Doing dialogue differently: case studies of teacher collaborative discourse in Malaysian secondary schools
type: CreativeWork
description: Teacher collaborative discourse is a process at the heart of many existing models of professional learning, yet there are gaps in understanding the process’ complex and contingent nature, especially with research from ‘non-Western’ contexts and using relatively ‘naturalistic data’ without significant external or researcher intervention/facilitation. To address this problematic, this thesis uses relatively naturalistic data to examine how teachers learn through collaborative discourse within professional learning communities, and how their discourse practices such as explicit reasoning, storytelling and discussing external expectations make a difference to their learning. Utilising a conceptualisation of learning based on cultural models (Gee, 2015) and cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957; Beswick, 2017), teacher learning is examined in the context of two English-language teacher PLCs in urban Malaysian secondary schools, thereby making novel contributions to the theory and practice of teacher learning while advancing methodological tools for the field. The study’s primary data comprises verbatim transcripts of 13 teacher meeting videos, generated over a nine-month period in 2019, segmented into 112 discrete episodes of discourse. Various descriptive and analytical procedures were conducted to generate a theoretically-informed gloss of the data, from which relevant samples were identified to ask three analytical research questions: [RQ1] ‘What are the different outcomes to teachers’ shared cultural models about their students when they (the teachers) discuss discrepant evidence?’; [RQ2] ‘What observable features appear to make a difference with respect to the outcomes found in RQ1?’ and [RQ3] ‘What are the observable nuances and contingencies to those ‘difference-makers’?’ With respect to RQ1, this thesis reports three distinct outcomes when teachers discussed discrepant evidence about their students: the teachers’ initial cultural models were either ‘maintained’, …
abstract: Teacher collaborative discourse is a process at the heart of many existing models of professional learning, yet there are gaps in understanding the process’ complex and contingent nature, especially with research from ‘non-Western’ contexts and using relatively ‘naturalistic data’ without significant external or researcher intervention/facilitation. To address this problematic, this thesis uses relatively naturalistic data to examine how teachers learn through collaborative discourse within professional learning communities, and how their discourse practices such as explicit reasoning, storytelling and discussing external expectations make a difference to their learning. Utilising a conceptualisation of learning based on cultural models (Gee, 2015) and cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957; Beswick, 2017), teacher learning is examined in the context of two English-language teacher PLCs in urban Malaysian secondary schools, thereby making novel contributions to the theory and practice of teacher learning while advancing methodological tools for the field. The study’s primary data comprises verbatim transcripts of 13 teacher meeting videos, generated over a nine-month period in 2019, segmented into 112 discrete episodes of discourse. Various descriptive and analytical procedures were conducted to generate a theoretically-informed gloss of the data, from which relevant samples were identified to ask three analytical research questions: [RQ1] ‘What are the different outcomes to teachers’ shared cultural models about their students when they (the teachers) discuss discrepant evidence?’; [RQ2] ‘What observable features appear to make a difference with respect to the outcomes found in RQ1?’ and [RQ3] ‘What are the observable nuances and contingencies to those ‘difference-makers’?’ With respect to RQ1, this thesis reports three distinct outcomes when teachers discussed discrepant evidence about their students: the teachers’ initial cultural models were either ‘maintained’, …
author: Tiong, Ngee Derk
language: eng
keywords: teacher collaborative discourse, teacher learning, discourse practices, naturalistic data, narrative, explicit reasoning, cultural models, cognitive dissonance, situated learning, professional learning communities
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2021-06-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:07Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.80311