Walter C. Parker

Teaching with and for Discussion.

Abstract Leading productive classroom discussions is difficult, as any one knows who has tried. Teaching future teachers to lead them is doubly difficult — a case of teaching beyond ones own understanding. Here we report our reflection on our efforts to teach beginning teachers to lead discussions. Our method was reflective inquiry, for the central problem we addressed arose from within our teaching, and this is where its solution would have to be worked out. Lisa, one of our student teachers, expressed the problem well: After participating capably in and reflecting upon model discussions that we had led, she said that she had “really no idea how to lead a discussion” herself. Our efforts to teach with discussion were surprisingly inconsequential when it came to teaching for discussion, where the subject matter is discussion itself — its worth, purposes, types, and procedures — and in which case discussion is not a teaching method but a curriculum objective. Against this problem, we critique methods we have used to teach both with and for discussion and present a typology that we developed in order to do both better.

Educating World Citizens: Toward Multinational Curriculum Development:

School curricula are virtually everywhere developed nationally and intranationally—by national or local curriculum committees. Ironically, even the portion of the curriculum that involves world study (e.g., courses in world history, world geography, world problems) is developed within nations. Has the time not come to create some portions of the school curriculum multinationally? A multinational research team from nine nations used Cultural Futures Delphi procedures to interview then survey iteratively a multinational panel drawn from an array of fields in the same nine nations. The panelists reached consensus on (a) complex global crises that humans will face in the next 25years, (b) human characteristics needed for dealing with these crises, and (c) education strategies needed for developing these characteristics. Interpreting these findings, the research team developed a curriculum geared to the development of world citizens capable of dealing with the crises.

Public Discourses in Schools: Purposes, Problems, Possibilities

Classroom discussion can play an important role in the formation of citizens, and in more ways than one. Yet recitation persists as the discursive norm in classrooms, and the literature on discussion lacks clarity as to purpose. This article contributes a delineation of two purposes—interpretation (enlightenment) and decision making (engagement)—and argues that they are elemental to both discussion pedagogy and citizen formation. As practices, they upend recitation and offer an occasion for liberal education, including opening oneself to difference. The author aims to show that classroom discussion is useful both pedagogically and politically when the two purposes are articulated in a diverse school setting, and that critics risk their own interests when they dismiss the possibilities of discussion.

Rethinking advanced high school coursework: tackling the depth/breadth tension in the AP US Government and Politics course

This paper reports a design experiment that attempted to strike a balance between coverage and learning in an exam-oriented, college-preparatory, high school course—Advanced Placement (AP) US Government and Politics. Theoretically, the study provides a conceptual framework for penetrating the depth/breadth tension in such courses, which are known for coverage and perhaps ‘rigour’, but lag behind contemporary research on how people learn and what learning is. Methodologically, the paper details a mixed-methods study of an alternative approach to AP coursework, conducted with 314 students across three high schools. First-year findings indicate that a course of semi-repetitive, content-rich project cycles can lead to same or higher scores on the AP exam along with deeper conceptual learning, but that attention is needed to a collateral problem: orienting students to a new kind of coursework.

Beyond Breadth-Speed-Test: Toward Deeper Knowing and Engagement in an Advanced Placement Course

We report a mixed-methods design experiment that aims to achieve deeper learning in a breadth-oriented, college-preparatory course—AP U.S. Government and Politics. The study was conducted with 289 students in 12 classrooms across four schools and in an “excellence for all” context of expanding enrollments in AP courses. Contributions include its investigation of a model of deeper learning, development of a test to assess it, and fusion of project-based learning with a traditional curriculum. Findings suggest that a course of quasi-repetitive projects can lead to higher scores on the AP test but a floor effect on the assessment of deeper learning. Implications are drawn for assessing deeper learning and helping students adapt to shifts in the grammar of schooling.

Critical Reasoning on Civic Issues.

Abstract In order to examine the elicitation and production of critical reasoning, twenty-four eleventh grade students were directed to write a dialectical essay on a selected civic issue. Twenty-Two of the 24 students produced such essays. Difficulties included simplistic arguments pro and con, and non sequitur counterarguments. The investigators suggest that high school students are ready to employ advanced forms of critical reasoning on public controversies, and await lessons that invite it.

‘International education’ in US public schools

This study focuses on the recent adoption of ‘international education’ (IE) by US public schools. Theoretically, it conceptualises this phenomenon as a social movement and a dynamic arena of knowledge construction and contestation. Methodologically, it combines fieldwork, interviews and critical discourse analysis. The central finding is that multiple meanings are circulating on an asymmetrical field: a discourse of national security dominates the ‘IE’ movement but competing discourses (global perspective, cosmopolitanism, international student body) are found closer to the ground of school practice.

Learning Activities and Teachers’ Decisionmaking: Some Grounded Hypotheses

Stimulated-recall data were gathered in interviews with 12 elementary school teachers describing the decisions they made during lessons conducted shortly before. Ideational units were identified in the protocols, and a grounded theory analysis was conducted. Categories and terminology were generated and, using the constant comparative technique, hypotheses grounded in the data were developed. The first hypothesis embeds these teachers’ interactive decisionmaking (IDM) in the structure of the lessons they were conducting, and subordinates IDM to teachers’ cognitive representations of the activity at hand. The second hypothesis identifies the central intention of IDM: to move a learning activity to completion according to the cognitive representation; and the third hypothesis specifies the role of decision rules and routines.

Cognitive Praxis in Today's "International Education" Movement: A Case Study of Intents and Affinities

We report a qualitative case study of interpretive activity inside the current wave of the “international education” movement in U.S. schools. We used a sociological framework to examine how competing interpretations are mobilized in relation to one another and to the urgent discourses of Globalization and Terror. Data were gathered in interviews of a sample of movement intellectuals—activists positioned between powerbrokers and school practitioners. We found a diverse set of interpretations that were spread across a two-dimensional framework with four quadrants: intent (civic and enterprise) and affinity (national and global). We conclude that the cognitive praxis of this sample extends prior patterns—it is plural and contentious, and national security plays a central role. Within these tendencies, however, are features unique to the current wave. We end with implications for the social studies field.

Developing Teachers' Decision Making.

Process-product research is conceptually truncated because it ignores that teachers are cognitive beings whose behavior is mediated by decision making. This study sought to develop inservice teachers’ interactive decision making (IDM)–their ability to “think on their feet” during instruction. An experimental group of teachers was engaged in a nine-week treatment of reflection and role-taking activities focusing on their IDM. A control group read information about IDM. Both groups then conducted lessons in the natural classroom setting and data on their IDM were collected in stimulated-recall interviews. Content analyses of the protocols produced frequency distributions on four measures of IDM. One-way analyses of variance indicated a significant difference on each measure, and effect sizes were well beyond the 80th percentile of the control group.