Visiting Previous Readings and New Information...Plus Icky Sanders...

The readings for this week could not have been placed in a more appropriate spot for the outline of the semester in terms of where we are at this week currently as a state and my personal experiences.  Several of the articles were refreshers from our readings in DP this summer and I have included my notes and thoughts from our previous time together.  My responses to Elizabeth and Josh’s articles were written as if writing to them and my questions were typed in bold to help you identify them.  As I was reflecting on the information that they shared with us previously in DP, the only thing that I am still wondering about is what elements in their study of participants’ discourse (Elizabeth’s work in IEP meetings and Josh’s work with new teachers) has surprised them the most during their analysis and perhaps, how has their work changed their line of personal line of thinking during their study.  As you have reflected before, a lot of the work that I do with my ESL families involves me seeing them in meetings with teachers in which I see teachers starting by killing parents with kindness only to pull the rug out from underneath them to uncover the agenda that they had along.  There have also been times in which I see teachers using the language barrier to hide their unprofessional behavior.  Comments that would never be made in front of Anglo-English-speaking parents are made in meetings with what appears to be no second thought.  Although both studies were written completely different, as an educator, I enjoyed them both.  Elizabeth’s more closely related to my line of work at this stage of my career, but Josh’s work was interesting to me as teacher who struggled (and sometimes, still struggles) a lot in the beginning to find her identity in the school.  I enjoyed reading them both and I can see the relevance for both of them in the current educational climate.

The Gabriel & Lester article regarding TVAAS was my favorite reading during DP.  I loved the style that it was written in and appreciated the literature format of the piece.  I also loved that UT graduates were being given the respect that they deserve.  This week, FB has been blowing up with an article from Classroom Chronicles ‘The Man Behind the Numbers’ giving Sanders accolades for his development of the TVAAS system and how its use has spread across districts throughout the United States.  This quote taken from the article ‘He hopes that TVAAS will continue to curb what he calls one of the most ineffective resources in the world’ points to a lack of respect for all of the different elements that teachers face in their classroom from year to year. He says that you can look at student achievement in 5^th grade and track how well a student will be doing years later or look at a high school student and know at what point in their academic career they veered off the correct path based on teacher TVAAS scores.  What about all of those students who came to school worried about their next meal or whose native language isn’t English or who are severely delayed in their learning for various reasons?  What about those schools that were struck with by a natural disaster just before testing that the school wouldn’t allow an extension on the testing window?  A bad year’s test scores can effect a teacher’s TVAAS data or a school’s rating for may years to come and yet that is going to be used to determine teacher effectiveness or teacher pay.  A test designed for the measurement of corn.  I call bunk!  As did another FB post flying around this week regarding the fact that 20 years of TVAAS data hasn’t proved anything and certainly hasn’t improved anything in TN education.  Another reason why it was so perfectly timed is the teachers in my district had to sign their agreement forms today in what data they wanted collected for 50% of the teacher evaluations.  As a non-classroom teacher, my TVAAS and teacher evaluation is mandated to be determined by school-wide TVAAS data.

I have to say that the Ladegaard article may have been one of the most shocking articles that I have read and I think that it points to the gender bias that I have regarding men and women in leadership roles.  I mean this quote doesn’t surprise me: ‘Gender may move to the foreground or retreat to the background at different points in an interaction, but it is an omnipresent influence, and always potentially relevant to the interpretation of the meaning of an interaction (15).’ I would agree that it is always there.  It is like a movie that I watched that said that men and women can’t be friends, because ‘sex’ is always an issue.  Well, I would agree that gender is always an issue, because we are humans.  We react to situations based on who we are and our previous experiences.  I was raised by an independent, Southern lady who was married to the same man for over 40 years that encouraged me to do anything that I set my mind to do.  I think that I was raised to expect that I can do anything that a man can do, but why would I want to?  How do you as the researcher identify an innate bias that you have when it is so finely grained into who you are as an individual?

I have worked with both male and female bosses.  I have had positive and negative experiences with both, but in general I have had a more negative experiences with females. I feel that they tend to be more emotional and more reactive than their male counterparts.  However, something that I found interesting was ‘This study suggests that female leaders should not employ an exclusively feminine management style’ it is probably equally true, however that they should also do their best to escape the Pit-Bull-Terrier image that some female leaders seem to think is an asset for a female leader (18).’  I agree with it in that there is not perfect balance.  If a woman is ‘too female’, respect is probably not going to be given by certain people, but if a woman is ‘too Pit-Bull-Terrier’, she may be judged as trying to hard to be one of the boys and not receive the respect that she is trying to get. It is my personal preference to work with male bosses.  I think that the women that I have worked for tend to have an ‘emotional-I’m-your-friend’ leadership style and have a really hard time knowing where the line needs to be drawn until it is too late, which sort of mirrors the research by Odgaard and Jorgensen.  (Plus, I don’t just don’t personally trust women.)  With my male bosses, there has tended to be more of a ‘what you see is what you get’ style of leadership.  They let you know their expectations and as long as you meet them, you are fine.  

Another aspect from this article that I personally tied to regarded their discussion on Communities of Practice for their framework.  I used communities of practice for my study on professional development book clubs as an alternative to traditional professional development models offered in schools.  For that study, I was even more of a novice, so I had so much to learn. I made so many mistakes or assumptions.  I wish that I had known more about DA and how it could have better helped me understand the language of my participants and how we constructed the learning environment of our endeavor.

Ladegaard, H. J. (2011).  ‘Doing power’ at work: Responding to male and female management styles in a global business corporation.  Journal of Pragmatics, 43, 4-19.

Previous research:

• ·         Case (1988): ‘the men in her study used a more direct, action-oriented style which allowed them to establish dominance in the group, and most of the women uses a more accommodating style which emphasized interpersonal relationship (6)’
• ·         Odgaard and Jorgensen (2003): Male-more factual, to-the-point, no small talk, unemotional; Female-lots of small talk, more emotional approach (6)
• ·         Mullany (2007): both men and women use masculine and feminine speech, favor feminine strategies when they are exercising power and authority (6)

Community of Practice (CoP): ‘This framework focuses on how people construct membership of certain groups through their language use’…’an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations—in short practices—emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor’ (8).

‘The most significant difference found in this study is the way employees respond to their male and female leaders.  The male leaders do not seem to have any problems when it comes to ‘doing’ power, claiming authority, and accomplishing their transactional goals, whereas the female leaders are often struggling—not only in the excerpts we have analyzed but in many other situations as well (16).’

Other notes of interest:

• ·       ‘the paucity of women in management positions, including cultural, social, and educational factors’ and ‘infamous ‘glass ceiling’ are the main reasons why it is usually difficult for women to climb to the top of an organization’ (4)
• ·        ‘overwhelmingly male (4)
• ·         good leadership qualities: authoritative, strong-minded, decisive, aggressive, competitive, and goal-oriented—qualities normally associated with men rather than women (5)

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) ‘aims to identify connections between language, power, and ideology and discourse analysts favoring this approach are trying to describe how power and dominance are produced and reproduced in social practice through the discourse structures of everyday text and talk (7).’

Elizabeth…

Price, E. Dissertation proposal: A discourse analysis of individualized transition planning meetings.

First of all, I loved the opening addendum.  I think that it made the process that you are going through very real for me and I could sense the struggle that you are having in regards to gaining access to the data that you need for your study.  For someone at the beginning of this doctoral process, it helped me to appreciate the complexity that goes into the type of work that you are doing.  Thank you for your honesty and openness. 

I am a K-4 ESL teacher, so I have limited experience with IEP meetings.  I wasn’t aware that students were expected to participate in their instructional planning at the age of 14.  That seems like such a crucial age in a child’s development while at the same time very difficult to get them to participate in a matter such as this.  I understand that theoretically they should have a vested interest in the planning of their transition or continued services, but we don’t always know what should be important, especially at the age of 14.  I think that the premise of your study in looking at the discourse of special education students in the IEP conversation/meeting is a very interesting premise and one worthy of study.  At this stage of the reading, I am wondering how you plan to compare the IEP’s with students present vs. IEP’s where students aren’t present.

In your section on the ‘Challenges Associated with Participation in IEP and ITP Meetings’, you share a variety of points regarding issues that come up with IEP’s involving students, families, and educators.  Something that I was curious about was your discussion on the litigations or disputes that occur over special education services. Did you come across research that indicated why there was a disparity between the number of disputes that arise at the secondary level versus the number of disputes at the younger grade levels? Are you thinking that more student participation could eliminate or reverse this statistic?

A quote that I took from your paper and found pertinent was ‘As such, IEP meetings may be seen as a school institutional concern by participants rather than a place for all participants to share knowledge and make decisions together (Lo, 2008).’  I think that this has very much been the case in the IEP’s that I have attended.  They seem to be held in rudimentary fashion and little parent involvement is really sought out or deemed necessary.  They ask all of the right questions of the parents, but in a manner that really seems kind of rhetorical.  It seems as if they are holding a mandated meeting with ‘x’ amount of stuff to wade through and the parents there to be seen not really heard.  It would be very interesting to attend meetings in which children are expected to be active participants in the process. 

I have brought this up before, but what is your experience with meetings pertaining to LEP students.  Would these students, if they had a SPED label also, have been excluded from participation in your study?  Why or why not?

Well done on the theoretical framework section. Best description of DP that I have read thus far. I actually understood it.  This quote especially held direct me in my understanding of the process: ‘Without question, the discursive features I will choose to focus upon emanate from my background, interests, and research questions (33).’

I LOVED THE FOLLOWING QUOTE…’The stated membership categories listed above cannot reveal the complexity of my emotions, reactions, thoughts, and questions about a system in which I am deeply connected as both an insider and an outsider (31).’ I think that you write beautifully.  Your emotion was felt and I think that is one of the things that I like about reading what I think of as real qualitative research.  It is raw.  It is real.  It is connectable. 

‘Whatever participants are doing with language in the situation takes precedence over the attempts to identify the inner motives and intentions of the participant. Since the inner workings of someone else’s thoughts are usually not on display, the concern is with what participants say and do (34).’ In regards to DAM element 1, I think this is one my biggest struggles that I am having in regards to understanding DP.  How do you know what you are finding with your analysis is accurate or valid if you don’t know more about what is behind the participants’ message?  I am not saying in your study, but DP work in general. 

Thank you very much for sharing your work with us.  It is overwhelming to me at times to put myself out there.  As a public educator working with diverse learners, it was a very interesting study for me to read and learn how DP work can be used in an educational setting that is familiar to me.  As a future researcher (hopefully), it was an accessible study for me to learn from.  Much like Gabriel and Lester’s study on TVAAS data, it was written in UT (forget that APA nonsense, wink wink) style.  It was familiar to me.  It was written in a format that I have been taught and could almost utilize a checklist to say you modeled everything that I have been taught.  I look forward to reading your finished work.

Josh…

Johnston, J. Dissertation proposal: A discourse analysis of beginning teachers’ identity negotiation during a student-teaching internship.

‘As I use identity, it is a socially negotiated and contextually occasioned understanding of what an individual stands for in a given interaction (3).‘ This was the first time that I really have read and understood the concept of identity in DP.  Your writing on this point was very readable and understandable.  Another quote that I appreciated was, ‘Though these changes may not occur knowingly (Goffman, 1959), people move among multiple identities that are temporary and malleable (4).’ In DP, we have been talking a lot about this just recently.  It is a concept that I firmly believe.  Potter and Edwards talked about the self and how it is not fully represented as it was in the past, as it is now, or how it will be (not a direct quote, but the gist).  It is ever evolving and each version is just as ‘true’ as another one. 

‘DP analysts simply offer one interpretation of what they understand discourse to be doing and try to make their own thinking behind that analysis transparent. What the participants meant, felt, or believed is not important because is not at all accessible to analysts from a discourse analytic perspective (21-22).’  I asked this of Elizabeth, too.  How do you accept the realm where you are taking emotion and the participant’s thoughts out of the equation?  How does this not drive you crazy?  How does it not affect the validity or accuracy of the study?

‘In my approach to the data, I will attempt to stay aware of common failures of discourse analysis: (1) summarizing, (2) taking sides, (3) over quoting or under quoting, (4) reasoning circularly, (5) attributing to membership categories (6) spotting features (Antaki, Billig, Edwards, & Potter, 2003)(37)’. I LOVED THIS SECTION.  But, could you provide me a little more background or examples as to what they mean?  I haven’t taken DA yet.

As part of course requirements, I looked at professional learning communities and used a theoretical framework related to communities of practice.  In your discussion of how the meetings were set and your role, you mentioned communities of practice (38).  Did you ever consider using this as your framework? What, if any, other frameworks/methodologies did you consider using for your work?

I really appreciated your reflexivity statement and your discussion of how your presence should be represented as part of the data.  Something that I had never read before was the idea of using time/space to eliminate some of the ‘inside’ knowledge in which you would have had access to your own thoughts or feelings if you had analyzed immediately.

Gabriel & Lester…

Gabriel, R. & Lester, J. (Forthcoming).  The romance quest of education reform: A discourse analysis of The LA Times’ reports on value-added measurement teacher effectiveness. Teacher’s College Record.

As a new student learning research and the research process, this article was great for me. It combined all of the information in a readily accessible format that I have been taught to include in a study and write-ups about my study.  It also helped me see one element of the bigger picture that I have been desperately trying to see so far this term.  It was a great article and very relevant to the current state of education reform.

I loved the opening for the article: ‘In the fairytale of US public education reform, the root of all evil has presumably been identified: ineffectiveness in teaching.  Districts and teacher’s unions, like kings and dukes in a romantic tale, have the authority and influence that should protect their people from the evils of ineffective teachers, but lately they have been powerless to track down and eliminate the dragons of ineffectiveness that lurk in our K-12 schools (2).’ It not only got to the heart of the premise behind the problem of the article’s purpose, but it was written in what I think of as qualitative style.  It gave me an interest to keep reading the article and learn what they learned.  There was not  an attack on the LA Times, but instead stated that ‘The issue lies with the ways in which VAM continues to be positioned as a means by which to validly and reliably identify low-performing teachers, even when research suggests otherwise (3).’ The researchers presented findings from a discourse analysis of 52 articles published between 2009-2011 on VAM.

As a teacher with 6 years of experience TN, I have experienced the previous teacher evaluation system.  I have been around for the previous standards movement roll-out.  I am the first to admit that we needed a new evaluation system and new standards. However, it astonishes me that administrators and the public really think that ‘By comparing individual students to their own historic performance over time, the method is said to eliminate the problem of individual differences and outside factors (5).’  There are stories throughout our state alone that prove this not to be true.  For example, tornadoes rolled through middle TN a few years back and the students had to take their EOCs that week.  Can you tell me that didn’t affect data?  There was a school shooting just after winter break and students had to return to the same school for testing.  A favorite specialist teacher in another school passed away in a car wreck and the school staff and student body was grieving during testing. One bad year, one bad circumstance.  It can affect a teacher’s TVAAS scores for 3 years before dropping off. Those are extreme cases.  What about factors that effect students on a daily basis, such as hunger, housing, family dynamics, etc.?  How are those elements excluded?  ‘Since student projections are created by comparing a student’s achievement over time rather than comparing students to each other, VAM is said to avoid the difficulty of controlling for individual differences among students (Sanders & Rivers, 1996).’ (7) It is ridiculous!

Sanders (professor of agriculture at UT) ‘decided to use the case of teachers and student test scores to demonstrate a model often used in genetics to estimate the half-life of radioactivity in cattle after reading about the dilemma of teacher evaluations in a campus newspaper’ (5).  Dr. Allington references this in a lot of his courses, but I never had the specifics to refer when discussing the TN evaluation with my peers.  Something else that Dr. Allington discusses is how the actual formula for the calculation of TVAAS data is copyright protected and doesn’t have to be shared with the public for analysis in other contexts.

‘Ironically, Sanders stipulated that scores of the TVASS should never be used as the sole indicator of effectiveness and should never be made public.  In fact, state law (now amended) prohibited the public release of individual teachers’ scores (5).’  See that is one of those things that I like to refer to as bunk in education.  There are many instances where as a state, as a system, or as a school that are adopted for one thing and then tweaked for another purpose.  It’s no longer research-based, but its deemed okay since ‘It’s the best we have.’  SAT-10 was supposed to be used for primary grade testing last year in a kind of piloting format even though primary teachers are teaching CCSS and it is TN Standard aligned.  After districts gave the assessment, the teachers were informed the test was being mandated for use with the evaluation model and would count as their TVAAS data.  They weren’t even teaching all of the content for that assessment.  They were teaching CCSS.  That is ridiculous for that to be valid (or ethical for that matter).

TRUE:  The main concerns around the uses of VAM within teacher evaluation include: the stability of scores assigned to teachers (Papay, 2010): large error rates in identification (Schochet & Chiang, 2010); the effect of student assignment (random versus nonrandom assignment) on a teacher’s scores; the large number of classroom-level variables that cannot be disentangled from a teacher’s score; and the lack of standardized test data with which to calculate value-added scores for teachers in untested subjects and grades (approximately 60% of teachers in some states).  (8)  Not to mention the assessments are not developmentally appropriate.  Kindergarteners are given the SAT-10 which has some questions in which they choose this or that picture.  One little boy picked a picture and said, ‘I know it is this one, but I don’t like that picture.’  Instances like that are determining how effective his teachers are at doing their job.

A problem a lot of teachers have across the state: ‘instruction in tested subjects is often provided by teachers, co-teachers, specialists, aides, parent volunteers, substitute teachers, out-of-school tutors, etc.: thus, responsibility should not be pinned on the individual teacher of record’ (8).’ On the flip side, all special areas teachers are being judged as ineffective or effective on subjects that they don’t teach.  The music teacher’s data is based on 4^th grade reading/ELA scores on TCAPS, as well as the librarian, the art teacher, the technology teacher, the counselor, and the gym teacher.  F’real.  It is valid though.  Just ask Commissioner Huffman or Haslam.  They’ll tell you.

‘As social constructionists, we do not have the right endowed by possession of a final truth.  But we do have the right that all people, in principle, have to intervene in democratic debate with a truth that can be discussed, in order to further our visions for a better society (10).’  I am still working on this statement and this sentiment throughout the learning that we are doing, but I was able to connect it to discussions that we have had in class.  It made me understand our conversations a little better.

‘Societal myths, cultural perspectives, and identities (such as what makes a teacher effective or ineffective) are generated as these ‘unnatural’ realities are reified and eventually become taken-for-granted (11).’  What about student identity?  What about commitment to the profession?  What about planning?

Critcher has noted, ‘discourse analysis reveals how ways of speaking about an issue are constructed to subsume all other versions’ (12).

4 Step Analysis Process:

1.     repeated readings of the texts

2.     selection, organization, and identification of discursive patterns

3.     generation of explanations linked to the overarching patterns

4.     reflexive and transparent documentation of our claims (14)

Discourse Analytic Questions that Sensitized the Process:

•            What is the discourse doing?
•       How is the discourse constructed to do this?
•            What resources are present and being used to perform this activity? (14)
•       We have discussed the difficulty in creating questions at the beginning of your study.  Could these questions be identified upfront on your IRB when you yet to have your research questions as preliminary guides?

‘Within educational researchers’ ongoing efforts to promote the use of research in order to serve all children well, it is important to examine the ways in which the tools and findings of educational research are represented to the public by the public (e.g., media outlets). Furthermore, efforts to improve education are often mediated by the media and contingent upon the ways in which language is used to communicate messages about reform (31).’  This hit home for me, because it was something that could be pointed to appropriate others in how to view what is shared.  In the previous school year, it was all that I could do to get through the school year. I felt so beaten down.  Every time that I turned on the TV or radio, read Facebook status updates, or read the newspaper, I was bombarded with disparities about the teaching profession.  Every body had an opinion and every body was dogging on teachers.  So, ‘To label (‘brand’) a teacher as either an ineffective or effective teacher reinforces ideologies and discourses that position teaching as a singular, monolithic thing, measurable by one thing (i.e., VAM) and knowable by outsiders (32).’  For everyone out there that thinks this isn’t true, let them be a teacher.  Let them see how difficult our job is and how VAM doesn’t measure that.