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ERIC Number: EJ1229364
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Aug
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1526-8659
EISSN: N/A
Social Discourse Influencing Elementary Teachers' Cognition and Metacognition for Problem Solving in Open-Ended Professional Development
Durley, Hui-Chen K.; Ge, Xun
New Waves-Educational Research and Development Journal, v22 n1 p55-71 Aug 2019
This study explored teachers' problem solving during technology-mediated professional development (PD) in the topic related to teaching English Learners (ELs, i.e. students whose home languages are not English). Open-ended PD provided authentic, situated contexts using videos of scenario to engage six elementary teachers to participate in small group, social discourse and collaboration for problem solving. Group social discourse was video recorded to observe participants' cognitive and metacognitive development during PD. Post-PD interviews were also conducted to explore the influence of social discourse upon individual thinking for problem solving. PD artifacts for problem solving were also collected. Data analysis revealed three themes characterizing teachers' cognition and metacognition including conceptual understanding of PD content, application of professional learning for classroom practice, and authentic discernment of activities in classroom situations. The findings suggested that when teachers developed group thinking that helped them to generalize their own classroom experience to explain problem scenarios social discourse facilitated the development of collective intelligence and enabled peers to scaffold thinking for problem solving. Lacking cohesiveness as a group, teachers' thoughts manifested individualistic interpretations and unrealistic suggestions to deal with classroom issues. Study implications include incorporating open, interactive, authentic problem-based activities that facilitate meaningful discussions and collaboration to elicit dialogical connections of minds.
Chinese American Educational Research and Development Association. e-mail: info@caerda.org; Web site: https://www.viethconsulting.com/members/publication/new_waves_home.php
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A