This study begins with the belief that the ways in which teachers see and attend to educational encounters matter for their actions in classrooms. Using microethnography as a framework, this dissertation explores the relationship between teacher candidate attention, problem formulation, and action. Through analysis of the M.Ed. inquiry reports of teacher candidates in a boutique teacher education program, this study answers the following questions: 1) What do teacher candidates’ M.Ed. inquiry questions reveal about their attention and problem formulation? 2) How do these questions indicate possibilities for attention and action in a classroom? 3) How does candidates’ attention change over the course of a year in the context of the M.Ed. investigation they complete in a teacher education program? 4) What do candidates’ attention, problem formulations and actions as revealed in their M.Ed. reports indicate about the relationship between attention, problem formulation, and action?

The findings of the analysis reveal the ways in which teacher candidates are attending to the problems of their classrooms and how that attention might shift through the course of inquiry. As teacher candidates’ attention shifts, it broadens possibilities for problem formulation and the actions a teacher might take in a classroom. In its conclusion, this paper ultimately argues that the object of teacher education be to educate teacher candidates’ attention.

ABSTRACT

Weaving the Social Fabric of Dialogic Relations:An Investigation and Exploration of the Interactional Accomplishment of “Being With” by Kimberly A. Rudder-Breed

Opportunities to participate in dialogic practices are essential to the co-construction of meaning. Such opportunities not only afford deeper learning for the individual, they open up different kinds of possibilities for the community as a whole. Participating in dialogic practices enables intersubjective understanding across differences of experiences and ideas. While many schooling practices organize students into social relations of a corrosive nature, participating in dialogic practices opens up possibilities for more generative social relations between students – ways of regarding and being with others that generate richer future pathways of social and civic involvement with others. Yet, these opportunities are often rare to nonexistent in many classrooms. The exigencies of the classroom, including many external forces, create barriers to teachers who would otherwise pursue this as an educational aim. When dialogue is conceived as merely technique or method, the investment of time into this approach may feel untenable. But to conceive of dialogue this way is to diminish its full potential. This study conceptualizes dialogue as both encounter and relation, and explores the ingenuity of young children as they navigate high-stakes disputes – in the absence of adult intervention.This study begins with a search for the emergence of “dialogic moments” (Cissna & Anderson, 1998) in one kindergarten classroom. The questions orienting my observations and analysis were: What does a dialogic encounter look like in a kindergarten classroom? Where and under what conditions does it emerge? And what are the barriers? Acting as a participant-observer (Spradley, 1980) in the classroom, I collected approximately 50 hours of video over four months. Using a “natural history” approach (McDermott & Raley, 2011), I conducted slow, fine-grained analysis of video recordings of naturally occurring interaction. In my search for dialogic moments, I discovered a student-generated interactional phenomenon, which I have named “commoning,” to describe the ways that students collectively opened up a shared space to inhabit together. To establish the phenomenon, I drew on a collection of four cases of commoning to identify and describe its constellation of defining features. I then analyzed two episodes in more depth to better contextualize how these features function and interact within the unfolding interaction. Driven by a need to better understand what was happening between students in these commoning encounters, I returned to the literature for new theoretical tools. I drew on work in the fields of Sociology, Social Psychology, Anthropology, and Phenomenology to develop a novel conceptual framework for understanding the social relational processes emergent in the interaction. Returning to one particularly delightful episode, I applied this conceptual framework to the analysis of the micromoments of embodied interaction. I examined the relational messages emerging between participants as they moved into embodied involvement and enacted a fullness of mutually co-present participation in the encounter. Through fleeting micromoments of mutual gaze, students confirmed one another. These moments were infused with vitality and collective effervescence, including moments of shared delight and shared rhythm of movement. Together, students were weaving a shared social tapestry that opened the possibility for the kind of risk-taking and vulnerability that was required to navigate emergent dialogic tensions. Applying the same conceptual framework to the analysis of micromoments in the dialogic encounter, I compare and contrast these two very distinct yet similar interactional modes of “being with” others – both enacted without guidance or intervention from adults. In the final discussion, I further refine my conceptual model in an attempt to develop a vocabulary to describe the interlocking components of embodied mutual involvement in the interactional accomplishment of “being with.”

ABSTRACT

This qualitative research project applies a case study approach to investigating the nature of experience and interactions of four pre-service teachers who took part in facilitating an activity for a School Maker Faire. Additionally, the research looks for evidence of design thinking as a pedagogical practice, manifested by pre-service teachers in this environment. Data was collected in the form of stimulated recall interviews and semi-structured interviews. Analysis of the data was guided by the following three questions:

• What is the experience of pre-service teachers in a Maker Faire environment?

• How do pre-service teachers interact with children in a Maker Faire?

• How do pre-service teachers display their pedagogical understanding of design thinking, in a Maker Faire environment?

Findings reveal the following four phenomena as being important influences on interaction and experience: pre-Maker Faire preparation, types of questions asked, the role of assessment, and the role of parents.

Additionally, evidence suggests relationships between these influences and a pre-service teacher’s level of adopting design thinking, however further research would be necessary in order to substantiate these findings to a degree of applicability for practitioners. This research study contributes to the growing literature on maker education and design thinking, as it applies to teacher education.