Beatty Feldman - NARST 2009

Illuminating teacher change and professional development with CHAT
In the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), Garden Grove CA, Apr 20.

Beatty, Ian D. and Feldman, Allan

Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA) is an innovative pedagogy for science and mathematics instruction. Teacher Learning of TEFA is a research project studying teacher change as in-service secondary science and mathematics teachers learn TEFA in the context of a multi-year professional development (PD) program. Applying cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to the linked activity systems of PD and teachers’ classroom practice leads to a model of teacher learning and pedagogical change in which TEFA is first introduced into classrooms as an object of activity, and then made useful as a tool for instruction, and then—in rare cases—incorporated into all elements of a deeply transformed practice. Different levels of contradiction within and between activity systems drive the transitions between stages. CHAT analysis also suggests that the primary contradiction within secondary education is a dual view of students as objects of instruction versus students as willful individuals; the difficulties arising from this contradiction can either inhibit or motivate TEFA adoption.

Beatty Feldman Leonard Gerace Cyr Lee Harris - arxiv.org 2008

Teacher Learning of Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment
arxiv.org

Ian D. Beatty, Allan Feldman, William J. Leonard, William J. Gerace, Karen St. Cyr, Hyunju Lee, Robby Harris

Conference paper accompanying a special symposium presented at the 2008 Annual International Conference of the US National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), Baltimore, MD, Apr 01

Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA) is a pedagogy for teaching with classroom response technology. Teacher Learning of TEFA is a five-year research project studying teacher change, in the context of an intensive professional development program designed to help science and mathematics teachers learn TEFA. First, we provide an overview of the project's participating teachers, its intervention (consisting of the technology, the pedagogy, and the professional development program), and its research design. Then, we present narratives describing the unfolding change process experienced by four teachers. Afterward, we present some preliminary findings of the research, describe a "model for the co-evolution of teacher and pedagogy" that we are developing, and identify general implications for professional development.