenerative dialogue and its following classroom observation
field note as a pair, each time writing descriptions of the pieces of student information and
corresponding moments of adaptive teaching that emerged across them. I cross referenced these
descriptions with the patterns of student information and adaptive teaching practices that I had
identified in the two earlier analysis cycles, and I then selected three dialogue transcripts and
their corresponding classroom vignettes that best demonstrated these patterns. Thus, the
41
metalogues below represent particularly illustrative—but not exceptional—moments in the
study. Additionally, the selected metalogues revolve around examples of pedagogical
activities—science labs, oral presentations of student inquiry, and whole-class discussions—that
reflect both the core science practices of ambitious teaching (Kloser, 2012) and the cooperative
learning strategies of equity pedagogy (Banks & Banks 1995).
2.5 Findings
Metalogue A: Using Cogenerative Dialogues to Inform Teaching within a Lab Dissection
Somewhat later in the study, Lorena and I facilitated with her student focus group a
cogenerative dialogue, where we discussed an upcoming lab in which groups of students would
dissect and explore the anatomical structures of sheep hearts. For homework over the previous
two evenings, the students were assigned to read and answer questions found within the written
lab manual, which Lorena had provided the class several days earlier. The manual explained
each step of the lab and briefly referenced new vocabulary related to the heart anatomy. After
we had discussed Lorena’s lessons from the previous week, our conversation in the cogenerative
dialogue (transcribed below in Table 2.3) shifted to the lab manual and upcoming heart
dissection:
Table 2.3: Cogenerative Dialogue Transcript Excerpt about Lab Dissection (Lorena)
Lorena: So what'd you think of the actual reading of the lab manual itself?
Emmy: I thought some words were kind of confusing. Even the pictures, ‘cause I was
looking for the new vocabulary there and it wasn’t there. So maybe you could go
over it.
Lorena: Okay, so I’ll definitely give you better pictures next time. But should I also
review vocabulary before the lab? My concern is I don't want to overwhelm you
with paperwork before a lab, and then in the lab is when you’ll get to see all of the
new anatomical structures, so…
Emmy: I think it'll help to do it before, that way we know what we're dissecting…
Carlos: Miss, the manual says we’re gonna put food coloring down the heart. Are we
really doing that? ‘Cause you gotta go over that [set of directions]. Like, a lot of
people might put more than they should and just start playing around with it.
Mateo: Yeah, you could just give us a certain amount [of food coloring]…
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Emmy: Or just give a person in the table group a job, like one of them is the dropper...
That way, it's more organized.
Carlos: Yeah, because when it was just me and Mateo in the eye dissection [last month],
we had to take our gloves off to write down, and then try to put them back on. It
just took too long and we couldn’t finish it.
Lorena: That’s good. So, give people specific jobs? I like that. We could have, like, lab
assistants. So, if I put you in groups of four, we could have lab assistants who are
doing the dissecting, they're the ones touching everything, so they have gloves to
touch everything. Then, the lead person gets all the supplies, and they could be
the one actually going through the directions, "OK, where are we at?" Then we
could have a person be the recorder, who fills out the lab guide for the group.
Antonio: Yeah, that’s good, Miss, ‘cause sometimes people be arguing about doing stuff.
Lorena: Okay, so we’ll have lab jobs for everyone so they’ll all know who’s doing what…
Mateo: Miss, people always have a lot of questions during labs, but when you answer
them at their tables, we can’t all hear them and then we ask the same questions...
Lorena: Okay, so maybe I could just announce new questions to the class when I get them.
Carlos: Oh, I got a question now, Miss. Why is the heart that shape and not like emoji?...
Antonio: Yeah, and what causes the heart to clog? Why do they do open heart surgery?
Relevant student information revealed within the dialogue. A host of individual
pieces of student information are revealed within this sliver of dialogue transcript. Lorena and I,
for example, could have noticed that introducing new anatomy vocabulary in written lab guides
may not help clarify those terms for individuals like Emmy, that more explicit diagrams or other
graphics could help make such vocabulary more accessible, and that new terms should be both
covered before and during a lab so that students have at least some familiarity with central
anatomical structures while they explore them through a hands-on dissection. Additionally, the
transcript reveals that some students in Lorena’s class, like Carlos and Antonio, have concerns
about class participation, particularly around students engaging in appropriate lab activities
without the distraction from tools such as food coloring. One might also notice from the excerpt
that some students, like Emmy and Antonio, have a need for clearer directions, more
organization, and more structural supports within labs, such as assigning particular “jobs” or
roles to individuals within each group. Without such structures, time might be a factor in
finishing lab procedures for some students like Carlos. This transcript also reveals that as
43
student interests are piqued during labs, a multitude of questions tends to emerge at one time
from, and might be shared by, individual students located in separate groups. Given their
apparent desire to soak up information in during these dissections, students like Mateo want to
hear their peers’ questions and the answers to those queries; thus, finding ways to share and
address questions for the whole class might benefit student learning and engagement. At the end
of the excerpt, Antonio and Carlos share some of their own related curiosities even before the lab
is underway, and while not captured in Table 3 (for brevity), Mateo and Emmy pose additional
authentic questions about the heart to Lorena later in the dialogue as well.
Looking across these pieces of information also reveals broader categories of information
about students’ needs in relation to lab activities. First, Lorena and I might recognize that
although Lorena views dissection labs as a place for student-guided exploration, requests made
within the dialogue for more conceptual clarity and academic supports before and during labs
seem to indicate a need for a great deal of scaffolding and building of prior knowledge in order
for students to be sufficiently prepared to carry out such exploration. Therefore, such labs
should perhaps be prefaced with several preparatory lessons, so that students have the interests,
knowledge, and tools to discover even more once they begin their dissections. A second theme
across these pieces of information is that within activities of hands-on learning such as dissection
labs, students desire (and likely need) structures that help them work with peers—for example, to
help them know “who does what”—by providing clear expectations and guidance for individual
participation.
Vignette from following instructional period. The day following the cogenerative
dialogue referenced above, Lorena begins the instructional period by assigning her students a
warm-up activity to write down questions that they have about the heart and/or questions that
44
emerged for them while reading the lab manual. After a few minutes, Lorena asks for student
volunteers to share what they had written. Some of these questions relate to or directly repeat
questions asked by the student focus group during the previous day’s cogenerative dialogue, and
Lorena quickly copies them in short-hand on the board. For the more unique questions, Lorena
provides a brief verbal answer as they are posed within this brief whole-class discussion.
Lorena then powers up her LCD projector and presents a series of slides (which she had
prepared the night before) that address the questions her cogenerative dialogue students had
raised earlier. As Lorena gives this direct instruction (clarifying confusing anatomical
terminology, explaining the heart’s actual shape in relation to its popular images, discussing
plaque, fat deposits, and open-heart surgery, etc.), students take notes or point to and whisper
about images on the projection screen with their partners, showing active listening throughout
the five-minute presentation. Lorena then advances to her final slide, which introduces the lab
and explains the different “jobs” that will be undertaken by certain students within each group.
After answering a few questions about these directions, Lorena directs each group to assign its
members a particular job and begin following the instructions listed on the manual.
Like Mateo had predicted during the previous dialogue, as student groups begin to move
into the actual dissection stage of the lab, a dozen or so students raise their hands at different
points to get Lorena’s attention and ask a question about their specimens. When students ask
about the anatomical structures being explored in the lab or their particular jobs during the lab
(which collectively represented the majority of questions), Lorena calls for her students’
attention and shares the question and its answer aloud with the entire class. When questions
concern material not yet covered in class, however, Lorena hands students post-it notes, and asks
45
them to write down their curiosities and then place the note on her desk, so that she can cover
those questions in the lab debrief during the following class period.
Analysis of adaptive teaching practices captured in first vignette. This vignette
illustrates how Lorena incorporated the feedback from students in her cogenerative dialogue and
in doing so, demonstrated macro- and micro-adaptive teaching practices (Corno, 2008), as well
as instances of ‘responsive guidance’ (Hammer et al., 2012). Macro-adaptations—the responsive
pedagogical decisions that Lorena made prior to teaching the lab—included those moments when
Lorena reviewed vocabulary terms that Emmy had identified as possibly confusing, presented
information in relation to the authentic queries of students like Carlos and Antonio, and provided
her class with the structure of lab “jobs” recommended by the student focus group. Lorena also
undertook a micro-adaptation—a responsive teaching decision made on-the-fly—when she
addressed student curiosities that arose during the lab—those that did not seem to directly relate
to the material at hand—by having students record them for later discussion, a move perhaps
facilitated by Mateo’s forewarning that this lab would raise many student questions. In doing
this, and in asking students for their own questions before the lab began, Lorena also
demonstrated responsive guidance by adapting the content of the lesson to the interests and
explorations of her students.
While many of the pieces of student information seemed to be targeted by these adaptive
practices, other information, particularly the broader themes emerging from the cogenerative
dialogues, went unaddressed. For example, although Lorena did frontload some vocabulary
explanations and addressed several related student queries about the heart, this segment of the
lesson seemed somewhat hurried, consisting of less than 20 minutes of the total 100-minute
instructional block, and thus it seemed that the teaching here was less responsive to an
46
underlying need (inferred from the cogenerative dialogue) for more time spent preparing students
for the lab. The press to quickly get to the lab itself also seemed to extend to the limited
discussion of lab jobs, which were the focus of many students’ questions during the dissection.
Given this amount of student confusion, such a rush to get through the explanations of lab
structures actually may have reduced the amount and quality of time for student learning through
hands-on discovery within the dissection.
Metalogue B: Using Cogenerative Dialogues to Inform Presentations of Student Inquiry
Several weeks prior to the cogenerative dialogue and instructional period referenced
above, Lorena, her student focus group, and myself met to discuss the results of a group inquiry
project that had culminated in student oral presentations. For this project, Lorena had asked
students to form work groups, to which she assigned each a particular sensory system to
research. For consecutive instructional periods, Lorena then created opportunities for these work
groups, first, to use textbooks and online resources to research information on their assigned
sensory system, and second, to plan an oral presentation in which they would teach the class
about the information they had gathered and synthesized. These groups then presented their
projects to the class over two additional periods. In the dialogue transcript below, Lorena, her
students, and myself reflected on the process of this student inquiry project and the student
presentations that had finished earlier that day.
Table 2.4: Cogenerative Dialogue Transcript Excerpt about Student Presentations
(Lorena)
Carlos: Miss, can I be honest? I don’t think the presentations were good today. I’m not
bragging or nothing, but I thought ours was just better. I mean, other people
didn’t even sound like they knew what they were talking about. They just copied.
John: Why do you think that happened?
Antonio: My group was just bad. I tried to get everyone to meet, but nobody did…
Lorena: So, how can I support that better? I gave you guys time in class to work on
them… What do you think if I gave you the project to you in little chunks, like
47
benchmarks, so that you have to turn in your PowerPoint slides on this particular
date, and then you have to turn your talking points on another date—like that?
Emmy: Yeah, I think that would be really good…
Mateo: But some people just don’t present very good. They’re all like [dramatically
hunches back, looks down]
Lorena: So I should go over presentation skills first, too, like beforehand?
Emmy: Uh huh (affirmative), but like they should also get time to practice, too.
Mateo: Yeah, it helped our group when you let us practice in the hallway right before we
went…
Emmy: Maybe you could also make us come in to meet with you [afterschool] to go over
the presentation with you first.
Antonio: Yeah, Miss, ‘cause some people just don’t want to meet. My group—Jeremy said
he had soccer, Martha had to go home… I think some groups were into it, but not
mine… Plus, nobody in our group even cared about [the sense of] hearing.
Relevant student information revealed within the dialogue. As seen in the earlier
metalogue, the second transcript except condenses within a relatively brief dialogue moment a
substantial amount of student information, some of which is more explicit, while some is more
thematic and implied. Those more explicitly mentioned pieces of student information include
Carlos’s (and, later, Mateo’s) call for more preparation for student inquiry and presentations;
Emmy’s affirmation that students like her would benefit from the ‘chunking’ of large research
projects into smaller assignments; Mateo’s comment that some students might need an
introduction, review, and/or practice of oratory skills; and Antonio’s recognition of some
students’ disengagement from the content and/or structure of the assignment.
Less explicitly articulated but more overarching student information might also be
recognized within this transcript. For example, Carlos’s comment about students copying from
resources, coupled with Antonio’s final statement about his group, seems to signify that some
students may require more direct instruction and support in areas related to conducting research,
such as research literacy skills. One might also infer from Antonio’s complaint that unequal
access to external research opportunities and/or materials may have prevented some group
members from meeting and working with one another outside of school.
48
Vignette from following instructional period. At the start of a new unit on sexual
reproduction (which followed shortly after the cogenerative dialogue referenced above), Lorena
asks her students to generate any authentic questions they might be entertaining around
previously known processes or organs involved in the reproductive system. She next directs the
class to form small inquiry groups, which are then assigned to research and present the answers
to three related questions that their own members have posed. Lorena also structures the project
so that students must submit to her their notes and PowerPoint slides (or presentation posters) on
separate dates prior to their oral presentations, which are scheduled ten days from the start of the
project. To help bolster more equitable participation within groups, Lorena announces that, at
the conclusion of the project, students will peer-assess the effort and contribution of each
member. During one of the instructional periods leading up to the due date for this project,
Lorena sets aside a portion of class time for student groups to give a practice presentation to a
peer from another group; this peer is later tasked with providing feedback to the presenters on
their oration and content. Finally, Lorena offers extra credit to those groups who arrange to stay
with her afterschool to rehearse their presentation with her and/or to use the research tools
(textbooks, laptop computers, and wireless internet) available in her classroom.
Analysis of adaptive teaching practices captured in second vignette. In this vignette,
Lorena demonstrated multiple examples of macro-adaptive teaching and responsive guidance in
her approach to structuring the class assignment. Addressing student needs for more support in
completing long-term research tasks, she broke the student inquiry projects up into three
manageable benchmarks. She also provided the class opportunities to practice their
presentations, both within the class setting and with her afterschool. Moreover, by encouraging
students to use her classroom afterschool, Lorena offered a central meeting space and access to
49
research materials for those students who may not have had available transportation and/or
research resources at home. Possibly to increase engagement in the assignment, Lorena asked
students to research questions that they themselves had posed about the reproductive system.
Additionally, Lorena inserted a peer-assessment component to the assignment, perhaps, to
encourage more accountability for equitable participation in the groups.
Left unaddressed in this instance, however, were the apparent student needs for more
support in specific research or literacy skills necessary for conducting student inquiry. That is,
while other needs and interests expressed by students during the dialogue were targeted by
examples of adaptive teaching in the vignette, the more thematic student information offered
through these conversations—their need for more explicit instruction in the research and literacy
skills necessary for inquiry—did not seem to be addressed in Lorena’s ensuring instructional
periods.
Metalogue C: Using Cogenerative Dialogues to Inform Facilitation of Class Discussions
The transcript excerpt featured below was taken from the seventh cogenerative dialogue
involving Ellen and her student focus group. Members of this dialogue perceived a lack of
student participation within class discussions as a major area for classroom change. Thus, our
talk centered on different techniques, previously used and/or future possibilities, for eliciting
more student volunteers.
Table 2.5: Cogenerative Dialogue Transcript Excerpt about Class Discussions (Ellen)
Ellen: What did you all think about being cold-called in class, or even just the idea of
participating in class discussions?
Vanessa: I feel like it was a good idea, because that's a way that you checked for
understanding of some people who were trying to avoid it. Some people don't
want to be called on because they don't want to be put out. I also think it’s
beneficial because we’re all shy people in this group. I mean, admit it. [Laughter]
We need to be called on to get us to talk in class!
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Patricia: For me, it's good because I don't have confidence in my answer. Because when I
read it, and then I hear other people, they sound so different. I just say, "Okay, I'll
just change my answer." I only volunteer if I'm 100% positive of my own answer.
Lina: I know, huh? It's just scary! What if you’re answer’s wrong? And then everyone
just looks at you when you raise your hand. I don't know, it's sad [laughter]…
John: Could you think of a different way, one that would work for you better, rather
than just being cold-called?
Patricia: Well, I like how today you made us do a digital warm up, and we got to respond
online to their comments instead of saying them out loud. That worked for me.
John: So, may be move more class discussions online then?
Lina: Not always, ‘cause I think we should actually have to talk to people, and I think
we all need to practice that, even if it’s not something we always like to do.
Ellen: I agree completely, Lina… We need to build that confidence to participate in
class, and not just rely on technology. But the question is, how do we do that?
Patricia: I remember one of my old teachers from middle school used to tap us on the
shoulder before we answered questions [out loud] and she’d be like, “I’m gonna
call on you next time, okay?” and that made it a little easier for me…
Vanessa: And also I think maybe you could, like, have people discuss their answers more
with each other before we have to share them with the whole class. Like, maybe
you could give us time in our rows to talk about what we wrote down, and then
each row could, like, vote one person to say what we just talked about.
Relevant student information revealed within the dialogue. The transcript excerpt
reveals several specific pieces of information about some students’ learning needs and
preferences. Vanessa and Patricia not only identify the efficacy of cold-calling as a strategy, but
also help explain its necessity, particularly for students who may self-identify as “shy”, lack
confidence in their knowledge of the content, and/or feel uncomfortable (for personal,
developmental, or cultural reasons) with the mass attention that accompanies public speaking, as
Lina seems to indicate. Patricia highlights the sharing of ideas through online discussion
boards—another strategy Ellen has already employed—as a second effective method for helping
reticent participants to still engage in dialogue around content with classmates. Lina, however, is
quick to point out the limitations of this method for students like her who still require “practice”
of oral language in the genre of anatomy, and she expresses her need for more face-to-face
encounters with peers during class.
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Patricia and Vanessa then each propose new possibilities for promoting greater
participation, particularly among reluctant speakers: Patricia suggests a practice commonly
referred to as designating volunteers (Caldwell, 2007), where a teacher might seek out assent
from and preview questions with more reluctant students prior to the actual whole-class
discussion, in order to encourage their later participation. Vanessa recommends that Ellen both
provide students more opportunities to discuss questions in small groups before offering an
answer to the class and allow students to serve as representative speakers for their peers. Within
their suggestions for new possible strategies, Patricia and Vanessa reveal some potentially
helpful insights into student thinking: Patricia’s recommendation seems to indicate that some
students may benefit from advanced warning before, or individual encouragement for, speaking
in front of the class. Vanessa’s suggestion seems to underscore the need for students to gain
clarity and perhaps confidence from more familiar peers (i.e., those with whom they sit) before
sharing this knowledge with the whole class.
More inferential, thematic information may also be available from this transcript. Given
the varied methods of eliciting student participation that were discussed above (e.g., cold calling
on individuals, using online discussion boards, designating volunteers, small group discussion
prior to whole-group sharing, etc.), one might surmise that multiple options and/or opportunities
for participation within the same activity (i.e., exchange of ideas) might benefit at least some
students. Additionally, one might infer that the reticence to participate that is emphasized within
the dialogue might also relate to student needs for greater processing of information prior to a
discussion activity and/or for more explicit instruction and practice in oral language skills.
Vignette from following instructional period. Much of this information seems reflected
in the teaching that Ellen delivers during the anatomy class period following the cogenerative
52
dialogues referenced above. Ellen begins the lesson by asking her students to use their laptops to
answer a warm-up question relating to the previous evening’s homework. Soon afterwards,
Ellen calls for her students to discuss their answers with the individuals sitting around them, and
she then directs the students to use any new insights they may have gained to respond to at least
two classmates’ answers on the online discussion board. As students carry out these next steps,
Ellen circulates carefully around the room, stopping to chat with a few individuals, most of
whom are typically reluctant to participate in class discussions. I overhear one conversation in
which Ellen caringly cajoles a student, “Nadine, this answer sounds really strong. When I call
for volunteers, would you mind presenting it?”
Ellen then moves to the front of the classroom and introduces a whole-class discussion by
exhorting the students to take courage and show confidence in their answers by volunteering:
I know there are students in here with some well thought-out answers that would really
benefit the class to hear…And remember, there are no wrong answers in science, only
ones that are more or less accurate, and we only learn by building on less accurate
understandings to begin with…C’mon, let’s show some ganas and speak up!
Ellen then restates the opening question and watches as eight volunteers (many of whom she had
recently “designated”) raise their hands and share their responses. After exhausting the
volunteers, Ellen cold-calls on a handful of students, who seem to offer their answers with little
hesitance. Once the conversation rounds to a conclusion, Ellen points out to the class that much
of what she has heard so far addresses some of the misconceptions students had originally posted
in their online answers, so she ends this portion of the lesson by asking the class to review and
revise any partially accurate ideas they may have written on the discussion board.
53
Analysis of adaptive teaching practices captured in third vignette. This vignette of
Ellen’s teaching captured several instances of macro adaptive practices that related to the pieces
of information shared in the third cogenerative dialogue excerpt. As dialogue members had
suggested, Ellen asked students to participate in online discussion boards and continued to cold-
call on some in follow-up oral class discussions, perhaps as ways to elicit participation from
more reluctant classroom members. Ellen also supplemented these techniques with the other
strategies recommended by Patricia and Vanessa, namely, the use of small-group conversations
paired with designating volunteers, to prime students to participate in the whole-class discussion.
Such adaptive actions by Ellen seemed to have provided those more reluctant students with
advanced warning about volunteering, with confidence in their answers, and with further time for
processing information. Possibly in response to Lina’s stated fear of “wrong” answers, which
may also have hindered the participation of students in previous class periods, Ellen also
reiterated her epistemological beliefs that science ideas are not categorically wrong or right, but
simply vary by degrees of accuracy, with more accurate understandings only emerging from
earlier, less accurate ones. Collectively, these strategies for promoting participation seemed to
allow students multiple opportunities to voice their ideas within the same activity and around the
same key question. An example of a micro adaptation might also be seen at the end of the
vignette, where Ellen—noting students’ misconceptions in their original discussion board
posts—called for the class to revise their earlier online answers in light of what they may have
learned from the multiple discussion activities.
Less visible in this vignette, however, was any explicit instruction on oral language skills
that may have been useful in such activities. That is, while Ellen’s teaching seemed to address
student needs for various forms of social participation in class, the more thematic, implicit need
54
for development of the oral language skills necessary for such forms of participation was not
explicitly targeted in the vignette above, nor was it seen in later observations of her teaching.
2.6 Discussion
For decades, scholars have called for more equity-oriented teaching, especially in schools
serving diverse students, who historically have been subject to inequitable, assimilationist
classroom instruction (Banks & Banks, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 2008). In response, research has
begun to explore the possibilities of more responsive, adaptive pedagogical practices
(Mascarenhas et al., 2011; Lampert et al., 2012). Previous studies in the adaptive practices of
teachers have investigated what adaptive teaching is (e.g., Corno, 2008); the frequency with
which experienced teachers adapt their instruction (e.g., Parsons, 2012); how instruction can be
adapted in particular content areas (e.g., Hammer et al., 2012); and what teachers think about
while adapting their instruction (e.g., Richards, Elby, & Gupta, 2014). This study has begun to
explore a learning catalyst for teachers—cogenerative dialogues—which could facilitate the
development of adaptive practices by helping teachers both construct and leverage new
knowledge about their students, something few studies (e.g., Sherman, 2005; Soslau, 2012) have
examined. Findings from this study have revealed that discussions within cogenerative
dialogues can uncover a host of useful information about students, and that such information can
be effectively utilized in several different categories of adaptive practices. In the following
sections, I discuss these findings more specifically and situate them in relation to the literature
mentioned earlier on cogenerative dialogues, adaptive expertise, sociocultural learning theory,
ambitious teaching, and equity pedagogy.
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Learning about Students through Participation in Cogenerative Dialogues
The metalogues presented above illustrate how discussions between a teacher and her
students (perhaps along with a collaborating researcher such as myself) can elicit pieces of
information about students that can be grouped into three categories or types: student learning
needs, social needs, and personal interests and curiosities.
Student learning needs. Students within the cogenerative dialogues expressed learning
needs for further vocabulary clarification; supportive structures and clearer expectations for
appropriate classroom participation; robust preparation for and ample scaffolding of student-led
inquiry and/or hands-on activities like dissection labs; greater engagement through the
integration of student interests into subject area content; access to resources and collaborative
opportunities for research outside of school; and multiple and varied opportunities for processing
information prior to classroom discussions. These pieces of information might be understood as
representing student learning needs, in that they can help teachers understand (a) what students
are ready to process and participate in with teacher guidance and (b) what types of guidance
might be most useful for student learning.
Although previous literature on cogenerative dialogues has yet to highlight the ways in
which this space can reveal such student learning needs, theory on sociocultural learning,
particularly Vygotsky’s (1980) concept of the zone of proximal development, underscores the
essential nature of such knowledge for effective teaching. That is, to help students construct
knowledge, teachers must first have a sense of the two dimensions of learning needs noted above
(a and b). The findings here suggest that cogenerative dialogues might represent a space in
which teachers can access these learning needs and thus locate more precisely individual
students’ zones of proximal development. For example, in the first metalogue present above,
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Emmy reveals that she needs further clarification of vocabulary terms introduced in the lab
manual, and in the following class period, Lorena provides some targeted direct instruction
around those terms prior to initiating the dissection lab.
Student social needs. Sociocultural learning theory also posits that within the zone of
proximal development, learners must feel comfortable with both the guide/s with whom they
work and the context of this guidance (Smagorinsky, 2013; Vygotsky, 1980). In other words,
learners have particular social needs that require attention if development is to take place; the
findings here indicate that within cogenerative dialogues, discussions between teachers and
students can begin to uncover such social needs. For example, within the metalogues presented
above, students revealed preferred strategies for eliciting their participation within small-group
and whole-class discussions. Student comments also implicated their needs to process
information and to practice less comfortable social interactions (such as face-to-face discussions
of content) first with familiar peers before branching out into whole-class conversations or
presentations. Previous literature on cogenerative dialogues supports this finding, highlighting
how teachers have used such dialogues to learn about and adapt to students’ social needs by
limiting cold-calling on some students (e.g., Martin, 2006) and by partnering students with
familiar peers when group projects center around challenging concepts or new linguistic skills
(e.g., Wassell, Martin, & Scantlebury, 2013).
Student interests and questions. Also similar to previous literature (e.g., Beers, 2005a,
200b), the findings here indicated that cogenerative dialogues can serve as spaces for teachers to
learn about their students’ individual interests and curiosities. Often, the teachers in this study
leveraged this information to forge ‘third spaces’ (Moje et al., 2004), where the subject area
content of anatomy was fitted to the knowledge and questions that students brought to school.
57
For instance, students in Lorena’s dialogue group such as Carlos and Antonio felt comfortable
sharing with Lorena their lingering questions about the heart and its anatomical structures.
Again, sociocultural learning theory underscores the importance of teachers (and other guides)
having access to this student knowledge, because with it, they can shape learning experiences
that promote deep engagement and meaning making around topics of interest and/or authentic
questions (Beltramo & Stillman, 2015; Smagorinsky, 2013).
Learning how to collaborate with students. Additionally, the findings here raise the
possibility that within cogenerative dialogues, teachers not only learn about their students—their
learning and social needs, interests and curiosities—but also learn how to collaborate more
effectively with their students. Tobin and Roth (2005) write that through their participation in
cogenerative dialogues, “teachers can learn to collaborate with students to establish and maintain
effective learning environments—rather than endeavoring to establish control over them”
(p.315). The metalogues presented here seem to illustrate a similar but slightly divergent idea—
that by offering a teacher more insights into how her students learn, think, and feel, and through
the recursive interactions of weekly meetings, cogenerative dialogues allow a teacher to begin
building a familiarity and trust with students that helps her understand how to better interact with
them on a person-to-person level. Learning to collaborate personally with students could go
beyond ‘establishing effective learning environments’ to actually establishing learner-centered
relationships (Kostogriz, 2012).
Learning what ‘works.’ In two important ways, what the teachers in this study likely
learned about their students also broke from the major themes of earlier studies into cogenerative
dialogues. Much of the literature on cogenerative dialogues emphasizes that teacher learning
centers exclusively around the identification of problems or contradictions through discussions
58
with students (e.g., Tobin et al., 2003; Tobin, 2006). While evidence of this mode of learning
does appear in the metalogues above (for example, when Carlos points out to Lorena that some
students seemed to ‘copy’ from research resources rather than synthesize them), an important
area for teacher learning also seemed to occur when students acknowledged strategies that
“worked,” or facilitated their learning and participation. For instance, in the third metalogue
Patricia both validates Ellen’s decision to have students respond to each other’s comments in an
online forum versus asking them to respond to each other orally in a class discussion. In this
moment, Ellen likely learns that online fora are supportive places for information processing and
student interaction for adolescents like Patricia. Indeed, the following class period finds Ellen
continuing to use this strategy. Thus, the findings here suggest that cogenerative dialogues offer
valuable information to teachers not simply through the identification of problems and
contradictions in their teaching, but also through confirmation of strategies perceived by students
to be supportive.
Learning about students as individuals. Also, somewhat surprising in the light of
previous studies is the finding that the students’ home Discourses were rarely discussed within
Lorena and Ellen’s respective dialogues. Much of the extant literature highlights cogenerative
dialogues’ potential to help students share their cultural repertoires, ways of knowing, and funds
of knowledge with teachers (e.g., Beers, 2009; Emdin, 2011; LaVan, 2005; Tobin & Roth, 2005).
Discrepancies in participants between this and other studies of cogenerative dialogue study likely
represents one possible explanation. A majority of previous studies on cogenerative dialogues
investigated the practices of novice teachers who had little previous knowledge of their students’
cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In this study, however, Ellen and Lorena were veteran
teachers at their schools and shared many of the same Discourses of their students, having
59
themselves grown up in the communities in which they taught. Thus, this study suggests that,
when teachers who are familiar with their schools’ communities and their students’ home
Discourses engage in cogenerative dialogues, the information shared by students in these
settings—and the learning available to teachers—may tend to center more on students’
characteristics as individuals—their personal interests and learning and social needs—than their
cultural and linguistic practices. That is, this study finds that the more that students and teachers
share in terms of a Discourse—the common cultural and linguistic practices of social groups—
the more likely it is that the student information revealed in a cogenerative dialogue will reflect
individual needs, interests, and preferences.
Leveraging New Knowledge about Students through Adaptive Teaching
The metalogues above also illustrate how Ellen and Lorena leveraged new knowledge of
students to deliver more adaptive instructional practices. The most common category of such
practices across both sites were macro-adaptations (Corno, 2008), where the teachers seemed to
craft lessons and/or planned certain strategies that responded to the student information gleaned
from earlier cogenerative dialogues. Examples of such macro-adaptations could be seen when
Lorena used Emmy’s suggestion to institute student “jobs” during science labs, and when Ellen
leveraged Vanessa’s recommendations to designate student volunteers for class discussions.
Less frequent but still apparent were moments when the teachers exhibited micro-adaptive
practices, that is, when they leveraged their greater familiarity with students in pedagogical
decisions seemingly made in-the-moment of teaching (Corno, 2008). For instance, confronted
with numerous student questions during her dissection lab, which was predicted by Mateo in
their earlier cogenerative dialogue, Lorena decided to forego answering each question and
instead asked students to write down their personal queries on post-it notes that would be
60
addressed in later class periods. Moments of responsive guidance—where a teacher opens up
her curriculum to be shaped by student interests and questions (Hammer et al., 2012)—were also
found at several points during the metalogues. This occurred most commonly in the case of
Lorena, who, for example, responded to student disengagement perceived by members of her
cogenerative dialogue by centering future inquiry on the authentic questions of student groups.
Supporting the Dimensions of Adaptive Expertise
Theory on adaptive teaching and adaptive expertise, as well as sociocultural learning
theory, point to possible explanations for how cogenerative dialogues could facilitate the types of
responsive, adaptive practices illustrated by here by Lorena and Ellen. Scholars propose that
adaptive expertise—the understandings and competencies underlying adaptive teaching—relies
on an individual’s development of two particular dimensions of practical knowledge: technical
efficiency and innovation (Hammerness et al., 2005; Hatano & Oura, 2003).
Efficiency. Efficiency represents the development of “automatized schemas and routines
that provide enough background efficiency to keep teachers from becoming overwhelmed and
losing sight of important goals” (Hammerness et al., 2005, p.363). This dimension of adaptive
expertise is generally developed through substantial experience and the deep technical
knowledge experience tends to foster (Hatano & Oura, 2003). Given their veteran status as
teachers, it is likely that Ellen and Lorena have the ample experience in technical aspects of
teaching that is necessary for the efficiency dimension of adaptive expertise.
Innovation. On the other hand, the dimension of innovation represents an individual’s
capacity to creatively apply their technical knowledge in ways that uniquely respond to the
particulars of a given context. Such innovation is primed by (a) an awareness of “larger social
contexts” (Hammerness et al., 2005, p.364), which for teachers includes a constant pursuit of
61
knowledge about their students, and (b) regular opportunities for “structured analysis”
(Hammerness et al., 2005, p.364), or reflection with those who can offer new perspectives and
feedback on practice and its emergent problems (Hatano & Oura, 2003). As discussed earlier,
the cogenerative dialogues studied here seemed to have provided Ellen and Lorena with spaces
to access key pieces of student information, and in turn likely contributed to the teachers’
awareness of their classrooms’ social contexts. Moreover, previous literature (e.g., Tobin &
Roth, 2005), along with the metalogues above, suggest that cogenerative dialogues provide
teachers like Lorena and Ellen with consistent opportunities to reflect on this new student
knowledge in relation to their previous and current teaching practices. In this way, the findings
here support the claim of extant literature that cogenerative dialogues represent for teachers
opportunities of structured analysis and reflection on their practice. Thus, cogenerative
dialogues may support the dimension of innovation required for adaptive teaching by offering
teachers fora for gleaning and reflecting on critical information around students’ interests and
social and learning needs.
Affect. Other scholarship in adaptive teaching identifies additional factors that contribute
to a teacher’s ability to flexibly respond to students and their exigencies. Lin, Schwartz, and
Bransford (2007) suggest that adaptive experts also need a confidence and willingness to take
calculated risks by experimenting with newly developed or modified practices. Tusting (2009)
supports this conjecture and adds that adaptive teachers often need opportunities to develop
trusting relationships with students and to leverage these relationships in negotiating an
atmosphere of mutual respect. In these ways, adaptive expertise in teaching also seems to
depend on an affective dimension that consists of confidence, risk-taking, and trust with students.
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The metalogues presented above, in addition to previous studies (Emdin, 2007a, 2007b),
propose that cogenerative dialogues provide spaces for teachers to not just learn about their
students, but also learn how to collaborate with students, particularly in collective decision-
making about classroom activities and curricula. Further, the findings here raise the possibility
that teachers like Ellen or Lorena may experience the increased confidence to take risks around
new pedagogical practices when their students themselves ask for such classroom changes. For
example, in the first metalogue, Emmy hints that student “jobs” might provide more clarity for
student participation within labs; Lorena not only responds enthusiastically to this suggestion
within the cogenerative dialogue, but changes her lesson plan for the following day to reflect
Emmy’s recommendation. Thus, it might be suggested that cogenerative dialogues could further
facilitate teachers’ adaptive teaching by supporting the affective dimensions—the teacher
confidence and relationships with students—that in turn afford innovation and responsiveness.
Expanding Teaching Practices through Reflective Contract and Open Theory
New ideas come to light when viewing the findings through other theoretical lenses as
well. Schön’s (1983) concept of the reflective contract, and sociocultural theory more generally
(e.g., Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1990), suggest that by acting on what they learn about
student perspectives and trying out new, responsive teaching moves, teachers learn not just about
their students and how to interact with them, but also about their pedagogical practices more
generally. That is, through participation in cogenerative dialogues, teachers can gather
information about students, make plans with those students based on this information, and then
take new action—i.e., expand their practices—within this specific context. Scholars of
sociocultural learning theory and cogenerative dialogues such as Roth, Tobin, and Zimmerman
(2002) explain that this expansion of practices represents the construction of “open theory.” By
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this term, Roth and colleagues suggest that the teacher learning catalyzed through participation in
cogenerative dialogues takes place in and in response to a particular context, and because it is
collaboratively co- (and re-) constructed with students in an iterative process of reflective
inquiry—of consultation, planning, action, and evaluation (Schön, 1983). The metalogues
presented here in particular illustrate teacher learning via this process of open theory co-(and re-)
construction with students through cogenerative dialogues: As Ellen and Lorena learn about their
students’ needs and interests, and field their student recommendations for improved learning
opportunities, the teachers are able to collaboratively develop with their students ideas for how to
change and expand their teaching practices. That Ellen and Lorena’s adaptive practices seemed
associated with their learning about students through cogenerative dialogues suggests that such
dialogues can facilitate the expansion of teaching practices—specifically for adaptive teaching—
by contributing not only to the innovative and affective dimensions of adaptive expertise, but
also to the collaborative construction of context-based knowledge with the client (i.e., students).
Missed Opportunities and Barriers to Adaptiveness
Importantly, not all of the student information revealed through the cogenerative
dialogues was leveraged in participating teachers’ adaptive practices, and this finding points to a
possible constraint around the teacher learning mediated by cogenerative dialogues with
students. While the instructional decisions of Ellen and Lorena seemed especially responsive to
the pieces of student information more explicitly identifiable within their conversations with the
student focus groups, the more implicit, thematic types of information about students and their
needs were less reflected in the teachers’ classroom practices and thus may have been
overlooked. In my debriefs with Ellen and Lorena following their dialogues, I often discussed
with them the more explicit information that students shared with us about themselves, but
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rarely—if ever—did I help them “connect the dots” between individual pieces of information to
better identify and understand the larger, thematic student needs that were also being
inferentially expressed. In my concern to collect “robust” data in the brief duration of the study,
I had postponed a close analysis of dialogue transcripts until most if not all of our meetings had
passed, and it was usually weeks or months following a dialogue that I began to notice the more
interpretative themes about the students and their learning needs. By that time, the study was
almost complete, and my opportunity to contribute to my participants’ learning during that
school year had elapsed.
I highlight this finding here to suggest that even when a teacher and researcher have
opportunities to immediately reflect on discussions recorded in dialogues, some (and perhaps the
most important) information about students may not be easily recognized without more
concentrated scrutiny of data such as dialogue transcripts. Previous studies of cogenerative
dialogues (Carambo & Stickney, 2009) and other forms of student consultation (Hoban &
Hastings, 2006) recommend that, to fully mine the rich information that students provide about
themselves in such spaces as cogenerative dialogues, teachers should analyze recordings of
student voice (e.g., videotapes, transcripts, field notes) with peers in a series of collaborative
professional development sessions. Such settings might increase the possibility that implicit
themes as well as explicit pieces of student information can be gleaned, and might also facilitate
the construction of even more ideas for adaptive teaching practices, particularly if the
collaborating teachers are themselves familiar with (and perhaps even currently teach) the same
students.
It is also important to note that, although at both sites some instances of leveraging
student information led to adaptive, student-centered learning opportunities, others moments still
65
reflected more teacher-centered, assimilationist instructional practices. When Lorena and Ellen
used student questions to engage in responsive guidance, the classroom teaching centered on
what students found meaningful and valuable to learn in their lives and “involve[d] students in a
process of knowledge construction and production” (Banks & Banks, 1995, p.153), something
that scholars stress is critical for more equitable, learner-centered teaching (Banks et al., 2005).
However, when student information (such as their preference for holding class discussions) was
leveraged to deliver more effectively standards-based content that was less relevant to students’
lives, some would argue that the instruction—while indicative to some degree of adaptive
teaching—still reflected elements of assimilationist practices. Thus, the teaching in this case was
not as student-centered as more equitable teaching could have been. Therefore, I suggest that
although cogenerative dialogues may provide student information valuable for the enactment of
adaptive and ambitious teaching, contextual barriers (such as high-stakes standardization in
schools) may limit the extent to which teachers can move away from standardized content and
toward more student-centered teaching. In this way, if teachers seek to participate in
cogenerative dialogues out of a desire for creating more equitable teaching practices but work in
contexts that constraint this approach, they may need additional supports (e.g., equity-oriented,
collaborative colleagues) that can help such teachers mitigate or circumnavigate barriers to
student-centered teaching.
2.7 Conclusion
In the face of inequitable learning opportunities for students from historically
marginalized communities, recent literature highlights the need for teachers to take up more
ambitious and equitable approaches to teaching, each of which requires an adaptiveness to
students. This study suggests that cogenerative dialogues represent a powerful space for teachers
66
to learn about students and for helping teachers generate new, responsive practices that leverage
student knowledge in service of more equitable learning opportunities. The findings here also
raise several possible explanations for how cogenerative dialogues can facilitate experienced
teachers’ adaptive practices: Participation in these dialogues can help teachers identify student
learning needs and thus locate more accurately students’ zones of proximal development;
become more familiar with student social needs and in turn develop more trusted classroom
relationships; find and include student interests and authentic questions within learning activities;
learn how to better collaborate with students; and develop the innovative, affective, and
collaborative dimensions of adaptive expertise. Within this study, however, I also caution that
cogenerative dialogues should not replace collaborative professional reflection with peers but
rather should be seen as a complementary forum for reflection that can inform what teachers
discuss and analyze in learning communities. For, as seen in the findings reported here,
unpacking the information available about students through cogenerative dialogues—particularly
the more implicit, thematic ideas—requires the many opportunities for deep and iterative
analysis that are likely most available and fruitful in collaborative professional spaces.
Moreover, to ensure that such adaptive teaching helps create more equitable learning
opportunities while avoiding assimilationist practices, teachers might need to seek out equity-
minded colleagues who can help them thoughtfully leverage their newly gained knowledge of
students.
This study also raises possible implications for further investigations. As a tool for
facilitating teacher learning and adaptive practices, cogenerative dialogues could serve as an
especially generative area for research and practice in equity pedagogy and ambitious teaching.
For example, future inquiry might explore how cogenerative dialogues could be used by a
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teacher to target a particular high-leverage practice of ambitious teaching (e.g., a classroom
discussion) or a practice illustrative of equity pedagogy (e.g., collaborative inquiry), learn about
students’ needs and interests in relation to that practice, and then adapt this more universal
activity for the specific contexts of a classroom. Similarly, a group of teachers within the same
department (e.g., science) might each conduct one or a series of cogenerative dialogues with
their respective students around a particular practice (e.g., conducting student-led inquiry) and
then collaboratively compare and analyze the results (or transcripts) of each dialogue to uncover
and explore themes for common areas of instructional improvement within that practice.
Through such investigations and collaborative efforts at professional development, perhaps new
affordances of cogenerative dialogues might be revealed, especially in regards to how these
spaces can bring about more adaptive teaching and in turn hopefully more equitable learning
opportunities for diverse learners.
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2.7 Appendix 2A: Examples of Codes Applied in Cycle 1 of Data Analysis: Analysis of
Student Information Gleaned from Cogenerative Dialogue Transcripts
Site of
Cogenerative
Dialogue
Example of Student Information
from Cogenerative Dialogue
Transcript
Description of Student
Information
Within Site Pattern Across Site
Pattern
Lorena’s
Emmy: People in the gallery walks
weren’t taking it seriously… They
would just write stupid stuff [on the
posters]…We need, like, to know the
rules and more strictness.
Emmy expresses a desire for
greater clarity about and
enforcement of student
participation expectations during
gallery walk activities.
Student learning needs:
Need for greater clarity of
expectations for in-class
student participation
Student learning
needs: Need for
greater clarity
of expectations
for student
participation
Mateo: Miss, can you put the directions
more on the [lab] manual? ‘Cause
some people don’t know what they’re
doing [during the lab].
Mateo expresses a desire for
greater clarity about student
participation during science labs.
Ellen’s
Nelson: I wasn’t here for that. What
were we supposed to do for those
personal research question thingies?
Nelson expresses a need for
greater clarity about instructions
for and student participation in
student inquiry project.
Student learning needs:
Need for greater clarity of
expectations for student
participation in student
inquiry
Maria: Yeah, experimental designs are
confusing. My group needs a lot of
help! [laughter]
Angel: We have no clue, either. Can
you just show us one way to do it?
Nelson: Yeah, because even when I
asked you what to do, I was so
confused.
Maria, Angel, and Nelson
express a need for greater clarity
about both instructions for and
student participation in design
inquiry project.
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2.8 Appendix 2B: Examples of Codes Applied in Cycle 2 of Data Analysis: Analysis of
Adaptive Teaching Moments Found in Field Notes and Videotapes of Classroom
Instruction
Site of
Cogenerative
Dialogue
Example of Student Information from
Cogenerative Dialogue Transcript
Description of Corresponding Adaptive Practice Category of
Adaptive
Teaching
Lorena’s Carlos: Miss, when we’re doing the food coloring
[in the heart dissection lab], people are gonna mess
around with it. You gotta watch this group over
there, especially [points to a table in the classroom]
During the heart dissection lab, Lorena circulates quickly
about the room, monitoring student progress. At the point
when students pour food coloring down different ventricles
of the heart, Lorena is especially vigilant around a group
located back of the classroom, and when a student from
that group begins to misuse the food coloring, she quickly
approaches the group and provides hands-on guidance in
how to apply it correctly to the heart.
Micro-adaptation
Ellen’s Ellen: If people keep choosing the same partners for
group work, how do we make them work with
others, without making them too uncomfortable at
the same time?
Kevin: Well, we could, like, have everyone choose
one friend as a partner, and then that pair has to find
another pair that they’ve never worked with before?
Nelson: Yeah, but some people might probably just
stand around and wait and not try to get partners.
Ellen announces to the class that, to make more inclusive
work groups, she’d like each student to choose one partner
with whom they work well. Then, that pair would partner
with another pay of students with whom they have yet to
work. After some initial groans from the class, the students
set off to this task, and it seems that within 2-3 minutes,
most of the students have formed their groups of four.
Meanwhile, it seems that, perhaps with Nelson’s comment
in mind, Ellen notices several students scattered throughout
the classroom who are reluctant to engage in this partner-
finding exercise; in response, she quickly becomes a
‘match-maker’, helping those reluctant students find
partners with whom they’re comfortable working and who
are willing to work with them in turn.
Lorena’s Lorena: What about the respiratory system? What
could we do to make studying that more interesting?
Mateo: I got it. Miss, what if we made a model of
the lungs?
Carlos: Yeah, something that shows how air gets
pumped in when we breathe, like maybe with
balloons or something.
Based on the suggestion from Mateo and Carlos, Lorena
follows her direct instruction about the anatomy of the
respiratory system by introducing to the class a hands-on
simulation, where each group creates a model “lung” from
plastic bottles, modeling clay, rubber bands, and balloons.
Macro-adaptation
Ellen’s Vanessa: I think returning the laptops to the laptop
cart takes too long. Some of us just stand there for
like five minutes before we can put it away and then
we end up leaving class late.
John: So, what suggestions do we have about how to
make this go more smoothly?
Lina: I think Miss should just call us up by our rows
and have it go more organized like that instead of
everyone trying to put their laptop away at once.
As the following class period winds to a close, Ellen notes
that the procedure for putting away laptops has been
somewhat unorganized and inefficient. Thus, she’s
decided that students will wait at their seats and pack up
until their entire row has finished their digital exit slips, at
which time that row may return their laptops to the cart.
After Ellen explains this new procedure, the students carry
it out with little problems, taking less than three minutes
for the entire class to return their laptops.
Lorena’s Lorena: Are there any topics you think people
would want to learn more about, when it comes to
just being aware of your health?
Mateo: Maybe like how to exercise at home. I want
to do that one.
Carlos: What about all that cholesterol stuff and,
you know, diabetes and stuff ...
Emmy: How about pimples? You know, like skin
acne…
Antonio: Hey, Miss, I heard this one thing about
soda and how much sugar it contains. I want to do
something like that…
Lorena asks student groups to select a topic touched on (but
not covered deeply) in class and then research and present
information on it during an end-of-the-year health fair for
the school. Many of the possible topics presented to the
class were originally recommended by the student focus
group.
Responsive
guidance Ellen’s Nelson: Miss, I liked it how we did our warm-ups
before. You know, how you would ask us a
question that would make us review material from a
long time ago and if our answer was accurate, you’d
give us extra credit.
Angel: Yeah, we should have opportunities for extra
credit again, like for researching something we like.
In response to Nelson and Angel’s requests for individual
inquiry and enrichment (i.e., extra credit), Ellen asks
students to select and research answers to three ‘personal
research questions’ related to the endocrine system but not
directly covered in class.
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CHAPTER 3 – ¡Con Ganas! Fostering Latina Students’ Active Participation in Science
Classrooms through Their Involvement in Cogenerative Dialogues
3.1 Introduction
Despite calls for “science for all” (Barton, 1998), recent studies have repeatedly
highlighted a lack of equitable learning opportunities for Latina/o youth in secondary science
(Moreno & Gaytán, 2013; Parker, 2014). This lack of opportunity is evidenced at least in part by
decades of lower achievement scores for such underserved students (National Center for
Educational Statistics, 2011). While a myriad of factors have been associated with this
achievement “gap” (McWhirter, Luginbuhl, & Brown, 2014), recent scholarship emphasizes the
particular detriments of “assimilationist” (Bartolomé & Trueba, 2000), or traditional, science
instruction on diverse students, especially since the era of standardization and accountability
(Emdin, 2007a; 2010). Specifically, studies suggest that traditional, teacher-centered pedagogy
within science classrooms has contributed to higher levels of limited participation for Latina/o
youth than any other racial or ethnic student group (Lee, Robinson, & Sebastian, 2012; Swanson,
Bianchini, & Lee, 2014; Uekawa, Borman, & Lee, 2007). With the underrepresentation of
women in science-related careers today (Chapa & De La Rosa, 2006), the lack of opportunities
for Latina students to participate in engaging science lessons (e.g., Parker, 2014) is particularly
troublesome. Given the salient link between science learning and student involvement in class
activities (Daniels & Arapostathis, 2005; McNeill, Pimentel, & Strauss, 2013), I argue the
critical importance of developing equitable teaching approaches to bolster the active
participation of Latina youth in secondary science classes.
In the following study I explore how cogenerative dialogues might be employed toward
this end. Cogenerative dialogues consist of meetings between a teacher and a representative
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group of her/his students held regularly outside of instructional time to discuss the improvement
of classroom instruction, curriculum, and learning environment (Tobin & Roth, 2005). These
teacher-student discussions often address questions such as: How have activities and the
classroom environment supported or hindered student learning? What improvements should be
made to enhance student interest, involvement, and learning in science class? (Emdin, 2007b). In
cogenerative dialogues, members may also co-construct curriculum that centers on student
interests and inquiry around science-related content (Selier, 2011).
These dialogues have been studied as “learning catalysts” (Siry & Lang, 2010), spaces
wherein a teacher and students construct knowledge about and transact social capital with each
other (Emdin, 2007b). Scholarship in this area has begun to suggest that cogenerative dialogues
may promote more active participation among student members (Bayne, 2009; Emdin, 2010;
Seiler, 2011; Wassell, Martin, & Scantlebury, 2013). However, such studies have yet to explore
the process by which this expansion of in-class participation occurs, or how it might relate to the
particular engagements that students undertake with each other and their teacher within the
cogenerative dialogues. Moreover, few if any of these studies have examined the ways in which
cogenerative dialogues may mediate active participation specifically for Latina students in
secondary science courses. Responding to the lack of research in this area, and the particular
need for more investigations into equitable science teaching practices for students of color, this
study explores how involvement in cogenerative dialogues might mediate the active in-class
participation of Latina high school students.
3.2 Review of Literature
A host of troubling studies has revealed the contours of inequitable learning opportunity
for urban students in the secondary science classroom. In their survey of urban high schools, for
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example, Lee and colleagues (2012) found that students consistently rated science classes among
the least engaging courses. In addition, numerous qualitative investigations into this area have
suggested that science teachers in urban high schools have been unprepared to teach in culturally
responsive ways, and/or hindered by standardization policies from incorporating their students’
personal interests, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and individual decision-making
opportunities into their teaching (Aschbacher, Li, & Roth, 2010; Emdin, 2010; Emdin, 2011a;
McLaughlin, 2014; Zacharias & Calabrese Barton 2004). Other studies have found that many
science teachers in urban settings harbor deficit viewpoints of their students and/or neglect to
provide enough rigor and challenge in their courses (Hewson, Kahle, Scantlebury, & Davies,
2001; Prime & Miranda, 2006). Viewed collectively, this scholarship suggests that too many
urban classrooms fail to foster a rigorous, culturally responsive science community of high
expectations, where students can actively participate in culturally meaningful science tasks and
develop an identity around the practice of science (Aschbacher et al., 2010; Emdin, 2010).
While these studies indicate that students from urban schools tend to face inequitable
classroom instruction in science, highlighted particularly are the injustices faced by Latinos, and
in particular, female students. In several large-scale survey investigations, it was found that,
among high school students of various races and ethnicities, Latinos reported the least degree of
engagement and active participation in science classes (Lee, Robinson, & Sabastian, 2012;
Swanson, Bianchini, & Lee, 2014; Uekawa, Borman, & Lee, 2007). As possible mediating
factors of such results, these studies pointed to whole-class, undifferentiated instruction that
lacked “personalism” (Lee et al., 2012; Swanson et al., 2014), as well as to a prevalence of
independent work that may have contrasted with some students’ preferences for collaborative
and community-centered activities (Uekawa et al. 2007).
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Similar inequities surfaced in studies, both quantitative and qualitative, that specifically
investigated the perceptions and experiences of Latinas in secondary science courses. For
example, in a recent survey of both white and Latino high school students, Simpkins and
colleagues (2015) found that Latinas reported lower ability self-concepts than their peers.
Moreover, in her ethnography of eight Latina middle school students, Parker (2014) observed
science instruction that neglected the cultural and linguistic practices of students and constrained
the active participation of Latinas. She argued that such teaching “discourages full participation
of all students in our science education community[,] restricts access to the discipline, and in the
end, works counter to the mission of educating all students in science” (Parker, 2014, p.330).
Taken together, the scholarship on science education for urban and/or Latina/o students
paints a somewhat bleak picture of disengagement and non-participation in science classes,
where overly didactic, individualistic, and culturally irrelevant teaching can contribute to
inequitable learning opportunities. At the same time, this literature also proposes other teaching
strategies and approaches that might elicit greater involvement and more effective learning for
Latinas and other female students in science courses. In particular, scholars suggest that science
teachers might offer targeted linguistic scaffolding and social supports (Brotman & Moore, 2004;
Parker, 2014); create classroom activities that represent the actual work of scientists in the field
(Parker, 2014); provide students with afterschool mentoring in science (Burger et al., 2007;
Parker, 2014); make concerted efforts to establish supportive relationships with and among
students so as to foster confidence and risk-taking in learning (Brotman & Moore, 2004; Burger
et al., 2007; Parker, 2014); and incorporate student choice, perspectives, interests, and inquiries
within the curriculum (Brotman & Moore, 2004). Taking up such teaching practices, these
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scholars suggest, could create the science communities that encourage expanded participation,
particularly for female students.
3.3 Sociocultural Perspective on Participation, Learning, and Identity
From a sociocultural perspective, active participation—along with one’s cultural and
linguistic practices—deeply matters for learning. I begin from the assumption that active
participation, identity, and learning develop together within communities, where individuals
contribute to a practice (or commonly supported work) by taking on enterprises (or individual
actions), sharing certain repertoires (or tools, discourses, ways of thinking, etc.), and developing
mutual engagements (or “dense” relationships with one another) (Wenger, 1998). As newcomers
participate more fully in the enterprises, repertoires, and engagements of the community, their
knowledge of the common practice (i.e., what they are able to do within the community)
expands, and their identities as members of the community begin to develop and strengthen
(Lave & Wenger, 1991). To assist newcomers in this process of learning and identity
development, “old timers” (or more experienced members) provide certain scaffolds and
supports, which are eventually removed over time as the newcomers become more independent
in their involvement with the practice (Vygotsky, 1980).
From this theoretical perspective, because learning is connected to identity, individuals
seek out participation within communities that are meaningful—that resonate with and build
from their previous cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Rogoff, 1991). Often, meaningful
opportunities for participation take the form of “third spaces,” which combine and/or bridge
elements of individuals’ cultural and linguistic experiences with aspects of a new practice,
thereby creating relevant avenues for involvement and learning (Bhabha, 1994). For example,
previous research in science literacy has reported how classroom instruction can draw from the
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particular cultural practices in which diverse students engage at home—which represent
students’ first space—to derive science-related questions—which represent the second space of
school—and thus create a new, third space that combines and bridges the practices of students’
cultures and mainstream science (Moje et al., 2004).
In urban science classrooms that neglect students’ cultural practices and fail to create
third spaces, the practice of school-based science may not be viewed as meaningful enough to
warrant active participation (Emdin, 2010), or “activities and processes that indicate true
engagement in science such as questioning, sharing one’s thoughts about a concept,
argumentation, and debate” (Emdin, 2011a, p.2). When this occurs, students may instead
undertake forms of “pseudo participation,” dutifully completing assignments absent a deep
personal connection to the activity at hand (McLaughlin, 2015). While pseudo participation may
appease certain demands of compliance in the classroom, it fails to promote meaningful learning
and so impedes students’ development of a science identity, or “the sense of who students are,
what they believe they are capable of, and what they want to do and become in regard to
science” (Aschbacher et al., 2010, p.566). Without identification with and participation in the
practice of science, students from diverse backgrounds face serious challenges to achievement
and the pursuit of future careers in this field. Thus, to provide more equitable learning
opportunities for students from historically marginalized communities, and to promote their
involvement in science beyond high school, teachers are increasingly called to create more
culturally responsive classrooms that make science learning meaningful and foster active
participation (Emdin, 2010; Rivera Maulucci, Brown, Grey, & Sullivan, 2014).
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3.4 Meaningful Participation through Educación
Literature on the academic experiences of Latina/o students in science and across other
subject areas highlights the importance of such students’ expectations for educación in school
(Prins, 2011; Un, 2013; Valenzuela, 1999). While traditional, mainstream conceptions of
education in the U.S. tend to associate schooling more narrowly with the acquisition of academic
knowledge and dispositions (Jensen & Sawyer, 2013), scholars propose that some Latinas/os
both in the U.S. and across Latin America view educación as something more—the development
of one’s moral character and social responsibilities, as well as growth in academic competencies
(Garcia, Woodley, Flores, & Chu, 2012; Purcell-Gates & Rojas, 2011).
This view of schooling as educación has several implications for teaching Latina/o
students (Antrop-González & De Jesús, 2006). In carrying out educación, teachers are called to
establish their moral authority and inspire emulation by demonstrating and modeling authentic
care for their students. Valenzuela (1999) asserts that many teachers with traditional views of
education believe that they show ‘care’ by spending hours outside the classroom constructing
lessons plans that are rigorous and meet academic standards, and then in turn expect students to
reciprocate by showing ‘care’ around their in-class participation and learning. However,
teaching that illustrates authentic care seeks to adapt to students rather than vice versa. That is,
teaching with the care of educación begins with the students and their relationships, needs,
interests, and goals; and then leads to the crafting of lessons plans that meaningfully connect
students to the subject area content (Valenzuela, 1999). One way teachers can demonstrate such
authentic care is by incorporating personalismo into their teaching, or personalizing aspects of
lessons to and making connections with individual students. This approach to care often
facilitates the development of confianza, or trusted, personal relationships between teachers and
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students that extend beyond classroom walls and that can activate the affective dimensions of
learning (Antrop-González & De Jesús, 2006).
Diaz-Greenberg (2003) argues that one approach to supporting such a concept of
educación lies in dialogic, “co-intentional” teaching (Freire, 1977); here, teachers and students
engage in common reflection to collectively decide on aspects of the curriculum, such as the
questions and goals pursued within a content area. Through dialogue and problem-posing, co-
intentional teaching helps develop confianza and personalismo by building teacher-student
relationships and orienting knowledge construction around the learner (Diaz-Greenberg, 2003).
This approach to educación seeks to resolve the “teacher-student contradiction”—or the myth
that only the former teaches and the latter learns—by creating a learning community where “the
teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself [sic] taught in dialogue
with the students, who in turn while being taught, also teach. They become jointly responsible
for a process in which all grow” (Freire, 1977, p.61).
Garcia and colleagues (2012) also propose that educación and the learning of Latina/o
students more generally are supported by “transcaring,” a particular construction of third spaces
in schools. Through transcaring, teachers intentionally “build a common collaborative ‘in-
between’ space” (Garcia et al., 2012, p.799) in which Latina/o youth can navigate their way from
current forms of participation found in more familiar communities of practice—or their first
space—to those types of participation more valued in the discourse of formal learning and
schools—or the second space (Moje et al., 2004). Transcaring spaces may be especially helpful
when they are initially constructed outside the classroom, but are eventually introduced into,
become part of, and act as learning scaffolds within traditional academic settings (Garcia et al.,
2012).
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Taken together, numerous scholars of Latino education support the development of
culturally responsive teaching through efforts at cultivating educación. Where the cultural
practices of Latina/o students are left out of academic practices of schools, and where teachers
and students are separated by hierarchical, traditional roles, Latina/o students are denied the
relational and relevant schooling experiences that they expect and require to feel engaged
(Valenzuela, 1999). However, the scholarship reviewed above suggests that by utilizing
approaches such as co-intentional teaching and transcaring, teachers may help challenge such
constraints while creating equitable learning opportunities that represent third spaces and support
notions of confianza and personalismo.
3.5 Cogenerative Dialogues as Supports for Active Participation
This study conceives of cogenerative dialogues as one possible form of spaces which
might support Latina students’ active participation in the science classroom. Previous studies
have explored how cogenerative dialogues have helped teachers and students transact cultural
capital (Emdin, 2007b, 2011a), or share and collectively reflect on the divergent cultural
practices that each party brings to an interaction. Thus, such research has raised the possibility
that the spaces of cogenerative dialogues might make room for educación and transcaring to
emerge. Extant literature also highlights how cogenerative dialogues have allowed teachers and
students to co-construct curriculum (Emdin, 2007a; Seiler, 2011), and so hints at the co-
intentional teaching that studies of educación underscore (e.g., Diaz-Greenberg, 2003). Perhaps
most importantly, several studies of cogenerative dialogues have found that student members of
these spaces often take on greater participation in class during or following their participation in
the dialogues (Bayne, 2009; Emdin, 2010; Seiler, 2011; Wassell et al., 2013).
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Missing from this literature, however, are investigations that (a) focus primarily on Latina
students in the science classroom; (b) describe the process of how students expand their
participation in and through cogenerative dialogues; or (c) explore the particular conditions
found within cogenerative dialogues that may mediate students’ expanded participation within
the science classroom. Thus, this study seeks to address each of these gaps in the literature, and
centers on the following research questions:
1. Through their involvement in cogenerative dialogues, to what extent and in what ways do
Latina students expand their active participation, both within the dialogue setting itself, as
well as in the science classroom?
2. By what means does active participation within the cogenerative dialogues mediate
Latina students’ active participation within the science classroom?
3.6 Methodology
To answer these questions, I utilized data collected from a design-based investigation into
the potential for cogenerative dialogues to mediate the learning of teachers and students in urban
science classrooms (Design-based Research Collective (DBRC), 2003; Reinking & Bradley,
2008). For this study, I recruited two veteran science teachers, Ellen Galván and Lorena Silva
(all names pseudonyms), who worked in respective urban charter schools serving almost
exclusively students from Latino and low-income families, many of whom were recent arrivals
to the U.S. (see Table 3.1).
Table 3.1: Teacher Participant Demographics, Experience, and School Information
Teacher Gender Race/
ethnicity
Experience
in Teaching
(years)
High
School
School
Enrollment
Racial/ Ethnic
Makeup of
School
Enrollment
Percent
Qualifying for
Free/Reduced
Lunch
Ellen
Galván
Female Latina 13 Ambition
East
673 97% Latino, 3%
Black
97%
Lorena
Silva
Female Latina 11 Ambition
West
658 99% Latino, 1%
Black
92%
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Of their five science periods, Ellen and Lorena were asked to select a class about whom they felt
a particularly urgent need to learn, and each chose a section of their respective anatomy/
physiology courses. I met separately with the students of these sections to explain the
parameters of the study and to solicit volunteers, particularly from those students who perceived
themselves as not knowing their teacher well and/or not regularly participating in afterschool
activities. Recruitment efforts yielded four student participants in Lorena’s case and ten in
Ellen’s (see Table 3.2 for more information about student participants).
4
Prior to the first
cogenerative dialogue meeting, I led the participating students from each site in a week-long
training around how to engage in open dialogue with and give constructive criticism to others.
5
I
also collected baseline data by conducting a week of instructional observations at each school
and by formally interviewing each participant.
Table 3.2: Student Participants at Each Site
Site Name Race/Ethnicity Year/ Age Gender Focal Student
Ambition East Alejandro Latino Sophomore – 15 Male
(Ellen) Angel Latino Sophomore – 15 Male
Dylan Latino Sophomore – 16 Male
José Latino Sophomore – 15 Male
Lina Latina Sophomore – 15 Female
Maria Latina Sophomore – 15 Female
Melvin Latino Sophomore – 15 Male
Nelson Latino Sophomore – 16 Male
Patricia Latina Sophomore – 15 Female
Vanessa Latina Sophomore – 16 Female
Ambition West Antonio Latino Senior – 18 Male
(Lorena) Carlos Latino Senior – 17 Male
Emmy Latina Senior – 17 Female
Mateo Latino Senior – 18 Male
During these interviews, the vast majority of students (particularly the female students)
self-identified as “shy” and reluctant in their in-class participation. A comment by Emmy
typifies the kind of descriptions that students provided me in characterizing their academic
4
The ten students in Ellen’s case were split into two groups of five, with each group participating in the cogenerative dialogues for half the study.
However, early in their tenure, the second group of students invited any students from the first group to join them so as to bring more diverse
perspectives. Vanessa, Lina, and Patricia (from the first group) decided to join the second for the last seven dialogues of the study.
5
This week of training consisted of five afterschool sessions in which I introduced the students to Roth, Tobin, & Zimmermann’s (2002)
‘heuristic’ guide for dialogue expectations. Using old video footage from my days as a classroom teacher, I then led the students in the practice
of giving constructive feed around clips of my own teaching.
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selves: “I’m shy…I don’t like to talk in class or even work with partners much. I just like to do
my work, and that’s it…I don’t really see a need to talk to teachers besides [speaking with them]
about my grades.” Several of the female students also shared information about themselves that
implied a weak science identity. For example, Patricia remarked in her interview: “Science is
okay but I haven’t exactly done well in the past years, like mostly Cs…I don’t really think I see
myself doing a career in science, [I’m] more into art like Anime or something.” Emmy echoed
this sentiment, stating: “Science isn’t exactly my thing…I think I’ll go into business probably.”
While the original intent of the research was to examine what teachers learned from cogenerative
dialogues, Ellen and Lorena both requested that data be collected to also explore the
development of students during the study, particularly, those female students like Emmy and
Patricia who self-identified as being (and whom the teachers also perceived to be) reticent to
participate in and connect with the content of science courses.
After collecting baseline data and preparing the students for their participation in the
study, I worked closely with Ellen and Lorena to establish and sustain the cogenerative dialogues
at each of their sites. These cogenerative dialogues were held afterschool for approximately 25-
75 minutes each week across 4.5 months at both schools. To examine the five female students (or
focal students) and their active participation within the settings of cogenerative dialogues, I
videotaped, transcribed, and took field notes on the dialogues at both schools. Immediately
following every dialogue at each site, I would “debrief” (DBRC, 2003) for 5-10 minutes
separately with the students and then their teacher. I used these brief, informal interviews to
gather participants’ ongoing perspectives about the dialogues and any perceived developments in
student participation during instructional time. I also videotaped and conducted weekly
observations (55-110 min.) of Ellen and Lorena as they each taught their respective anatomy
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class periods. These weekly classroom visits not only helped me identify changes in the teaching
of Ellen and Lorena, but they also allowed me to track the in-class participation of the student
members of our dialogues.
At the conclusion of the dialogues, I collected comparative data in a similar fashion to my
baseline efforts, conducting a week of classroom observations at each site and formally
interviewing each teacher and student. Thus, the data I collected represented various vantages
(student and teacher interviews, debriefs, field notes, transcriptions, and videotapes) of students’
participation—within the dialogues and the classroom context—over the three stages of the study
(prior to the start of the dialogues, throughout their enactment, and following their completion).
Data Analysis
To begin analyzing the data in relation to the research questions, I first explored the
videotapes, transcripts, and field notes from each cogenerative dialogue and classroom
observation. Using this data, I tracked the participation of each female student member using
longitudinal magnitude coding and matrices (Saldaña, 2013): Every instance in which a focal
student engaged in an assigned activity in class was identified and coded. I then entered each
instance in one of four matrices (two for each site, one which traced in-class participation and the
other which plotted participation within cogenerative dialogues). For each identified moment of
participation, I recorded the names of individuals involved, their observed involvement in the
activity (i.e., what they were doing and for how long), and the transcript of any conversations
they had (if video data was sufficiently audible) (see Appendices 3A and 3B for excerpts of such
matrices).
Perhaps most importantly, I categorized each moment of student participation based on
Emdin (2011) and McLaughlin’s (2014) respective theoretical conceptions of active and pseudo
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participation, as well as the definitions of and expectations for student participation that Ellen
and Lorena provided in their formal interviews. The latter not only provided practical, locally
based conceptions of active participation (as volunteering in discussions, presenting in front of
the class, taking part in conversations within small-group settings, etc.), but also identified a
higher level of active participation missing from Emdin and McLaughlin’s definitions—
leadership in the practice of science. Using this amalgam of theoretical and practical
understandings, I classified each instance of student participation by locating it on a spectrum
that ranged in descriptors from ‘minimal’ and ‘superficial’ on one end; to ‘more engaged’ and
‘sustained’ at the center; and ‘active’ and ‘exemplary/leading others’ at the opposing end.
These exercises in magnitude coding and matrix construction revealed several patterns of
development in the focal students’ participation within the cogenerative dialogues and activities
of anatomy class. I then triangulated my interpretations by reviewing transcripts from formal
interviews and debriefs with students and teachers. When participants discussed student
participation within cogenerative dialogues and/or the classroom, I compared the information
revealed therein to the initial patterns that I perceived; I then noted supportive and
counterevidence, and folded them into my conjectures to craft more nuanced, refined assertions.
To explore the processes and factors related to cogenerative dialogues that may have mediated
student participation in the anatomy classroom, I returned to the transcripts of formal interviews
and debriefs with teachers and students, and conducted several rounds of analytical coding
(Miles & Huberman, 1994). After rereading the transcripts and memoing around my nascent
connections among data sources, I identified comments related to student participation across the
contexts of cogenerative dialogues and the anatomy classroom. Each instance was then given a
brief, summarizing descriptor, or descriptive code (Miles & Huberman, 1994), using inductive
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labels that arose from the particularities of the study and its contexts (see Appendix 3C for
examples of codes and their related data). I then employed the constant comparative method
(Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to group related data points, to collapse codes into larger categories—or
provisional codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994)—and to write memos around emerging conjectures
(Saldaña, 2013). I returned to the theoretical framework to make further sense of these
provisional codes through pattern coding (Miles & Huberman, 1994); that is, I used concepts
from theories on sociocultural learning and educación to recognize broader patterns among
provisional codes and weave conjectures into key themes. Finally, to enhance the
trustworthiness of these themes (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), I presented summaries of them to
Lorena and Ellen, and their feedback was used to refine further the findings presented below.
3.7 Finding A: Parallel Expansion of Participation across Dialogues and Classroom
Activities
In both frequency and quality, the focal students’ participation in the anatomy classroom
developed in parallel to their participation in the cogenerative dialogues. That is, analysis of the
data revealed that as the Latina members participated more actively in their afterschool
dialogues, their participation in the anatomy classroom also seemed to grow more robust
throughout the study.
Early Participation within Cogenerative Dialogues and the Anatomy Classroom
Early in the cogenerative dialogues, participation among the focal students reflected
pseudo participation (McLaughlin, 2015), in that it could be generally characterized as
infrequent, brief, and lacking initiative and depth. Teachers, male student members, and myself
tended to carry the conversations in these meetings; otherwise, discussions were punctuated by
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long moments of silence, as seen in the transcript example below, where we are discussing a
videotaped segment of Ellen’s teaching:
John: Okay, so we just saw Miss Galván [in a video of her teaching] start a discussion
about the opening writing prompt, right? What did you all think of that discussion?
Alejandro: I mean, when she asked the question, some people just speak out. And if
somebody else wants to talk, like, they'll raise their hand but someone else will speak out,
and the person who raised their hand didn't get to say what they were going to say.
Dylan: I mean, the good thing is that everybody's paying attention, they're not wandering
off, so they're into the conversation and everything. They're not talking to their neighbor
about a different thing because they're involved in the discussion. [4 second pause]
John: Any other ideas or opinions people have about the video and the discussion? [3
second pause] Is there anything people liked in particular? [2 second pause. John looks at
Vanessa, who is not raising her hand] Vanessa?
Vanessa: The one about the fruit.
John: Pouring all the stuff on the fruit? Yeah. Other things that you liked in that
discussion about the prompt? [5 second pause] Lina? Patricia? [3 second pause] No?
As this transcript shows, female dialogue members of Ellen’s group were initially quite reluctant
to speak up and share their thoughts with the group. Even when one of the focal students did
speak, like Vanessa above, her contribution tended to be minimal.
Emmy also demonstrated instances of reluctant participation in early dialogues at
Lorena’s site. For example, during Lorena’s third cogenerative dialogue, her group discussed a
previous science lab where students dissected sheep eyes:
John: What parts of the lab stood out to you, as good parts or parts that you liked?
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Carlos: I liked learning about and seeing the, what do you call it? The night vision thing.
Lorena: Oh, you mean the tapetum lucidum? Okay, yeah, I should talk more about that
next time. [2 second pause] How about you, Emmy?
Emmy: I thought it was okay. [3 second pause]
Mateo: Just okay? That’s it, that’s all you liked?
Emmy: Yeah, that’s what I said.
As this dialogue transcript illustrates, Emmy hesitates to provide a more detailed explanation of
her evaluation of the previous science lab, even when she is prompted by one of her peers to
elaborate. Moments such as those were common, as members (especially the female ones) had
yet to exhibit strong rapport with one another.
In debriefs following the first few dialogues, the female students themselves would often
comment on their lack of active participation and the “awkwardness” that such silence was
perceived to create among the group. Students such as Vanessa associated this reticence to share
with personal inclinations toward “shyness”: “It [today’s dialogue] was kind of awkward… I
guess it’s better when you [John] or Miss Galván asks us questions or does the talking, ‘cause
we’re not going to! [laughter] I mean, we’re all shy here, at least us girls.” In this debrief,
Vanessa feels comfortable enough to speak for other female members of the dialogue, but does
not seem confident that their collective female participation will develop much in the future.
Observations of Lorena and Ellen’s instructional periods within the first four weeks of
the study revealed a similar pattern of pseudo participation among the focal students. Few (if
any) of them asked a question, presented work, volunteered an answer or opinion, or actively led
a group in collaborative projects. Rather, most simply complied with instructions and completed
individual work. For example, in the first four weeks of the study, Emmy did not raise a hand,
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call out an answer, or initiate communication with anyone (peers or Lorena). Moreover, in group
work assignments, (such as the one described below in an excerpt from my field notes taken in
the study’s third week) Emmy’s participation was marked by little or inconsistent interactions
with her partners and her teacher, despite that she nearly always completed the written tasks.
As students loudly converse about the websites, reaching past each other to point to
various images on their Chromebooks, Emmy and her partner, Jeremy, each read their
screens in front of them in silence. A few moments later, Jeremy looks up at Emmy,
whose head remains fixed on her screen, and then turns his attention to Antonio [a friend]
sitting across the aisle at another table. Jeremy and Antonio chat until Lorena circulates
nearby and reminds Jeremy to get back to work with Emmy. Jeremy again looks to
Emmy: “So, what are we supposed to do?” Emmy replies curtly, “I’m just doing my
work,” and continues staring ahead at her screen.
While some of the female students such as Maria and Vanessa were slightly more open to active
group participation early on, much of the in-class involvement of focal students (like Emmy’s
above) was superficial and did not seem to challenge them to take on new enterprises in science.
Beginning Development of Participation across Dialogue and Classroom Activities
As the focal students continued their involvement with the study, however, they gradually
took on more expansive roles in both the cogenerative dialogues and the anatomy classroom.
Although the teachers and I continued to prompt some members with questions, the Latina
members began to exhibit patterns of greater active participation, voicing their opinions with
more frequency and giving more detailed suggestions of classroom improvements. This finding
is illustrated in the dialogue transcript below, taken from the sixth week of the study at Ellen’s
site:
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Ellen: Where do you think you learn most? In the groups that you choose, or in the
groups that I put you in, like your row groups?
Vanessa: It depends on which group understands things. Sometimes you can be with the
group that you chose to be with and they might know a lot, but sometimes they won't
know specific subjects and so then you have another group that knows that subject more.
Lina: I feel like the group that I choose will know more than me because the people that I
choose normally know what's going on and they master more that subject than I do.
Patricia: For me, the best group for learning is with my friends because usually if you
don't get it, your friend's going to explain it to you in an easier way than other people.
Vanessa: Yeah, it's like when you choose the group, those people probably already know
how you need things to be explained. Other people can have more higher-
Lina: Vocabulary?
Vanessa: Yeah, higher vocabulary to explain small things to you. You get more confused
with those people. But when your friends say it, you're just like, "Okay, I got this."
Patricia: Yeah, when other people try to explain it to you, they over complicate things.
Vanessa: Yeah, that's why. Sometimes what they say just messes me up more.
As seen above, the “awkward” pauses so prevalent in earlier dialogues were soon replaced by
quick, frequent, and often more detailed responses to questions and comments by Ellen and other
members. Additionally, students within the group seemed to have developed a better rapport
with one another, even finishing and building off one another’s thoughts. Indeed, this last
observation became an important pattern, as the teachers and I soon noticed that after one female
member spoke up during the dialogue, often another would do the same, as seen in the transcript
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excerpt above. In debriefs following such midpoint dialogues, the students recounted with pride
their more active roles in our weekly discussions:
John: How did you think it [the dialogue] went today?
Vanessa: I think it went better than last time because I had more to say.
Patricia: I think I did better than last time, too.
John: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You mean you spoke more?
Patricia: Yeah, and because when I talked, I directly talked to Ms. Galván.
Lina: I felt more, like, confident about saying stuff, too. Like, I just said it! [laughter]
Vanessa: Yeah, I noticed that we were all talking a lot more today. We did pretty well.
By the fifth meeting at each site, even the male members of dialogues began to recognize the
emergence of female voices within the groups, as seen in the debrief transcript below:
John: What do you all think about our meeting?
Carlos: I liked it because I think everyone was actually saying what they thought today.
Emmy: Yeah, I definitely was more engaged and talking.
Mateo: I know. You were actually sharing a lot today—that’s good.
For the most part, as the dialogues progressed, students seemed to become more supportive and
appreciative of one another in sharing their thoughts, particularly when those ideas came from
previously “shy” students such as Emmy.
Shortly after the focal students from both sites began to voice their opinions and
suggestions more strongly in cogenerative dialogues, they also started to exhibit more active
participation during in-class instructional activities. For Patricia, Maria, and Lina, this change
was manifest in frequent, unsolicited participation in class discussions, where they raised
questions to Ellen and/or proposed solutions to conceptual problems being analyzed by the class.
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As seen in the cogenerative dialogues, this participation often followed a pattern where one
female member would volunteer an opinion to the class, only to be immediately followed by the
comments of another female member. For example, during the ninth week of the study, Patricia
volunteered to present her group’s solution to a case study with which the class had been
grappling over the past period. Positioned at the front of the classroom with written work
displayed on an ELMO, Patricia confidently addressed her class:
Patricia: Because of a lesion, the seventh patient never fully developed part of her brain
and now she can’t feel cold and weighs more than six hundred pounds. Our group
believes that the lesion is probably located in her parietal lobe, which is responsible for
detecting taste, touch, and feel, so this would explain why the patient can’t feel cold.
[Pause] Any revisions? [Maria raises hand] Maria.
Maria: I would recommend that you write down the thyroid, too, because sometimes that
is involved in weight gain, like the patient had. [Patricia nods, writing down the
suggested revision; Lina raises her hand]
Patricia: Okay, Lina?
Lina: I would say something more about the hypothalamus, too. I would say that it
regulates the hormones involved in being hungry and that’s why it’s where the lesion is.
The in-class participation captured in the transcript above exhibits at least two dimensions of the
active participation that Emdin (2010) describes: students such as Patricia engage in deep
conceptual thinking in her presentation, while Lina and Maria offer critical review of peer ideas.
Perhaps more importantly, by engaging in dialogue with one another about concepts of anatomy,
and debating the accuracy of “diagnoses” within a medical case study, the three students
highlighted here exhibited active science participation; that is, Lina, Maria, and Patricia utilized
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the discourse of anatomy to build collective knowledge and thus took up not just the practices of
active students, but active scientists.
Vanessa and Emmy, for their part, began to demonstrate active participation in other
ways by this point in this study. While she was still somewhat reluctant to speak in front of her
entire class, Vanessa began to actively contribute in instances of small-group work, where she
was observed directing the division of labor among her partners and holding them accountable
for completing their work efficiently within class time. Likewise, Emmy exhibited more active
participation in her groups, choosing frequently to partner in-class with other members of her
cogenerative dialogue and interacting with more focus and ease around these students.
Additionally, Emmy began initiating more frequent contact with Lorena, both during class,
where she asked one-on-one questions about assignments at multiple points during lessons, and
afterschool, where she often dropped by Lorena’s classroom to complete homework and chat
socially with her teacher. In our midpoint interview, Lorena noted: “I can tell that Emmy is
slowly opening up more. Like, now she’ll ask me questions during class and she started coming
in afterschool with the boys to do homework and talk to me about what’s going on at home.”
Active Participation and Leadership toward the Conclusion of Dialogues
While not identical to one another, nor perfectly linear across all dialogues and classroom
observations, the participation of female members from both sites continued to expand and
strengthen through the concluding weeks of the study. During their final cogenerative dialogues
with Ellen, the female members at this site began not simply voicing their ideas and questions
more frequently, but also leading the group by prompting the male members to speak up and by
raising topics for discussion without solicitation from Ellen or myself. Vanessa, in particular,
demonstrated leadership in these meetings, as seen in the transcript excerpt below:
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Ellen: What can I do to help students be more comfortable and confident in presenting in
class? Should we do practice presentations?
Vanessa: For me, personally, I don't really practice anywhere, because I feel that's weird.
I guess, when I write my stuff, I feel confident for what I write. So, when I'm presenting,
I just know that it has to be relaxed and just speak what I wrote, and be confident about it.
That's for me, though. [Pause] Lina, what about you?
Lina: I was nervous when I presented because I was looking at the people in the front. I
was like "Oh, no, what have I done?" [laughter] But then I just told myself to go do it.
Maria: I was nervous at first, too, until I was talking and then my peers wanted to
motivate me, I guess, and that just made me more nervous. I thought I was doing an okay
job, and like Lina said, when I saw everyone, I got nervous, too, and I forgot what to say,
even though I had everything memorized until then. So I just read from my notes. So, I
guess we need to make sure to have, like, detailed notes with us when we present.
Vanessa: Melvin, what about you? Do you think we should have more detailed notes?
As illustrated above, Vanessa expands her participation into areas of leadership, as she is the first
to offer a response to Ellen’s opening question, and she also solicits the participation of other
dialogue members. Moreover, Vanessa subtly steers the conversation, using her final question to
shift the topic of the dialogue from the initial problem (i.e., student nervousness during in-class
presentations) to a potential solution (i.e., the use of detailed notes). While Lina and Maria do
not exhibit the same type of leadership in this excerpt, they do continue to display active
participation in their responses, which provide detailed explanations of their thought processes to
the group. Meanwhile, at Lorena’s site, Emmy similarly continued to demonstrate an expansion
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of her participation during cogenerative dialogues, as the frequency of her turns in sharing ideas
or asking questions peaked at her group’s fifteenth meeting.
Plateauing participation for male students. As female members began to expand their
participation, and in some cases, drive the final cogenerative dialogues, it was observed that the
involvement of some male members, particularly at Ellen’s site, began to plateau or diminish. In
our debrief following one of these dialogues, Ellen observed:
Well, I like that Lina and Vanessa were definitely participating a lot more. I still saw
evidence of the prompting, kind of looking at each other and saying, "What do you
think?" But José and Alejandro, not much from them, despite the prompting from the
other individuals, so I don’t know if they’re as engaged.
Ellen’s perception of the declining participation of male students like José and Alejandro
illustrates a possible conundrum of cogenerative dialogues: Because each student’s voice cannot
be heard at every instance, when the views of some students become amplified, it can detract
from and/or highlight the lack of involvement of others, even among those who choose to join a
dialogue (Emdin & Lehner, 2006). Although steps were taken by the teachers and myself to
prompt students to share their opinions on each topic, when students chose to pass or briefly
agree with another member, we could not be certain whether their pseudo participation was an
instance of silencing—the experience of feeling their voice was undesired and/or under threat—
or was simply a moment when they felt they had little to contribute on the subject. Some
scholars of student voice have also proposed that even when students choose not to participate,
their choice to remain silent is still an expression of their agency and may actually represent
resistance to some perceived injustice (Arnot & Reay, 2007); thus, even in the act of not sharing
within the group, it remains difficult (if not impossible) to discern for certain the intentions
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behind such decisions by students. When I debriefed and conducted final interviews with male
members like José and Alejandro, I asked them about their diminished participation. Both cited
a decline in engagement due to various personal reasons, and rather than being silenced by the
female members, claimed to support the focal students’ increasing participation in the dialogues.
However, because students here (or in any similar study) are not obligated to come forward with
their perceived intentions, I cannot rule out that the male students were not in fact silenced by the
female students’ active participation or were not using their silence to protest this development.
Another interpretation of this finding might assert that, since there existed an imbalance
of male students in the study (with 9 males to only 5 females), the shift in active participation
from male to female voices might have represented less a “silencing” of male students and more
an equitable change in the norms of the dialogues. That is, because females were
underrepresented numerically in the dialogues, their increased participation in this setting might
have signaled a new balancing of gendered voices, rather than an oppression of one group’s
views. Whether interpreted as silencing or balancing, it is important to note the finding that the
new roles taken on by the female students in both sites were simultaneously met with a degree of
less active leadership by male members.
In parallel with their active participation in cogenerative dialogues, the focal female
students across both sites continued to demonstrate more expansive involvement in in-class
learning activities. For Vanessa, this included leadership roles in small group settings, as noted
in this field note from the fourteenth week of the study:
As I make my way closer to their group, I notice Vanessa taking charge of her peers,
quickly informing Lisa and Rosalba to refocus their efforts on their design experiments
and restating the group’s central question of the assignment: “So, do you guys think we
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can figure out if someone is exhaling more carbon dioxide?” Lisa points to her laptop
screen, “Well, it says here that we have to use these certain strips that can, like, catch the
carbon dioxide from their breath.” Vanessa responds, “Yeah, I know, I saw that, too.
But, like, I think we need them to sit down and then exercise or something later. Maybe
we should figure that out first.”
This field note excerpt illustrates how, by the end of the study, Vanessa consistently led her peers
by directing the flow and focus of conversations in work groups. Similarly, Emmy continued to
take on an active role within small-group settings, but she also noticed other developments in her
participation within class. In an email to me several weeks following the study, after she had
begun summer courses at a local community college, Emmy reflected on the changes she
experienced in class as a result of her participation within the cogenerative dialogues:
When this program [the cogenerative dialogues] started evolving I noticed I would
volunteer a bit more, I would socialize with different people and start helping people
more in my table groups… I think as this program started growing I started changing the
way I was, I didn’t want to be a student who stayed quiet, or didn’t understand why
things happen in our bodies. I changed myself with every class, some days I would ask
Ms. Silva a question personally, other days I would just shout out a question… I even try
my best now to have talks one on one with my professors because it looks good on my
part, it shows them that I care about my education and I want to be successful.
In this reflection, Emmy explains that her in-class participation expanded to include seeking out
communication with new individuals, and has even spilled over into her college classrooms as
well. Observations and video recordings of classroom activities support Emmy’s claims that she
began to share her thoughts and questions within whole-class settings, and her interactions with
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Lorena also became more frequent and sustained.
Perhaps the most substantial changes in in-class participation occurred for Lina, Maria,
and Patricia. For these three dialogue members, active participation included not just frequent
involvement in class discussions and/or small group presentations—as found in other research on
students in cogenerative dialogues (Bayne, 2009; Emdin, 2010; Seiler, 2011; Wassell et al.,
2013)—but also consisted of major leadership roles within whole-class activities. For example,
as a final project for the semester, the students in Ellen’s class were asked to take part in a ‘town
hall’ debate on the merit of legalizing e-cigarettes. Each student was required to make a brief
statement of their position on this topic, and afterward, members of the class had the opportunity
to cross-examine and/or pose rebuttals to the presenting student. Beyond making passionate,
confident position statements to their classmates, Maria and Lina took it upon themselves to be
some of the foremost advocates for their respective arguments, even at one point engaging in a
somewhat heated disagreement with each other in front of the entire class. The excerpt below
captures part of that exchange, as Maria reacts to Nicole, a student who, for the purposes of the
town hall debate, is playing the role of a former smoker dying of lung cancer:
Nicole: If kids try e-cigarettes, then they’re gonna probably try regular cigarettes, and
then they could die like me.
Maria: But wasn’t that your choice? Don’t people have the right to choose to smoke?
Nicole: Yeah, they do have that right but we don’t want them to ruin their lives.
Maria: But shouldn’t it still be their right to do that as long as they know the impact?
Nicole: But are you okay with those teens smoking and dying like me?
Maria: It doesn’t matter if I think it’s okay. The Constitution gives them that right!
Lina: Maria, you said that people under age 18 cannot buy cigarettes, right?
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Maria: Yes, you cannot purchase them—
Lina: Okay, well, Nicole testified that she was only 11 when she started smoking—
Maria: I understand that, but that was her decision—
Lina: I know it was her decision! But it was an adult’s decision to buy her those
cigarettes! Isn’t that correct?
Maria: Yes. [Pause] I understand that, but that’s still illegal. The adult shouldn’t have
bought them for her and she still could have said no.
In this exchange, Maria and Lina demonstrate some of the most active participation encountered
in this study. Standing in sharp contrast to the “shy” behavior they exhibited during the early
weeks of this study, here Maria and Lina animatedly argue with one another about the
intersection of science and personal freedoms, as the entire class looks on with silent
engrossment at the unfolding drama. Moreover, this scene again illustrates some of the focal
students engaging actively in the discourse and practices of science, as they debate the ethical
nature of science-related questions. After class that day, I debriefed with Ellen who remarked:
I really liked that [the debates]. Because I was kind of sitting back there, and I would
look at Lina and Maria, and I was thinking, "You girls go! You go. You are challenging
each other. That's what I want you to do. You can have different positions and challenge
each other”…To those kids, the ones who call themselves shy, it means a lot to be able to
see Maria respond to students [like Nicole] who have strong personalities. And because
of [Maria and Lina], other quieter students also might get that confidence.
Ellen’s comment helps not only underscore the substantial change in participation that students
like Maria and Lina demonstrated by the end of the study, but also illustrates how this expanded
involvement in class may have inspired other students to take risks in participation as well. This
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also raises the possibility that the impact of cogenerative dialogues might spread indirectly to
those students who were not actually present in our afterschool meetings.
3.8 Finding B: Connections and Associations between Expanded Participation in Both
Contexts
As the focal students became more aware of their expanded participation in the anatomy
classroom, they began to draw connections between their membership in the dialogues and their
more active roles in class. Moreover, as students made meaning of these experiences, they also
identified particular elements of the cogenerative dialogues that they perceived as mediating their
expanded participation in both contexts. In particular, student comments (as well as observations
and interviews with the teachers) supported the findings that the cogenerative dialogues acted as
(a) communities of practice, where supportive and inspirational relationships developed among
students and between the teacher and students; and (b) a scaffold for comfortable, gradual
practice of the types of active participation that could be later transferred to the classroom.
Through these experiences, the female students claimed to have developed a sense of
membership and confident agency, along with a deepened science identity, that were collectively
leveraged in taking the risks of trying out new enterprises in classroom participation.
Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Fostering Community
Emdin (2007a) found that cogenerative dialogues help foster a spirit of communalism
among participating teachers and students—a collective support and appreciation for each
individual’s contribution to the dialogue and the classroom. Previous literature in science
education also underscores the importance of developing relationships among female students,
and between teachers and students, to promote more active student involvement and participation
(Brotman & Moore, 2004; Burger et al., 2007; Parker, 2014). The data here not only seem to
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support Emdin’s claim, but they also point to specific aspects of the cogenerative dialogues that
transformed this space into a community of practice (Wenger, 1998), which seemed to mediate
the expansion of the focal students’ in-class participation.
Teacher-student engagements. Contributing perhaps most substantially to this sense of
community were the bonds that developed between the female students and teacher at each site.
Each focal student at some point in this study claimed to have grown closer in her relationship to
her anatomy teacher. Some of these students felt that the cogenerative dialogues offered a space
for them to become more familiar with their teacher and vice versa. For others, they envisioned
the cogenerative dialogues as a springboard for developing close, personal connections with their
teacher. Each student, however, claimed that such relationships with their teacher contributed to
her expanded participation in the classroom:
Patricia: Honestly, the talking more here [in the dialogues] helped me talk more in class.
John: You think so? Talking more here helps you talk in class?
Lina: Yeah, me too. I feel a little bit more comfortable with Ms. Galván so I can talk
more now, too.
Vanessa: Yeah, I was going to say that I found [the dialogues] very helpful for both the
student and the teacher because they help the teacher understand what the student needs
to have more support, and what they can do to give them more, I guess, confidence in
class. Just to have a kind of bond between them so that the teacher knows what’s going
on with students and so the students know what’s going on with the teacher. Like if they
could just help each other in class.
In this debrief following a dialogue, Vanessa explained that as students and the teacher share
their views on classroom activities, a mutual understanding (and perhaps trust) develops because
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the teacher now has a better sense for how to help individuals learn. Vanessa’s comments also
seem to indicate that such mutual understanding contributes to a familiarity and bond between
teacher and student. In one of her interviews, Ellen shared a similar sentiment, highlighting how
the cogenerative dialogues allowed for an exchange of perspectives that made students and
teachers more “approachable” to one another:
[The dialogues] provide an environment where teachers and students can talk in a more
informal way about what's happening in a formal setting like the classroom. It creates that
bridge between those two perspectives… They also make you more approachable [as the
teacher] from the student’s perspective. And it makes the students approachable, too.
As seen in other studies (Beers, 2005a; LaVan, 2005a), the cogenerative dialogues helped some
students like Emmy emerge from their “shells” and participate more actively in class by
developing personal relationships with their teachers:
I think this program… kind of got me out of my shell and let me get to know Ms. Silva. I
felt that Ms. Silva actually cares about me. I also noticed that when I sit there she comes
up and talks to me, like, "Oh, how are you doing?" and all that. And I just felt that my
relationship with her has built like a lot, and I didn't think [at first] that me and her were
gonna have this bond together. So, for those who are shy like me I’d say [the dialogues]
help them build a connection with their teacher and makes them come out of their shells.
Emmy’s references to a close connection with Lorena, along with comments by Vanessa and
Patricia above, raise the possibility that cogenerative dialogues help to establish the dense mutual
engagements between teachers and students that are characteristic of communities of practice.
Within such engagements, sociocultural theory explains that individuals begin to develop
not only trust for one another, but also a sense of admiration and a desire for emulation (Lave &
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Wenger, 1991). Indeed, several of the focal students by the conclusion of this study expressed
such sentiments for their teacher:
Patricia: I think I also became a better student because I could tell Ms. Galván takes her
job seriously. When we were having these dialogues, you could tell that she did really
want to improve her teaching so she could help everyone learn, even quiet people like
me. So, that made me wanna learn more and like do more things in class…
Maria: Since the beginning of [the dialogues], Ms. Galván has inspired us and motivated
us. She has always been a teacher that tells you that you could do something…You just
have to do it con ganas like she always says… I've noticed that Ms. Galván is just a
really confident person, and that’s actually given me confidence, too.
These comments help to illustrate how participation in cogenerative dialogues might give
students like Patricia and Maria the proximity needed to recognize admirable characteristics of
their teacher—such as Ellen’s persistence and confidence—and then look to this adult model as
an inspirational guide for active participation in class. Literature on science education suggests
that active participation in and identification to science as a field are promoted when teachers
seek out mentoring opportunities with female students (Burger et al., 2007; Parker, 2014).
Perhaps, then, the teacher-student relationships facilitated through the cogenerative dialogues
encouraged once-reluctant classroom participants with the will/ inspiration—the ganas—to
expand their enterprises in class.
Engagements and shared tools among student members. The engagements supported
by cogenerative dialogues also seemed to extend beyond those just between students and their
teacher. Like other studies have reported (LaVan & Beers, 2005; Wassell et al., 2013), my
observations and interviews pointed to developing friendships between student members of the
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dialogue as well. For example, in an email to me, Emmy wrote: “This program made me create
bonds with my peers… and it helps build trust and closeness for students who take part in this.”
As the study progressed, student members of the dialogues more frequently chose to partner with
one another in group projects during anatomy class, and some student members reported
socializing with other dialogue participants outside of class. A comment by Maria helps explain
that the time spent collaborating with one another in the dialogues seemed to afford another
characteristic of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998)—shared tools and common
repertoires—which in turn may have strengthened their engagements with one another: “I think
the dialogues brought us closer as a group because we got to hear each other’s opinions and
views, we got to share what was bothering us in class or not, and we also got to come up with
ideas for [classroom] changes together.” As Maria notes above, the cogenerative dialogues
seemed to form, not just separate engagements, but a collective unit from the individual
members, and thus helped to support a sense of belonging for each person.
Agency and collaboratively shaping student-centered classroom activities. Beyond
strengthening engagements, the cogenerative dialogues also served as a community of practice in
that it provided a space for teachers and students to take on new collective enterprises (Wenger,
1998)—in this case, to collaboratively reshape the curriculum and instruction of the anatomy
classroom around students’ expressed needs and interests. Throughout the study, students
recognized that the suggestions they offered Ellen and Lorena were actualized in changes made
to the teacher’s respective classrooms. As Emmy and Patricia note below, this seemed to foster a
strong sense of agency within the focal students of this study:
Being in the dialogues allowed us to give our own opinions [about class] to their teacher.
Seeing that Ms. Silva takes into consideration what you say—it’s really nice. It makes
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you feel proud of yourself, so you feel like your voice does matter. And then you just
keep coming back [to the dialogues] for more. (Emmy)
I think [the dialogues] were pretty fun. I mean in the end it did help because Ms. Galván
did take our advice. The things we suggested, she would do it. And that was kind of nice
because it made you feel like you had a voice in how you were learning in class.
(Patricia)
The comments above hint that the focal students recognized their influence, and to at least some
degree, ownership over their learning, something that sociocultural theorists and scholars of
science education recognize as critical to female students’ involvement in the classroom
(Brotman & Moore, 2004; Simpkins, Price, & Garcia, 2015; Smagorinsky, 2012; Vygotsky,
1980). This raises the possibility that even moderate increases in agency and ownership over the
anatomy classroom may have supported the focal students’ expanded in-class participation.
The focal students’ contributions to the classroom may have propelled their active
participation in another sense as well. Many of the suggestions that students in the cogenerative
dialogues provided to Ellen and Lorena helped the teachers in constructing more learner-centered
activities, as the students note below:
John: Have you noticed anything different about Ms. Galván 's teaching this last week?
Lina: She's taking our suggestions more.
Patricia: A lot of the stuff that we’ve been wanting to happen, like more group work and
things like that, have actually started happening. I mean, we give our suggestions to Ms.
Galván and she does them, so then it’s like her being a better teacher because we get to
do things that make us learn more…
Lina: It definitely helps us students because our feedback is used in the lessons, and then
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we can understand the lessons more.
This excerpt from a debrief illustrates that the students perceived their teacher was crafting
student-centered lessons, or in-class activities that responded to students’ learning preferences
and interests. Previous studies of cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Wassell et al., 2012), as well as
literature on science education geared toward Latinas (e.g., Parker, 2014), suggest that the
enactment of more learner-centered activities coaxes more active participation from once-
reluctant students because this teaching both responds to student needs and gives students more
opportunities for involvement. Thus, one might argue that by simply participating in the
cogenerative dialogues and collaborating with their teachers on constructing more learner-center
activities, the focal students gave themselves more numerous and responsive opportunities for
active participation.
Cogenerative Dialogues as Scaffolds for Expanding In-Class Participation
In support of theory on sociocultural learning, studies in science education have
highlighted the importance of providing targeted scaffolding in support of the active participation
of female students (Brotman & Moore, 2004; Parker, 2015). In several ways, the cogenerative
dialogues studied here served as such scaffolds for the expansion of students’ participation.
Safe spaces for risk-taking in new forms of participation. Literature in science
education encourages teachers to create classrooms that represent “safe” communities in which
students can take the risks associated with learning (Brotman & Moore, 2004; Burger et al.,
2007; Parker, 2014). Geelan and colleagues (2006) propose that cogenerative dialogues
represent such potentially safe spaces where students can “‘play around’ with content in an
informal way that encourages increased participation without fear of ‘losing face’ in front of
their peers.” (p.729). Supporting this claim, the students and teachers here, such as Ellen below,
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often commented that the cogenerative dialogues created spaces of trust where they could be
vulnerable with one another in sharing their perspectives on class:
[About] Patricia and the other [female] students, I learned that they will share their views
when they feel safe enough to share them. So, for them it's really important to have that
safe space and I think these dialogues kind of took on that role…because [the dialogues]
are just that safe space for them to actually be vulnerable... I don't think you can learn
unless you make yourself vulnerable and put yourself out there.
As Ellen explains, the comfort that students felt within this space afforded them the courage to
share their views of and suggestions for science class. In doing so—in critically reflecting on
topics, stating their opinions, and offering new recommendations—the focal students of the
cogenerative dialogues were rehearsing the same enterprises that were expected of them during
class time. For students like Vanessa, this practicing of active participation within the setting of
cogenerative dialogues encouraged a transfer of this participation into the anatomy classroom:
I found that it [voicing opinions] got easier as we kept going in class because then we
were more comfortable with what we were going to say during [the dialogues]. And we
understand why we're saying it in [the dialogues] because we want to actually give more
ideas and advice to manage the class.
As Vanessa hints at here, the cogenerative dialogues represented authentic occasions for students
to practice their voice: In order for students to influence their teachers’ instructional decisions,
they had to raise questions, voice opinions, and share suggestions, i.e., actively participate.
Moreover, as students took on these new forms of participation, this level of involvement “got
easier”—that is, the students developed necessary communication skills for active participation,
a finding echoed in other literature on cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Bayne, 2012).
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Confidence and New Science Identities
As the focal students gained experience in new forms of participation within the
dialogues, many began to demonstrate and describe a greater sense of confidence in sharing their
voices, as Vanessa and Maria state below:
John: Did you change at all as a student because you took part in the dialogues?
Vanessa: I think I became a better student in class when it's like doing things during
learning time because it helped me build my confidence. Like, when I was the first one to
actually go up and present in front of the class, I didn't freak out or stutter. I just read it
and talked like I normally do in [the dialogues].
Maria: I agree because I think it made me feel more confident since Ms. Galván is always
telling us in our meetings that we have to be confident. That helped me more.
Here, Vanessa and Maria point out that the confidence that they developed within the dialogues
was carried over into the anatomy classroom, where the focal students leveraged a trust in
themselves to undertake new forms of participation, such as presenting in class.
Along with heightened feelings of confidence, the focal students also reported a greater
attachment to science as a field of study. As seen in other studies of cogenerative dialogues (e.g.,
Beers, 2005a; Emdin, 2010), some of the focal students reported an even greater interest in the
sciences (particularly anatomy) than they had before the study. For others like Emmy and Lina,
more active participation within both the dialogues and the anatomy classroom helped them
develop new aspirations for a career in the health sciences:
I liked anatomy a lot more than I did at the beginning because it's very interesting to
know about our body and our brain and everything… I mean, I got to know Ms. Galván
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and I got to see how interested she is in it and it does catch my attention and makes me
think about how important it really is and what I want to do someday. (Lina)
I love it [anatomy]… At first I didn't want to take this class, but I just got placed here.
But, now I love it ‘cause now I know how my body works and every function and it has
made me want to change my major… Now I want to do nursing when I start taking
college classes [this summer]. So, I think that is really helping me more ‘cause now when
I go into nursing this class will actually help me. (Emmy)
Studies of female science students suggest that building science identities, as well as confidence
in the area of science, is especially linked to active participation in the practice of science, both
within and outside the classroom (Brotman & Moore, 2004; Burger et al., 2007; Parker, 2014).
It appears from this evidence that, for individuals like Lina and Emmy, taking part in the
cogenerative dialogues afforded students opportunities to explore elements of science practice,
which in turn bolstered their confidence in and affinity for such activity. Additionally, scenes
from the classroom—such as Patricia leading a discussion about a medical case study and Maria
and Lina debating the science-related ethics of e-cigarettes—demonstrate that some of the focal
students may have developed this identity through opportunities to engage in the discourse of
science within their anatomy class period.
3.9 Discussion
Recent studies in the area of science education have underscored the existence of
inequitable learning opportunities for Latinas/os in urban secondary science classrooms (Moreno
& Gaytán, 2013; Parker, 2014). This research suggests that where Latina/o students have
encountered science teaching that fails to respond to their linguistic and cultural resources, such
students have tended to experience low rates of active classroom participation, which in turn may
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constrain the development of their knowledge of and identification with science and its practice
(Lee et al., 2012; Parker, 2014). In response to such research, this study has examined
cogenerative dialogues as one learning catalyst that could potentially mediate and develop Latina
students’ active participation in science class, as well as within the dialogues themselves.
In contrast with other studies of Latinas in science education, the current investigation
has found that the Latina students who took part in cogenerative dialogues gradually expanded
their active participation in classroom activities in parallel with their increased participation in
the dialogues. Evidence indicates that each of the focal students began voicing their opinions
and understandings in new ways and with more frequency. Furthermore, some of the students
began to undertake leadership roles within small-group and whole-class settings and used this
expanded participation to engage in the practice and discourses of science. The evidence
explored here suggests that the cogenerative dialogues mediated this expansion of active
participation by acting as communities of practice, which helped to develop mutual engagements
among members, shared tools for communication, and spaces for greater student agency and new
enterprises. The dialogues also supported an expansion of participation for the focal students by
serving as scaffolds, which created opportunities for students to experiment with new forms of
participation while developing their confidence in and identification with the practice of science.
Given that the findings here run counter to reports of poor student participation in other
research on urban science education, the question arises as to how cogenerative dialogues were
able to develop as effective communities of practice and scaffolds for the focal students of this
study—students who had once described themselves as “shy” or reluctant class participants. In
this section, I argue that the cogenerative dialogues of this research mediated the active
participation of the focal students by (a) fostering a climate of educación (Valenzuela, 1999) at
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each site and (b) acting as vehicles for transcaring (Garcia et al., 2012), which helped students
transfer their new forms of participation from the setting of cogenerative dialogues to the
anatomy classroom. In this way, the findings here support the idea set forth by other scholars
(e.g., Emdin, 2011a) that, in their capacity to foster more active participation among diverse
students, cogenerative dialogues represent one potentially powerful example of the culturally
responsive teaching that the literature on science education has long called for.
Cultivating a Spirit of Educación
In the cogenerative dialogues studied here, Ellen and Lorena listened to, learned about,
and then thoughtfully leveraged the suggestions of their students to improve the classroom
learning context. I suggest that this act—so central to the idea of cogenerative dialogues—
cultivated a spirit of educación within the dialogues, and in so doing, mediated the active forms
of participation for Latina students in this setting.
Care. By taking part in the dialogues, the teachers in this study demonstrated a
willingness to listen to and be affected by their students. As Emmy noted above, focal students
at each site perceived that their initial ventures into more active participation within the
cogenerative dialogue—that is, their comments and suggestions—were met with openness by
their teacher, who took the time after school hours to hear out the students’ perceptions of and
suggestions for her teaching. Valenzuela (1999) writes that “The caring teacher’s role is to
initiate relation” and in so doing the teacher “conveys acceptance and confirmation to the cared-
for student” (p.21). Thus, by witnessing their teachers listen to their concerns, perhaps the
students in this study began to sense the element of teacher care that is so essential to the concept
of educación. Just as theorists have proposed (e.g., Un, 2013), this primary sign of teacher
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care—the willingness to listen to student voice—seemed to spark the focal students’ initial,
tentative forays into more active participation in the early dialogues.
Confianza, co-intentional teaching, and personalismo. As the study progressed,
however, the focal students not only experienced their teachers listening to them, but they also
began to recognize that Lorena and Ellen considered and acted on student suggestions for
classroom improvement. This finding—that students like Patricia and Lina saw their ideas
actualized in their teachers’ instruction—may have contributed to other elements of educación
that promoted their active participation. For example, watching their teachers leverage student
suggestions may have fostered in cogenerative dialogue members a sense of confianza (Antrop-
González & De Jesús, 2006), or trust, that they are valued members of the classroom with valid
perceptions worthy of consideration.
As discussed earlier, students also began to develop and identify their agency in the
classroom; that is, they recognized that they can effect change in their classroom through their
involvement in the cogenerative dialogues. Such expansion of student agency, along with the
care demonstrated by teachers through their listening, may have begun to chip away at the
teacher-student contradiction (Freire, 1977) that separates teachers and students in classrooms
marked by more traditional, teacher-centered pedagogy. In its place, the teachers and focal
students in this study used the cogenerative dialogues to create more co-intentional classrooms—
ones where Ellen and Lorena learned about their focal students while teaching them, and where
all parties developed denser, more authentic mutual engagements with one another.
Additionally, by listening to students and their suggestions, Ellen and Lorena were able
to adapt their teaching to the individual needs, interests, and questions of their students and thus
helped construct more learner-centered classroom activities. Not only did these activities create
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more opportunities for active participation, but they also may have injected an element of
personalismo (Antrop-González & De Jesús, 2006) into the classroom because they responded
directly to the individual concerns and suggestions expressed by the focal students during the
cogenerative dialogues. Such personalized teaching has been identified as critical to the science
education of Latinas/os (Lee et al., 2012), and likely reinforced in the focal students their sense
of belonging and membership in the classroom.
Collectively, these conditions of care, confianza, co-intentionality, and personalismo
likely contributed to a space of educación that supported students in experimenting with new
forms of active participation—e.g., sharing their perspectives, offering suggestions, and making
an argument—within the spaces of cogenerative dialogues, where such students had confidence
that they would be listened to, valued, and encouraged. In other words, the cogenerative
dialogues fostered conditions of educación which helped transform that space into a type of
“cocoon” that, as Gándara (2008) suggests, may facilitate the exploration of new participation
forms for Latina/o students who may have faced unresponsive learning opportunities in the past.
But how were the focal students of this study supported in successfully transferring this new
active participation from the cogenerative dialogues to the classroom?
Cogenerative Dialogues as Vehicles for Transcaring
Literature on pedagogy geared toward Latina/o students emphasizes the need for teachers
to provide transcaring (Garcia et al., 2012)—the idea that scaffolds in place to support student
learning in one setting (e.g., the home) are transplanted to another if the continued development
of participation is expected in a new space (e.g., the school). A review of the evidence here
suggests that the cogenerative dialogues may have acted as a vehicle for this transcaring to occur.
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As mentioned above, within the cogenerative dialogues, students were supported by
trusted relationships—among each other and with their teacher—that brought about opportunities
for them to experiment with new forms of participation. Such participation seems to have been
sheltered in the cogenerative dialogues while the focal students gained needed confidence and
experience in them. This confidence and experience, along with the already established
relationships, were then carried over into the classroom, where cogenerative dialogue members
could continue to support one another as they each began expanding their participation during
anatomy class periods: Within the classroom settings, focal students elected to work with one
another in small-group assignments, followed each other when presenting in front of the class,
and even thoughtfully questioned one another during discussions and debates. Additionally,
Lorena and Ellen learned information about the individual learning and social needs of the focal
students, and then acted on this knowledge by creating more supportive, personalized classroom
conditions for active participation. In these ways, the cogenerative dialogues seemed to serve as
a site for transcaring because they fostered the relationships and conditions needed for active
participation in an afterschool setting, which were then introduced into the classroom, thereby
providing a continuation of support for the students’ expanded participation (Garcia et al., 2012).
Identity and Learning through Expanded Participation
Through this participation, the focal students began to develop identities as science
learners, as seen when dialogue members like Lina and Emmy spoke about their personal interest
in the subject and plans to continue studying it in the future. Just as important, the data suggest
that the focal students demonstrated a new knowledge of the practice of science through their
expanded participation. Members of the dialogues, for instance, exhibited an understanding of
the discourses of science when they engaged in the discussions, debates, and presentations of
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anatomy class. They also gained experience in and appreciation for the leadership and
collaboration necessary for endeavors within the practice of science. Such situated learning
represents the fruits of educación, in that it mediates more than the content knowledge of a
subject, but also the understandings of how to comport oneself, how to interact with one another,
and what expectations to have for others—in short, how to participate—in a particular practice.
3.10 Conclusion: Cogenerative Dialogues as a Culturally Responsive Tool for Science
Teaching
This study provides support for the claims, echoed in previous investigations on
cogenerative dialogues, that such spaces can be powerful catalysts for student participation and
learning. Other scholarship (e.g., Bayne, 2009; Seiler, 2011) has only briefly discussed the
connection between membership in cogenerative dialogues and greater in-class participation,
with the ultimate aims of making more theoretical arguments about student learning in urban
science classrooms. The investigation here, however, has specifically documented both the
process by which participation can develop, as well as possible conditions that promoted such
development.
Perhaps more importantly, this study highlights the potential for cogenerative dialogues
to serve as both spaces for cultivating educación and means for transcaring, which together can
support the expansion of active participation for Latina students like those studied here. In doing
so, the investigation here adds support to the claim made in previous scholarship that
cogenerative dialogues not only offer teachers the space to develop more culturally responsive
pedagogy, but also represent in their own enactment an example of such teaching (Bayne, 2012).
For instance, in previous research Emdin (2011a, 2011b) explored cogenerative dialogues
that primarily involved African American male students from high school science classes. These
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investigations found that, over time, the cogenerative dialogues adopted some of the repertoires
and conditions of a rap cypher, a culturally significant discourse for Emdin’s participants. As the
students in Emdin’s research took part in the dialogues, they began to bring the rap cypher
discourse into the classroom, and their participation in science class subsequently increased.
When Emdin’s findings are viewed in relation to those of this study, three implications
seem to emerge: First, because cogenerative dialogues as dialogues are inherently adaptive to
their various participants, it can be surmised that their flexible and informal structures allow for a
myriad of instantiations. Second, this flexibility affords teachers and students the opportunity to
bring, share, and build common ground around various cultural expectations for participation
(within both the classroom and the dialogue setting itself). Thus, the participants of this study
co-created conditions and relationships that supported a spirit of educación within the dialogues,
while those of Emdin’s investigations engaged in dialogues that reflected and promoted the use
of rap cypher discourses. Third, the flexibility and adaptiveness of cogenerative dialogues
position them as powerful spaces for culturally responsive teaching, in that they can foster active
participation of students through culturally resonant forms of interaction with their teachers.
Given that scholars point to a lack of culturally responsive teaching as one of the major factors
contributing to inequitable science learning opportunities, these implications seem to indicate
that cogenerative dialogues deserve specific and continued attention in research on active science
participation for diverse students.
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3.11 Appendix 3A: Matrix Excerpts of Coded Data from Cogenerative Dialogue
Observations and Videotapes
Site of
Cogenerative
Dialogue
Week
of
Study
Student Description of
Engagement
Transcript of Turn in Conversation Categorization of
Participation
Exemplified
Ambition
West
(Lorena)
1 Emmy Author directs a
question to
Emmy; Emmy
responds
John: Emmy, what did you think about doing the gallery walk?
Emmy: It was annoying. People were like messing around.
Minimal,
superficial
participation
6 Emmy Emmy responds
to a comment
from Carlos.
Carlos: I like those thinking maps, ‘cause they help me like
organize my thoughts better.
Emmy: See, I don't like bubble maps. I feel when I write it as a
bubble map, I get kinda lost. I start wanting to put everything in
the bubble map. Like, I’m not organized with the bubble map.
Can we just do Cornell Notes instead?
Sustained, active
participation
15 Emmy Emmy responds
to opening
question from
Lorena. She
asks the next
question.
Lorena: So, what did you guys want to bring up in today’s
meeting?
Emmy: I feel like we need to talk about how… I liked the
research project lesson but I thought that there were a lot of
students who were just messing around and not being respectful
to you and not letting us do our research. Maybe we should pick
our own groups next time?
Exemplary/
leading
participation
Ambition
East (Ellen)
1 Patricia Author directs a
question to
Patricia; Patricia
responds
John: Which part of the lesson did you like, Patricia?
Patricia: Talking about the [opening writing prompt] I guess.
Minimal,
superficial
participation
7 Lina Ellen asks open
question to
group; Lina is
first to respond.
Ellen: So, today was your first time taking a digital quiz, right?
What did everyone think about that?
Lina: Today when we took the test on the computer, even though
we did that like, I think, last week it still does help me, because
it helps me understand like the technology more and then it does
help me better visualize the axon and dendrites.
Sustained, active
participation
14 Vanessa Vanessa
responds to
comment by
Dylan
Dylan: For me, I thought those design experiments were tough, I
mean, even in just us finding partners. A lot of people were
complaining about that--
Vanessa: For me it was kinda easy but ... well, it was easy
because I knew who I've worked with before, obviously, but
then I found Lisa, and she found two other people that we never
worked with before and not really talked to a lot, so when we got
together we just started talking a little bit just to see how it was
going to go, and we found a good group, and I felt it was cool
because then you get to work with other people and see--like
Maria said--you don't know how they work or how they manage
their time and their stuff, but you at least can tell them how you
work and show them that you are focused on what you are
doing. So I think it was pretty good. I don’t know, what did you
guys think? Lina? José?
Exemplary/
leading
participation
116
3.12 Appendix 3B: Matrix Excerpts of Coded Data from Classroom Observations and
Videotapes
Site of
Cogenerative
Dialogue
Week
of
Study
Student Description of
Engagement
Transcript of Turn in Conversation Categorization
of
Participation
Exemplified
Ambition
West
(Lorena)
1 Emmy Lorena asks
students to share
their opening
writing with
their partners.
Emmy glances
at partner but
returns to
writing silently
at her seat.
No conversations observed or recorded Minimal,
superficial
participation
7 Emmy Emmy and her
two partners,
Matt and Ricky,
discuss the
operations of
their dissection.
Emmy: The guide says we need to probe it [lance the cow’s
eye]. Use the probe to pop it.
Matt: You mean we just stick it in?
Emmy: Yeah, just push it in here. [Matt probes the sclera].
Yeah, good. Now I think you just have to cut this fat part off
here. Before the next step.
Matt: Like that. [Matt uses the scalpel]
Emmy: Yeah, but use the scissors. Do you have scissors?
Matt: Yeah
Sustained,
active
participation
15 Emmy Emmy works
with Carlos and
Antonio, as well
as a friend,
Michelle, on a
group research
project.
Michelle: Okay, so how do we want to start?
Emmy: Well, I was thinking that since you guys like to look
at videos, why don’t you [looks at Carlos] and Antonio go
search YouTube for videos on, like, pimples and acne and all
that. Like, look for something on what causes it.
Antonio: You know me and YouTube are like this! [crosses
fingers and laughs]
Emmy: Michelle, what do you think? Do you think we
should just Google acne and see what comes up and start
reading that?
Exemplary/
leading
participation
Ambition
East (Ellen)
1 Maria In reviewing
answers to
question on
worksheet,
Ellen cold calls
on Maria to
share.
Ellen: So, when have you experienced a time where your
body was struggling to maintain homeostasis? [Pause] When
have you just felt off or something? Maria?
Maria: This happened to me last year when I was just coming
to this school and my body was not cooperating with me.
Ellen: It was being mean to you?
Maria: Yes.
Minimal,
superficial
participation
4 Vanessa Ellen asks each
row group to
share what they
had been
discussing.
Vanessa
volunteers to
summarize her
row group’s
discussion.
Ellen: So, who wants to go for this row? What did this row
discuss?
Vanessa: We said that the most interesting part of the video
was when the surgeons had everything planned out, like the
operation, and they had back-ups in case something surprising
happens. But besides that we thought it was cool that they
could have seen things that they didn’t know about during the
surgery but they didn’t because they planned things out really
well so they wouldn’t get shocked and so it wouldn’t be more
delayed. And we thought it was worth it because of how
happy it turned out for everyone. They kids can see each
other and they know who they’re with instead of just seeing
reflections of themselves or something.
Sustained,
active
participation
15 Lina During a class
debate on the
legalization of
e-cigarettes,
Lina cross-
examines a
student who had
just voiced an
opposing
position and
argument.
Student (ST): That’s right, e-cigarettes do not contain the
same 69 chemicals that cause cancer in regular cigarettes.
Lina (L): Do you have any evidence stating that e-cigarettes
don’t cause cancer? (BR then hands student a paper she has
researched)
ST: Yes, in the American Lung Association, it says that “e-
cigarettes don’t contain all the harmful chemicals found in
traditional cigarettes.” Therefore, this makes them healthier.
Stated by the American Lung Association.
L: But that doesn’t really prove that they can’t cause cancer,
just that they’re healthier than regular cigarettes.
ST: It doesn’t say that they don’t cause cancer. It says that
they don’t have the same cancer causing agents as traditional
Exemplary/
leading
participation
117
cigarettes.
L: But you’re not 100% that…you’re still not sure that they
can’t cause cancer.
ST: How can the American Lung Association be lying if it’s
an association that we as Americans trusted?
L: Well, we have to make sure and check everything out
before I can be completely certain that something isn’t
cancer-causing. And I have heard patients who say that these
e-cigarettes aren’t so safe, even though they’re safer than
traditional ones, because there’s always something in
cigarettes that cause people to risk their health.
118
3.13 Appendix 3C: Examples of Data Coding Across First Three Rounds of Analysis
Data Point Descriptive Code
Assigned in 1
st
Round
Provisional Code
Assigned in 2
nd
Round
Pattern Code
Assigned in 3
rd
Round
Ellen: [About] Patricia and the other [female] students, I learned that
they will share when they feel safe enough to share it. So, for them it's
really important to have that safe space and I think these dialogues kind
of took on that role…Because it’s just [about] the learning, yeah, the
belonging, but the safe space for them to actually be able to allow
themselves to be vulnerable. I don't think you can learn unless you
make yourself vulnerable and put yourself out there and participate.
Cogenerative
dialogues as a safe
space for students
to be vulnerable,
take risks, and feel
belonging.
Safe spaces for
taking the risk of
speaking and
sharing one’s voice
John: How come you show so much engagement here in the dialogues
and talk so much here, but not as much yet in class?
Vanessa: I don’t know. It’s like I’m less stressed here, like there’s not as
much pressure, you know?
Cogenerative
dialogues as a
space without risks
and the stresses
that go along with
most classes.
Ellen: I think they are the epitome of what I am trying to solve… I mean
I like the fact that they had self-identified as being the shy, quiet ones
that don't participate. But, still, each week we’ve been discussing how
to improve participation in class and we keep coming back to the same
question, "How can I get them to participate?" But at least they’re
starting to see a need of change in their own participation and maybe the
more they think about it, the more they will share what helps them
individually and then we can start making progress.
Need for
participation in
class mentioned in
cogenerative
dialogue and
student members
implicated in not
participating in
class.
Cogenerative
dialogues as spaces
where the act of
active participation
(and its
importance) is
specifically
discussed
Cogenerative
Dialogue as
Supportive
Scaffolds for
Active In-class
Participation
Lorena: It's just that when I need you guys to participate, to talk...
Emmy: It's always the same people.
Antonio: Yeah. But it just takes time for us. We're too energetic. That's
why it takes time.
Carlos: When we're awake, that's why.
Mateo: I just come in more sleepy. I go to sleep by four in the morning
so I can stay quiet. [laughter] Antonio: I think so. That's good. That's a
good thing that will make us quiet, but then again, no participation. So...
Dialogue group
discusses needs for
supporting student
participation in
classroom
discussions
Vanessa: : I found that it [voicing opinions] got easier as we kept going
in class because then we were more comfortable with what we were
going to say during [the dialogues]. And we understand why we're
saying it because we want to actually give more ideas and advice to
manage the class.
Growing comfort
in rehearsing voice
during
cogenerative
dialogues. Greater
understanding of
one’s own voice
through this
practice.
Cogenerative
dialogues as spaces
for students to
rehearse how to
sharing ideas in
front of others.
John: And I even saw you, Emmy, actually raise your hand and ask a
question in class. That was great!
Emmy: Yeah, I don’t know why, but I just did it.
Carlos: You should. You should say more [in class]. You always talk in
the dialogues.
Emmy: Yeah, maybe that’s why I talked now.
Student attributes
more active
participation in
class to
opportunities for
‘talking’ in the
dialogues.
119
CHAPTER 4 – Being ‘Faithful to Each Other’: Developing Mutual Accountability between
Teachers and Students through Participation in Cogenerative Dialogues
4.1 Introduction
For many teachers throughout the United States, accountability has become a bad word
(Ruben, 2012) and perhaps for good reason. In the prevailing model of accountability found
among contemporary U.S. schools, teachers are evaluated on and rewarded or sanctioned by
administrators based on classroom observations and students’ standardized test scores. This
hierarchical, neoliberal system of accountability was originally instituted through federal and
state legislation as a way to improve student learning by motivating teachers (Dworkin, 2005).
Yet, in many circumstances, it has had the opposite effect. For example, studies have associated
hierarchical, neoliberal accountability with: teacher demoralization (Santoro, 2011), as teachers
report deprofessionalization and constrained autonomy (Berryhill et al., 2009); alienated
relationships between teachers and students (Lasky, 2005); and diminished academic identities
for students, particularly those from historically marginalized communities (Santoro &
Morehouse, 2011).
In spite of the challenges associated with the current approach to accountability, its
influence in the lives of teachers remains powerful. Studies suggest that the discourse of
accountability permeates and extends from the preparation and development of teachers, to their
decisions and actions in the classroom, to their identities as professionals and ways of talking and
thinking about their work (Buchanan, 2015; Ryan, 2005; Wilkins, 2011).
The study presented here took place in a charter school district, Ambition, which recently
adopted a set of policies that typify the hierarchical, neoliberal accountability systems
increasingly found throughout the U.S. Originally, the focus of this study centered exclusively
120
on the processes and associated teacher-learning outcomes of a particular instructional practice—
cogenerative dialogues—that I was helping to enact with two high school science teachers from
Ambition. In these cogenerative dialogues, the teachers met weekly outside of class time with a
focus group of their students to discuss past instruction and to collaboratively plan out future
lessons. Given the pervasiveness of the accountability discourse in schools today, however,
early on in the investigation, the participating teachers began to discuss, without prompting, the
cogenerative dialogues in terms related to accountability. They also began comparing the school
district’s system of teacher evaluation with something else that they were feeling—a different
pull, one of responsibility and responsiveness, of reciprocity, of recursive reflection and renewal.
For example, in one of our debriefs following a cogenerative dialogue meeting, a
participating teacher—Lorena—commented:
When I talk to [my colleagues] about the [cogenerative dialogues], I tell them, "It's a
group of kids that come in afterschool and we just talk about my teaching and the lesson
and any concerns they have, to see if they can help me grow as a teacher and make their
class better. And they get a chance to have a voice, kind of like our admin do
observations of us. But the kids are there all the time and they're… participating in it.
And at the same time they give us feedback, like, ‘This is what we saw, this is what we
liked. Let's do this, let's do that. Can we change it up a bit with the classroom?' They're
our mini-admin who are in there all the time observing me. But they're helping us and
together as a group we collaborate to help the classroom and to help me become a better
teacher.
This perception of accountability—although of a divergent form than current approaches—was
also found among students, such as Angel, below:
121
John: What do you think about these dialogues we’re having?
Angel: I like ‘em because I think we’re more faithful to each other now.
John: What do you mean [by] ‘faithful’?
Angel: I mean, our teacher is faithful to us—she takes our suggestions. And we’re
faithful back to her because we work harder in her class.
After encountering statements such as these in my data collection, it became clear to me
that a fuller understanding of cogenerative dialogues and its instructional impact would also
entail an exploration into the instantiation of accountability—namely, mutual accountability—
that seemed to be developing within it. Thus, in this paper, I describe the ways in which
cogenerative dialogues seemed to engender mutual accountability for the participants. In the
following sections I discuss a typology of accountability forms active within the current
educational discourse and review the theoretical and empirical critiques of each form. I then
explore alternative forms of accountability, specifically highlighting mutual accountability and
its theory. I next turn to current examples of mutual accountability within teaching and teacher
development, and connections between mutual accountability and a situated understanding of
learning. I then shift focus to the central subject of this research—cogenerative dialogues— and
their previous explorations in extant literature, the methods by which I studied them, and the two
cases in which they were enacted.
4.2 A Typology of Accountability Structures in Education
Accountability here is understood as an underlying element of all social interactions
(Gelfand, Lim, & Raver, 2004), where individuals are expected to provide a rationale behind,
and evidence of, their normative actions (Giddens, 1984, as cited by Ranson, 2003). The term
accountability appears frequently in current studies of teaching and teacher evaluations;
122
however, to discuss educational accountability as if it exists as a singular construct would be
misleading, as scholars have identified a typology of approaches manifest in the current
educational context (Elmore, 2005; Goodin, 2003).
A traditional form—hierarchical accountability (Goodin, 2003)—is based on
principal/agent theory, where an individual in a position of authority contracts an agent to
execute a task, sets the normative grounds of the agent’s performance, and gives out a reward or
sanction to the agent based on these expectations (Henderson, Whitaker, & Altman-Sauer, 2003;
Ryan, 2005). Hierarchical accountability appears across the bureaucracy of education, from
interactions between officials and school leaders at the district level, to dealings between
teachers and students in the classroom (Elmore, 2005). Such an approach tends to reflect
behaviorist notions of motivation—the idea that individuals will follow guidelines of those in
authority in order to seek monetary or academic rewards and avoid termination or grade
retention/failure.
A second approach, professional accountability, reflects more modernist views of
expertise and professionalism (Ranson, 2003). Here, public faith in teaching and education more
broadly is entrusted to professionals who, through their extensive preparation and earned
credentials, perform a service that is perceived to be only assessable by organizations of their
peers. Such professional accountability is reflected in national boards of teacher accreditation
and, increasingly, in systems of peer assistance and review (PAR) for teachers (Goldstein, 2009).
Assumed in this approach is that the general public lacks requisite knowledge for evaluating the
performance of education professionals and thus should be minimally involved in this process.
To wrest control from professional organizations, since the 1980s federal and state
governments have adopted new approaches to monitor and evaluate schools and teachers by
123
reducing complex, multidimensional components of performance to simple measurements and
by weighing those measurements against resource allocation to maximize efficiency (Ranson,
2003). Schools and classrooms have also been exposed to increasing levels of surveillance
through newly developed tools—e.g., observational rubrics and video recordings of
classrooms—to provide additional means of ensuring teacher adherence to federal and state
policies aimed at measurement and efficiency. Scholars such as Ranson (2003) and Kostogriz
and Doecke (2011) characterize this approach as neoliberal accountability and stress that its aim
is to identify and eliminate those teachers deemed incompetent and/or unwilling to perform.
With the spread of content standards in the early 1990s, and the passing of No Child Left
Behind in 2001, neoliberal accountability has taken on greater dimensions of standardization and
high-stakes testing to levy rewards and sanctions for teachers and schools. Under this approach
to accountability, states have adopted achievement tests based on subject-specific standards and
begun issuing these tests to students across grade-levels (Dworkin, 2009; Lavigne, 2013; Ryan,
2005). Increasingly, achievement scores on such tests often help determine teacher bonuses,
contract renewal, or termination, and school closure, continuance, or reconstitution; thus,
accountability here seeks to “raise the bar” by standardizing content and intensifying
consequences for student achievement or lack thereof.
Challenges Associated with Current Types of Accountability
While current structures of accountability tend to reflect more neoliberal and high-stakes
approaches (Ranson, 2003), all four types discussed above are manifest to varying degrees in
contemporary educational discourse (Goodin, 2003). Moreover, these accountability approaches
can and often do overlap and interact with one another (Elmore, 2005), making the distinction of
any one type and its empirical effects more challenging to identify. At the same time, however,
124
numerous scholars of educational accountability identify critical theoretical challenges
associated with each type, and many ultimately argue for alternative forms of accountability.
Under hierarchical accountability, teachers as professionals are likely to experience a loss
of agency because the terms and conditions of their contracts are often set for them by those in
authority (Ranson, 2003). Additionally, because hierarchical accountability is premised on the
use of rewards and sanctions to convince agents to undertake what they would not choose to do
on their own, such structures tend to promote adversarial relationships that hinder free expression
of the agent and reduce trust between her and the authority (Henderson et al., 2003). Shifting
accountability entirely within the guilds of professionals, however, leads to other challenges, as it
excludes the general public and minimizes participation of other stakeholders such as the
students, who along with teachers help determine the meanings and purposes of learning
(Ranson, 2003).
As with hierarchical and professional accountability, scholars point to drawbacks within
neoliberal structures in education. The constant and increasingly more technical means of
surveillance characterizing neoliberal accountability arguably deprofessionalizes the field of
teaching, consumes valuable teacher resources, and heightens anxiety among educators
(Kostogriz, 2012). Such an “audit culture” fails to address underlying causes of educational
inequities and perpetuates narratives of failure among marginalized communities (Stigler, 2010).
An overemphasis of efficiency reorients the work of teaching toward the saving of money versus
the learning of students (Ryan, 2005), and the aim of neoliberal policies to eliminate incompetent
or resistant teachers suffers from the false assumption that masses of unemployed, but more
qualified, compliant teachers patiently await employment (Lavigne, 2013).
125
The addition of high-stakes, standards-based structures to this accountability approach
has brought further criticisms. In particular, scholars have noted that tying teacher evaluation to
test scores risks a host of unintended consequences (Brown, 2007; Ryan, 2005). For example,
accountability reforms based on standardized tests effectively narrow the classroom curriculum
to those subjects appearing on such exams and redirects teachers’ attention only to those students
at the cusp of passing (Lavigne, 2013). When this occurs, the complex mission of teaching (and
schooling)—with its varied and rich goals for students—is objectified and reduced to helping
students raise scores on a limited subset of academic skills (Ryan, 2005; Sahlberg, 2010).
Perhaps most dangerously, coupling teacher accountability with achievement scores may alienate
teachers from students, encouraging them to treat their students as a means toward higher
evaluation scores and deterring them from spending tightly budgeted classroom time on the
“affective labor” of developing caring student relationships (Kostogriz, 2012).
Mutual Accountability
Scholars critical of neoliberal, high-stakes forms of accountability in schools have
advocated for a range of possible alternatives, such as “improvement” accountability (Elmore,
2005), democratic accountability (Ranson, 2003; Ryan, 2005), and intelligent accountability
(O’Neil, 2013; Sahlberg, 2010). Each of these approaches describes a system of accountability
that demonstrates one or more of the following principles: an emphasis on wider involvement,
agency, and reciprocity; spaces for dialogue between agents and those in authority; a push for
teacher development and capacity building; and transparency and alignment in measurements
and goals. In the literature on accountability across the social sciences, one approach that comes
closest to capturing each of these principles is “mutual accountability” (Brown, 2007; Henderson
et al., 2003; Merrifield, 1999; Talbert, 2009).
126
Mutual accountability is understood here as “accountability among autonomous actors
that is grounded in shared values and visions and in relations of mutual trust and influence”
(Brown, 2007, p.95). Where social interactions manifest mutual accountability, participating
individuals engage in regular dialogue for the purposes of: negotiating “goals, identifications,
and interests” (Brown, 2007, p.95); building intersubjectivity—that is, developing common
understandings among their varied perspectives (Merrifield, 1999); generating and coming to
agreement around new strategies to undertake in response to shared challenges (Brown, 2007);
ensuring each individual knows their expected roles and responsibilities (Merrifield, 1999;
Talbert, 2009); transparently sharing information about and review the performance of collective
and individual actions through social reflection and responsive action; and fostering capacity
development and other learning for each party (Brown, 2007; Talbert, 2009).
Henderson and colleagues (2003) present a model of mutual accountability which folds
these interactions into a spiraling cycle of three stages: responsiveness, responsibility, and report-
and-review. At the stage of responsiveness, stakeholders find spaces to share their diverse
perspectives on issues, honestly identify and grapple with problems arising from these issues,
deliberate around such problems, and eventually generate potential solutions. When participants
reach a point of responsibility, they settle on a common plan of action, divide the labor in this
plan, and create shared expectations around its goals or outcomes. Arriving at report-and-
review, stakeholders discuss and evaluate those actions and outcomes (as well as the
relationships and resources inherent to them), and identify new challenges that may have
resulted, thus marking a re-engagement in the cycle. Underlying each stage of the mutual
accountability cycle are the foundational principles of learning, agency, trust, and reciprocity
(Elmore, 2005). Stakeholders hold each other to account for following these principles and for
127
their participation at each stage of the cycle described above by an authentic sense of
interdependence and a valuing of their commons bonds. This stands in contrast to the contracts
of rewards and sanctions that characterize the forms of accountability more prevalent today
(Brown, 2007). Translated specifically for schools, such mutual accountability would be
illustrated by instances when students “hold teachers, for example, accountable for providing
learning opportunities that meet their needs” and teachers “hold learners accountable for taking
learning seriously and for making an effort to participate fully” (Merrifield, 1999, p.10).
Scholars of mutual accountability highlight several theoretical affordances of this
approach. For example, participation within the cycle of mutual accountability can foster “more
complete and honest communication” (Henderson et al., 2003, p.19), can allow parties to more
rapidly and innovatively respond to challenges (Talbert, 2009), and can leverage intersubjectivity
to foster more integrated, cooperative actions and valued partnerships (Merrifield, 1999). The
most prominent outcome found in the literature on mutual accountability is its potential for
facilitating stakeholders’ growth, learning about one another and their relationships, and learning
new skills and dispositions (Brown, 2007; Henderson et al., 2003).
4.3 Learning Theory and Mutual Accountability in Education
That learning is an integral part of the process of mutual accountability is supported by
theory on communities of practice and situated learning. From this perspective, individuals
participate in communities that revolve around a shared practice—a collective endeavor that
defines their identities, individual actions (or enterprises) and social relations (or mutual
engagements) (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In communities of practice, members negotiate these
enterprises and engagements— their participation in the group—with one another, and then hold
each other accountable for meeting related expectations (Wenger, 1998). Group members also
128
negotiate, construct, and utilize shared repertoires, which represent the values, tools, and speech
they hold in common.
Learning is tied into the accountability process within communities (Wenger, 1998). By
holding one another to their enterprises and engagements, members are able to identify instances
when related expectations are unmet due to tensions, contradictions, or discontinuities that
emerge within the group’s practice. When the conditions are right, these moments of conflict
can serve as areas for growth and learning, particularly when group members hold one another
accountable for this development so that the collective practice may operate more smoothly.
Learning may also occur as various communities—along with their respective engagements,
enterprises, and repertoires (including their approaches to accountability)—come into contact
with one another (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011). Often, elements of one community interact with
and create tensions for those of another, which in turn creates opportunities for members to adapt
their tools, roles, and responsibilities, and thus brings change to their collective practice
(Engeström, 1998).
A limited number of empirical studies in teacher education have explored instantiations
of professional learning and mutual accountability within several different forms of teacher
collaboration. For example, teacher work groups (Masuda, 2010), professional learning
communities (PLCs; Talbert, 2010), and lesson study (Stigler, 2010)—each where collectives of
teachers engage in collaborative inquiry to support and challenge one another to continually
improve classroom practices—have each been studied as forms of mutual accountability. These
examples situate accountability within communities outside the classroom, however, and thus,
they are necessarily limited in the extent to which (a) they locate accountability internally within
129
the spaces where teaching and learning actually take place and (b) they include the perspective of
valuable, internal stakeholders such as students.
From a situated perspective of learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991), individuals’ proximity to
their shared practice and a diversity of perspectives both matter for mutual accountability and the
learning it supports (Wenger, 1998). In communities of practice, because members rely on one
another to carry out individual enterprises, the closer these enterprises are involved in the
community’s practice, the more interdependence and mutual accountability grow among
members (Wenger, 1998). Thus, while teacher work-groups, PLCs, and lesson study create
spaces for teachers to work with one another, the enterprises they undertake do not yet constitute
teachers’ actual practice (i.e., teaching), and thus their mutual accountability to another—their
dependence on one another for this teaching—is somewhat limited. Moreover, a diversity of
perspectives within a community is needed to identify when tensions emerge in a practice, and
thereby signal members to new areas for growth and learning (Wenger, 1998). In communities
of teachers, diversity may exist, but it often lacks the perspective of other parties involved in the
practice of teaching—specifically, students—who could identify contradictions less visible to
teachers and thus identify new opportunities for learning (Schön, 1983).
Cogenerative Dialogues
The following research examines cogenerative dialogues (Roth, Tobin, & Zimmermann,
2002) as a possible space that responds to the limitations of other sites of mutual accountability,
in that these dialogues locate teacher accountability internally at the classroom level and involve
the perspective and participation of students in this endeavor. In cogenerative dialogues, a
teacher meets with a representative focus group of her students on a weekly basis outside
instructional time to generate and deliberate suggestions for improved opportunities—and a more
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responsive environment—for student learning (Tobin & Roth, 2006). These conversations
typically center on such questions as: How have activities and the classroom environment
supported and/or impeded student learning? What related improvements should be made to
bolster student engagement and learning? (Emdin, 2007a).
6
Research on cogenerative dialogues has been extensive since the early 2000s, and it
highlights several affordances for teacher learning (Tobin, 2014). In particular, studies have
suggested that cogenerative dialogues can help teachers: learn about and include within the
curriculum interests of students (Martin, 2006; Seiler, 2011); create more culturally responsive
and inclusive classroom environments (Emdin, 2007b; Shady, 2014), and build and exchange
social capital with their students (Beers, 2005a; LaVan, 2005a). Within this literature, studies
have hinted that cogenerative dialogues might also contribute to a sense of mutual accountability.
For example, several investigations found that participating students often develop collective
responsibility for their class work (Bayne, 2012; Beers, 2009; LaVan, 2005a; Martin &
Scantlebury, 2009). Roth and Tobin (2005) also propose that cogenerative dialogues held mostly
among coteachers can represent an alternative to teacher evaluation. However, despite the
breadth of inquiry on this subject, existing research has yet to fully explore how or if such
dialogues might help mutual accountability develop between a teacher and students in a
classroom. Thus, this study asks: In what ways and to what extent can mutual accountability
emerge among teachers and students who engage in cogenerative dialogues, particularly within
today’s neoliberal educational context?
6
Participation structures of cogenerative dialogues tend to vary by site (Bayne, 2009; Tobin, 2014). Student participants in cogenerative
dialogues may be chosen by the teacher, may volunteer themselves, and/or may be nominated by others from their class. Dialogues may involve
as few as two students or as many as an entire class, and participants may change week-to-week or remain fairly stable over a given period, such
as a month or a semester. Typically, participating students and their teacher engage in a dialogue for 25-75 minutes during non-instructional
(e.g., lunch period or afterschool) time
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4.4 Methodology
In exploring this question, I employed a multicase study (Yin, 2009) to study the
“quintain” (Stake, 2006)—or focal phenomenon—of accountability manifestations emerging
within and across two cases of cogenerative dialogues. In multicase studies, versus comparative
case studies, more attention is focused on common properties across cases so as to present a
clearer portrait of the quintain (Stake, 2006).
Framing the Cases
I recruited participants from Ambition Network of Schools (Ambition), an urban charter
district serving exclusively students from historically marginalized communities. In 2008
Ambition had instituted a teacher evaluation system reflecting a neoliberal, high-stakes
accountability approach, where the vast majority of a teacher’s composite annual evaluation
mark was derived from a combination of two formal observations and her/his students’
achievement scores on state and/or benchmark standardized tests. Failure for even a tenured
teacher to meet the threshold mark for evaluation resulted in a probationary period, after which
time the teacher would be required to demonstrate substantial improvement in student
achievement and classroom observation scores, or risk the possibility of termination.
The two participating teachers selected for this study (Ellen Galván and Lorena Silva)
offered special purchase for studying the types of accountability that could manifest in
cogenerative dialogues: First, the participants’ veteran status ensured that they were beyond the
induction period, when the Ambition’s evaluation policies focused more on providing novices
with supports and less on holding them accountable for student achievement. Second, Ambition
recently adopted a standardized curriculum plan (known as a “pacing guide”), which anatomy/
physiology teachers were required to follow and which was reinforced by both monthly
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benchmark exams tied to the pacing guide and a summative life-sciences test mandated by the
state. Thus, Ambition anatomy teachers such as Ellen and Lorena had experience with both low-
stakes accountability (i.e., evaluation tied primarily to observations with few possible sanctions)
and high-stakes accountability (i.e., evaluation tied substantially to student test scores with the
possibility of considerable sanctions). Third, studying participants from two separate schools
offered possible insights into how cogenerative dialogues (and their instantiations of
accountability) might manifest in similar ways.
Each of the participants selected for the study, Ellen and Lorena, was an experienced high
school anatomy teacher, having worked for more than ten years in the classroom (see Table 4.1
for more information). Both teachers were known and respected within their respective schools
as teacher leaders, and each at some point had also served on curriculum committees for the
district.
Table 4.1: Teacher Participant Demographics, Experience, and School Information
Teacher Gender Race/
ethnicity
Experience
in Teaching
(years)
High
School
School
Enrollment
Racial/ Ethnic
Makeup of
School
Enrollment
Percent
Qualifying for
Free/Reduced
Lunch
Ellen
Galván
Female Latina 13 Ambition
East
673 97% Latino, 3%
Black
97%
Lorena
Silva
Female Latina 11 Ambition
West
658 99% Latino, 1%
Black
92%
Data Collection
This multicase study was nested within a design research framework (Design-based
Research Collaborative (DBRC), 2003), meaning that at each site I collaborated with the
participating teacher and her student focus group to enact, develop, and study the cogenerative
dialogues as catalysts for teacher learning (Siry & Lang, 2010; Tobin, 2006). The dialogues,
which typically ran 25-75 minutes immediately following instructional hours, included the
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teacher and 4-6 of her students (see Table 42.) from each site, and were held on 16 consecutive
weeks in the second semester.
7
Table 4.2: List of Student Participants at Each Site
Ambition East Weeks 1 – 8: Alejandro, José, Lina, Patricia, & Vanessa
(Ellen) Weeks 9 – 15: Angel, Dylan, Maria, Melvin, & Nelson
Ambition West Weeks 1 – 13: Antonio, Carlos, Emmy, & Mateo
(Lorena)
My methods of data collection closely followed procedures of previous design research
and case studies of cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Bayne, 2012). To understand how
accountability was manifest through the cogenerative dialogues themselves, I participated in,
videotaped, and transcribed each weekly dialogue. Additionally, I observed weekly blocks of
Ellen and Lorena’s anatomy respective classes (as well as an entire week’s instruction at both the
front and back end of the study) to note any changes in their teaching and/or classroom
environments. To explore the teachers’ and students’ perspectives on any potential changes,
with every participant I conducted (a) weekly informal ‘debriefs’ (DBRC, 2003) immediately
following each dialogue, and (b) multiple formal interviews held at various points throughout the
study.
8
Description of Data Analysis Procedures
My approach to data analysis consisted of three cycles of coding and memoing (Saldaña,
2013). Prior to this, however, I reread each piece of data chronologically to get a sense of
developments in participant actions or perceptions over the course of the study and also to begin
developing a set of broad provisional codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994; see Appendix 4A).
9
These provisional codes were used in the first cycle of coding to organize the data corpus into
7
The length of this study is consistent with multicase studies (Stake, 2006), design studies (DBRC, 2003), and research in this topic (e.g., Bayne,
2012; Shady, 2014). Also consistent with previous research into cogenerative dialogues, at most meetings I screened a brief (2-4 min) clip of
instruction from the previous week—chosen by the teacher, myself, or the students—to provide concrete examples of classroom activities for
members to comment on (Tobin & Roth, 2005).
8
I also collected site-related artifacts from and interviewed each teacher’s supervising administrator to learn more about the district and schools’
evaluation and accountability policies.
9
These provisional codes represent a combination of inductive ‘noticings’ from field journals and initial data explorations, as well as concepts
derived deductively from theory and previous research on accountability and cogenerative dialogues, respectively.
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broad units (Miles & Huberman, 1994), or ‘big bins,’ which contained related events or
descriptions; I then memoed around relationships that seemed to emerge within each unit. Such
memos helped developed new “subcodes” that served as the foundation for a second round of
analysis, where I parsed the data under each big bin into narrower associations, phenomena, or
concepts, which in turn became the source for further reflection and memoing. The final cycle of
analysis consisted of pattern and axial coding, whereby I analyzed and compared the data within
and across various related subcodes, focusing on the properties, dimensions, interactions, and
consequences of phenomena captured in and across the subcodes and, when appropriate, creating
matrices to compare and contrast the organized information (Saldaña, 2013). Patterns among
subcodes were fleshed out through continual memoing, as I sought to explicate my main
conjectures, identify the most illustrative evidence, and fold counterevidence into emerging
assertions and their overarching themes.
10
Discussion of Trustworthiness
I sought to align my research methods with standards of trustworthiness common among
multicase study, design research, and qualitative investigations more generally. I used member
checking throughout the study to discuss emerging themes with the participants throughout and
include their insights in refining patterns that I interpreted (DBRC, 2003; Lincoln & Guba, 1985;
Stake, 2006). I also made efforts to triangulate, or “crystallize” (Richardson, 2000), findings by
checking conjectures against multiple data sources and by applying theories and literature from
multiple areas of study (e.g., accountability, communities of practice, cogenerative dialogues,
etc.) to provide varying lenses from which to view the data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). As the
primary researcher, I spent considerable time with the participants within and outside the
10
Memoing and coding within this last cycle continued until I reach saturation, that is, until reviews of the data corpus failed to relinquish new
categories or patterns related to the research questions (Miles & Huberman, 1994).
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classroom setting (DBRC, 2003; Stake, 2006), and used the rich data this yielded to create a
lengthy audit trail of field notes and journals (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), which contributed to the
detail of case descriptions that I present below.
4.5 Findings
I think it [the dialogue] was a great process. I mean, you had a great process with the
teacher and students just talking about how it [a lesson] went and how it could go better.
Then we go and see how our solutions go in the next class, and then talk about it in the
next meeting. It's just a great process. I wouldn’t change it. (Dylan, Ellen’s student)
Data indicate that over the course of the study, a strong sense of mutual accountability
developed within the cogenerative dialogues between the participating teacher and students at
each site. As Dylan (above) and other participants recognized, this mutual accountability
seemed to manifest in an iterative process, or cycle, that closely reflected Henderson and
colleagues’ (2003) stages of responsiveness, responsibility, and report and review. Running
through and underlying this process was a major theme of relationship development among the
participants at both schools. At the same time, however, in each dimension noted above,
members of the cogenerative dialogues encountered salient tensions that helped reveal some of
the limitations of mutual accountability in its application to teachers and students during this era
of high-stakes, neoliberal accountability.
Responsiveness
In the first stage of mutual accountability, Henderson and colleagues (2003) propose that
stakeholders demonstrate responsiveness, by openly sharing perspectives, deliberating perceived
challenges, and identifying common points of interest within these issues. Interactions in the
setting of cogenerative dialogues at both sites of the study demonstrated this reciprocal
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responsiveness among participants, particularly as teachers (and students) sought out and listened
to various perspectives around instruction; discussed the rationales and values of learning that
grounded these opinions; and identified and grappled with problems that were perceived to have
emerged in the classroom.
Eliciting student perspectives on teaching. A common thread among dialogues across
both sites was the privileged position that student perspectives seemed to hold (Emdin, 2007a;
Tobin & Roth, 2005); nearly each meeting began with the teacher or myself asking students to
share their thoughts and feelings around the previous week’s anatomy lessons. These
perspectives then served as a springboard for much of the conversation that followed, as Lorena
explained when discussing her interactions with students during a cogenerative dialogue:
It’s something you have to do here [in the dialogues]—get their perspective. What did
they think? Is it useful or not? Is it even worth it for them? And that’s how you get to see
how they see the activity. And it helps because the kids [in the dialogue] will see certain
things that are going on for you that you might not. It’s also helpful to figure out, are they
learning it? (Lorena)
As Lorena noted, the students’ perspectives offered her and Ellen a variety of critical insights,
which not only helped these teachers see what students found engaging and valuable, confusing
or understandable, but also understand how and the extent to which students made meaning of
(and learned from) classroom interactions.
Students and teachers both acknowledged that much of this information can only be
shared within, and is thus exclusive to, an open setting where discussion is fostered and
expected. Lorena and Ellen expressed that within the dialogues, they felt not just an obligation
but a “curiosity” to continually elicit and explore student perceptions of classroom life, in part
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because the students helped triangulate the teachers’ assessments of their own teaching’s
efficacy. At times, listening to student perspectives encouraged the teachers to reorient their
reflection toward student affective concerns and away from more rigid pedagogical structures,
such as common strategies, as Ellen explains:
As teachers, we’re always busy thinking in lesson plans and strategies. But then we get
in the dialogue, and students tell me the group strategy’s not working because some feel
left out or uncomfortable, and then it's like, "You're right. I need to consider your
emotions before I implement any strategy.”
For Ellen, interactions with her students during these dialogues helped recenter her pedagogical
decisions around the affective learning needs of students, rather than privileging any particular
teaching strategy that she was planning to enact.
Sharing teacher reflections. At points within each cogenerative dialogue, Ellen and
Lorena also felt compelled to share their own perspectives on teaching, especially when
instructional matters were questioned by students. In these instances, the teachers took the
opportunity to explain their thought processes and to rationalize teaching decisions they made
earlier in class. Additionally, Lorena and Ellen clarified and made more transparent the goals
and values underlying their teaching decisions. For example, late in the study, Ellen tasked her
students with applying certain principles of the respiratory system to design an experiment that
would measure carbon dioxide levels in exhalation. When students such as Maria and Angel
perceived challenges with the design portion of this assignment, Ellen responded by highlighting
the importance of struggle in learning and creative processes:
Maria: Yeah, experimental designs are confusing. My group needs a lot of help! [laughs]
Angel: We have no clue, either. Can’t you just show us one way to do it?
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Ellen: See, maybe I need to make this clearer to your class. Instead of being told exactly
what to do, we’re doing experimental design so you learn how to do something on your
own and so you learn about a process. I know it can be frustrating, but remember, the
reason I'm setting up the experimental design is to prepare you for what's going to be
expected of you in later grades, and in life too. Sometimes you're given a problem to
solve and you have to design something. How are you going to figure it out?
In the exchange captured above, student questions prompted Ellen both to clarify and justify her
goals for student learning within the project.
Student comments and questions also prompted Ellen and Lorena to explicate their ideas
for upcoming lesson plans (Martin, 2006), which then often became the subject of further
discussion among the students. For example, in an early dialogue at her site, Ellen was asked by
a student member how the class would be assessed on a particular unit covering life-sustaining
functions. Ellen then put forth an idea that she had been previously pondering—that students
could demonstrate their knowledge by creating an illustrated storyline of a person’s life. The
next ten minutes then consisted of exchanges among all dialogue members, where they gave
feedback on this idea and added their own suggestions for various aspects of this project. Again
in moments such as these, the teachers were often prompted to reflect on (and justify) teaching
and curriculum decisions before they happened.
Developing intersubjectivity and perspective-taking. As predicted in theory on mutual
accountability (Merrifield, 1999), the exchanges of perspective around issues of classroom
environment, teaching, and curriculum often created opportunities for the teachers and students
to develop intersubjectivity about topics in those areas. As twelfth grader Emmy explains below,
these dialogues helped the participating students and teacher at each site to not only understand
139
what the other meant with regard to anatomy class, but how they made meaning of—i.e.,
experienced—it:
You’re both learning, the teacher and the student. The student is learning how the teacher
is thinking while she's doing the lesson plans and how she's going to teach us. And then
the teacher is learning what the student knows about it and what the student thought of it,
like, if they liked it or didn't like it, or what they could do better.
A dimension of this intersubjectivity that emerged within the dialogues—one less emphasized in
literature on, but nonetheless critical to the development of, mutual accountability—was the
perspective-taking that seemed to occur among members. In their final interviews and focus
groups with me, the majority of students made reference to the idea that they could now see
aspects of the classroom from the viewpoint of their teacher, or as Emmy explained it, “I can see
how she views us now.” This led students like Antonio (below) to demonstrate empathy for their
teacher and to critically reflect on their own participation as the teacher might:
Now I know how Ms. Silva feels when we’re messing around, like when we’re talking or
we're packing up and she's trying to teach something. Now every time she says, "Don't
pack up yet," or “Listen up,” I just listen to her because I know how it feels… It's not
right. So, I guess I try to understand her point of view more. I seen her perspective more.
The perspective-taking fostered within the dialogue frequently even stretched between students,
where individuals like Carlos (below) began to develop more appreciation for the diversity of
thought among his peers:
I learned about my peoples [other members] here. Because, like, I was next to some of
my friends and they had also different opinions [in the dialogues]. Different opinions
from what I have to say. And from there I learned things from them and they learned
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things from me and we all get to hear what they all want to say. And when we agree, then
we alright.
This sharing and exchange of perspectives, along with the creation of common
viewpoints, represented an almost contagious outcome of participation in these dialogues. On
multiple occasions at their respective sites, I observed Ellen and Lorena momentarily pause
classroom instruction to ask their entire anatomy class for thoughts on how a particular learning
activity had gone. As the study progressed, Lorena also reported that during passing periods, she
would often pull a handful of students aside from her chemistry and biology classes and ask for
their feedback on the lesson she had just taught. Moreover, both teachers highlighted the value
of these perspective exchanges with students as their main reason for pledging to continue
cogenerative dialogues with students in future years. Lorena reasoned: “If I’m gonna be
teaching new students next year, and I want them to be engaged and involved like these students,
I’m gonna have to get their perspectives, too.”
Problem identification. While the perspective exchanges facilitated mutual
understanding among the dialogue participants at both sites, such discussions were not without
conflict or tension. Rather, and perhaps most importantly, the sharing of divergent viewpoints
fostered by the cogenerative dialogues at each school invariably led to the identification of
problematic issues. These identified problems of practice included unintended consequences of
instructional moves highlighted in other studies of cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Tobin & Roth,
2005), challenges to student learning, and/or hindrances to the teacher’s efforts at creating
supportive learning opportunities. In many of these occasions, students pointed to particular
class activities or assignments that led to confusions or misunderstandings about particular
anatomy content, similar to the discussion of Ellen’s design experiments captured above. In
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other cases, student comments (like those below) underscored more enduring problems in the
classroom, particularly around student engagement and participation, both themes of the
dialogues at each site:
Carlos: So, I wrote something down in my notebook for this week. I put that I'm tired of
school and the reason why is because I see the same routine every day. I'm just bored and
tired of it. I don’t know… I would just like something new.
Miss Silva: Can you tell me a little bit more on routine?
Carlos: Everything the same every day, nothing new. Like, we do the same activities—
Mateo: Yeah, I think so, too. It's, like, warm up, then PowerPoint notes, then classwork
with worksheets, then exit slip—
Carlos: Then class ends and then go to the next and do it again.
Miss Silva: You mean, like, my class in general or in general all classes? Because I feel
like I’ve been trying to get away from the whole lecture routine.
Emmy: Yeah, we do way less notes in your class this year.
Carlos: Yeah, but I'd just like someday, like, "Hey, we're going to have class outside," or
"You know what? We're going to learn about stuff that you guys want.” Because, Miss, I
don’t know—I need something more to keep me going.
As seen in this excerpt of a dialogue transcript from Lorena’s site, tensions identified by one or
more students were not always immediately recognized by others and/or their teacher. Instead,
negotiations between disagreeing parties often ensued, with opposing sides citing evidence to
persuade the other or bring their perspectives into greater alignment.
Such identification and negotiation of problematic classroom areas were frequently
initiated by teachers as well. In some of these instances, Ellen and Lorena would acknowledge
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that expectations for classroom participation were not being met by their students, even those
involved in the cogenerative dialogues. At other times, however, without prompting from the
students, the teachers would present what they saw as a challenge in their instructional practice
and seek student insight and feedback on this issue. In one of her later dialogues, for example,
Lorena began the meeting by sharing her recent struggles to engage fully her first period
anatomy class:
I know you have things you want to bring up, but there’s something I really need help
with: How do I get my first period kids to be more energized and participating in class? I
think they’re just ready to graduate soon, but they still have so much to learn in class, so
what do you think I should do? You guys know some of them really well, so give me
your ideas.
The students members of the dialogues quickly responded with what they knew about the
interests and school participation habits of their peers in first period, and together with Lorena,
helped compile a list of potential strategies that Lorena might enact to boost their engagement.
Constraints within the responsiveness found among the dialogues. Underlying this
discussion of responsiveness and the perspective exchanges central to it is the assumption that
the views being expressed are the full and authentic perceptions of each participant (Emdin &
Lehner, 2006). As seen in other studies of cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Roth & Tobin, 2005),
the students in Lorena’s dialogues claimed to be honest and forthright, even in their discussions
of tensions and contradictions in Lorena’s teaching; however, Ellen at times was less convinced
that the feedback she received each week was an accurate assessment of students’ perceptions:
143
I feel like with the discipline environment of the classroom, like with me in charge, I
wonder how much of that sneaks into the student dialogues some times. That's where I'm
skeptical of the kids feeling safe enough to be completely honest with me.
Ellen questioned whether these dialogues could fully overcome the institutional separation
dividing teachers and students, and thus worried that other areas for her professional growth
were being withheld by students fearful of her authority. Ellen’s skepticism was not without
grounds, as in two debriefs following dialogues, a student admitted that he felt uncomfortable
sharing a comment with Ellen for fear of how she might view his work ethic in the future.
11
Responsibility
After identifying tensions and contradictions within the classroom learning activities,
participants in the cogenerative dialogues typically progressed into the responsibility stage of
mutual accountability (Henderson et al., 2003). In this stage, they began to address these
problematic issues by specifically discussing anatomy content or seeking responsive solutions in
the form of new classroom repertoires and enterprises.
Reviewing content. As stated earlier, on occasion students at each site would express
their confusions around certain anatomy concepts introduced during instructional times, and as a
response Ellen and Lorena would take those moments to review academic content with their
dialogue groups. Similarly, and sometimes as a result of these ‘reteaching’ moments, other
students would raise questions that related to the general content but focused on issues of
personal interest that had yet to be covered in class. Many times such student questions and
content review sessions served as helpful hints at what Lorena and Ellen should cover with the
entire class in following anatomy periods. For example, after reviewing the structures of the
11
Although I gave assurance of Ellen’s open-mindedness, the student would not be persuaded to raise the issue during a dialogue, and his concern
was never addressed.
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heart with her students during one dialogue, Lorena was soon inundated by her students’
curiosities about the heart: “Why is the heart organ shaped differently from the heart emoji?”
“What happens if a blood vessel breaks in the heart?” “How can a body survive during a heart
transplant?” Lorena took careful note of each question, and in the next day’s anatomy period,
she began class with a Power Point presentation that directly answered her dialogue students’
queries.
Negotiating solutions. More frequently, however, the tensions identified within the
cogenerative dialogues related to classroom instruction and/or a learning activity, a finding
reported in other studies of cogenerative dialogues as well (e.g., Martin, 2006; Seiler, 2011). In
response these tensions, at each site the teacher or myself typically proposed teaching
alternatives that might address the problematic issue raised by a student. At times, students
would be divided in their estimation of the most efficacious alternative, and in these cases, it
generally fell to Ellen and Lorena to somehow negotiate a compromise that everyone could
support. At other times, when consensus was quickly reached around one of the propositions,
the teachers reported feeling more certain in their enactment of such an instructional change,
(especially when it represented a risk they had been less willing to try earlier); often Lorena and
Ellen would actually experiment with a given proposition also in classes and subject areas
outside their anatomy periods.
Less often but still somewhat frequent were occasions when students would suggest a
solution that had not been first proposed by the teacher or myself. For example, when Nelson
raised the issue of social exclusion within group projects in one of Ellen’s dialogues, it was
another student—Melvin—who first proposed a negotiated solution:
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Nelson: I feel that for every time we select a team, it's mostly a choice-less choice
because sometimes, like, me and Angel are treated like leftovers. We're just waiting,
saying, "Anybody take me, we're just standing here." So, maybe you could motivate
more cooperation in teams and maybe assign them for us.
Ellen: I hear that. But how do we balance that idea of choice and comfort? Because I
know some individuals prefer selecting their workmates, right, because they feel more
comfortable or they know individuals that can help them learn. But then I think Nelson
brings up an important point. If you know that you have certain classmates that you
always go to and other classmates don't include them, how do we make that fair? [Pause]
Melvin: Why not let the persons choose one person they want to pick. Like, if it's teams
of four, maybe we should let each person choose one person they want to work with and
then you [Miss Galván] could put those partners together with other partners to make the
[teams of] four. So they're not always going with the same people all over again.
Unlike options offered by the teacher or myself, these student-generated ideas rarely gained
unanimous approval without some opposition or further suggestion; thus a degree of a negotiated
compromise was necessary to reach a consensus. Indeed, later in the dialogue quoted above,
Melvin’s suggestion sparked a debate among the students, some of whom opposed any teacher
involvement in partner selection and instead presented a modification of Melvin’s proposal.
As noted earlier, not all identified problems and their solutions related to issues of
teaching; at each site, discussions were held in the dialogues around ways that the students could
improve their own participation in the classroom. In Lorena’s dialogue, conversations of this
type generally revolved around students completing homework tasks and not distracting their
groupmates during collaborative learning activities. Several of Ellen’s dialogues centered on
146
how students could more actively participate in whole-class discussions. While Lorena and
Ellen were open to adapting their instruction and to facilitating student participation, they also
outlined plans—supported by the dialogue members—that called for students to take
responsibility for and make changes to their class participation.
Constraints on the responsibility found within the dialogues. In some circumstances,
problems were posed by Ellen or Lorena to which students in the dialogues could not offer a
solution. These issues would then continually re-emerge in later dialogues, eventually evolving
into themes that, although generative, failed to elicit any one particularly effective response or
solution. For Lorena, this seemed to stem from students’ lack of pedagogical background or
their reluctance to suggest a classroom adjustment that they had yet to experience themselves as
students:
I think the biggest challenge with these dialogues is being aware that the kids are limited
when it comes to the pedagogy knowledge. They’re just kind of basing their expectations
on their comparison of other teachers. And sometimes when we ask for suggestions, they
just give me blank stares. I mean, maybe they’re just afraid to suggest something they’ve
never seen in a classroom. But then again, do they have the expertise to know enough or
to know what we [as teachers] look for?
In design investigations like this, and in related forms of inquiry such as participatory action
research, scholars have reported similar findings of “model monopoly,” where experts or
professionals like Lorena and Ellen hold a base of theoretical knowledge not yet constructed by
the other participants in a collaborative setting (Elden & Levin, 1991). The model monopoly
held by the teachers in these cogenerative dialogues allowed them access to tools such as
147
teaching strategies that the students here did not have and thus created a constraint at moments
when Ellen and Lorena were at a loss for generating new approaches to an identified problem.
Where students did offer suggestions around such issues, they would at times directly
conflict with goals of the teachers, particularly Ellen, who always considered but usually decided
against acting on such suggestions:
I definitely want to take the feedback and taking into consideration things that are being
shared, but there are certain items where I'm like, "Well, I can't do that so much because
it does go against my overall goal and where I want you to be at the end of the course."
So that’s been a tug-of-warring in my brain—should I do what they suggest or should I
stick to my goals?
In these two regards, the degree to which classroom changes could be offered and/or accepted
was limited by inequalities among participants, particularly in knowledge and formal roles. That
is, students in the dialogues seemed to be perceived by their teachers as capable of sharing
insightful perspectives into their experience of teaching, but less prepared to always offer
pedagogically sound recommendations for improvement. As a result, and because of their
official duties and roles in the classroom, Lorena and Ellen viewed themselves as ultimately in
charge and assumed final responsibility for selecting particular pedagogical changes discussed in
the dialogues.
Report-and-Review
Reflecting Henderson et al.’s (2003) stage of report-and-review (and findings from other
studies into cogenerative dialogues, e.g., Tobin & Roth, 2005), the teacher and students at each
site—after having agreed to a course of action for a given week—would hold one another to
account for their involvement in, and discuss the general outcomes of, these consensual plans.
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Such efforts of report-and-review took place both within and outside the cogenerative dialogues
afterschool, involved all participating members, and led to responsive changes in repertoires and
enterprises by both teachers and students.
Encouraging follow-through. At each site, students used certain means to hold their
teacher accountable for following through with the suggestions for classroom improvements that
had been discussed and agreed to in earlier dialogues. Students thanked and commended the
teacher for acting on their proposals, and when the outcomes of such plans were not ideal,
students would offer further recommendations for improvement. In the rare occasions when
students felt that Ellen or Lorena had not made efforts to undertake a suggestion, it would often
be gently repeated over consecutive meetings. Outside the cogenerative dialogues, students
would even give their teacher reminders of previous suggestions during instructional time. Such
means by which the students at each site influenced their teacher’s decision by giving advice and
watching for evidence of its enactment prompted both Ellen and Lorena (below) to characterize
the student members of their dialogues as ‘evaluators’ and ‘mini-administrators’:
It's funny because I'll look at them the way I look at my evaluators—to see what they're
thinking and is everything going okay for their learning. They notice what I do, how I
take their suggestions, all the time. It makes me more aware of myself but in a good way.
For Lorena, above, student members of her dialogue took on an evaluative role, helping to
critique her teaching based on their learning needs, and thus influenced her thinking around
practice in ways similar to an instructional coach or evaluative administrator.
Student members from each site studied here also held one another accountable for their
participation, within the dialogues afterschool and during instructional periods, as seen in other
research into cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Wassell, Martin, & Scantlebury, 2013). In the
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dialogue setting, several students emerged as leaders, who would encourage their peers to share
perspectives on or offer suggestions for certain issues at hand. Most often—particularly in
Lorena’s case, below—the students expressed their disappointment when a member failed to
follow through with the expectations they had agreed to for classroom participation:
Lorena: So what’d you guys think of class today?
Carlos: I don’t know—you should ask Antonio.
Antonio: Miss, I was done. I was sleepy with my head down. I’m sorry.
Mateo: We were tired, too. But we still managed to listen in class.
Carlos: We can't be doing that. Especially you, now that she [Lorena] knows us better.
Mateo: Yeah. ‘Cause we're the ones giving suggestions to her but then messing up.
Antonio: Yeah, I know. I need to change. I’ma be a changed man.
In this exchange, students Carlos and Mateo chastise their fellow dialogue member, Antonio, for
failing to actively engage in class, which they perceive as a contradiction to their role as trusted
student consultants for their teacher.
Similarly, Lorena and Ellen used this space of cogenerative dialogues both to praise
students when their participation aligned with the expectations set by the group, and to have
critical conversations with them when this participation fell short, a finding common among
earlier research into cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Martin, 2006).
Responsive changes. These efforts at accountability collectively led to responsive
changes by teacher and student member of the dialogues (Emdin, 2007a; Martin, 2006). At each
site, the vast majority of student suggestions for improvements were leveraged by both teachers
as adaptive changes to their classroom environment, teaching, and/or curriculum (Seiler, 2011).
Analysis of each dialogue transcript shows that Lorena enacted 84% of her students’ 87
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suggestions targeted for immediate implementation (see Appendix A); many of these student
recommendations centered on ways of making Lorena’s curriculum and teaching more relevant
and engaging to her anatomy periods. A similar analysis revealed that that Ellen acted on 78%
of her students’ 59 suggestions targeted for immediate implementation, most of which related to
ideas for facilitating a more comfortable environment for student participation in classroom
discussions (see Appendix B). In fact, the teachers were so responsive to student feedback that
by the end of the study, some members (like Carlos, below) were challenged to identify new
areas for growth every week:
After we told Ms. Silva all the suggestions or what not about what we wanted to see
change it started becoming harder [to offer new suggestions] because everything we
wanted to see was already being done. (laughter) ‘Cause we didn't have nothing else that
we want to change.
Analysis of field notes and videotapes of classroom observations pointed to substantial
changes among the students’ participation as well. Those students involved in Lorena’s
cogenerative dialogues demonstrated greater engagement and less distraction at the end of the
study, even as some of their peers “checked out” as second semester seniors. Even more evident
were changes among the students in Ellen’s dialogue, as students who initially were intimidated
by speaking in class were participating in and even leading class discussions by the study’s end.
Opportunities for reflection. Just as importantly, this stage of report-and-review served
as an essential platform for individual and collective reflection on the process of classroom
learning improvement toward which most cogenerative dialogues are oriented (Beers, 2009;
Carambo & Stickney, 2009). As Lorena notes below, she and Ellen reported that the dialogues
afforded them greater opportunities for reflection on teaching:
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I think the dialogues also made me be reflective, because every week I had to make sure I
was reflecting on my lesson with the kids. Because they’d say, "Yes, this lesson worked"
or "That didn't work. Can we just do this instead?" And so I have to really consider that.
So it forced me to make sure I was even more reflective than I already am.
The teachers also claimed that a student-centered lens guided this reflection, as Ellen explains:
I always wondered [about] the thoughts of my students that were a lot more quiet and
wondered what was going through their minds in class. Now I have some voices that are
contributing to that reflection in the dialogues. As crazy as this is going to sound being
recorded, it puts some voices in my head that accompany that reflection...I think now
there's a lot more student context for the content of my reflection.
Reflection was not exclusive to the teachers, however; many times when students shared their
perspectives on certain elements of class, they also justified their opinions by reflecting on their
own learning needs and preferences, and thus engaged in some degree of metacognition. For
both teachers and students, then, cogenerative dialogues represented an integral space for
learning about the repertoires and endeavors they undertook within the classroom.
Constraints within the report-and-review found among the dialogues. Like the other
stages of mutual accountability, a salient limitation emerged in the participants’ work around
reporting and reviewing the outcomes of previous dialogues. Like participants in other
cogenerative dialogue studies (e.g., Emdin, 2007a, 2010), both teachers here felt encumbered in
their enactment of student suggestions by conflicting expectations from administrators. Indeed,
analysis of the few instances where student recommendations or feedback did not translate into
classroom changes revealed that such suggestions tended to push against the structures under
which Ellen and Lorena taught. For example, after one of Ellen’s formal observations, her
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evaluating administrator questioned her use of student-chosen work-groups (a focal suggestion
of her student dialogue members), and expressed an expectation to see mixed-ability groupings
at the next observation. Lorena reported even greater tensions between the expectations of her
students and those of her administrators. As mentioned earlier, important themes across
Lorena’s dialogues included the need to make anatomy curriculum and teaching more relevant
and engaging for students. Yet, like Lorena states below, often student suggestions with regard
to these themes took time or pulled her away from the district’s strict pacing plan and nudged her
toward content areas that were not included in the monthly benchmark exams she was tasked
with giving:
Our curriculum specialist made these pacing plans. You already know, we’re behind in
them now. First semester I was on them. In second semester, I was like, ‘Okay, I want to
get here. I want the kids to get here.’ But now I just want them to really learn, and so they
need to be engaged. I want them to learn about their health and see how I can help them
apply this to their own lives. How can I get them to get something out of this that's
important for them? Do projects, right? Like the ones we talked about [in the dialogues],
right? But then I’m running out of time. Because the pacing—I'm behind. So yeah,
pacing is an issue and sometimes I don't really care but…in every single meeting, they'll
[administrators] ask me, "How is it going? Where are you on the pacing?"
As illustrated in the quote above, Lorena felt pressure to adhere to her pacing plans, and at times,
this resulted in her choice to forego acting on a suggestion from the dialogues that would have
taken instructional time, or the anatomy content, away from those pacing plans. Each time this
occurred, students reported their disappointment in ensuing dialogues, but ultimately expressed
their understanding in statements like, “Miss Silva has to obey principals like us, too.” (Carlos).
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Relationships
Across the stages of mutual accountability described above emerged a parallel and
dialectical process of relationship building (Wassell, Martin, & Scantlebury, 2013) that occurred
among the members of the cogenerative dialogues in both settings. As members spent these
hours together, week after week, comments (such as those by Vanessa below) about a growing
comfort level and familiarity between the teacher and students emerged more frequently in
debriefs:
I found [the dialogue] very helpful for both the student and the teacher because it helps
the teacher understand what the student needs to have more support, and what they can
do to give them more, I guess, confidence in class. Just to have a kind of bond between
them so that they would know what's going on, and how it's going to work and simple
stuff like that. Like if we could just help each other in class.
When I pressed the participants to share why the dialogues had brought them closer, some
suggested that the space encouraged a feeling of safety that allowed members—particularly, the
teacher—to be vulnerable and open with others. Vanessa, for example, noted that she can “give
some crazy suggestion” because her teacher—Ellen—would seriously consider “and probably
even try it out.”
Similar to other studies of cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Beers, 2005a; LaVan, 2005b;
Wassell & LaVan, 2009), the conditions of comfort, familiarity, and openness found in this study
seemed to promote shared identity and solidarity, particularly among the participating students,
who frequently called made reference to “our group” or “us dialogue students” in their
interviews with me; and helped to bridge the teacher-student divide, making each side more
approachable to the other and eventually forming some fairly strong bonds:
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It [the dialogue] takes your knowledge of a student as an individual to a whole other
level. It gives you a glimpse into who they are, not just as a learner, but as a person. I
think that knowledge is essential for relationship-building. That knowledge is essential
for planning. Plus, it provides an environment where teachers and students can talk in a
more informal way about what's happening in a formal setting like the classroom. It
creates that bridge. It makes you approachable, and it makes the students approachable
for me. (Ellen).
Additionally, these conditions may have supported what the teachers saw as greater “buy-in”
from students (LaVan, 2005b; Tobin, 2006), or an increase in their assent to engage in in-class
learning activities, and even encourage greater participation of their peers who were not
members of the dialogues.
4.6 Discussion
This study sought to understand how cogenerative dialogues might help manifest among
teachers and students at two sites a sense of mutual accountability, something that scholars have
set in contrast to the current discourse of accountability today, which tends to emphasize more
hierarchical, professional, neoliberal, and high-stakes approaches. Evidence suggests that these
cogenerative dialogues gave rise to moments of responsiveness, responsibility, and report-and-
review, which collectively helped build important relationships among the participants at each
site. It was through these moments and relationships that mutual accountability emerged and
developed. Yet, in areas of each stage noted above, salient tensions arose, which disrupted and
helped identify the limitations of this sense of mutual accountability as it exists within the
current accountability discourse. In the section that follows, I discuss the findings in more detail
by exploring (a) the principles and conditions of cogenerative dialogues which seemed to support
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the occurrence of mutual accountability and its stages, and (b) a pattern among the tensions noted
within each stage, namely that the forms of accountability found within today’s current approach
limited the extent to which teachers and students could share, trust, and act on each other’s
insights. I then offer concluding thoughts and recommendations for future studies in this area.
Principles of Learning, Agentive Shifts, Trust, and Reciprocity
Across the stages described within the cogenerative dialogues at each site, mutual
accountability was manifest through interrelated principles of learning, agency, trust, and
reciprocity. As proponents of mutual accountability have theorized (Brown, 2007; Henderson et
al., 2003; Merrifield, 1999), members of the cogenerative dialogues reported instances of
learning at each stage of the cycle described above. In the stage of responsiveness, members
gained greater understanding of one another’s perspectives, including insights into the problems
that they perceived in the classroom, which echoes earlier research into cogenerative dialogues
as well (Beers, 2005b; Emdin, 2008). Through the problem-solving discussions found at the
stage of responsibility, participants often brainstormed adaptive changes that represented both
possible solutions to the conflicts at hand, as well as new enterprises and repertoires for the
students and teacher to undertake in each classroom. Finally, a spirit of reflection, critique, and
cajoling within the stage of report-and-review helped each member grow and develop in these
new enterprises and repertoires. This evidence of growth and learning—particularly for Ellen
and Lorena—stands in contrast to neoliberal and high-stakes approaches to accountability, which
have been critiqued for their lack of attention to teacher learning as a necessity for more
equitable classroom practices (Lavigne, 2013; Ryan, 2005).
Although previous scholarship primarily envisions learning as an outcome of mutual
accountability (Brown, 2007), here it also seemed to feed back into and support this approach by
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facilitating shifts in agency. Elmore (2005) suggests that for democratic forms of accountability
to function, there must occur a shift in agency from those in power to those of less power, for
example, from teachers to students. But from a situated learning perspective, agency is not
something that can be simply given; rather, it is created through capacity building and learning
(El Kadri & Roth, 2015; Emdin, 2010). As seen in Ellen and Lorena’s respective dialogues,
students learned about their teacher’s viewpoint, developed news ways of participation in the
classroom, and even imagined new forms of learning activities. This may have represented the
capacity building that enhanced student agency in their relationship with their teacher, which is
reported in other studies of cogenerative dialogues as well (Bayne, 2009; Shady, 2014). Thus,
agency here was not won by some and lost by others but was increased for all stakeholders—the
teachers and students involved in cogenerative dialogues all developed their enterprises and
repertoires and thus created agency for themselves (and each other). Moreover, the agency built
within the stages of mutual accountability signal a major advantage of this approach in relation
to current pushes for accountability, which have been linked to decreased teacher agency and a
subsequent deprofessionalization of the field (Kostogriz, 2012; Lavigne, 2013; Santoro, 2011).
Elmore (2005) also suggests that such agentive shifts occur in concert with the fostering
of trust and reciprocity, which in turn offer additional support to mutual accountability. Findings
from this study seem to reflect Elmore’s theory. Throughout the stages of responsiveness,
responsibility, and report-and-review, the teacher and students at each school developed close
relationships based on trust through perspective-taking, intersubjectivity, common expectations,
shared identity, and collective assent (Beers, 2009). Together with such trust also developed the
“dense relations” of mutual engagement (Wenger, 1998) and reciprocity, which students such as
Angel interpreted as “faithfulness” between the teacher and the students. That is, in the
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dialogues, each side worked to help the other. Again, this association of mutual accountability
with close relationships and reciprocity contrasts with descriptions of predominant accountability
forms, which tend to promote division, formal authority, and adversarial relations (Ranson,
2003).
Advantageous Conditions of Proximity, Informality, and Recursion
Literature on cogenerative dialogues points to several particular conditions that may help
explain how the two cases studied here supported the learning, agency shift, trust and reciprocity
underlying their manifestations of mutual accountability. Within cogenerative dialogues,
teachers and students gather in close proximity—to each other and to the context of the
classroom—under expectations of openness and honesty, week after week (Roth & Tobin, 2005;
Roth, Tobin, & Zimmerman, 2002). This proximity, informality, and recursion of cogenerative
dialogues allowed participants of this study: to revisit thematic problems that emerged at each
site; to remind (and, in some circumstances, cajole) others into acting on suggestions for
classroom improvements that had yet to be undertaken; to reflect collaboratively on outcomes of
these changes; and to continue refining them.
The conditions of proximity, informality, and recursion also may have encouraged
dialogue members to listen and respond to a perspective or suggestion of another, perhaps in part
because they had to face the same individual again the following week, but also because the
social consequences for not addressing the person and his/her comment were heightened through
close relationships created within the dialogues. In mutual accountability, the loss of
relationships and trust is the primary sanction for a member’s lack of follow-through or
forthrightness (Brown, 2007). In cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Beers, 2009) like those studied
here, these sanctions are not only present through strong relationships, but also perhaps amplified
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because teachers and students know that they must account for their actions (of which evidence
is shown via video clips) in close, exigent contexts for honest assessment. Such conditions
might help to address the limits found in other forms of accountability, where formal divisions
and infrequent interactions among stakeholders (along with a lack of immediacies in classroom
learning) can contribute to strained relationships that inhibit (rather than support) follow-through
(Brown, 2007).
Constraints on the Mutual Accountability Emerging from Cogenerative Dialogues
Despite the favorable principles and conditions associated with mutual accountability,
Brown (2007) notes that where avenues of this approach exist—such as in the cogenerative
dialogues studied here—particular tensions are likely to arise. Indeed at each stage of mutual
accountability described in the findings, areas of tension emerged—usually between the teacher
and students at each site—which limited the extent to which mutual accountability could
develop. Scholars of situated learning and accountability both propose that where multiple
systems interact, tensions are likely to occur (Goodin, 2003; Ranson, 2003; Wenger, 1998), and
looking across the particular tensions noted above seems to indicate problematic interactions
between cogenerative dialogues and the predominant forms of accountability today.
For example, complete honesty and forthrightness between teachers and students have
been recognized as a major challenge in the literature of cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Emdin &
Lehner, 2007). With the formal divide between their roles, and because teachers are tasked with
passing judgment on student performance, a hierarchical accountability exists in classrooms, and
its influence can stretch even into informal spaces, such as cogenerative dialogues (Emdin,
2007a), where students may take into consideration their teacher’s formal responsibilities of
student judgment before sharing more critical perspectives on instruction. Evidence of this was
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found in the study, particularly within Ellen’s dialogue, where a student reportedly withheld
information during a dialogue. Thus, the presence of hierarchical accountability between
teachers and students seems to have limited (at least to some degree) the full exchange of
perspectives between members, and in turn may have also constrained opportunities for learning
and professional growth associated with such omissions.
A similar tension and limitation also seemed to occur at the reciprocity stage, where
cogenerative dialogue members typically collaborated on plans for classroom improvement. At
times, however, Lorena and Ellen noted that students failed to offer solutions to problems the
teachers presented to them, either because students lacked the pedagogical understanding of
teachers, or were reluctant to propose a suggestion they had yet to experience in the classroom.
In this instance, professional accountability—the notion that, because of their expertise, only
teachers can assess and offer guidance to other pedagogues (Ranson, 2003)—seemed, in part, to
limit the extent to which students could play an equal role in constructing mutually desirable
plans.
Finally, as seen in other investigations of cogenerative dialogues (e.g., Emdin, 2007a), a
neoliberal and high-stakes approach to accountability seemed to limit the extent to which
teachers of this study could follow through with classroom changes proposed by students.
Where Lorena and Ellen felt that they could fit student suggestions securely into their goals and
their respective administrators’ expectations for teaching, those suggestions were readily
attended to. However, at times when students asked for such changes as more responsive
groupings that got away from mixed ability level approaches, or more project-oriented learning
that strayed away from mandated pacing plans (and their accompanying benchmark tests), such
requests were not undertaken (often regretfully) by their teachers. In these ways, neoliberal,
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high-stakes accountability disciplined how far Lorena and Ellen could respond to student
recommendations for more adaptive, engaging learning opportunities.
Collectively, then, the tensions found within each stage of mutual accountability indicate
that the forms of accountability predominant in today’s schools seemed to influence the spaces of
cogenerative dialogues by limiting the extent to which: perspectives can be honestly exchanged
between teachers and students, plans for classroom changes can be collaboratively constructed,
and student suggestions diverging from administrator expectations can be leveraged. Thus, these
cases suggest that cogenerative dialogues may create some spaces for mutual accountability and
provide certain affordances to teachers that stand in contrast to the challenges associated with
neoliberalism and standardization; however, such spaces still must contend with current forms of
accountability and are subsequently limited in the extent to which mutual accountability can be
more completely realized.
4.7 Conclusion: Facilitating Space for Affective Labor of Teaching
Supported by conditions of proximity, informality, and recursion, the cogenerative
dialogues at each focal site facilitated moments of responsiveness, responsibility, and report-and-
review, as well as facilitated the development of close relationships among its members. This in
turn helped to cultivate mutual accountability through principles of learning, agency, trust, and
reciprocity. Such manifestations of mutual accountability were not without tensions, however,
as other approaches to accountability more prevalent in today’s schools limited the extent to
which some principles and conditions could operate.
These findings support an emerging theme within the literature on school accountability
(Kostogriz & Doecke, 2011): namely, that the affective labor of teaching—teachers’ efforts to
sustain an environment of “care and appreciation” (Kostogriz, 2012, p.405) necessary for
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fostering student learning—is disrupted by structures and unintended consequences of current
accountability approaches. Thus, new spaces for initiating and supporting this affective labor of
teaching are needed to circumnavigate—to some extent—the outcomes and structures associated
with accountability systems driven by neoliberalism and standardization. Future research might
explore more closely the ways in which cogenerative dialogues interact and avoid tensions with
the predominant accountability discourse in schools today so that these spaces can become even
more supportive of the affective labor of teaching. Studies might also explore other possible
spaces for engendering mutual accountability in schools, between teachers and students, but also
between teachers and administrators, and administrators and state or district officials, so that
accountability might be re-appropriated from its status as a “bad word” among teachers to
becoming a supportive dimension of both classroom and professional learning.
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4.8 Appendix 4A: Examples of Codes Applied in Data Analysis
Provisional Codes Subcodes Related to
Provisional Codes
Axial & Pattern
Codes Related to
Subcodes
Definition
Holding accountable Member of the cogenerative dialogue through word or action
holds another responsible for enacting a classroom change that
had been agreed upon in an earlier cogenerative dialogue.
Student reminders in
cogenerative dialogues
During a cogenerative dialogue, a student reminds the teacher
of a recommendation or other piece of feedback that was made
in a previous dialogue but not yet acted upon by the teacher in
class.
Student reminders in
class
During instructional time, a student asks the teacher to follow
through with enacting a recommendation made in previous
dialogue(s).
Teacher reminders Teacher reminds student(s) of expectations for class
participation that were agreed upon in previous dialogue(s)
Report-and-review Members of cogenerative dialogues hold one another to
account for following expectations around changes in class
participation or teaching.
Trust development Actions or words of cogenerative dialogue member(s) evince
trust among the group.
Familiarity Actions or words of cogenerative dialogue member(s) evince
familiarity with one or more members.
Openness Actions or words of cogenerative dialogue member(s) evince
openness with one or more members.
Vulnerability Actions or words of cogenerative dialogue member(s) evince
vulnerability with one or more members.
Relationship building Relationships of trust among cogenerative dialogue members
emerge through instances of familiarity, openness, and
vulnerability
Perspective exchange Cogenerative dialogue member(s) exchange and/or explain
opinion(s) related classroom environment, teaching,
curriculum, or learning needs
Student perspectives on
teaching
A student member of the dialogues provides her/his perspective
on an aspect of the classroom environment, teaching, and/or
curriculum.
Teacher rationale A teacher rationalizes her teaching decisions to the student
members of the cogenerative dialogues.
Preview content A teacher provides student members of the cogenerative
dialogues a preview of teaching and/or content for future
lessons.
Responsiveness Members of the cogenerative dialogues exchange perspectives
on classroom aspects, and in doing so, develop intersubjectivity
and perspective-taking
Note: Codes presented in italics represent inductive codes; all other codes were derived from the
theoretical framework or previous literature.
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4.9 Appendix 4B: Suggestions for Teaching, Environment, and/or Curriculum
Improvements – Lorena’s Cogenerative Dialogue
Suggestion Week From
Whom?
Evidence of
Enactment (and
Source)
Targeted
for Next
Year
Give students verbal warnings for first
infraction of behavior expectations; if
second infraction occurs, the student
should be asked to stand in the hallway to
reflect for several minutes before rejoining
the class.
1 All
students
X – Observation
Be more consistent with the enforcement of
behavior expectations.
1 Antonio X – Observations
Provide students with more affirmation for
in-class participation.
1 Carlos X – Observations
Give nonverbal admonishments for
students who interrupt others in class.
1 Carlos X - Cogen
During gallery walks, students should sign
their name after written comments make on
gallery posters.
1 John,
Lorena
X
During gallery walks, each group should be
provided with a particular color of marker
to help in identification of comments.
1 Lorena X
Allow students to cross out impertinent
information/ comments written on posters
during gallery walks.
1 Emmy X
Increase the value of homework
assignments in relation to overall grade.
1 Antonio X – Observations
Assign fewer nightly homework
assignments.
1 Mateo
Provide students with frequent reminders
about long-term homework assignments.
1 Emmy X – Observations
Change in-class inquiry assignment to a
partner project.
1 Carlos X – Observations
Play music in class during partner projects
inquiry so that students are less likely to
use computers for watching music videos
online.
1 Lorena X – Observations
Allow students to share helpful websites
that they found during in-class inquiry
project.
1 John
If a student commits a third infraction of
behavior expectations, s/he should be sent
to have a discussion with the principal
and/or should later apologize to the class
for disrupting student learning.
2 Emmy,
Carlos,
Mateo
X – Observation
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As a class project, student groups should be
assigned to research a sensory system and
then tasked with presenting an hour-long
lesson to the class about that sense.
2 Lorena X – Observations
Prior to class discussions, students should
be asked to write down their thoughts, and
then following a brief period, students
should be cold-called by Lorena to share
their thoughts with the class.
2 Lorena,
Emmy,
Antonio
X – Observations
When assigning student seats in the
classroom, Lorena should use cards to
randomly assign (and keep record of)
students to numbers, which are then
associated with a particular seat in class.
2 Mateo X
To review material in class, Lorena should
use more instances of direct instruction
accompanied by a diagram or map that
reviews the concepts previously taught.
3 Mateo X – Observations
To review material in class, students should
be provided with a list of concepts to
research information about online.
3 Mateo
To review material in class, utilize relevant
and engaging videos.
3 Carlos X – Observations
Provide multiple options of homework, and
in particular, at least one option involving
digital media.
3 Lorena X – Observations
Provide students with a thinking map to
help them organize their thoughts and plan
out their group-project lessons around the
sensory systems.
3 Mateo X
Simplify substitute lesson plans and assign
fewer group activities.
3 All
students
X – Cogenerative
dialogues
Review all answers on a quiz, not just the
ones that volunteers answer incorrectly.
3 Antonio X - Observation
Rather than utilize partner-grading of
quizzes, Lorena herself should collect and
randomly redistribute quizzes across the
classroom.
3 Carlos,
Mateo
X – Observation
Assign more relevant, engaging selections
for readings for jigsaw activities.
4 Mateo X – Observation
Allow more time for students to share out
in expert groups during jigsaw activities.
4 Mateo X – Observation
Allow students to choose the type of
thinking map or note organizer that best fits
their learning style.
4 John X – Observation
Ask class to remain seated until all 4 Mateo X – Observation
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groups/students have been assigned a new
seat for in-class group projects.
Assign students seat work during periods
when a substitute is teaching.
4 Mateo X – Cogenerative
dialogue
Call substitute teachers the night before
their relief appearance to review the lesson
plan with them (when day of absence is
planned).
4 Emmy X
Provide substitute teachers with lesson
plans that review previous content instead
of introducing new content.
4 Carlos X – Cogenerative
dialogues
Require student groups (by setting aside
project points) to meet with Lorena prior to
class presentations in order to review their
work and/or practice their presentations.
5 John X
Instead of providing students with just
topics for inquiry projects, offer them with
specific questions to answer on those
topics.
5 Carlos X – Observations
A week before they have to present,
students should be required to submit all
their materials—PPTs, lesson plants,
videos, etc.—to Lorena, who would then
grade them and give them feedback before
their actual presentation.
5 Emmy X
Tell students to split up the questions and
research during group inquiry projects so
that each person is an expert on at least one
topic from their project.
5 Mateo,
John,
Lorena
X – Observations
Stand just inside the classroom doorway
and/or check in frequently with the class
during the passing periods as students
begin the daily warm-up activity.
5 Antonio X – Observation
Award students with points (using a check-
list) for completing the warm-up activity.
5 AL
Extend unit on sensory systems to allow for
a review activity, such as a lab, that covers
the material provided in student
presentations.
6 Emmy
Text everyone in the class to remind them
of the homework.
6 Antonio X – Cogenerative
dialogues
Use the ELMO to model the incisions for
students when dissecting during a lab.
6 Carlos,
Ales,
John
X – Observation
Review vocabulary related lab before
beginning the dissection.
6 Carlos
& Mateo
X – Observations
166
Suggest students to use lamps on their
smartphones to help them see the
specimens better during a lab.
6 John
As individual students ask questions of
Lorena during the lab, she should share
them (and their answers) with the entire
class.
6 Lorena X – Observations
Lorena should text (or SnapChat)
reminders to students about completing
homework the night before it is due.
6 Lorena,
Mateo
X – Interview
Hold labs during 100-minute block periods
rather than 55-minute Friday periods.
7 Carlos X – Observation
Provide students with lab guide before the
lab.
7 Emmy X – Cogenerative
dialogues
During next year’s sheep’s eye dissection,
include steps for students to cut away and
explore night-vision structures in the eye.
7 Carlos X
Have students post pictures from lab on
Google drive or share them by some other
means.
7 John X – Observation
Have students label their own bodies with
the names and locations of various glands.
7 Mateo X – Observation
Give students opportunities in class to start
homework assignments and major projects.
8 Mateo,
Emmy,
Carlos
X – Observations
Have students jigsaw readings on the
endocrine system.
8 Lorena X
Avoid giving students partial credit for
submitting incomplete homework.
8 Antonio X – Debriefs
Allow more class periods for students to
practice their oral presentations, and take
time to review presentation expectations
before oral presentations commence.
9 Antonio
Provide more frequent reminders of the
total value of homework (10%) in students’
overall final grades.
9 Mateo
Students should submit their own questions
or curiosities about the endocrine system,
and then research the answers to a set of
these related questions during an in-class
inquiry project.
9 Antonio,
Lorena
X – Cogenerative
dialogues
Ask for students suggestions when creating
a class seating chart.
9 Emmy,
Mateo
X – Observation
Ask students to complete an exit slip/
formative assessment following major class
discussions or direction instruction.
10 John,
Lorena
X – Observation
167
Students should submit their own questions
or curiosities about the cardiovascular
system, and then research the answers to a
set of these related questions during an in-
class inquiry project.
10 Mateo X – Observation
Acknowledge the hands raised by students
with questions while assisting other
students in the classroom.
10 Mateo X – Interviews
Limit time providing assistance to groups
during labs to just 1-2 minutes.
10 Antonio X – Debriefs
Take time to review answers on study
guides prior to the day of a test.
10 Mateo,
Carlos
Assign students to submit drafts of papers
prior to their due date and provide feedback
on them.
10 Emmy X – Observations
Provide students with time in class to begin
homework assignments.
10 Carlos X – Observations
Lead students in creating a model of the
heart in class.
10 Emmy,
Carlos,
Mateo
X – Observation
Prior to the sheep heart dissection lab, field
and answer questions from students about
the heart.
11 Carlos,
Emmy
X – Observation
Provide students with the written lab guide
at least one day in advance of a lab.
11 Emmy X – Interviews
Take time before the sheep heart dissection
lab to give students a quiz on content from
the written lab guide.
11 Mateo,
Lorena
Provide students close modeling of
incisions throughout the heart lab.
11 Carlos,
Mateo
X – Observation
Have students research and present digital
media on the use of stem cells and their
potential to clone human organs.
11 Carlos,
Mateo
Ask students to pour some kind of dye or
other liquid down the vessels of the sheep
heart during the dissection lab.
11 Carlos,
Lorena
X – Observation
Extend lab to include opportunities for
students to actually use the sheep hearts to
pump air into a balloon.
11 Carlos,
Mateo
Review vocabulary before commencing the
dissection lab and offer more detailed
pictures of the heart structures to assist
with new vocabulary.
12 Lorena X – Observations
Assign individual students in each group
specific roles to complete during the heart
dissection lab.
12 Emmy,
Mateo,
Lorena
X – Observations
168
Closely monitor students during lab to
ensure proper use of dyes.
12 Emmy,
Carlos,
Lorena
X – Observations
Call on or acknowledge students when they
raise a hand to answer a question.
12 Carlos,
Mateo
X – Observation
Begin class discussions by asking students
questions about more familiar content and
then gradually increase the difficulty of
content references in later questions.
12 Carlos,
John
X – Debrief
Use student cards to randomly call on
students during class discussions, but allow
students to consult with a friend if they
cannot answer a question immediately.
12 Lorena,
Emmy
X – Observation
“Designate” volunteers from shy students
to participate in class discussion by giving
them forewarning about the likelihood of
being called on later in the period.
12 John X – Observation
Were a student to refuse to participate in an
activity, Lorena should hold a conversation
with him/her outside of class before taking
further action.
13 Antonio,
Carlos,
Lorena
X – Debrief
Relocate students who become easily
distracted by friends in close proximity to
them.
13 Lorena
Task students with putting on a class
“Health Fair,” where groups of students
will present information about a health
topic at different booths around the
cafeteria.
13 Lorena X – Interviews,
Observations
Health fair should be held during a 100-
minute block period (instead of the lunch
period or afterschool).
13 Antonio X – Interviews
Visitors should be grouped and evenly
distributed among the different booths;
then Lorena should use a timer to make
sure that each group visited each booth in a
timely manner.
13 Mateo,
Lorena
X – Interviews
Offer extra credit to those students who
bring a parent to Health Fair.
13 Carlos
Have Health Fair presentation stand as final
graded assignment of anatomy/ physiology
class.
13 Lorena X - Interviews
Dedicate a portion of class time for
students to work on Health Fair projects.
13 Carlos,
Mateo,
Lorena
X - Observations
Divide the Health fair projects into a series 13 Emmy, X - Observations
169
of benchmark assignment that students
have to turn in at different points in the last
month of school.
Antonio
Provide greater modeling and guidance at
each table during the sheep heart dissection
lab.
13 Carlos X
Have students create a model of a lung. 13 Carlos,
Mateo,
Lorena
X - Interviews
Begin the respiratory unit by asking
students to submit questions and curiosities
about the respiratory system; then assign
students to research information to a related
set of those questions and present this
information in class.
13 Antonio,
Carlos
X – Observations
Provide students with key vocabulary
related to the respiratory prior to the in-
class inquiry project.
13 Lorena X – Observations
Have students complete an “egg project,”
where they are tasked with caring for an
egg as a simulation in parenting.
13 Emmy X – Debriefs
Use YouTube videos to illustrate how
vocal cords operate.
13 Carlos,
Mateo,
Lorena
When asking students to assess each other
on practice oral presentations, Lorena
should offer clear instructions on how peer
evaluations should operate and should
avoid pairing students who are would
likely not be honest with one another.
14 Mateo,
Carlos,
Lorena
X
Provide each student group two
opportunities to practice oral
presentations—first, to get peer feedback
from a visiting student and, second, to
incorporate such feedback in another
practice opportunity.
14 Lorena X
Rubric for oral presentations should
explicitly assess the equal division of labor
among group members.
14 Mateo X
In group projects, each individual member
of a group should be assigned a
subquestion that related to the larger
thematic question addressed by the group.
14 Mateo,
Carlos,
Lorena
X
Students should present group project
information in jigsawed expert groups
instead of class oral presentations put on by
14 John X
170
a whole group.
Students should only be allowed to use
minimal text on PPT slides.
14 John,
Mateo
X
Present different class structures, for
example, holding class outside or replacing
a written warm-up activity with a
kinesthetic activity.
14 Carlos
Create a model of the lung. 14 Mateo,
Lorena
X - Interviews
Limit field trip admission to only those
students with passing grades.
15 Carlos X
On late-start Wednesday periods, Lorena
should set aside time in class for students
to “unwind” from early morning events
with friends by offering interesting or
engaging warm-up activities, such as
kinesthetic activities.
15 Carlos,
Antonio,
Mateo,
Lorena
Prior to field trips to museums, Lorena
should collect phones from students and
stores them securely on the bus or in
museum lockers.
15 Mateo,
Emmy,
Lorena
X
Prepare students for potentially graphic
images at museum field trips, and make
clear expectations for respectful responses
to such images.
16 Carlos,
Mateo
X
During field trips, students should be
required to remain with a chaperone.
16 Emmy X
Bring at least four chaperones on larger
field trips and ask each chaperone to
supervise one group of 15-20 students.
16 Lorena X
171
4.10 Appendix 4C: Suggestions for Teaching, Environment, and/or Curriculum
Improvements – Ellen’s Cogenerative Dialogue
Suggestion Week From
Whom?
Evidence of
Implementation
Targeted
for Next
Year
Ask students to discuss their written
warm-ups with a partner.
1 Lina X – Observations
Call on all students who raise their
hands during a class discussion.
1 Alejandro X – Observations
Grade projects both by individual effort
and group outcomes.
1 Vanessa,
Lina,
Alejandro,
Ellen
X – Observation
Allow students to consult with one
another regarding study guide material
prior to quizzes or tests.
1 Vanessa X – Observation
Post thematic question of units on
hallway bulletin boards so that non-
anatomy students can weigh-in by
posting their answers with sticky pads.
2
José
X
Use cold-calling as a strategy to elicit
participation from students perceived as
shy or less confident.
3 Vanessa X – Observations
Chat room conversations like those on
Schoology should not completely
replace classroom discussions.
3 Lina X – Observations
Use videos for prompts on the digital
written warm-ups.
3 Vanessa X – Cogenerative
dialogues
Allow students more time for
answering the digital written warm-ups.
3 Vanessa X – Observations
Call on volunteers first during class
discussions, and then once volunteers
are exhausted, cold call on non-
volunteers.
3 Vanessa X – Observations
Have students use Google docs more
often during in-class group projects.
3 Lina,
Vanessa,
Ellen
X - Observations
Ask students to return their laptops to
the laptop cart by rows.
4 Lina,
Vanessa,
Ellen
X – Cogenerative
dialogues
Remind students that prior to a group
project, they should only select as
partners those with whom they work
well.
4 Lina,
Patricia,
Ellen
X – Observations
Ask students on occasion to complete
in-class projects with others seated in
4 Vanessa,
Patricia,
X – Observations
172
their row. Ellen
When students are asked to work with
row partners, Ellen should assign roles
to each partner to avoid debate over the
division of labor.
4 Ellen
Have one student from each row
present the work that each row-group
did or discussed.
4 Vanessa,
Lina
X – Cogenerative
dialogues
Create projects wherein Ellen links
websites of various topics onto
Schoology and students then choose a
topic, read from the websites of that
topic, and write a report (or exit slip)
about the topic.
4 Vanessa
Allow students to select their own
partners for projects that require
students to touch or measure one
another.
5 Vanessa,
Lina, Ellen
X – Observations
Use multimedia technology (e.g.,
Schoology) to send out reminders to
students about homework on a regular
basis.
6 John X – Observations
Use multimedia websites as an
introduction into the written warm-up
or other class activity.
7 Alejandro X – Observations
“Designate” volunteers (especially
students perceived as shy) to speak in
class discussions by approaching them
before the discussion and encouraging
them to participate.
8 Vanessa X – Observations
Continue to emphasize that answers
can be categorized by their accuracy,
but should not be labeled as purely
correct or incorrect.
8 Lina X – Observations
During class discussions, cold call on
non-volunteers but allow them one
“pass” if they feel uncomfortable
participating in a particular moment.
8 Patricia,
Lina, Ellen
X
In case study presentations, each
student group should be allotted only
five minutes so that all groups can
participate within the class period.
8 Vanessa,
Patricia,
Ellen
X – Observations
Include short answer questions on
digital quizzes.
8 Lina X – Observations
If the class is required to address each
student as “Dr. ___”, Ellen should
8 Patricia X – Observations
173
provide regular reminders of students’
last names.
Volunteers should be “designated”
prior to each case study presentation, so
that the presenting students have
classmates willing to answer their
questions.
8 José, Ellen X – Observations
Offer extra credit review questions on
the written warm-up or exit slips.
9 Nelson,
Angel,
Ellen
Provide students with class time to
begin group projects with partners.
9 Angel X – Observations
If a student provides a less accurate
answer, and another student does not
recognize the inaccuracy, Ellen should
state: “I spot an issue in that answer,”
or ask, “To what extent is that
accurate?”
9 Nelson
If an inaccurate fact is given by a
presenter in class, another student
should point it out respectfully only if
they already have a suggestion for
fixing it.
9 Melvin
X – Observation
When a student is cold-called during a
class discussion but is doubtful about
her answer, she should be allowed to
first consult with a partner before
offering a response to Ellen’s question.
9 Angel X – Observations
When students consult with one
another about answers on a study
guide, they should not be allowed to
write anything down, but rather should
be encouraged to discuss the answers
until they form an understanding.
9 Angel,
Nelson
When a student provides an inaccurate
response, Ellen should direct that
student to a particular text that can
provide clarity for him/her.
9 Nelson
Make salient connections between class
discussions or assignments to
meaningful issues in student lives.
9 Nelson X – Observations
Students should spend increased time
in class talking with one another in
content discussions and spend less time
interacting with screens.
9 Nelson X – Observations
Ask for students to volunteer their 9 Angel, X – Observations
174
answers from an assignment by
projecting them onto the whiteboard
via the ELMO.
Nelson
Begin class discussions of content with
lower level questions and then move
gradually to more analytical queries.
9 Angel
Have students complete the helmet
safety/ egg drop project prior to the
start of spring break.
10 Ellen X – Observation
For students who started but did not
complete their lab guides, ask them to
finish those guides in the back of the
classroom before rejoining their lab
partners in completing the lab.
10 Nelson,
Maria, Ellen
X – Observation
For students who did not begin their lab
guides, ask them to relocate to another
classroom where they can complete it
as their lab partners complete the lab
itself without them.
10 Maria
Offer students time in class to begin the
lab guide on the day before it is due.
11 Dylan,
Nelson,
Ellen
X
Make sure images in lab guides
accurately reflect the anatomical
structures (and their positioning) of
specimens during sheep brain
dissection lab.
11 Nelson X
To help students build confidence in
public speaking, ask them to make
short speeches about themselves in
class.
11 Angel
Encourage students to demonstrate
“good posture” during oral
presentations.
11 Nelson
Balance activities centered on group
work with individual assignments.
11 Angel X
Add water as a material that students
can use in their ‘egg drop’ projects.
11 Angel X
Allow students to use four oz. cups
(versus the less common 3 oz. cups) as
materials in their ‘egg drop’ projects.
11 Nelson X
When students create groups for the
‘egg drop’ project, require each group
to fill out a contact information sheet.
11 Nelson X
Make review packets an extra credit
opportunity, or alternately, a graded,
11 Melvin,
Maria,
175
mandatory assignment to be finished
the night before an exam.
Nelson
Lift some questions verbatim from the
review packets and use them in the
exam.
11 Nelson X – Interviews
Have students repeat the sheep brain
quiz if a majority of students fail it the
first time.
11 Nelson X
Give digital quizzes only once or twice
a week (but not every class meeting).
11 Melvin,
Angel,
Ellen
X – Observations
Have students take more paper-and-
pencil (versus digital) quizzes.
11 Nelson,
Dylan
X – Debrief
Vary digital quiz questions by class
period.
11 Nelson X
Provide more reminders for students to
update their vocabulary lists.
11 All
students,
Ellen
X – Observations
Allow students some time to review
material before having them take a
quiz.
12 Ellen X – Observations
Allow students both paper-based and
digital options for completing group
projects.
12 Ellen,
Nelson,
Dylan
X – Observations
Continue having students research
answers about the endocrine system
using biology textbooks as a resource.
12 Nelson,
Angel,
Ellen
X – Observations
Offer new structures for oral
presentations and/or debates in class.
13 Melvin X – Observations
Balance online and paper-based tasks
for students.
13 Nelson,
Angel
X – Observations
During the town hall meeting, allow
students within the same ‘camp’ to
consult with each other before making
closing statements to the town council.
13 Angel X – Observations
Provide clearer labels and organization
on the lab guide for the kidney
dissection.
13 Nelson X
Allow whole groups of student to
consult with each other during in-class
time dedicated to the design experiment
project.
13 Nelson
Assign students to present to the class
the results from their personalized
inquiries into the endocrine system.
13 Melvin X
Continue having paper-based (versus 13 Angel, X – Observations
176
digital) written warm-ups and exit slips. Maria, Ellen
Have students form groups by picking a
partner and then finding another pair
with whom they’d never worked in
order to create a team of four.
13 Nelson,
Melvin,
Ellen
X – Observation
Set up communication guidelines that
students can use in small groups when
working with new partners.
14 Maria
Have Ellen meet individually with each
experimental design group in order to
provide further guidance.
14 Ellen, Maria X – Observations
In the final day of the town hall
debates, allow students to write out
their closing arguments in various
forms.
14 Ellen,
Dylan
X – Observations
During future town hall meetings,
allow students more time to process
and respond to closing arguments from
the opposing side.
15 Lina X
Before closing arguments in a town
hall, re-emphasize to students that all
counterarguments must have textual
support and cannot be fabricated.
15 Vanessa X
Caution future students serving as
‘mayor’ of the town hall proceedings
that her or his vote will be the ultimate
decision in the case and thus should be
grounded in strong evidentiary support.
15 Dylan,
Vanessa
X
Ask future town hall mayors to first
acknowledge the most compelling
arguments from each side before
handing down the ultimate decision.
15 John X
In future town hall debates, allow
students from audience to question
councilmembers after councilmembers
present their votes.
15 Ellen X
Begin future town hall debates on a
Wednesday, so that councilmembers
will have the weekend to review
arguments and write a strong rationale
for their vote.
15 Ellen X
177
CHAPTER 5 – Conclusion: Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Teacher, Student, and
Public Learning
The cogenerative dialogues at center of this research have been examined as learning
catalysts for both teachers and students. At the same time, however, the findings from each of
the three studies presented earlier also hold important implications for public knowledge and its
potential expansion. In this conclusion, I review what teachers and students seemed to have
learned from their participation in this research. I then present the policy implications of the
papers featured here, and propose a connection between cogenerative dialogues and knowledge
expansion for the public. I next argue the importance of learning spaces like cogenerative
dialogues for addressing issues of educational equity today. Finally, I discuss the limitations of
this dissertation research and propose directions for future exploration within scholarship on
cogenerative dialogues.
5.1 Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Teacher Learning
The studies presented above seem collectively to trace the contours of teacher learning
through participation in cogenerative dialogues. In the first paper, Lorena and Ellen each gained
access to key student information through the dialogues, including students’ social, learning, and
affective needs, as well as their authentic questions and interests. The teachers were then able to
use this information to develop and expand their repertoires in adaptive teaching, undertaking
instances of micro- and macro-adaptive teaching, as well as responsive guidance. At times,
student information was used to make standards-based, assimilationist practices more effective;
in other moments, however, Lorena and Ellen leveraged student questions and interests to create
more opportunities for student-centered, equitable learning opportunities in class. Additionally,
the teachers learned how to collaborate with their students to solve problems that emerged in the
178
classroom. The third paper demonstrates that much of this learning was supported by the shared,
ongoing spaces of reflection afforded to the teachers and students through the cogenerative
dialogues. In having to interact with and hear from their students each week about constantly
evolving issues of classroom instruction, Ellen and Lorena confronted the tensions and
contradictions in their teaching and worked out with their students responsive ways to address
such problems. Thus, such spaces of professional reflection catalyzed the teachers’ learning in
powerful ways.
5.2 Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Student Learning
The spaces of cogenerative dialogues also offered important opportunities for student
learning as well. As seen in the second paper, the Latina student members of the dialogues
expanded their modes of participation within the classroom by first developing related skills in
their afterschool cogenerative dialogues: They learned how to speak up; to share and defend their
viewpoints; and to question those of others. Social supports forged within the dialogue settings
then acted as scaffolds for transferring this active participation into the classroom, where the
focal students practiced leadership among their peers. Moreover, such students leveraged an
emerging confidence in their abilities to take part in the discourse of science happening within
the classroom, and in so doing, learned to think and act as scientists of anatomy. Also
emphasized in this research, especially in the third paper, is how the focal students gained greater
familiarity with their teachers: Through the cogenerative dialogues, the student participants
learned about Ellen and Lorena, learned how to empathize with them, and learned the importance
of developing professional (and sometimes even personal) relationships with teachers.
Additionally, the reflective spaces of the dialogues created opportunities for the students to look
179
inward and think about their own efforts in anatomy class. Through these various ways, then,
participation in the cogenerative dialogues also mediated the students’ development.
5.3 Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Public Learning
I argue that the mediated learning associated with the cogenerative dialogues studied here
is not necessarily confined to teachers and students, but may actually extend to the public, in at
least two senses.
Policy Implications
First, the findings presented in this dissertation yield several implications for education
policy and thus can inform the discourse among policymakers and the public more broadly.
Together these papers suggest that the student development reported here is closely tied to
teacher learning; that is, where Ellen and Lorena were able to learn about and responsively adapt
to their students, new opportunities for student participation were sometimes created through
more student-centered activities. This finding lends even more support to a growing chorus of
scholarship which calls for a shift in the educational reform discourse: If policymakers and the
public seek to improve educational opportunities for all students, then what’s needed are
investments in and commitment to teacher education (Darling-Hammond, 2010; Zeichner, 2014;
Zeichner, Payne, & Brako, 2015), rather than policies—like a recent proposal from the U.S.
Department of Education (Rich, 2014)—seeking to defund, minimize, and/or eliminate it.
Findings from this dissertation also suggest that neoliberal systems of accountability and
the high-stakes standardized tests inherent in them may actually deter the engagement and
learning desired by policymakers who mandate them (Dworkin, 2005; Kostogriz, 2012; Santoro,
2011). For example, in the second paper, students like Vanessa and Emmy spoke of their
increased participation in class activities (e.g., student inquiry) that they had suggested or helped
180
plan with their teacher in cogenerative dialogues. However, as seen in the third paper, when
student suggestions for more engaging classroom activities conflicted with standardized curricula
and their tests, teachers like Lorena felt pressure from and acquiesced to demands from
administrators, who called for a strict adherence to curricula schedules which precluded some of
the student-suggested activities. In this sense, the system of accountability present at both sites
of this dissertation likely constrained the degree to which classroom learning activities could be
truly responsive and adaptive to students, and thus may have also limited the engagement and
learning of the students studied here. Perhaps, then, educational policies and research should
first look to prioritize, support, and exhaust the search for school and classroom initiatives that
foster learning and engagement before exclusively focusing on ways to hold teachers and
students accountable to standardized test scores.
In a related point, findings from this research additionally—and perhaps most saliently—
underscore the centrality of the affective labor of teaching and learning. Recall that affective
labor represents the necessary bonds and intersubjectivity that must develop between the learner
and the guide during a moment of skill and/or knowledge development (Kostogriz, 2012). Each
of the three papers presented here highlight how cogenerative dialogues offered spaces for
Lorena and Ellen to establish and develop close relationships with dialogue members—
relationships that helped shape the academic identities and expanded participation of such
students. Thus, the research here supports the work of other scholars (e.g., Kostogriz, 2012;
Kostogriz & Doecke, 2013), who argue for educational policies that begin to de-emphasize
systems of neoliberal accountability (which can detract from teacher-student relationships
(Santoro, 2011)) and instead begin to support initiatives that protect and nurture the affective
labor of the classroom, so that more equitable, humanistic opportunities for learning can occur.
181
Preparation for Public Life
Beyond its implications for educational policy, the research on cogenerative dialogues
presented here may contribute to public learning in a second sense. I argue that the particular
type of learning and active participation mediated by cogenerative dialogues represents an
education for the public, that is, one that prepares students (and perhaps even teachers) for
participation in the discourses of a democracy. For decades, education scholars (e.g., Apple &
Beane, 1995; Shor & Freire, 1987) have called for schools and educators to provide students
with intentional preparation for democratic citizenship, which includes the dialogue and action of
active political engagement (Ayers et al., 2015). Findings here (particularly from the third
paper) suggest that cogenerative dialogues represent spaces for members to learn how to critique
current issues, identify problems, propose solutions, negotiate collective plans, report one’s
actions, and hold others to account for theirs—each critical components of engagement in a
democracy. Additionally, members have used the dialogues studied here as opportunities for
learning about and developing intersubjectivity with “the other”—a necessity for democratic
discourse to take hold (Habermas, 2015; Levinas, 1998). Thus, I contend that the dialogues
described in this dissertation helped members to develop the skills and forms of participation
necessary for public life in a democracy, and in doing so, may in the future contribute to a
strengthening of that democracy.
5.4 Cogenerative Dialogues as Spaces for Challenging Inequity
I argue that each form of learning associated with the cogenerative dialogues studied
here—learning for teachers, students, and the public—is essential for addressing the most
pressing issues of equity facing education today. Given that, historically, students from
marginalized communities have been generally denied the learner-centered, responsive
182
classrooms associated with robust learning (Ladson-Billings, 2008; Odibah & Howard, 2005),
Mascarenhas, Parsons, & Burrowbridge, 2010), the field and practice of teacher education needs
catalysts like cogenerative dialogues that can help teachers serving diverse students—teachers
like Lorena and Ellen—to develop more adaptive teaching practices. With reports of inequitable
opportunities for engagement and participation in science classrooms (Emdin, 2010, 2011),
students from historically marginalized communities—particularly females of color (Parker,
2014)—deserve spaces like cogenerative dialogues that promote student agency, membership,
and identity in the science classroom. In this way, science can become a part of who they are
and what they do, rather than an area of frustrated disenfranchisement. Given the detrimental
effects of current neoliberal policies such as high-stakes testing and accountability, more
research on spaces like cogenerative dialogues are needed, so that scholars can protect and
support the affective labor of the classroom, learn more about preparing students for public life,
and shift the educational discourse away from one focused on competition and fear to one more
firmly rooted in learning and the communities that foster it. While cogenerative dialogues are
simply one learning catalyst and are not represented (here or elsewhere) as a panacea for
educational and/or social ills, research such as this helps to intensify the current scholarship on
collaborative, collectivist spaces for learning (e.g., Emdin, 2007) and heralds their potential for
challenging some of the inequities present today.
5.5 Limitations and Directions for Future Research
By emphasizing particular opportunities for teacher, student, and public learning through
engagement in cogenerative dialogues, the dissertation seeks to contribute in a modest way to the
literature in this area. At the same time, however, the three papers offered here represent a
limited venture into the data collected and only a narrow glimpse into cogenerative dialogues
183
more generally. Thus, many directions for further exploration exist, both within the data
gathered for this research and through additional, more expansive field-based studies.
Across the three studies featured here, the findings focus most particularly on the
affordances that can result when teachers and students engage one another in cogenerative
dialogues. Given less attention, however, are the challenges that may (and did) emerge within
these spaces. For example, as hinted in the second paper, discussions within early dialogues at
both sites often consisted of stilted, adult-dominated conversations where the teachers and I
struggled to help foster the relationships and environment necessary for students to feel safe
enough to share their perspectives of and offer suggestions for the anatomy classes. Many of my
debriefs with the teachers centered on our frustration around “getting the students to talk” and
our fears that this space might never elicit a real dialogue. Scholars of qualitative research
underscore that rapport and trust among participants takes time to grow roots (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2015), but literature on design research is decidedly silent on the issue, and thus I was
left with little guidance on methods for facilitating (and accelerating) the relationship
development needed for my time-sensitive project. Over the course of the study, Ellen, Lorena,
and I experimented with several tools for stimulating more student-centered discussions, such as
providing students with pocket notebooks for them to jot down ideas that may arise throughout
the week. Without more concentrated analysis and perhaps more data (e.g., further participant
interviews into the matter), however, it is difficult to attribute the development of our dialogues
to one of those tools, over the contribution of more traditional “prolonged engagement” in the
field (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). In this way, an opportunity exists in future work for me to use the
data I’ve collected to describe with more focus and detail possible stumbling blocks in launching
of cogenerative dialogues with students and teachers who are previously unfamiliar with them.
184
Another (and perhaps related) challenge receiving little attention in this dissertation or
other studies are the moments of participant discomfort that seemed to occur within and
sometimes following cogenerative dialogues. Although I allude to this in the third paper above,
students at times confided to me in our debriefs that they felt uncomfortable raising and/or
discussing critiques of their teachers’ classroom instruction. More frequent were moments
following the dialogues when Ellen or Lorena would admit that a student critique shared earlier
had temporarily wounded them, in spite of the teachers’ demonstrated professional confidence
and despite the students’ efforts to couch their comments in constructive terms. I attempted to
address such instances of discomfort during my debriefs as I became aware of them. The
literature on cogenerative dialogues, however, offered minimal, specific advice for how to
proceed, and scholars of learning theory tend to note the importance of realizing conflict,
contradiction, and tension without providing much guidance for helping learners cope in
productive ways (e.g., Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1998; Sannino et al., 2009). Given
this lack of research specifically within cogenerative dialogue scholarship, I plan to return to my
data to explore with more attention those moments of discomfort that seemed to arise for my
participants, as well as my feeble (and uninformed) attempts at guiding my teachers and students
through them. I argue that such future research would be foundational in supporting teachers and
students who are just beginning their journey together in these dialogic spaces.
While the data collected for this research can be mined for these and other stories of
challenges in conducting cogenerative dialogues, the dissertation study itself remains limited in
scope and thus cannot answer some of the most pressing questions in this area of research. Two
such questions seem most pertinent to the investigation reported here. One asks, In what ways
and to what extent do teachers continue engaging in cogenerative dialogues with students
185
following a researcher-led study of these dialogues? Because the investigation here only
explored the cogenerative dialogues for the period of my involvement, the data I collected cannot
yield insight into this question, which has yet to be examined in other studies as well. In my
personal communication with her following the analysis of this dissertation, Lorena revealed that
she had since established at least one cogenerative dialogue-group when she began a teaching
position at a new high school closer to her home. However, over the same period, Ellen
informed me that she had not found the time to resume dialogues with students. Exploring why
teachers like Lorena extend their practices of dialogues beyond a formal study, and what those
teachers learn after multiple years of dialogues, would help illuminate the potential for these
spaces to serve as a sustainable practice for professional development.
A second question of importance to this area of study—but unanswerable through the
data collected here—asks, What is the nature of cogenerative dialogues (and the learning
associated with them) established within classrooms outside the science content area? The
teacher and student participants of this study hailed from anatomy classrooms and thus the
dialogues they engaged in grew to reflect the particular content and pedagogies adopted in these
contexts. Similarly, nearly each cogenerative dialogue study reviewed for this dissertation, with
one exception (i.e., Wassell et al., (2013)), focused exclusively on the experiences of science
teachers and their students. While the need for equitable teaching is great in the area of science
education, similar gaps in learning opportunities exist in other content areas as well (Lee &
Reeves, 2012). Given the learning affordances reported here and elsewhere (e.g., Bayne, 2012;
Emdin, 2010), I argue that researchers ought to expand their study of cogenerative dialogues into
other content areas to understand the patterns of learning that may result and how (if at all) such
dialogues can help address inequities found across various types of classrooms.
186
From this discussion, it becomes clear that the research presented here is somewhat
limited in its analyses and scope. However, the same limitations identified above also represent
critical areas in which the literature on cogenerative dialogues can (and should) expand, and thus
they point toward valuable directions toward which I hope to steer my future scholarship.
187
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
The following dissertation encompasses three studies. Each study draws from research the author conducted with two high school science teachers, who each participated in weekly cogenerative dialogues with respective focus groups of their students. The first study explores what the teachers learned about their students through these dialogues, and how the teachers then leveraged this new knowledge about students to engage in moments of adaptive teaching in the science classroom. The second study examines what some of the participating students learned from their experiences in the cogenerative dialogues
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Beltramo, John Luciano
(author)
Core Title
Cogenerative dialogues as spaces for teacher, student, and public learning: a design investigation into two instantiations
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Urban Education Policy
Publication Date
06/17/2016
Defense Date
04/14/2016
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
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(digital)
Tag
adaptive teaching,cogenerative dialogues,Latina/o education,mutual accountability,OAI-PMH Harvest,science teaching,teacher accountability,teacher development
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English
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Electronically uploaded by the author
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Stillman, Jamy A. (
committee chair
), Cooper, Terry (
committee member
), Tynes, Brendesha (
committee member
)
Creator Email
beltramo@usc.edu,jlbeltramo@gmail.com
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https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-253526
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UC11280528
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Beltramo, John Luciano
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Tags
adaptive teaching
cogenerative dialogues
Latina/o education
mutual accountability
science teaching
teacher accountability
teacher development