The Development of Primary Teachers' Understanding and Use of Interactive Teaching (R000 238200)

The Development of Primary Teachers' Understanding and Use of Interactive Teaching

Moyles, J., Hargreaves, L., Paterson, F., and Esarte-Sarries, V.

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Leeds, 13-15 September 2001

This research is part of Study of PRimary INteractive Teaching (SPRINT) Project funded by ESRC research Award No: R000238200

Project team:

Moyles, J. (Anglia) , Hargreaves, L. (Cambridge) , Merry, R. (Leicester) , Paterson, F. (Nottingham), Esarte- Sarries, V. (Durham), English, E. (Durham), Hislam, J. (Leicester), Hunter-Carsch, M, (Leicester) and Kitson, N. (Leicester).

Statistical consultant Dr. A.W.Pell (Cambridge)

DRAFT NOT TO BE QUOTED

1Background

Teachers have been encouraged recently, to use ‘ interactive teaching’ in order to raise national standards of performance. This encouragement has come from Reynolds and Farrell’s (1996) analysis of England’s poor performance in international comparisons of achievement in mathematics and science, and from the pedagogical advice in the National Literacy ( NLS) and Numeracy Strategies (NNS) (DfEE 1998, 1999) which have been almost obligatory practice in primary schools since 1998/9. The NLS framework document describes ‘The most successful teaching’ as, inter alia, ‘... interactive - pupils’ contributions are encouraged, expected and extended’ (DfEE 1998:8). The NLS training materials have not yet provided any pedagogical theory or empirical research evidence to underpin their recommendations, however. Beard’s (1999) retrospective review of research relevant to the NLS (see also Reynolds and Farrell, 1996; Reynolds, 1998) suggested a three-phase framework of questioning in which teachers use :

a)questions of increasing difficulty to solve an initial problem to assess skills;

b)rapid recall questions to assess pupils’ knowledge;

c)slower paced higher order questions within whole class discussion to promote pupils’ thinking.

Research published during this project, however, found that even ‘effective’ teachers in the Literacy Hour still use the ‘Initiation Response Feedback (IRF)’ pattern first noted by Sinclair and Coulthard in 1975 (Mroz et al., 2000). This type of exchange tends to curtail rather than extend pupil responses, however, but several studies of teaching in England including Edwards and Mercer, 1989; Mercer 1995 and more recently, Alexander (2000) and Fisher et al. (2000) have revealed that it remains the dominant pattern of discourse despite changes in educational policy. Further, Galton et al., (1999) observed key stage 2 teachers just prior to the introduction of the NLS but after the introduction of the National Curriculum, and found that they were spending more time giving information and less time asking questions. This finding runs counter t o the implicitly socio-constructivist theory adopted here, which predicts that learning higher mental functions depends on teacher support which is contingent on the learner’s moves towards understanding. In practice this is likely to imply sustained interactions with the same pupil(s), a relatively high question to statement ratio and a significant proportion of questions answered by active reasoning, explanation or imagination.

Given the minimal definition of interactive teaching in the NLS document, the SPRINT project set out (i) to discover not only what teachers themselves understood by ‘interactive teaching’, but also to observe how they put it into practice and (ii) to give them the opportunity to refine and articulate their practice using video, and a procedure referred to as ‘reflective dialogue’ with an HE research partner.

The aims of the project, more specifically were:

• To develop research on pedagogy: to define interactive teaching in collaboration with teachers and to generate an accessible model of skills in interactive teaching.
• To enhance teachers’ professional development by carrying out formative and summative evaluations of the implementation of the interactive teaching model through a process of evidence-based mentoring.
• To develop ITT tutors’ research skills and professional expertise.

These aims were translated into the following objectives:

a)To construct a working definition of interactive teaching;

b)To observe experienced teachers at work over a period of one school year when implementing and evolving their constructs of interactive teaching in the Literacy Hour and in one other area of the curriculum;

c)To provide evidence-based feedback and mentoring to foster teachers’ critical reflection on their pedagogical skills;

d)To train ITT tutors in research methods including the use of systematic and descriptive observation, and administration and analysis of in-depth and semi-structured interviews;

e)To convene teachers’ workshops and conferences to refine and disseminate the interactive teaching model;

f)To construct training materials for new teachers based on the refined, research-based model.

2.1Research on pedagogy and professional development

The fundamental aims of the research were to defineand generate ‘an accessible model ofinteractive teaching in collaboration with practising teachers’ in two geographical regions. Teachers’ definitions of ‘interactive teaching’ and its conditions etc. were elicited through interviews, reflective dialogues and teacher conferences.). The production of an ‘accessible model…’ became untenable, however, as the teachers provided a more complex array of skills and relevant contingencies than originally anticipated. Ultimately, construction of a typology of interactive teaching was a more valid outcome.

A further aim was teachers’ professional development in the articulation and refinement of their skills and understanding of interactive teaching, through reflection on observational evidence. The proposed means of achieving this was improved by replacing live systematic observation with video, viewed first by the teacher, and used as a basis for ‘Reflective Dialogue’ with a tutor-researcher partner. The video was then available for systematic coding, subsequent feedback to the teacher, and more reliable summative evidence for analysis.

A significant consequence of the video-stimulated reflective dialogue was a shift towards teacher leadership of the discussion. The terminology above of ‘evaluation’ and ‘evidence-based mentoring’ however became inappropriate to describe the discourse and was replaced. ‘’Evaluation’ became ‘exploration’ of the meaning and evidence of interactive teaching by a teacher-tutor research partnership. The video Stimulated Reflective Dialogue (VSRD), however, constitutes a model of wider applicability for the development of pedagogical skills and understanding for both experienced and trainee teachers.

The aim to observe the implementation of interactive teaching was achieved using systematic observation , whilst teachers’ concerns about the effects of interactive teaching on their children were measured using questions from the Hall et al (1973) Concerns-based adoption model (CBAM).

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3METHODS

3.0Design and sample

The research design was essentially a pre- and post-test intervention study in which a convenience sample of 30 teachers from 15 schools competed a questionnaire, were videoed whilst teaching the Literacy Hour, and interviewed at the beginning and end of the eight month fieldwork period. During this time, one ‘focus’ teacher from each school, was videoed twice more teaching other curriculum areas, and participated in three ‘reflective dialogues’. One ‘comparison’ teacher who taught in the same Key stage wherever possible, in each school had no intervention. The teachers (three men; 27 women) range in experience from two to over 20 years.

Outcome measures including systematic observation using a modified ORACLE teacher observation schedule (Galton et al 1999) the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) questionnaires (Hall et al., 1979) and semi-structured interviews, were carried out at the beginning and end of the eight-month fieldwork period. The intervention, consisting of video plus reflective dialogue’ is described below.

3.1 Systematic Observation

The teachers viewed their videos and selected the 20 minutes section which best demonstrated their interactive teaching. These sections were coded systematically using the ORACLE teacher record (Galton et al., 1999) modified to record extended pupil utterances, NLS teaching techniques, and interactions with meta-cognitive content (see Medwell et al., .1998). Teacher talk is coded every 25 seconds into pre-determined categories. The use of video assisted the process of inter-observer moderation and can still be analysed qualitatively in greater depth.. A mean overall inter-observer measure of agreement of 73% was achieved. Inter-observer reliabilities for specific categories (e.g. task questions, task supervision statements) ranged between 0.74 and 0.82. Chi-square tests were carried out to test for differences between the observation frequencies of different groups e.g. focus and comparison teachers.

3.2Questionnaires

the Stages of Concern (SoC) questionnaire from The Concerns’ Based Adoption Model (CBAM) (see Hord 1987), designed to measure innovation adoption., was adapted to refer to interactive teaching. This was administered with the interviews at the beginning and end of the fieldwork. Oblique factor analysis of the initial SoC data resulted in five reliable scales (see Section 4.2). Teachers’ mean scores on items and scales were compared using t-tests.

3.3 Interviews

Semi-structured interviews which lasted on average about 30 minutes, were conducted with every teacher before and after the first and last video. The interviews were recorded and transcribed.

These data were analysed using the method of constant comparison, aided by Nud*ist, to produce a typology of interactive teaching and its associated conditions, contexts, and constraints.

3.4 Intervention method: Video Stimulated Reflective Dialogue (VSRD)

The video stimulated reflective dialogue (VSRD) was the main vehicle for pedagogical development. The 15 focus teachers were videoed on four occasions engaged in what they defined as ‘interactive teaching’.. The teachers then viewed each video independently, and selected a 20 minute section which best demonstrated their interactive teaching. These videos were then the basis of the ‘reflective dialogue’ with their research partner a few days later. Each teacher used a framework of questions to focus attention during the RD and to stimulate professional reflection on practice. The teachers stopped the video at points of significance, and chose reflective questions to discuss. Action points for implementation in the next video session were agreed, and reviewed at subsequent meetings.

The RD method addressed all five key aims of the SPRINT project. The VSRD process provided methodological coherence in the two locations as well as a model of reflective practice. It gave teachers individual autonomy and opportunity to articulate their theories of interactive teaching and examine their practice. The teachers’ endorsed its effectiveness in prompting changes in thinking, and enhancing critical awareness of practice. Despite some initial unease, all teachers considered RDs worthwhile, and some planned to adopt video and dialogue as a school-based professional development tool.

4.0RESULTS

The project has a rich and extensive pool of quantitative and qualitative data. This report does not attempt to report the results comprehensively but to present the most salient findings to date. More detailed accounts are in press or in preparation. We begin with the basic typology of teachers constructions of interactive teaching which emerged from the analysis of the qualitative data, and then report the quantitative results concerning teachers’ concerns and observations of practice. Finally, we bring the two sources of evidence together in one teacher case study.

4.1 A typology of interactive teaching

A typology of primary teachers’ constructions of interactive teaching grounded in the teachers’ own terminology, and validated by the teachers in project workshops is summarised in Table 1. It fulfils the first aim of the project. Undoubtedly, the teachers conceived interactive teaching to be a more complex, and broader matter subject to specific conditions and contexts, than is implied by the NLS definition. Many of the teachers refined and/or expanded their interpretations during the project, and changes in their attitudes, knowledge, thinking and practice ensued.

In the typology, teachers made a conceptual distinction between ‘surface’ practices (explicit and observable) as in items 1-4 in Table 1 and ‘deep’ practices (more implicit and qualitative) as in items 6-8, with item 5 existing in both forms. References were made to these as ‘little ‘i’’ and ‘big I’ interactions, or to ‘gimmicky things’ such as the phoneme fans and whiteboards introduced by the NLS. Most teachers referred at some time to surface features, but there was less emphasis on ‘deeper’ principles by the majority of teachers. The teacher conferences highlighted collaborative activity, and account of children’s social and emotional needs, as aspects lacking in the NLS materials.

Analysis revealed certain conditions which influenced teachers’ construction and application of different types of interactive teaching, notably

1. teacher attitudes : 11 teachers expressed negative or ambivalent attitudes to the NLS, but all were positive about interactive teaching.
2. NLS training and knowledge of interactive teaching: 19 teachers expressed limited confidence in their knowledge of interactive teaching, despite extensive NLS training in five cases.
3. other professional training: Numeracy Strategy training enhanced nine teachers’ self reported understanding of interactive teaching, and six teachers deemed the NNS more interactive than the NLS.

TABLE 1: A Typology of interactive teaching

1. Engaging Pupils Constructs relating to maintaining pupil interest in the curriculum and providing fun and enjoyable experiences.

1. Pupil Practical & Active Involvement Constructs emphasising ‘hands on’ learning and activity requiring ‘movement’ and practical engagement.

1. Broad Pupil Participation Constructs referring to strategies that involve the whole class in activity or those that allow the teacher to assess pupil knowledge through whole class presentation of knowledge e.g. the use of white boards or letter fans.

1. Collaborative Activity Constructs relating to pupil-pupil collaboration as the basis for learning e.g. NLS ‘Time Out’.

1. Assess, Extend and Convey Knowledge Constructs that refer to issues around assessing and extending pupil knowledge and conveying new knowledge, particularly non-didactic methods.

1. Attention to Pupils (Social and Emotional) Needs/Skills References to teaching addressing the emotional needs and social interests of the pupils.

1. Reciprocity and Meaning Making Constructs that relate to ‘two way’ communication where both teacher-pupil and pupil-teacher interaction is encouraged. Constructs that emphasise the construction of meaning through dialogue rather than didactic approaches.

1. Attention to Thinking and Learning Skills References to attention to, and development of pupil thinking skills, and comments that imply learning frames or attention to pupils’ learning processes.

d.Reported effects of the reflective dialogues

The majority of teachers altered their definitions and reported use of interactive teaching as a result of having read more NLS literature, as their pupils matured during the project and because the felt more confident about their own teaching. More than half, however, reported that the videos and reflective dialogues made them more aware of their practice, and caused them to focus on certain aspects of it, although this in itself did not guarantee attempts to change practice (Table 2). Whilst the focus teachers had more time and opportunities for in-depth reflection, half of the comparison teachers had become sufficiently interested to engage in further reflection without a research-partner.

4.2Change in teachers’ conceptualisations of interactive teaching

The interview data were analysed to determine whether the teachers changed their conceptualisations and reported practice of interactive teaching, and became more reflective during the project. Clearly, the scope for change depended on their initial interpretations, and ironically, some ‘comparison teachers’ showed a deeper level of understanding than their ‘focus’ colleagues. Change however did not correlate with length of experience. The majority of teachers could be placed in one of three broad groupings shown in Table 2 . This indicates teachers who:

1. showed greater awareness but did not change their interpretation or practice of interactive teaching;
2. reflected on their practice and extended their understanding and interpretation within the NLS framework;
3. moved to interactive teaching being a key principle of all their teaching, and acknowledged their debt to the reflective dialogue process for enabling them extensively to examine their views.

Five teachers could not be placed either because their data was inconclusive, perhaps because they needed more time, lacked confidence, or were unfamiliar with the types of questions in the reflective framework or incomplete, three teachers withdrew.

Eight teachers made substantive shifts in their conceptualisations of interactive teaching and at least six teachers developed more concern with the ‘deeper principles’ of interactive teaching. Just over a third of teachers referred largely to ‘surface’ practices. They changed some aspects of their practice, but did not engage in reflection on the deeper aspects, and appeared to accept the organisational models within the NLS and NNS frameworks as a sufficient condition of interactive teaching.

TABLE 2: Degrees of Change in teachers’ views of interactive teaching

4.3 An emergent model of interactive teaching.