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This work emerged as faculty members at the University of Illinois at Chicago
and at 6 Chicago-area Community Colleges (William Rainey Harper Community
College, Oakton Community College, Olive-Harvey College, Triton College,
Truman College, and Harold Washington College ) became involved in a CETP
project. This project offers scientists who have been teaching college
science courses the opportunity to come together during an intensive week in
the summer and throughout the following academic year. During this work,
faculty members identify issues in their classroom teaching, explore
approaches that have been fruitful in other places and settings, and design,
implement, and evaluate their own change projects in their own classrooms.
After the first year of the project, four of the participating college
teachers (all chemists) took a step further, pursuing more systematic
analysis of the changes they brought about in their courses, thus conducting
teacher research. They have been collaborating with each other and with me,
one of the PIs. They study what they do, what impact it has on them and
their students, searching for insights that will help them understand and
improve their practice, understand their classrooms, their students,
themselves. They expose and attempt to understand ambiguities and
frustrations of teaching and learning. They uncover struggles and
possibilities that have arisen for them as they attempt to transform their
classrooms into sites where their students make meaning, become interested in
science, interact with their teacher and their peers, ask questions, pose and
solve problems, become in charge of their learning. As Jeanne Henry (1999)
writes, the teacher research that these scientists have been involved in
constitutes the "ethnography of change" (p. 201).
In their studies, the teachers paint pictures (in broad strokes and fine
details) of their classrooms, they tell stories about themselves, their
students, and their classrooms. The pictures and stories are characterized
by idiosyncrasy, specificity, and particularity. The stories are situated
and partial. They are presented in the form of narratives told by insiders
who are studying their own cultures. These teachers "study teaching as
teachers. For [them], teaching is research and research is teaching" (Grumet,
1990, p. 119).
Through these studies we get the strong feel that classroom change is a
journey, not a blueprint. The projects show us that there was no single
recipe for change / restructuring, but certain common ingredients.
Furthermore, change is not a linear process, thus supporting Fullan's (1993)
notion that "when you go deeper you go different. What appears to be a
linear track becomes a new world" (vii). Change also brings about "periods
of cloudy thinking, confusion, exploration, trial, and stress, followed by
periods of excitement, and growing confidence" (Fullan, 1993, p. 17) both for
the teacher and the students. A few other themes arise from these studies.
First, change begets questions faster than they are answered. Second, change
is all about time-making time, taking time, finding more meaningful ways to
spend time. Third, these studies give us a feel for college classrooms as
complex and dynamic systems of relations and agents, where one action
constrains and / or is constrained by others.M
References
Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (1993). Inside / outside: Teacher research
and knowledge. New York: Teachers College Press.
Fullan, M. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational
reform. New York: Falmer Press.
Grumet, M. (1990). "On daffodils that come before the swallows dare."
In E. Eisner & A. Peshkin (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry in education: The
continuing debate. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hammer, D. (2000). Teacher inquiry. In J. Minstrell & E. H. van Zee
(Eds.), Inquiring into inquiry learning and teaching in science (pp. 184-215).
Washington, DC: American association for the Advancement of Science.
Henry, J. (1999). An ethnography of change: Teacher research as
dissertation. In R. S. Hubbard & B. M. Power, Living the questions: A guide for
teacher-researchers (pp. 196-204). York, Maine: Stenhouse.
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