Challenge to create a new school culture 3rd International Conference of Reserching work and Learning, July 25-27, Finland, Proceeding BookⅢ Theme5 i Learning Communities, 2003
Research Journal of Educational Methods, 29 37-48, 2003
Teachers' work is rapidly changing under the influence of educational reformation these days and those factors like societal need states. In this study, I conducted "developmental work research", which is based on the cultural-historical activity theory. And the focus of the research was given to the teachers' collaborative work on curriculum development for the "integrated curriculum" in a public school and analyzed how teachers' work changing and what was the contradictions they were facing in everyday practice. Through this analysis, I try to figure out the possibility of transformation of teachers' work. The critical issues they were facing in this elementary school were summarized as following; a) shortage the number of teachers for the practice of "integrated curriculum", b) lack of shared idea/image or understanding of "integrated curriculum" within teacher team. For the challenge to solve a), they tried to get enough number of adults/teachers by crossing their boundary of ordinary way of classroom practice and collaborate with organization not only teachers in this school but also other organization out of the school. Teacher team challenged to transform their activity system by re-defining the boundary of their work and by mediating new cultural tools. And for b), teachers came to aware of their need to transform their way of communicate with each other and the challenge to create new culture is the next issue for them. The task of educational practice study could be trying to catch this very moment of transformation and encourage them by keeping an eye on teachers' expansive learning in everyday practice.
Challenge to create a new school culture 3rd International Conference of Reserching work and Learning, July 25-27, Finland, Proceeding BookⅢ Themae5 i Learning Communities, 2003
Research Journal of Educational Methods, 24 39-48, 1999
It has been criticized that the classroom research is based on P-P paradigm. By contrast, the research which is focus on the process of meaning-making is called "qualitative research". In these kind of research, the most important place is given to qualitative analysis of excerpts of actual classroom talk. In this paper, I adopted the methodology called "interpretive participant observational research" and analyzed the actual talk in the classroom. In the school culture, children get to master the roles they are given under a dominant discourse though the mastery and performance are not always connected automatically. They appropriate the dominant discourse as the cultural tool for mediating to participate the classroom practice and re-construct the discourse. The discourse also function as the cultural tool for constructing the power. The power is potentially possessed by both teachers and students. This means, although teachers are normally assigned authority to control the lessons, the social formation could be changed because the classroom lesson is a texture of various voices and it is constructed by the irreducible tension between teachers and each children. In this paper, I discuss that motive and identity is socially constructed according to the contexts or relations. The motives are not in the individual but constructed as the device of making the action understandable which describe actor's life as narrative. Identity is also not substantial notion but constructed by means of narratives as cultural tools according to the sociocultural contexts. Both motive and identity in the classroom practice constructed from multi-voiced narratives of all the participants of the practice. But some voices of the participant are tend to be ignored under the power relations in the practice. As so, it could be the way to make classroom practice better to take care of that kind of voices.