From Partnership Agreement to Initial Use: Multi-Sited Inquiry into Early Implementation Efforts

In this presentation, we trace teachers’ experiences participating in an educational technology development and research project focused on the creation and use of an online writing and peer review environment called Scholar. We follow teachers from their initial expectations of the program, to their response to professional development training sessions, planning sessions, student account setup, and to their initial attempts at utilizing the digital learning environment in the classroom.

This presentation given at AERA in San Francisco, 2013
Paper Type: Session Paper
Unit: SIG-Writing and Literacies
Paper Role: Author
In Session: Implementing Computer-Supported Collaborative Writing

Transcript

1. From Partnership Agreement to Initial Use: Multi-Sited Inquiry into Early Implementation Efforts Justin D. Olmanson University of Illinois Urbana Champaign olmansju@gmail.com | olmansju.tumblr.com h Sandra S. Abrams St John’s University abramss@stjohns.edu
2. Just Getting to Implementation is a Journey • developed technology • teacher agreement – complex – multidimensional – often goes unreported (in the literature) (Olmanson & Abrams, 2013) initial classroom use
3. Participation Dynamics Social-Sciences-Wide Issue Seldom Reported (Ahern & Le Brocque, 2005)
4. Participation & Inquiry Achievable Inquiry Goals more likely less likely Participation Levels higher lower (Kubitskey et al., 2012)
5. Participation & Complexity Features more fewer Participation Levels higher lower (Neve, Collins, & Morgan, 2010)
6. Teachers as Technology Gatekeepers Positioned as determiners of which technologies are used when, and how (Kline, Letofsky, Woodard, 2013)
7. Guiding Question What are the dynamics associated with participating teachers’ pre-implementation activities of Scholar?
8. Shifts in how students learn, express, produce, and reflect
9. Shifts in how teachers prepare for, organize, and assess learning
10. Shifts in evaluation and formative feedback
11. Shifts in the affect and metaphors associated with academic expression
12. Implementation Context • 40 participating teachers • 11 focal teachers • 2 implementation cycles (Spring & Summer of 2012) 5 Central IL HS & MS Schools 3 NYC HS & MS Schools
13. Data Collection Methods • Semi-structured interviews (Weiss, 1994; Wolcott, 2005) • Participant observations (Spradley, 1980) – professional development sessions – pre-implementation classroom teaching • Researcher memos & journals
14. Parallel Data Analysis & Collaborative Theming (Eakle, 2007; Frambaug-Kritzer, 2011) Code Mapping Base Coding Data Walking Theming (Anfara, Brown, & Mangione, 2002) Data Chunking Holistic Coding
15. Trustworthiness • Member checking (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). – 6 participants agreed to do descriptive and interpretive member checking – 4 gave explicit feedback based on either a slide presentation (1) or a full reading of the paper (3) – Written and oral feedback was used to clarify information and confirm our interpretations
16. Data, Findings, & Interpretations Constellations of Impediments Constellations of Supports
17. Data, Findings, & Interpretations Impediments and Supports as a leaky binary based on the way it fit with how – researchers positioned participant attrition and participation (Ketelhut & Schifter, 2011) – teachers spoke about their experiences – Researchers, teachers, and administrators framed implementation
18. Constellations of Impediments • Teacher Time • Technology Access and Connectivity • Teacher & Student Resistance • Curricular Upheaval • Multi-Dimensional Beta
19. Teacher Time “My planning period is after school; that’s just the way it works for our contract and so all of our meetings get pushed there; that’s when parents come in, kids stay after school; I lead a chess club and so there is no time to sit down and put that much extra time into one assignment” - - Kathleen Time to: • Get familiar with Scholar • Create rubrics and give feedback to peer reviewers • Work through technical glitches • Embrace the pedagogical shifts Scholar makes possible
20. Technology Access • Nadia: “That was something I feel posed a problem because I mean lab time, you can get it; it’s just not consecutive with classes and there might be a week or two here you can’t get it and before you get back in the lab, it’s a full week.”
21. Technology Connectivity • Allison: “Two times a month I have a notice on the front door that says Internet is out today, and on top of that how many times I’m in the middle of a class lesson and it just blanks out on me…the fact that it was so Internet-based it was just causing problems.”
22. I went through all that and you won’t do it? Seriously? --Joanne • Student resistance • Faculty resistance • Curricular upheaval Resistance and Upheaval
23. Multi-Dimensional Beta Brian: “Oftentimes technology doesn’t work or you have some little glitch that can be rectified if you’re sitting in your office by yourself... but [when] you’ve got thirty-eight kids sitting in here and you can’t have that; it’s got to be good to go and quick and fast or else you’ve got chaos on your hands, so those were my hesitations”
24. Constellations of Supports • Teacher Effort and Agency • Promise & Possibility • Affiliation & Connection • Local Dynamics • Researcher Relationships
25. Teacher Effort and Agency • Sacrificing • Negotiating • Planning
26. Promise & Possibility “It’s just such an anachronism what I’m having these kids do, writing journals and nobody writes like that anymore.” Brian (Olmanson & Abrams, 2013) Notebook Writing in a Netbook World “This is what our kids are going out into in the workplace, they need to be able to interact with these environments.” Joanne
27. Affiliation & Connection • Professionalizing attributes of participation • Students as designers
28. Local Dynamics • Administrator Interest and Support • Involved Colleagues
29. Researcher Relationships logistics tech support account setup model writing rubric creation team teaching presence
30. Considerations & Constructs • Teacher as Site of Articulation • Personal-Professional Bandwidth • Anticipated Use Horizon • Time as Prioritization • TPACK by Proxy/ TPACK + 1
31. Teacher as Site of Articulation Instead of thinking of teachers as the final arbiter of study participation we came to understand them as sites of articulation. They weren’t so much deciding but rather they were externalizing the state of things.
32. Personal and Professional Bandwidth Grading An educator’s in-school bandwidth Formative Feedback Planning & Administration When personal priorities include things that expand to fill all available free time (illness, wedding planning) the possibility of innovating with new, unfamiliar technologies and pedagogical approaches severely constrained.
33. Anticipated Use Horizon • Teachers approached participation in the Scholar project differently based on how they long they intended to use It in their classroom. – Long-term orientation to use = more engagement…
34. Time as Prioritization • Not enough time was given as a reason for delaying implementation or implementation- related tasks however this was a polite way to say that Scholar was not a high enough priority given available time.
35. TPACK + 1 Teacher Teacher Researcher Researcher Researcher Teacher TPACK by Proxy TPACK by Committee
36. Early-Implementation as Weather Pattern –shifting social and material interconnections as an implementational forecast –just because it looks like it will rain, doesn’t mean that it will (Latour, 2008).
37. Olmanson, J.D., & Abrams, S.S. (2013). Constellations of Support and Impediment: Understanding early implementation dynamics in the research and development of an online multimodal writing and peer review environment. E-Learning and Digital Media, 10(4). Accessing the Full Paper
38. Select References Ahern, K., & Le Brocque, R. (2005). Methodological Issues in the Effects of Attrition: Simple Solutions for Social Scientists. Field Methods, 17(1), 53–69. doi:10.1177/1525822X04271006 Kubitskey, B. W., Vath, R. J., Johnson, H. J., Fishman, B. J., Konstantopoulos, S., & Park, G. J. (2012). Examining study attrition: Implications for experimental research on professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 28(3), 418–427. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2011.11.008 Neve, M. J., Collins, C. E., & Morgan, P. J. (2010). Dropout, Nonusage Attrition, and Pretreatment Predictors of Nonusage Attrition in a Commercial Web-Based Weight Loss Program. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 12(4), e69. doi:10.2196/jmir.1640 Wolcott, H. F. (2008). Ethnography. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
39. From Partnership Agreement to Initial Use: Multi-Sited Inquiry into Early Implementation Efforts Justin D. Olmanson University of Illinois Urbana Champaign olmansju@gmail.com | olmansju.tumblr.com h Sandra S. Abrams St John’s University abramss@stjohns.edu
40. Acknowledgements The research reported here was supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305B110008 to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.
41. From Partnership Agreement to Initial Use: Multi-Sited Inquiry into Early Implementation Efforts Justin D. Olmanson University of Illinois Urbana Champaign olmansju@gmail.com | olmansju.tumblr.com h Sandra S. Abrams St John’s University abramss@stjohns.edu