Abstract
This symposium is based on a project conducted between Beijing Normal University and Institute of Education Research in Dongcheng District (Beijing), in order to improve integrated curriculum (IC). There cases, namely maker education, vocational education and traditional culture education, will be presented based on authors' observation of LS process and qualitative analysis. Distributed leadership was adopted as the theoretical lens to get insight into LS partnership. Findings include that sustainable leadership of partnership is about the community volition. It is closely related to the hard-soft degree of IC’s domain, as well as teaching researcher’s episodic agency. Particularly, teaching researcher works both between partners and within the curricular team. Reflections and proposed strategies will also be presented.
Summary
Chair: ZHOU Shenji
Discussant: Prof. SONG Huan
There is a worldwide stronger discourse in terms of competencies in today’s education policy (e.g. Kabita & Ji, 2017; Lee, 2014; Nordin & Sundberg, 2016; Sivesind & Wahlström, 2016). To empower citizens with knowledge, skills and attitudes requisite for individual and nation’s future, curriculum as the vehicle should address such needs, and integrated curriculum (IC) therein is envisioned effective to resolve challenges related to development of these capabilities (Drake & Reid, 2018; Mohr & Welker, 2017). In China, followed by international tendency, Core Competence for Students’ Development had been issued in 2016. However, curriculum reforms have preliminary focus and impact on subject-discipline curriculum, while IC only takes a backseat.
In September 2018, in pursuance to push forward IC improvement from the local, Beijing Normal University and Institute of Educational Research in Dongcheng District (IERDD), a district-level education authority, reached an agreement on a collaborative lesson study project with engagement of curricular teams from within-district schools as well as relative extra-school institutions (e.g. museums, NGOs). Inspired by previous experience, e.g. Shanghai’s teacher-expertise infusion system (Cravens & Wang, 2017), we embraced that expertise of the teaching researcher – IERDD’s agent as district-level advisor with profound teaching experience – could contribute appreciably to curricular team’s capacity. Said otherwise, it was about tone-up learning-focused leadership which meant “the shared work and commitments that shape[d] the direction of a school or district and their learning improvement agendas, and that engage[d] effort and energy in pursuit of those agendas.” (Knapp, 2014)
We university researchers began with importing LS approach by lectures to our partners and then endeavored to keep the LS process adhered to standardized paradigm. Additionally, we gave viewpoints to a moderate extent but made no excessive interventions during LS activities.
Considering the critical research need to explicate innovative mechanism (Lewis, Perry & Murata, 2006), during this experimental project’s implementation, we university researchers as well as undergraduate assistants made participant observations and thick descriptions to capture actions as well as their meanings by interpretation (Denzin, 2001). By qualitative analysis via coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1991) and sociological imagination (Mills, 2000), we implicate our LS partnership through (and sensitized by) the lens of distributed leadership which is thought to be a heuristic tool rather than a type of or prescription for practice (Lumby, 2013). It is mainly because in our focus of concern, leadership is a contextualized outcome of interactive process of LS rather than properties of individuals (Gronn, 2002). Generally speaking, distributed leadership signifies that leading is exercised by the whole community, enabling educational decision to be managed and directed by all individuals according to community’s certain conditions (Vernon-Dotson & Floyd, 2012).
This symposium will be in three sections: First, the LS project coordinator will give a brief introduction of the project’s implementational and theoretical background. Then, three cases, namely maker education, vocational education, and traditional culture education, will be reported. Finally, we will make comparisons between cases and discuss how to support quality and sustainable collaborative LS.
Symposium paper 1 (200 words):
Strong-man leading: A Teaching Researcher-centralized Lesson Study on Maker Education
ZHOU Shenji
The teaching researcher Mr. Gao, a maker education specialist, was assigned to the curricular team from a youth museum. Mr. Gao played as a dominator of the LS process. For instance, after reviewing Ms. Wang’s previous lesson plans, Mr. Gao set a series of training lectures in terms of ‘deficiencies’ he identified, and directed her as well as other team members to his ideal manner hung upon his steady professional beliefs and capabilities, revealing habitus of Chinese traditional teaching research (Jiaoyan).
There was a critical event after the first research lesson that Mr. Liu, the curricular team leader got into quarrel with Mr. Gao in regards to observation on an evaluation segment in the research lesson. The source of the quarrel was divergent ideas on maker activity design and finally Mr. Liu quitted this partnership as resistance. From this case, Mr. Gao’s strong-man leadership approach was almost a completely masculine process (Manz & Sims Jr., 1991) characterized by unshakable authority in the domain of maker education and lack of affectiveness. Community’s practice was privatized to a great extent; it hindered team members’ reflection on essential elements of teaching (Korthagen, 2017), and ultimately partnership’s sustainability.
Symposium paper 2 (200 words):
Bridging-role leading: An Expertise-balanced Lesson Study on Vocational Education
Wu Yuchen
I this case, the teaching researcher Ms. Wei needed to carry out a LS on vocational education with a diversified team. In this team, a delicate balance is arisen from the distribution of functional expertise. This function-oriented balanced is not strongly affectively sustained, but the affective exists to some extent. Ms. Chen was the research lesson “executor”, and the university expert Dr. Liao provided theoretical guidance on pedagogy. As for Ms. Wei, she played as a bridging role to maintain the balance of diverse expertise.
Some special events happened during the LS process. For instance, teachers from the vocational school with superior executive power refuted Ms. Chen’s own thoughts for the transferability of the context setting harshly and aggressively. The incident not only frustrated Ms. Chen, but also made curriculum team's collective content knowledge trap into divergency. At such a moment, Ms. Wei stepped forward, expressed her views and encouraged Ms. Chen to express her own opinions as well. Ms. Wei’s action recovered the balance. This reconciliation, which combined affective encouragement with the authority of teaching experience, was a bridging-role leading. It secured the community’s practice and made members apply this bridging strategy to maintain the balance.
Symposium paper 3 (200 words):
Female-led leading: A Pure Collaborative Lesson Study on Traditional Culture Education
LIAO Yujie
“Let’s help Ms. Liu to think about these problems,” Ms. Zhang said at the beginning of the discussion. As the leader of this curricular team, Ms. Zhang’s words led to the emergence of the shared willingness to work and the common goals of the team, which contributed to the formation of a flat collaborative team culture. This pure collaborative culture was formed in the complex practice mode.
The curriculum, whose cultural themes and forms of inquiry learning enabled teachers to learn together in an open expression space through a de-authoritative way, brought about a perceived dilemma. In that case, Ms. Zhang made use of her administrative power to promote the connection between teachers and university experts, and facilitated the formation of the “relationships based on mutual respect and trust” (Wagner, 2001) through empowering other teachers and the emotional connection. For example, Ms. Zhang made sure that every teacher could make a voice and communicated, ensuring “everyone’s voice valued”. The leadership of Ms. Zhang, which was also related to her gender identity, promoted the collaborative culture of the team. Combined with the centripetal force of the problem-oriented team, it ultimately contributed to the improvement of the curriculum.
Symposium paper 4 (200 words):
Distributed Leadership in Collaborative Lesson Study on Integrated Curriculum
ZHOU Shenji, WU Yuchen, LIAO Yujie
Stigler and Hiebert’s (2016) commentary paper laid emphasis on the institutional context of LS. They argued that LS was evolved cultural practice and it was important to consider how to support such practice with high quality and sustainability. From a distributed leadership perspective, which concludes two main facets: 1) Episodic agency implies use of his or her positional power with intentional action; and 2) community volition implies the synthesis of the whole community’s activities and aspirations (Lumby, 2013).
Showed in the table, from three cases we find that the sustainable leadership of partnership was about the community volition. It is closely related to the hard-soft degree of IC’s domain, as well as teaching researcher’s episodic agency. Particularly, teaching researcher works both on 1st and 2nd level.
However, this study also shows that teaching researchers contribute to teachers’ reflection merely in a light degree. It may be related to the possible negative correlation between domain’s hardness and teaching researcher’s insight based on observation.
This study moderately controls the impact of university researchers and empowers teaching researchers and curricular teams. These results lead to our reflection about improvement strategies of LS partnership.