ERIC Number: EJ910836
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Jan
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0950-0782
EISSN: N/A
Power and Knowledge-Building in Teacher Inquiry: Negotiating Interpersonal and Ideational Difference
Spicer, David H. Eddy
Language and Education, v25 n1 p1-17 Jan 2011
Professional collaboration in schools features prominently in contemporary approaches to educational change. Advocates highlight the importance of situated knowledge to continuous teacher learning, sustained school reform and improved student learning. Critics portray collaboration as an invisible and coercive means of official control. The framework presented in this paper aims to treat these perspectives not as ideological positions but as starting points for empirical investigation into the dynamics of power in professional collaboration. The framework draws on social semiotic theories of language and functional linguistics to portray the ways in which the development of ideas and the development of social relations--ideational and interpersonal meaning--move in concert. Excerpts from an in-depth study of interaction among science teachers and teacher-leaders in a secondary school undergoing broad reform illustrate the application of this framework. Attention to the dynamics of support and challenge in the most generative of these interactions reveals distinctive patterns of the negotiation of interpersonal and ideational meaning. These patterns of control provide a means of connecting the microprocesses of building knowledge with the broader dynamics of power at play in educational change. (Contains 3 tables, 2 excerpts, 1 figure and 7 notes.)
Descriptors: School Restructuring, Teacher Collaboration, Learning Processes, Semiotics, Educational Change, Science Teachers, Linguistics, Guidelines, Secondary School Teachers, Power Structure, Interpersonal Relationship, Teacher Leadership, Knowledge Base for Teaching, Linguistic Theory
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A