Participation and learning in prek teacher workgroups: a communities of practice analysis of mathematics-focused professional development

ABSTRACT

Professional collaboration is widely seen as an important component in educator professional development, but we know little about the interactional processes that undergird teacher learning in collaborative workgroups. This paper focuses on four collaborative workgroups in a yearlong, mathematics-focused professional development series for pre-Kindergarten teachers. Using a communities of practice framework, we analyzed teacher workgroup conversations to understand how these interactions mediated teachers’ learning. We identified three modes of participation that characterized workgroup conversations and influenced the availability and quality of learning opportunities afforded to participants: interpersonal management, validation, and collective reasoning. Findings provide insight into how interactional processes in teacher workgroups may advance or inhibit teachers’ learning.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Culleen Witthuhn, Beth Vaade, Jill Hoiting, Julianne Snyder, Amanda Venske, the Center for Research on Early Childhood Education, and the educators who participated in Mathematize Your Class. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. This research as conducted through a research-practice partnership and we have permission to identify the partner school district. All individual participants are anonymized using pseudonyms that individuals selected at the outset of the project.

2. The first author is a former early childhood educator and was a postdoctoral scholar and lead researcher on the MYC project at the time of the PD. Author 2 is a former elementary and special educator and joined the research team after the conclusion of the PD series. Author 3 is a professor of early childhood education, a former early childhood educator, and the lead designer and facilitator of MYC. Author 4 is a co-director of the research-practice-partnership.

Additional information

Funding

This study was carried out with the support of the Madison Education Partnership, acollaboration between the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and the Madison Metropolitan School District, and with funding by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Award #R305H180053 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Madison Education Partnership, Wisconsin Center for Education Research and the U.S. Department of Education.