Ideological sensemaking in an elementary science professional development community

ABSTRACT

Background

Ideologies are socially constructed frameworks for sensemaking that influence teaching and learning. Drawing on Learning Sciences research on ideologies, we explore how an elementary science professional development (PD) community used substrate (shared interactional resources) in sensemaking interactions to reify or rearticulate dominant ideologies.

Method

We analyzed PD interactions to understand how PD community members used substrate across multiple timescales as part of ideological sensemaking.

Findings

We first show how participants drew on substrate to rearticulate ideologies about young learners’ capabilities in science. We then show how limited resources available in substrate impeded interactional engagement with deficit narratives of multilingual learners.

Contribution

Practically, we demonstrate how ideological rearticulation requires establishing intentionally designed substrate as a resource for later PD and facilitation that surfaces and challenges dominant ideologies. Methodologically, we show how substrate—often analyzed at microgenetic scales—can be traced back over longer timescales to understand longitudinal learning.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge that all authors contributed equally; we arrange our authorship in reverse order of seniority. We thank the teachers who have been our thought partners in this work, allowing us insight into their classrooms and sensemaking journeys. We also thank the RepTaLs research team including Rachel Askew, Adam Bell, Lana Ćosić, Noel Enyedy, Andrea Henrie, Tessaly Jen, Heather Johnson, and Sarah Lee who contributed to the design, implementation of, and critical reflection on our PD program. We thank Thomas Philip for his critical feedback that reshaped our thinking. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers and Carrie Allen, Scott Grapin, Sophia Jeong, and Rogers Hall for feedback on previous drafts of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

¹ By multilingual learner, we refer to students bureaucratically classified as English learners and students who are developing proficiency in multiple named languages, recognizing that learners’ home languages, language and literacy skills, race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability status, and prior STEM learning experiences all vary, among other salient characteristics (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine [NASEM], 2017).

² We capitalize White per APA 7 guidelines.

³ We acknowledge intersectionality across marginalized communities (e.g., class, disability, gender, immigrant, language, LGBTQIA+, race). Because of the prevailing impact of race in U.S. education, we focus on whiteness and racialization in our analysis. We view other dominant ideologies as intersecting with whiteness, such as heteropatriarchal ideologies that privilege White males in STEM spaces and monolingual ideologies that reproduce norms of White native English speakers.

⁴ New prompts included: How are representations helping attend to the needs of learners in equitable ways (particularly for students classified as ELs or young learners)? Where did you wonder about how students could leverage linguistic or cultural resources to help in scientific sensemaking? What connections can you make to the EL matrix? (see Appendix B).

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this study was provided by the James S. McDonnell Foundation [Grant #220020521] under grant [#220020521].