Abstract

Researcher-practitioner collaborations often stop short of engaging researchers and teachers in collectively negotiating the moment-to-moment improvizational decision-making of instructional practice when students are present. We consider the potential for learning at one boundary that often exists between researchers and practitioners as they collaborate on instructional practice: the boundary between performing-teaching and observing-teaching. We draw on performance studies to conceptualize this boundary as a fourth wall. Our analysis examines researcher-practitioner collaboration across four sites in which participants were learning together about the complex work of facilitating student discussion. We analyze how one boundary crossing routine provided opportunities for researchers and practitioners to interact at the boundary of the fourth wall during enactment of discussion-based instruction with students. To analyze episodes of this routine, we draw on conceptualizations of potential learning mechanisms of boundary crossing in research-practice partnerships. Our findings identify and describe the mechanisms for researcher/practitioner learning that arose when our participants crossed the boundary of the fourth wall: perspective taking, boundary spanning, and recognition of shared problem spaces. We argue that these learning mechanisms create potential for researchers and practitioners to wrestle with and learn about the challenges and opportunities within facilitation of student discussions.

摘要

当学生在场时，研究人员与从业人员的合作通常不会让研究人员和教师参与集体协商教学实践的即时即兴决策。我们考虑了在研究人员和从业者之间在教学实践中合作时经常存在的一个边界上的学习潜力：表演教学和观察教学之间的边界。我们利用性能研究将这个边界概念化为第四面墙。我们的分析考察了四个地点的研究人员与从业者之间的合作，参与者在这些地点一起学习促进学生讨论的复杂工作。我们分析了一个跨界例程如何为研究人员和从业者在与学生进行基于讨论的教学过程中在第四面墙的边界处进行互动提供机会。为了分析这一例程的情节，我们借鉴了研究-实践伙伴关系中潜在的跨界学习机制的概念化。我们的研究结果确定并描述了当我们的参与者跨越第四面墙的边界时出现的研究人员/从业者学习的机制：观点采取、边界跨越和对共享问题空间的识别。我们认为，这些学习机制为研究人员和从业者创造了潜力，可以在促进学生讨论的过程中应对和了解挑战和机遇。