Teachers and University Researchers as Co - Investigators : A Case Study of the Collaborative Process

Cognitive science has made great strides in the study of human learning the past three decades, yet many have noted that these advances have not made as much of an impact on classroom teaching as might be expected (e.g., Sowder, 2000). Among the factors that could be responsible for this lack of translation of cognitive theories and research findings into classroom practices may be a split between the world of teachers and the world of researchers. This split results in a lack of conversation in two directions: The writing of teachers rarely appears in research journals and books on instructional practices; instead, contributions are made primarily by university-based researchers. Moving in the other direction, we find that teachers rarely look to research as an important guide to their everyday decision making (Gitlin, 2000). Sowder (2000) also recently noted that many mathematics teachers have little regard for research in mathematics education and believe that it is irrelevant for their practice. Whereas university-based researchers invent, develop, and sometimes field-test innovations in educational practice with the intent that, when complete, teachers will eagerly seize upon the innovations and implement them, all too often this fails to occur. Instead, innovations in instructional methods often remain known to a small circle of universitybased researchers and become implemented in only a few schools. In this sense, we find little mutual respect between teachers and university researchers for the work and potential contributions that each can make to improving educational practice. Wineburg and Grossman (2001) have commented that, ironically, although researchers of cognitive science often make the case that the competency of the young child has been underestimated, somehow these brilliant youngsters mature into teachers who are portrayed as “not so smart”–in other words, “kids are smart but teachers are dumb.” A further spin on this subtle bias is the notion that only university-based researchers are capable of inventing curricula based on principles of cognitive science whereas teachers merely implement what these researchers have developed. Those few teachers who have become both generators and implementers of educational innovations (e.g., Magdalene Lampert, Jim Minstrell1) seem to be viewed as anomalies and not representative of most teachers. It is suggested here that these assumptions need to be identified and put to the test empirically. It is quite possible that many teachers, given supportive circumstances (which may not be typical of those found in their jobs), can do a very good job of developing as well as implementing curricula. Further, they may bring considerations to this task that the university researcher is unable to, just as the university researcher brings insights that teachers may not. The main goal of this exploratory study was to investigate the creative, generative processes that both a classroom teacher and a university researcher engaged in when designing new curriculum. The product of these planning processes was a method for teaching a topic in elementary mathematics, and a formal study (referred to hereafter as the “mathematics study”) evaluating this method was carried out at the end of the planning phase. This paper, however, focuses only on the collaborative processes involved in planning the curriculum (referred to hereafter as the “collaboration study”) and not on the formal study of the efficacy of the curriculum that resulted from the planning phase. A second purpose of this study was to find out what processes occur between these co-investigators as new lessons are developed and implemented. Of particular interest was how different ways of