6.3 CASE STUDY THREE: TERRACE CENTRE: FROM INQUISITION TO CO-CONSTRUCTION
6.3.1 Introducing Terrace Centre
Terrace was a large and long-established community childcare centre, with separate sections for under- and over-2-year-olds, each with their own indoor and outdoor areas. At the time of my work with them, a full time supervisor was employed, with an administrative assistant. The over-twos section maintained a ratio of 1 : 1 0, resulting in approximately 4-5 teachers working with up to 40 children at any time; this was a large group for both children and teachers to work in. The number of casual staff employed here during the period of the research meant that some 1 5 to 20 teachers worked with the children during a week. This was a very mobile staff team, with frequent staff changes, though with a stable core of three senior teachers averaging 5-6 years service
in this centre. The team had been involved in several programmes of professional
development in recent years. (For further centre details see appendix D4.)
The focus for Terrace Centre in this report is my change in terminology, from that of
adults scaffolding children's learning, to the co-construction of understandings. I
demonstrate this change through the analysis and comparison of two dialogues the key
teacher in our action research programme had with children. While scaffolding and co
construction are not mutually exclusive terms, metaphors do have an influence on
intuitive understandings (Lakoff & Johnson, 1 980).
There was evidence in my work with this centre that clarification of the scaffoldinglco construction metaphors was necessary to support teachers having access to the full
repertoire of interactions with children. Certainly clarification of some differences
between scaffolding and co-constructive interactions between teachers and children in early childhood practices supported my own evolving understanding of the constituent skills and processes in each.I had been involved the previous year with facilitating this centre 's programme of
professional development related to programme planning based on
Te Whiiriki.
I wastherefore very familiar with their planning processes; specifically, I was aware they planned group activities based on observations of individual (focus) children, in a two week cycle, though this sequence varied considerably across the groups. The teachers who initially chose to engage with this further programme of professional development were keen to extend their skills of dialogue with children, to identify the children' s thinking and to plan programmes o f activities that could develop into projects with the children, based on these observations. Because of our shared understanding at the start of the action research and also because of my previous experiences in Manuka Kindergarten, we were able very quickly to establish the specific aspects of their programmmg to address. Three teachers working with the two- to five-year-olds initially chose to join my programme of professional development; for various reasons, Marion was the only teacher able to continue working with me.
6.3.2
Dialogue analysis as a tool in professional developmentMarion analysed several of her own dialogues with the children that I had video recorded and transcribed. Having established the value of analysing her own dialogues with children, Marion asked me to video-record her session of muffin-making with what became quite a large group ( 1 2) of children, the day following their trip to the local supermarket to visit the bakery and buy extra ingredients for the baking exercise. In a centre in which neither process-cooking (see Glossary) nor group cooking were regular events, so many children chose to join the activity that interactions between Marion and the children were probably more directive than would have been possible in the more relaxed atmosphere of a smaller group. Analysis of the following dialogue led to the development of a model of intersubjectivity (Figure 6. 1 , p. 1 77).
Marion (teacher) and 1 0- 1 2 children, making muffins, m one bowl circulating the group:
Marion: This is bran. Where do you think bran might come from, Rachel? Have a look at it.
Marion: Child: Marion: Child: Marion: Child: Marion: Child: Marion: Rachel: Marion: Marion: Child: Marion: Child: Marion: Child: Marion:
Yeah, you can have it on porridge. Where do you think it might come from?
Hey, this is a mill? Seed.
Everybody have a wee look and see where it might come from. Does it look floury?
Yeh. I think it comes from flour.
Ah, now you 're getting onto it. And where does flour come from? Umm, the beehive ?
A beehive ?
The bee gets on the flowers and then the bee collects it. Remember the story of the Little Red Hen ?
Oh, from the seed.
From the seed, from the wheat, that's right. They grind it and grind it and grind it. OK, we need some bran in our muffins today. Now let's read what else we need. Some baking soda. What do we use baking soda for when we make something?
The eggs are from our chickens. So they are very special. What's inside them?
What do you think might be inside them? Have you seen an egg inside ?
I have and it's a rusty bit in there.
A rusty bit. There's a clear bit, a white bit., And an orange bit.
That's right, an orange bit. A yolk. I'm going to let you guys have a crack at these today.
In the above example, Marion directed the conversation, she did most of the thinking and the children were working hard to guess what was in her head. Marion did not respond to such original statements about the egg as "it's a rusty bit in there", or to ideas such as "the bee gets on the flowers and then the bee collects it", rather she was leading the children to produce the answer she was looking for, following her own agenda, on each occasion. Here are prime examples of "guess what's in the teacher's head"
described by Dahlberg, Moss and Pence
(1 999,
pp. 53 -54). However, this group ofteacher and children had warm and reciprocal relationships; they knew each other well and had shared many experiences, including the previous day's trip to the supermarket to buy the ingredients for the cooking, episodes of reading "The Little Red Hen" and of caring for the centre' s own hens, which had laid the eggs being used in this cooking. The teacher consistently talked about previously shared experiences with the children, eliciting responses from them that supported their linking of ideas across settings and experiences. An example of extending children 's interests was the evolution of children's writing "thank you for our visit" letters to the manager of the bakery, into a postal project (see also pp.23 5-236).
Several factors mitigated against this teacher developing shared meaning at the deeper level. The size of the group was too large for one teacher to interact e ffectively with each child's ideas. For this teacher at this stage of her professional development, "getting inside the child's head" seemed to add to her focus on supporting their factual knowledge base and this was at the expense of developing their own ideas and
understanding of the actions taking place between them. Time was also a factor, in that
the activity needed to be completed in time for the children to eat their muffms before
the next set of activities was due to begin.
The video-recording of the muffin-making exercise was transcribed and analysed with
Marion. I made a book of laminated photos, taken from my video of their session, with
simple captions to be shared with the children (another example of the co-construction of learning using tools and artifacts). Marion commented, "The activity would have been great if I had only had six children to work with. But they all wanted to join in and at Terrace Centre we have a policy of not excluding any child who wants to join in. I couldn't do it".
Even in this less than perfect environment, the teacher and children were working to develop shared meanings, though the topics of these shared meanings were firmly within the control of the teacher. At this point I struggled to identify how I could discuss various degrees, or levels, or depths of scaffolding learning for children. During the full staff meeting, the group seemed to understand the concepts of scaffolding learning and I could not deny that, along with Marion, they did meet many of the criteria we had previously identified as contributing to this. The other teachers defended Marion's scaffolding skills, as demonstrated in the muffin-making video; they seemed to resent my implication that Marion could improve her interactions with the children, pointing out the many ways in which Marion was scaffolding learning for children. Involved as they were on the periphery of our action research the remainder of Marion's team engaged in the reification (Wenger, 1 998) o f Marion's and therefore their own practices
(see p. 26 this report). Yet the outcome of interactions seemed to be qualitatively less
empowering of children than I had come to know was possible. When the teacher was in
control of the direction of thinking and followed this direction, both the teacher and the children seemed to be missing out on ideas that might have eventuated had they followed through with the children's own creative ideas.
In my struggle to represent the various situations of interaction possible when a teacher is working closely to support children ' s thinking, I developed a draft of the model of intersubj ectivity (Figure 6. 1 , p. 1 77).
6.3.3 A model of in tersubjectivity that makes sense for practitioners
The co-construction of learning is a complex concept; it is also one that many practitioners would claim to be implementing in their programmes, regardless of their understanding of the concept or of their teaching methods. In fact, it is likely that some degree of intersubjectivity that is the core of co-construction will exist in even the most
didactic· of teaching situations, as teachers adjust their levels of explanation to the level
of children 's understandings. The construct of co-construction depends on levels and amounts of shared understanding developed, and this depends on the distance between participants and on the sharing of power between them. The following model of intersubj ectivity (Figure 6. 1 , p. 1 77) is my attempt to represent graphically the qualitative difference between the minimal levels of shared understanding developed during either didactic (cultural transmission) teaching, or unassisted, child-directed play, and the much greater levels that develop when all parties are contributing to interactions through the sharing of power. The key features in this diagram are: the sizes of the areas of intersubj ectivity developed, representing the levels of mutual understanding; and the distances from each participant to this area of understanding, representing the psychological distances between partic ipants and the levels of power sharing. The perforated lines indicate that these are not solid boundaries and that they are open to input and influence from many sources.
Figure 6 . 1 (a). Adult and child as equal partners in interactions.
When ongoing intersubjectivity is practised, both contributors are considered to be experts in the topics of discussion. The child's understandings are as valid as the adult's and on occasion the child will be acknowledged as more of an expert than the adult. Each participant listens to the other's i deas, contributes from their own and together they develop their unique "shared meaning". The child's voice is heard and valued. Both participants make links between experiences, across time and distance and there is