Publication details
Changes in teachers' conceptualizations of students as a result of a collective dialogue intervention
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This lecture aimed to map how teachers' conceptualizations about students changed through a teacher professional development program focused on collective dialogic teaching. The term teachers' conceptualizations of students denoted, following Rainio and Hofmann (2021), assumptions or beliefs that teachers held about students, including perceptions, judgments, explanations, and expectations related to students' attributes and performance. Little attention had been paid to changes in teachers' conceptualizations of students in the field of teacher professional development research. Therefore, the question was whether teachers' conceptualizations of students became more productive when they transformed their teaching practices. Six teachers and their classes (145 students, grade 6) participated in the intervention during the 2021/2022 school year. The teachers participated in workshops, videorecorded their lessons, and conducted a series of interviews with each teacher. Individual interviews with each teacher were conducted before the intervention program started and after it ended (6 pre-interviews + 6 post-interviews). Another 60 interviews were conducted through the program, focused on the planning of lessons and their reflection. The series of interviews provided a unique data set that enabled tracking how teachers' conceptualizations about students changed over the course of the intervention. The results showed that the direction of change in the conceptualization of individual students towards a more productive way was highly prevalent. Besides changes in the level of individual students, teacher statements transformed over time towards lower stabilization and greater acknowledgment of teacher agency. |