CREATING A HOME: PROMOTING EQUITABLE ACADEMIC DISCOURSE BY ESTABLISHING TEACHER AGENCY AND CO-DESIGN

Abstract

If students are to have an equitable opportunity to talk and communicate understandings, reasoning, and ideas, teachers need to use instructional practices that promote equitable academic discourse in the students' academic home - the school. Students need to feel and know they are challenged and supported to be their best, just like a school leader needs to challenge and support their teachers to ensure access and rigor in instruction. This qualitative participatory action research study was informed by activist research and community learning exchange (CLE) methodology and protocols. In collaboration with a team of co-practitioner researchers (CPR) composed of four teachers, the goal was to examine the extend to which teachers engaged in co-designing equitable academic discourse across content areas within an Early College setting. As a result of three cycles of inquiry, the findings indicate that a well-facilitated community of practice supported teacher agency for effective collaboration and co-design. The teachers were energized and recommitted to their role in providing strong instruction for teachers. When we coupled our conversations and co-design processes with evidence-based observations with post-observation conversations using evidence, teachers transferred their learning to substantial changes to practice. Over the course of the PAR project, we saw consistent implementation of equitable academic discourse protocols observed in practice. In practice contexts, other leaders and teachers can replicate the process we used to form trusting a community of practice in which teachers were willing to collaborate and deprivatize their teaching practices. In the research context, these finding complement and extend other research findings: Common tools support co-constructed teacher learning through social and material mediation (Ahn et al., 2021; Comell et al., 2022). Teachers need time to reflect, learn together, and co-design so they build a common language and processes for the goals they set (Woo and Henriksen, 2023).