Inger Assarson
PhD Student
University of Malmö, Sweden
Paper presented at EERA conference in Crete 2004-09-23
Author: Assarson, Inger
Title: PhD student
Abstract:
The aim of my study is to analyse how teachers make sense and construct meaning from theories, official documents and practice in their endeavour to include all children in their education. How do teachers think about learning and teaching for plurality in heterogeneous groups of students? Focus of my research is on teachers’ sense making and construction of meaning in a pedagogic discourse where deviancies can be seen as a resource rather than a problem. Pedagogic discourse is then defined as attitudes towards theories of learning, pupils’ differences and predispositions for learning, school failure, curriculum, responsibility of the school as well as its social function.
The research school is a rural school whose teachers have expressed positive attitudes towards inclusion of children from a special school. By a discourse analyse I will outline how the teachers make sense and construct meaning in a pedagogic discourse for plurality. The teachers engaged in striving for inclusive education in comprehensive schools have been writing life stories, diaries and have been interviewed in both groups and as individuals. The analysis is focused on the process in three levels of how teachers are making sense and constructing meaning of their profession. The first level is personal, the other emanates from their interpreting of official documents about the mission and the third level concerns their experiences in educational praxis.
The results of the study will be presented in my PhD theses.
Document type and origin: Conference paper presented at the European Conference for Educational Research at the University of Rethymno, Crete 2004-09-22-25
Suggested key terms: inclusion, discourse analysis, pedagogical discourse, consensus
Teacher’s sense-making and construction of meaning in education for plurality
Inclusive education is well illuminated in research studies as far as the normative, political and social aspects are concerned. How to implement this vision is not that well examined. Although there is a clear support in official documents ever since the seventies for implementing a school for all, there still is a tradition for excluding children who are not expected to reach the goals of the comprehensive school. In Swedish schools today, special needs education is to a great extent a matter of finding special solutions outside the classroom for pupils who are considered not to fit in, rather than to make changes in the school in order to suit all students.
The aim of the paper
The aim of my full study is to analyse how school staff make sense and construct meaning from theories, official documents and practice in their endeavour to include all children in their education. How do teachers build up the strategies for learning and teaching for plurality in heterogeneous groups of students? Focus of my research is on teachers’ sense making and construction of meaning in a pedagogic discourse where differences can be seen as a resource rather than a problem. Pedagogic discourse is then defined as expressed attitudes towards theories of learning, pupils’ differences and predispositions for learning, school failure, curriculum, responsibility of the school as well as its social function.
In this paper I will present the first analysis from a group conversation where the intention was to create an understanding for how a group of school staff talks about a public document concerning learning and about the commission to educate all students.
The aim in this first study was to understand how a group of professionals, working at a comprehensive lower grad school, in a dialogue handled the different statements emerging from the public outlines for teachers’ competence in educating all children.
Inclusion and teachers’ attitudes
There is in Sweden and other countries a trend to regard consensus as a presupposition for inclusive education. The Swedish School Council emphasizes the striving for shared values among all school staff generally and for integration especially.
In the Malvern and Skidmore study from 2001, there were seen three different strategies approaching inclusive education. The first was a compromise where a work agreement was established to one task at a time. Another strategy was built upon reciprocity, a pluralistic view where everyone looks upon objects from different perspectives. The third strategy then, was the consensus theses on values and goals.
Booth (et al 2002) sees inclusion essentially as transforming school cultures and practices involving all staff as well as the society around the school environment. The Index of inclusion contents statements as a base for discussion in order to reach some sort of consensus around the school work. School development and school changes are important factors in many studies concerning inclusive education. The aim of many of those studies are changing attitudes and forming an inclusive school culture. Action research therefore can be seen as an instrument for changing practises and minds. Armstrong and Moore’s (2004) present a number of studies in this topic.
Skidmore (2004) examined viewpoints of school staff around the discourse of inclusion deviancy and outlined some main features which he gathered in the concept of pedagogical discourse. This discourse signifies by
an interconnected set of beliefs held by a constituency of teaching staff in a common institutional setting about the nature, purposes and methods of education which combine to make up a working theory of schooling (Skidmore, 2004 s 113)
Those beliefs emanated in a theoretical model with two contrasting forms of pedagogic discourse the discourse of deviance and the discourse of inclusion. The two forms could be identified according to staffs thinking about
-educability of students
-explanation of educational failure
-school response
-theory of teaching expertise
-curriculum model
The theoretical model can be seen as closely related to the model of categorical and relational points of view. In the categorical view the difficulties appears connected to the individual shortcomings depending on the person himself, his body or his social background. In the relational perspective the difficulties are regarded as appearing in the encounter between the individual and his or her environment.
Theoretical frames
A description is not only given as a representation of reality. It also has an implicit aim to achieve something. Descriptions always are integrated in a context as a part of acts which in their turn is imbedded in broader sequences of interaction. Actions are constructed and reality is formulated to satisfy running circumstances (Potter, 1996).
The concept of the reflective practitioner was brought up amongst others by Schön in 1987 and has been transformed into the field of education and influenced a research trend in ´teacher thinking´. Hargreave’s (1986, 1994) approach to the subject is closely related to school development and an attempt to improve the quality of education. Clark & Peterson (1986) point at the connection between teachers’ thought processes and teacher’s actions and the observable effects of those actions. Research in teacher thinking has frequently been linked to demands of effectiveness mostly from economic and political aspects (Arfwedsson, 1994). Despite the danger of interest restrictions when the frequently public financed researchers involve in order to improve school, action research has contributed to the understanding of the complexity of teacher’s practice in an ever-changing context. Teaching a group of children is a task where quick decisions must be made in a very complex situation. In these decision-makings there is no time to consider all those factors whose impacts on the situations are essential in order to act logically and rationally. Many of these acute events can’t be reflected about until later by constructing meaning and making sense to what happened. When this process of reflection occurs in a team of school staff it could enlighten essential aspects of the construction of a commitment to educate all children.
A method often used in teacher thinking is the narratives, where teachers’ voices are seen as an important part of understanding the development of education (Goodson, 1992). In the research field concerning reflection in work, the aspect of professionalism has been brought up as a disregarded aspect. Studies and definitions of teacher’s professionalism have focused on consciousness about theories of learning and teaching, authority, autonomy and ethics (Colnerud, 2002). In this investigation my intention is an attempt to associate former research on teachers’ thinking with the concept of ´sense making and construction of meaning´. Sense making implicates to create a meaning in a world where nothing can be taken for granted and where we can’t be sure of if it’s the reality we are going to discover (Weick, 2001). According to Weick sense making can be understood as a way of constructing maps. How the map is drawn depends on what is noticed, on our creative ability, on our needs when we construct the map and on the fact that sense making is a social act, taking place in a broad ever-changing context. The landscape is continuously changing and if we want to investigate the process of sense making it is essential to outline a short stability in the continuous flow that is life. This can be done by some short cuts in the proceeding complex process.
Method
The research school is a rural school whose teachers have expressed positive attitudes towards inclusion with children from a special school. The children from the special school are now attending comprehensive school and are educated together with their schoolmates in ordinary classes the entire day or a part of the day. Some of the schoolteachers cooperate around two or three classes. The special educational teacher is seen as a resource for all the school and is working in close relationship with the headmaster. The staff of the school consists of teachers from comprehensive school, a special needs teacher and a special pedagogue as well as headmaster and staff from the pupils caring organisation. They have all written letters about their background and work at school, diaries over one week of work as part of the data collection and have then been interviewed in order to complete data. These more narrative data were collected in order to get a context and background from which to understand the process in the group dialogues.
In the main study the analysis is focused on the process of how teachers are making sense and constructing meaning of their profession in three areas. The first area is personal. It concerns the private experiences and purposes of the working in school according to the personal history and context. The second area derives from how school staff interprets official documents about their obligations and the third area concerns their experiences in educational praxis.
This paper is related to the second area and a first analysis of how school staff in a dialogue handles the different statements emerging from the public outlines for teachers’ competence in educating all children.
In interpreting the dialogue I use an approach inspired by discourse analysis. Discourses represent reality at the same time as they create the world by choosing emphasis and selecting the parts described. In discourse analysis the issue is altered from studying a problem to studying the process of how and in witch context the problem was created. This moves focus from the reality to how reality is created (Börjesson, 2003).
Focus for investigating the dialogue was on
-how professionals construct meanings and make sense of their work in relation to the public expectations on the school and its teachers
-how professionals interpret their experiences from the content in the public texts
In the communicative process my interest is the structure in the dialogue as
-Who takes the leading role in the conversation and from what criteria?
-What threads and messages do the participants develop out of each other’s utterances?
-How is the concept of consensus handled? Can the participants unite or how do they deal with disagreement or unspoken conflicts during the conversation?
Results
My aim for this paper was to analyse one of the group dialogues where school staff talk about a public document. The chosen document is considered as the base for the new Teacher Educational Program, To Learn and to Lead (Att lära och att leda SOU 1999:63). The chapters chosen for the conversation was the third chapter The New Teacher Assignment (Det nya läraruppdraget) and the ninth chapter Competence to encounter all students (Kompetens att möta alla elever). This document can be seen as an interpretation of the political intentions of a school for all. The purpose was to use a material that could stimulate a dialogue around the mission also in an ideological perspective. The dialogue was initiated by an open not too demanding question: What thoughts did you get reading the material? The aim with this every day question was to put as little pressure as possible on the group. The first thought to raise questing during the session was soon abandoned as it often was followed by silence. A ‘question’ was supposed to be answered in a correct way. There for I used ‘incitements’, small stories, to inspire further thoughts. Mostly these incitements worked but there were occasions when they led in quite another direction than intended.
Levels in using the language
Reading and relating to a public document is not an everyday experience for school staff, busy all day by handling immediate situations and simultaneously handling thousands of unexpressed impressions and facts.
The analysis of the dialogue showed different ways of managing the text. When the participants were referring to the text in the public document they used more formal words. Interpreting a text produced by researchers encouraged the use of words that were more similar to the manuscript, as mediator, resource person, authority, competence and handling information. These words were often used in close connection to the text as when reading or direct referring to a part in the document in order to emphasize an argument. When the participants were talking about their work at school the words used were close to everyday speech as potter about, obeying, jobbing, something to get ones teeth in. This language was linked to laughter and situations where the dialogue was more like a chat.
When the every day work was handled and treated on an intellectual level, the use of words changed and took a form somewhere between. In this amid level the actions that had taken place at school were making sense and got their meaning in relation to the text in the public document. The words then used could be social person, responsibility, changing roles and traditions.
Leading roles and consensus
The leading role in the discourse was shared between those teachers who already were working in team and felt they could handle schoolwork according to the documents. Those teachers spoke most of the time and also referred more often to the documents. The striving for consensus within the group was evident. When there was no consensus it was overseen by saying for example
-well…. I can… I agree .. completely .. but not quite, though. Because I think that……..
When there was an open disagreement the participants tried to find a common statement as commenting the new teacher’s role:
- well, you have to be more human… more human and less teacher
-(Silence)
-do you understand what I mean?
-Mmm… well…. Maybe…
-Well, … teacher.
-What?
-I would say that you are wrong.
-Well maybe I am
-You shall not say less teacher
-Well, I mean ….
-In the teacher’s role also is all that other….. in the new role is all that other
Then someone finds out and tries altering expressions to gather around, witch at once is accepted
-less old fashion
-less old fashion is a way to say it
The group members then gather around seeing the new role as less old fashion and thereby avoid the expression of ‘less teacher’.
View on school responsibility and social function
The school responsibility and social function concerned the new and the old role of the teacher and the school, further on to the teachers’ social role and the over mighty feeling to live up to all the demands. In spite of all new objects now being a concern for the school there was a feeling of a claim to keep all what was important in the old times. The talk around the feeling of great responsibility for the children led to a dialogue around the relations to the parents. In connection with the parents’ view there were made associations to the experiences of school that all inhabitants have and the difficulties of changing an institution that so many have their own story about.
Example from a piece of dialogue:
After an introduction the dialogue was initiated by my question
-what thoughts did you get reading the document
Anna opens up the conversation after a moment of silence and then picks up the word ‘thought’ and at the same time indicating that what she now is going to say, is not all but only her first thought. She argues that there is a difference between teachers today and in the past. To authenticate her thought she reads in the text.