Russell, D. L., & Schneiderheinze, A. (2005). Understanding Innovation in Education Using Activity Theory. Educational Technology & Society, 8 (1), 38-53.

Understanding Innovation in Education Using Activity Theory

Donna L. Russell University of Missouri-Kansas City

Instructional Technology, Curriculum and Instructional Leadership Suite 309, School of Education Kansas City, MO 64110, USA

russelldl@umkc.edu

Art Schneiderheinze Project Construct National Center

1115 Kennesaw Ridge Road #707, Columbia, Missouri 65202, USA ASchneid@columbia.k12.mo.us

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe how four teachers in four different cities in Missouri implemented a constructivist-based learning environment (CBLE) that included an innovation cluster that paired an emerging online technology with a unit design framework. The motivating question for the study originated from prior research on teacher reform efforts including the adoption of technology innovations in the classroom, new theories of constructivist-based learning and the principles of professional development for educators implementing reform. Using a multiple case study research method, the researchers collected and analyzed data to (1) identify how effectively each of the teachers implemented the CBLE unit based on their goals for adopting the innovations while participating in online collaborative professional development and (2) identify cross-case issues that arose as the teachers implemented the unit. Conclusions in the study suggest that the teachers implemented innovation into their classrooms with varied levels of effectiveness based on their initial goals for the reform process. Aspects that influenced the effectiveness of their unit and the implementation of the innovation included (1) the teacher’s ability to benefit from online collaborative professional development forums, (2) the teacher’s problem-solving strategies for resolving conflict issues related to their local school environment, and (3) their prior conceptions about teaching and learning and their compatibility with the reform instructional pedagogy.

Keywords

Technology innovations in education, Activity theory methodology, Professional development for innovators in education, Problem-based learning

Introduction This study is based on sociocultural theories of learning and development with a systems-based methodology that identifies the characteristics and consequences of purposeful efforts at change from the viewpoint of the educator. Several aspects of innovative educational settings were identified as background understandings necessary to design the study including previous studies of innovation, technology innovation in education, research on constructivist classrooms and the mediational aspects of implementing innovative tools into complex human systems. Previous studies of innovation decision-making have been limited in their ability to understand the adoption of innovations by three factors: (1) they often lack the perspective of the potential adopter, (2) they lack a recognition of social and contextual structures inherent in the environment, and (3) they do not address the possibility that the adoption of one innovation can be contingent upon its relationship to another innovation. Identifying and understanding teachers’ goals and beliefs is critical to creating a evaluative analysis of reform efforts in education. Researchers have primarily understood innovations as independent variables; however, once they enter the classroom, the innovations become part of a complex system of social and pedagogical interactions. Finally, previous studies on innovation adoption have not considered innovation as a goal-based process that is impacted by or contingent upon other innovative aspects in the research environment. While recognizing that Internet technology affords K-12 teachers new tools that allow for expanded forms of communication, analysis, and expression by students and teachers, the Web-Based Education Commission (2000) contends that education is far from meeting the potential impact of Internet-based technology. Our society places greater demands on educational systems to develop learners who can use knowledge in new areas

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and different situations. Implementing new technologies more effectively can help educators meet this societal demand. In the Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K-12 Education in the United States (1997), the committee of advisors recognizes the benefits of a constructivist theoretical framework to learning and recommends looking more closely at the constructivist pedagogic model and the role of technology as a tool to mediate learners to use knowledge in new areas and different situations. Contemporary constructivist-based learning principles suggest that students should actively participate in goal-based activities that provide them the opportunity to construct knowledge responses to meaningful issues. According to Jonassen, Peck, and Wilson (1999), constructivist learning involves knowledge that is constructed not transmitted, embedded in activity, and anchored in the context of the activity. Knowledge construction can be part of a how students interact and respond in a classroom (Jonassen, 2000; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Salomon, 1993). Technology has the potential to support students in the development of these higher-level knowledge use abilities (Blumenfeld, Marx, Krajcik, Guzdial, & Palincsar, 1991; Pea, 1993). When technologies are inserted into the educational environment, they are meant to develop learning abilities in the students. However, these technologies do not function in the vacuum. Instead they are coupled to the existing tools and concepts in the setting. When teachers attempt to implement a technology innovation in the classroom, they naturally face the complex challenge of fitting together new ideas with deep-rooted pedagogical beliefs and practices. An innovation presents people with alternative tools and ways of completing everyday tasks and solving a variety of problems in ways not possible without the innovation. However, new cultural tools, such as technology, contain both affordances and constraints that mediate the actions of the agent, in this case, the teacher (Wertsch, 1998). Through the process of implementing these new cultural tools into classroom practice, a tension is inserted into the work activity system of the teacher. In response to this tension, teachers take advantage of an innovation in means that reflect the way in which they negotiated old and new ways of doing things (Bruce, Peyton, & Batson, 1993). The ways they respond to these tensions affects how effectively they implement the intended reform. In this study four teachers collaboratively designed and implemented a constructivist-based learning environment (CBLE) in order to develop advanced learning abilities in their students utilizing two clustered innovations, an emerging online technology and a template for a constructivist unit design process. The questions in this study defined the relationship among aspects of the implementation process which included the adoption of an innovation cluster, defined for this study as the purposeful implementation of two related innovations in order to effect change (Rogers, 1995; Wilson, Sherry, Dobrovolny, Batty, & Ryder, 2001). This study systemically identified the important factors in the teachers’ classrooms that affected their ability to respond to tensions caused by the adoption of an innovation cluster and relate these responses to how effectively the teachers were able to meet their goals for implementing the CBLE unit using the innovative tools. Methodology In this study, the researchers used Activity Theory (AT) as a qualitative methodology with descriptive case study methods of data structuring and analysis in order to develop an understanding of a complex social system. AT (Engestöm, 1987) is a systemic analysis of complex human environments providing the researchers with concepts that were used as instruments in developing an understanding of these systems. Activity systems are historically conditioned systems of interrelated contacts among individuals and the "proximal culturally organized environments" (Salomon, 1993, p. 8). An activity system contains a variety of different elements including viewpoints, or voices, as well as layers of historically accumulated artifacts, rules, and patterns of division of labor. By identifying these characteristics, called nodes, in the activity theory model, the researchers were able to look for patterns of relationships in these nodes in the work activity of the teachers over the course of the study. All activity is object-oriented. The object of an activity system is something given and something anticipated by the subject, the teacher. In this study, the conceptual object of the teachers involved implementing the CBLE unit utilizing the innovation cluster as tools in order to develop described higher-order thinking abilities in their students. This was their initial motive for attempting innovation. At the end of the study the researchers identified their outcome, the actual learning potential resulting from the implementation as described by the teacher, and related that outcome to their initial goals. The study identified the innovation cluster as mediational objects inserted into the work activity to meet the goals of the educators but they were also identified this change process as potential sources of contradictions in their work activity (Wertsch, 1998). Additionally, using the AT Model to identify contextual and goal-related elements in the work activity of the teachers allowed the

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researchers to design apriori data structures and design interviews, surveys and otherwise collect data on the relationships among the categories and later identify the contradictions resulting from the implementing of the innovation cluster. Activity Theory Model The top of the AT Model triangle represents the insertion of new conceptual tools into the work activity of the teacher, the innovation cluster. The middle of the triangle depicts the subject acting on the object of the activity. The subject arrow also identifies the announced outcome for the unit as described by the teacher. The bottom of the triangle depicts the AT identified contextual characteristics for each of the teacher’s individual work settings. These local context issues include (1) the rules of the work activity setting, (2) the community; those local people that support or detract from the innovation efforts of the teacher, and (3) the division of labor; those people that are necessary for the teacher to implement the innovation. The researchers operationalized all these categories for coding by using research in the areas of effective professional development for educators (Kortagen, 1993; Shulman, 1992; Schön, 1983), coding teachers’ cognitive beliefs as related to their motive, and anticipated outcome using Bereiter’s Scheme of Knowledge (Bereiter, 2002), coding their collaborative online professional development using Pfeiffer and Jones’s (1974) analysis of task and role behavior and coding the characteristics of the tools using Rogers (1995) and Barab (2001) to understand the mediational effects endemic in the tools themselves. The subject attempting change in a work activity system endeavors to appropriate external elements to aid her in meeting her object. However, these external elements create an imbalance in the system which results in contradictions that appear between the nodes of the activity system. Il’enkov (1977) and Engeström et al. (1999) noted that change systems are internally contradictory and identifying these contradictions as they occur is of crucial importance in order to understand the efforts at changing the system. When an external force, or element, becomes part of a teacher’s work activity system, contradictions, or tensions, result between nodes of the activity system. Contradictions can also result between systems such as those tensions that occurred between the teachers’ work activity goals during their collaboration efforts. To develop the unit effectively required the teacher to resolve the contradictions occurring in her work activity which would ultimately result in an expansive learning process for the teacher (Engestrom, 1999). In the AT Model developed for this study, the researchers identified contradictions on the model using a solid broken arrow for unresolved contradictions, resulting in the lessening of the potential of the teacher to develop her object, or as a dashed broken arrow when the teacher identified the contradiction and resolved it, resulting in the increased possibility that she would meet her object goals. Figure 1 shows the completed AT Model for Teacher A in this study. The characteristics of her classroom environment, the contradictions that occurred in her attempt to innovate and whether they were resolved or unresolved were identified in each teacher’s AT model. The responses of the teachers to contradictions that occurred during implementation of the unit were then categorized as turning points. For this study they are defined as a behavior of the teacher in response to a contradiction that affected the implementation of the unit—the development of her object. In order to describe patterns of behavior over time, the researchers looked for indications of object transformation by way of these turning points, or ways in which the teacher delineated the object in a new way. Transformation of the object in a work activity system can occur in four ways: widening, narrowing, switching, and disintegrating. Widening of the object relates to the object expansion while narrowing refers to object contraction. Switching involves a shifting of the object in response to tensions in the system, and disintegrating refers to fragmenting or splitting of the object. For instance, if the teacher’s turning point response to a contradiction made the unit shorter, this is a temporal contraction in her object lessening her chance at effectively implementing the unit to meet her original goals. Correspondingly, using the AT Model and our coding for each aspect of the model, we were able to trace the response of the teacher back to the aspect of the implementation process that affected the contradiction. For instance, using our apriori coding structures, we could then identify if the innovation’s mediational characteristics, such as usability, accessibility, and functionality, that contributed to the contradiction and the teacher’s resulting turning point response. We also developed a Transformation Model which graphically depicts the four teachers’ AT Models in sequence over the course of the study. We were then able to look for patterns among all four teachers using three invivo issues that arose during data structuring. As a result, in our cross-case conclusions we can discuss the effect of the dialogic turning point responses of the teachers in the online professional development, the teacher’s

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anticipated outcome in relation to their beliefs about learning and the characteristics of their individual school environment that strengthened or weakened the effectiveness of the teachers’ efforts at reform.

Figure 1. Activity System of Teacher A

Research Context The eMINTS (enhancing Missouri's Instructional Networked Teaching Strategies) program is a statewide effort to upgrade Missouri's classrooms in the 21st century by combining cutting-edge technology with first-class teaching. eMINTS establishes demonstration classrooms in Missouri's public schools to illustrate the use of technology in classroom instruction. Each eMINTS classroom gets a saturation rate of computers and supporting technology (see Table 1 below). eMINTS teachers are volunteers who have undergone training in technology implementation into inquiry-based learning environments. The eMINTS program presented the researchers with a unique opportunity to study teachers involved in both the design of a Constructivist Based Learning Environment (CBLE) and the implementation of emerging online technologies. Participants The study participants were four eMINTS teachers who work with students in 4th and 5th grades in four different schools in Missouri. These teachers were originally part of a cohort of 45 teachers who were invited to participate in a pilot project called ePioneers at MOREnet (Missouri Research and Education Network). The teachers that volunteered for the ePioneers program all had 2 years of eMINTS training. They agreed to learn about a new online tool, Shadow netWorkspace™ (SNS) developed by the University of Missouri at Columbia College of Education, and to design and implement a CBLE unit that incorporated problem-based learning methods and that would be implemented simultaneously with other ePioneer classrooms across the state. The four teachers in this study voluntarily chose to collaborate with the researchers and each other in the design and

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development of the problem-based unit called “Improving Interstate 70”. The group also represented 4 different sized communities with a diverse cultural background among the students.

Table 1. Participants in the Study Grade Community Students Technology Access

Teacher A 4th suburban 12 boys and 10 girls, all Caucasian

Teacher B 4th rural 12 boys and 12 girls, all Caucasian

Teacher C 5th urban 7 boys and 10 girls, all Black or African-American

Teacher D 4th mid-size city 9 boys, 10 girls; 11 Caucasian, 8 Black or African-American

As a part of their participation in the eMINTS program, each teacher has 12-14 Pentium3 LCD computers, a teacher workstation, laptop, a Smartboard and projector, a scanner, a color printer, and a digital camera.

The Innovation Cluster The innovation cluster in this study included an emerging technology, Shadow netWorkspace™ (SNS), and a unit design framework for the CBLE unit called “Improving Interstate 70”. SNS served three purposes in this study. First, the teachers in this study collaborated to design the unit via online professional development provided by the researchers. They took advantage of SNS tools such as a discussion board, file management system, messaging, and chat rooms. Second, the students used SNS to collaborate, communicate, and share knowledge during the unit. Third, the researchers, who were also located in two different cities in Missouri, used SNS as a means to communicate about the study; collect, define, and assess data; and collaboratively construct meaning in the data collected. The second innovation, the unit design template, was used by the teachers in this study to design, plan and implement the I-70 unit collaboratively. It draws upon the theoretical and practical applications of constructivist learning principles. The CBLE unit, “Improving Interstate 70”, engaged students in the four classrooms in tackling a complex, open-ended problem taken from a real-world context. In this problem-based unit, students from the four Missouri schools collaborated to work as engineers to tackle this state-wide problem and propose an effective and efficient way to ultimately improve this major interstate highway which runs border-to-border in Missouri. The unit included three phases each one building on the previous and guiding students to develop a solution to the problem by working collaboratively with students in their class and online with students from the other three participating classes. In Phase 1 the students defined the problem setting by establishing the issues in the problem such issues as the cost issue, the environmental issue, the socioeconomic issue, etc. In Phase 2 the students are grouped totally online with students in the other classes researching these identified problem issues. These students communicate, disseminate material, revise work and present their group projects online using SNS. In Phase 3 the students bring their Phase 2 expertise back into their classrooms in order to identify a solution strategy. The learning goals of the unit were based on the Missouri Show-Me Standards, a set of academic standards that school districts can use to align curriculum and which serve as the basis for state-wide assessment on the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP). The teachers used the design template to collaboratively design and implement the unit online. Their main sources of collaboration during the unit were SNS chatrooms and discussion boards. Although the teachers had the same amount of technology, software and hardware, and the same amount of previous eMINTs training, they had differing beliefs about the learning potential resulting from the unit, differing abilities to collaborate and problem-solve as innovators and differing context issues that impacted their responses to the implementation of the unit. These issues were identified as invivo coding organizational structures and were used to query the data set of apriori AT categories to identify patterns in individual and cross-case responses to the contradictions that occurred during implementation of the unit. Data Collection and Analysis The data collected from the teachers included initial and follow-up interviews, transcripts from a phone conference and seven chatroom conferences, messages posted on discussion boards, a reflective questionnaire

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related to their design of the unit and the principles of constructivist learning, an online journal, and documents the teachers produced related to the unit and technology as well as interactions with the other teachers during the phone and chatroom conferences, and ongoing contact with the researchers during the data collection process. Each case study included a description of the teacher’s experience of implementing the innovation cluster over a six week period, drawing upon multiples sources. The researchers identified the nodes of the teacher’s work activity system and created the AT Model for each teacher using the teacher’s voice in both her collaborative dialog with the other teachers and in her reflective dialog with the researchers. Next the researchers identified contradictions occurring in the development of the object, as perceived by the teacher, and categorized them as contradictions she could or could not resolve. Finally the researchers identified the turning points indicating how she responded to the contradiction and, subsequently, the way her response influenced the transformation of object, the manner of implementation. As a result the researchers could identify case by case contradictions and turning points which resulted in widening, narrowing or disintegrating of the object. Using the teacher’s original motive for implementing the reform, her overarching concepts about the type of higher-order learning the innovation cluster could potentially afford her students, the researchers could also ultimately define the overall transformation process for each teacher. Three progressive invivo questions were revealed during data structuring that aided the researchers in understanding how the teachers’ responded to the implementation process. These issues then were utilized to structure our findings and our conclusions. These progressive questions are:

How does the individual teacher’s participation in collaborative professional development influence how teachers implement a CBLE unit integrating an innovation cluster?

What factors in individual teacher’s school environment influence how teachers implement a CBLE unit integrating an innovation cluster?

How do issues of practice and pedagogy and their beliefs about teaching and learning influence how teachers implement a CBLE unit integrating an innovation cluster?

Results Teacher A Teacher A worked with 4th grade students in a suburban community. Her initial motive for developing the ePioneers I-70 unit was to increase the problem-solving abilities of her students by working with other students with multiple perspectives. Upon hearing an overview of the unit design framework, Teacher A identified a contradiction (shown as a lightning-shaped arrow in Figure 2) related to departmentalization in her grade level. A turning point occurred pre-unit when she responded to this contradiction and worked with the principal and other teachers to avoid departmentalizing during the unit. As a result of this turning point, she transformed the object, widening it to allow more time to meet the goals she had for student learning. She voiced the learning responses of her students in her post-unit interview:

The students looked at the I-70 from many angles, local as well as statewide. They learned a lot about how MODoT attacks problems and works together to solve them. They also learned the importance of looking at what others have done to solve similar problems. They did this by studying case studies from various places. The project was set up in phases that flowed very well. Each phase provided the students with opportunities to help them understand the problem at various levels.

A second contradiction appeared during Phase 2 of the unit related to the mediating tools, the unit design framework and SNS. Teacher A responded to the design of the unit in an email communication with the researchers stating her discomfort with her feeling that her students, working in groups online, were “out of control.” Teacher A expressed a dilemma with the unit design framework when she did not feel comfortable with her perceived inadequate background knowledge on the problem, the accessibility of online resources for her students, and the usability of resources to help her students develop conceptual understanding about the eight areas of expertise. The contradiction was between subject, her beliefs about learning and pedagogy, and the unit design. Her turning point was to move to control the learning processes by placing the responsibility for information gathering within her classroom by limiting students’ access to the internet resources thus giving her all access to resources. Consequently, she narrowed the object by lowering her expectations for developing students’ complex problem-solving responses despite her initial motive to develop those problem solving skills.

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A third turning point occurred when she decided to forego the SNS chatrooms as a way for her students to interact online with other students and instead end Phase 2 and start Phase 3 without the other classrooms. She expressed a dilemma with the inconsistent accessibility of the SNS chatroom, preventing her students from interacting with students from other communities in Phase 2. She made this decision despite her initial motive to develop multiple perspectives about the Interstate 70 problem by interacting online with the other classes. She did not resolve this contradiction between subject and tools and narrowed her object in depth. Teacher A completed all three phases of the unit with her students. However, she struggled with overcoming her perceived issues of incompatibility of the innovation cluster with her concepts about teaching and learning. She used the resources in her community (e.g., the researcher and the other teachers in the collaboration) more for sharing her frustrations rather than using those community resources to resolve those contradictions. Despite her initial enthusiasm towards the potential of the innovation cluster to support her motive for participating in the activity, Teacher A consequently developed a favorable opinion about only part of the innovation cluster, SNS, but not the other part, the unit design framework. She stated that she would not do the unit in the future because it did not contain enough “MAP content information.”

Figure 2. Teacher A’s Work Activity System

She overall narrowed her object in depth by removing activities. She completed the unit but the learning goals for her students changed from the higher-order concept of understanding multiple-perspectives in authentic problem-solving to content delivery for standardized testing. The contradictions that occurred during Phase 2 of the unit were critical aspects of her decision to narrow her object and develop her unfavorable opinion to the problem-solving unit. She was unable to resolve the contradictions between her beliefs about teaching and learning and the CBLE unit framework which dramatically changed the interactions of the students and her role in her classroom.

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Teacher B Teacher B worked with rural 4th grade students. Teacher B’s initial motive for implementing the unit was to develop the problem-solving abilities of her students by putting them in contact with students outside their rural culture in order to build multiple perspectives. When dialoging online with the other three teachers, she knew waiting to implement the unit until after all of the teachers finished administering standardized tests would severely reduce the amount of time she would have to complete the unit since she was the first of the four teachers to end the school year. This contradiction (shown in Figure 3) and her response, indicated as a turning point during collaboration, agreeing to the shortened schedule, led Teacher B to temporally narrow her object. This contradiction remained unresolved throughout the implementation of the unit and contributed to the fact that she could not finish the unit before the end of the school year thereby eventually disintegrating her object overall. Only one other contradiction arose in her work activity system, during Phase 2, when the lack of communication between Teacher B and the technology support staff in her building led her to believe her students could not access the SNS server. Her students were off SNS for over a week during Phase 2 when her students were supposed to use SNS in order to interact with students from other communities to develop multiple perspectives on the Interstate 70 problem. The researchers identified this turning point in a phone conversation with Teacher B during which Teacher B realized the problem was with the building’s firewall and not with the SNS server. When the problem was fixed, she had missed so much time online during the unit that she abruptly ended the unit without completing Phase 2 or initiating Phase 3. Despite these two dilemmas, Teacher B developed favorable opinions about both parts of the innovation cluster in terms of their potential to align with her motives. She noted in her final interview her opinions about the unit:

I would really like to try the I-70 unit again. I would like to try other things like this. I mean I think the phases are really good, and I like that one of them was done in our school, so we would do it and be done. Another part, probably the shortest part, was out there with the other schools. Then, in Phase 3, you're back in your own school again. I mean you're in your community, then you're out there, and then you're back in your community. I like that idea. I liked the fact that there was a question in each phase guiding you. I would really like to do I-70 again.

Her inability to resolve the community and division of labor contradictions resulted in her shortening the unit drastically and prevented her from meeting her initial goals. As a result she overall disintegrated her object. Her inability to resolve these contradictions because she did not communicate effectively with technology support personnel in her building and did not develop her goals in the collaboration with the other teachers meant that she could not develop the unit to meet her learning goals. In her post-unit interview she described the students’ responses to the unit:

They almost had it. They were learning how to solve problems or learning how to work collaboratively. I don't think we quite made it. With another week, we could have. We had a lot to do and the year was almost over. We joked about adding another week to the school year, and they (the students) were all for it. I guess we tried to cram it in too fast, and I know that was my fault since everyone (the other teachers) wanted to wait until MAP was finished. It could have been a project that we could have spent a lot more time on

Teacher C Teacher C worked with 5th grade urban students. Teacher C’s initial goal for participating in the I-70 unit was pressure from her principal to participate. In her pre-unit interview she described her students’ communication skills as “very low.” She was unsure whether they would even be able to communicate with the other students online. After hearing an overview of the unit design framework, she identified a contradiction in her work activity system (see Figure 4): how departmentalizing for part of the day would limit the amount of time she had with her students to implement the unit. Her turning point response, which resolved this contradiction between rules and object, involved talking with the principal and other teachers about avoiding departmentalization during the unit.

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Figure 3. Teacher B’s Work Activity System Eventually, by talking with the researchers who designed the unit framework about the potential learning outcomes of the CBLE unit, she was better able to conceptualize the type of learning that could potentially occur with her urban students, a type of learning that she came to believe was more important than the rote learning she regularly employed to prepare students for a standardized test. Her realization of this contradiction between her beliefs about the learning potential of her students and the unit design tool resulted in a turning point which led Teacher C to widen her object by increasing the expectations she had for potential student learning outcomes resulting from the unit. Subsequently, Teacher C actively developed her unit by working with her online community to develop ideas for how to implement the unit more fully. This collaborative dialog helped Teacher C to resolve the contradiction between her beliefs about learning and the unit. As a result, she transformed the object, widening it through the collaboration with the other teachers and the researchers to develop advanced learning outcomes in her students. The previous contradiction between object and rules reappeared during Phase 2 when the science teacher asked to departmentalize again in order to obtain more grades from students to assign final grades for quarter. Despite her initial response to communicate her need to have the students all day, Teacher C decided not to talk with the science teacher or the principal to keep her students throughout the day. Because she did not resolve this contradiction, she did not have her students in her classroom throughout a significant part of the unit leading to a temporal narrowing of the object. She also experienced inconsistent access to the SNS chatroom server preventing her students from participating in all of the cross-classroom chatroom conferences during Phases 1 and 2. Even though she tried to suggest an alternative to the chatroom in order to maintain interaction among the four classrooms of students, the group of teachers did not pursue this idea. Teacher C response to this contradiction between tool and object was to narrow

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the object. She decided not to continue using the SNS chatrooms. She finished Phase 2 and continued Phase 3 without the other classrooms. Teacher C, who initially participated in the innovation because of the authoritative decision-making of her principal, successfully completed all three phases of the unit. Despite the number of contradictions arising in her work activity system, Teacher C took advantage of local and online community resources to resolve contradictions and she developed a favorable opinion about both parts of the innovation cluster. In fact, she was enthusiastic in her final interview about how she ready to design a new unit for the next year that would incorporate both parts of the innovation cluster.

They got a lot more out of it than I expected. They enjoyed the challenge. They did wonderful brainstorming and cooperative planning and decision-making. They enjoyed the chance to communicate with other students in Missouri. They felt empowered to work on a big problem that kids would not usually be involved in solving.

Figure 4. Teacher C’s Work Activity System She overall widened her object by dramatically reformulating her own beliefs about the learning potential for her urban students as a result of implementing the problem-based unit and developing her community resources. This teacher, despite the challenges in her local context and her own initial limited beliefs in the learning potential of her students, benefited from collaborative professional development processes and used the resources in her local community ultimately developing new expansive concepts about the abilities of her urban students.

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Teacher D Teacher D worked with 4th grade students in a small city in Missouri. Teacher D’s initial motive for implementing the unit was to use Shadow in her classroom. Teacher D explained in her initial interview how she felt the unit was too complex for her students, who were part of a class within a class inclusion model. She initiated email contact with the other teachers, hoping to change the unit design framework to include only Phase 1. Teacher D also expressed hesitation in working with other teachers to not only design a unit but also implement a unit collaboratively. She cited several examples from her own building that helped to develop negative feelings about not wanting to feel “lock step” with other teachers. Teacher D resolved this contraction (see Figure 5), shown as a break between subject and community, during the pre-unit phone conference when the teachers characterized their work more as a means for coordinating rather than collaborating on day to day parts of the unit. As a result she did decide to work collaboratively with the other teachers throughout the unit. However, teacher D’s role in the online collaboration during the unit tended to focus on anti-task behaviors such as dominating the dialog to vent her frustrations with the unit design framework and blocking the group from collectively resolving individual contradictions and group tensions. In her post-unit interview she stated, “Had I done it alone, I would have known what I was doing and where I was going much more clearly. The main point of frustration was thinking I was letting down three other teachers and their classes if I did not live up to my end of the project.” She ultimately completed all three phases of the unit in order to stay with the other teachers thus widening her object temporally. An initial contradiction occurred during the initial phase of the unit when SNS was not accessible in her building Teacher D worked with the researchers as technology resources to resolve this contradiction between the tool and the object. In doing so, she widened the object in depth, enabling her students to use the SNS chatroom which had been disabled by the building firewall. Teacher D, however, did not resolve two contradictions that arose in Phase 2, related to the inconsistent access to the SNS chatroom server by the students in other classes and her continued perception of the lack of learning potential for her students in that process. She believed the Phase 2 online unit activities were too difficult for her learning disabled students and decided not to participate in these activities, a contradiction between subject and rules. She also did not resolve a contradiction between the potential benefit of the online interactions developed in the unit and her concepts about the unit design template, a contradiction between subject and tool. Teacher D’s response to these contradictions was to remove the online group work aspect from the unit. This response resulted in a narrowing of the object, in depth, by changing the unit design framework and removing the students’ online collaboration. Teacher D did implement all three phases of the unit; temporally widening her object overall from her initial goal of implementing only Phase 1 something she initially said was unnecessary and too difficult for her students. However, she did not change her beliefs about the higher-order learning processes, problem-solving using technology, that the unit was meant to develop. She called the unit design and the student activities in Phase 2 and 3 “useless” in the post-unit interview. She developed a favorable opinion about only one part of the innovation cluster, SNS. Cross-Case Conclusions The researchers designed a Transformation Model (figure 6 below) that depicts the contradictions that occurred among all the teachers over the course of the study and helped the researchers respond to the three progressive issues that developed in vivo in this study: • How does the individual teacher’s participation in collaborative professional development influence how

teachers implement a CBLE unit integrating an innovation cluster? • What factors in individual teacher’s school environment influence how teachers implement a CBLE unit

integrating an innovation cluster? • How do issues of practice and pedagogy and their beliefs about teaching and learning influence how

teachers implement a CBLE unit integrating an innovation cluster?

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Figure 5. Teacher D’s Work Activity System Collaborative Professional Development Tertiary contradictions occur between different interacting work activity systems. Using the Transformation Model, created for this study, the researchers could look at the contradictions that occurred in the AT models of each teacher throughout the study in order to identify patterns between the four teachers. Additionally, the line across the top of the model shows the contradictions that occurred in the collaborative dialogs of the teachers as a widening or narrowing of the object, identified by widening or narrowing of the line. Using this model the researchers could look for patterns in the work activity of the four teachers using the three progressive issues. The researchers found that all the teachers narrowed their object during a difficult collaborative phase of the unit, Phase 2, when all their students were online in synchronous chatrooms. The online collaboration process available to the teachers, a weekly online chat, was insufficient to aid these teachers in resolving contradictions during this phase. Based on dialogic coding of task and role relationships, the teachers used the online forum as a means for coordinating activity or as a support system rather than to collectively act upon a shared object. During Phase 2 the teachers did not use their online chats productively to solve any problems occurring when the students were all in their online groups. Two teachers used the collaboration to solve problems at other times in the unit. When teacher C discussed the ideas used by Teachers A and B in their classrooms and viewed work samples uploaded to the SNS workgroup by students in those classes she subsequently developed similar activities for their students and resolved her belief contradiction and widened her object. Also Teacher D’s decision to stay with the online group meant that she resolved her belief contradiction about the length of the unit and completed all three phases. Teacher B’s decision to stay with the group and shorten her unit resulted in a narrowing of her ability to reach her goals. The collaboration process did not seem to affect the implementation of the unit for Teacher A. On one hand, the teachers all stated that the collaboration was not only beneficial but also necessary to implement a complex innovation in their classroom. On the other hand, participation in the collaboration created additional tensions for them.

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The two teachers, A and B, who described in their pre-unit interviews several prior experiences working with other teachers in their building, did not resolve any contradictions as a result of the online dialogs. The other two teachers, C and D, both described feeling isolated in their school environments and did not describe prior experiences collaborating with the other teachers in their building. Both of these teachers resolved contradiction during implementation of the innovation cluster through the collaboration process. Collaboration is an important aspect of professional development for innovators in education. However, that collaboration process should be designed to develop problem-solving strategies and effective communication strategies for innovators. Local Context Issues Secondary contradictions occur in the local context of the work activity setting and are depicted on the Transformation Model in the AT triangle made for each teacher. Three of the teachers in the study narrowed the object because of communication issues with people in their school environment who were important or necessary to successfully implementing the unit. Without a productive dialog about the teacher’s goals for the innovation with her local division of labor and community members, none of the teachers were able to resolve contradictions in their local setting. Developing a positive communication structure in their local context is an essential process for all the teachers implementing innovation in the classroom. Beliefs about learning A primary contradiction is a pre-existing contradiction between the subject’s overall goals, the motive and outcome. A primary contradiction is a negative tension between the concepts underlying the implementation of the object or the agent’s motive. In this study we used the teachers’ initial stated learning goals, coded hierarchically using Bereiter’s Scheme of Knowledge (Bereiter, 2001), and their stated ending learning goals to define overall development of the object. The researchers identified relationships between the pre and post levels in outcome in order to evaluate their relationship to the overall development of their object. The researchers coded these as hierarchical levels, a scale from 1-7, of the teacher’s philosophy of learning in order to identify changes in their overarching learning goals for their students as they stated them pre and post unit. Teacher A narrowed her overall object, stopping the chats among her students and the other students, because of a primary contradiction that occurred during implementation. Her original motive changed from the learning processes she stated in her initial interview, the development of multiple perspectives during problem-solving, a level 5 on the Bereiter scale, to delivery of content, a level 3. Teacher B disintegrated her object overall despite her high expectations for the learning resulting from the unit and her strong background developing innovative units. She was unable to resolve context-related contradictions despite her initial motives for innovation. She stated in her final interview that she had “let her students” down and she would advocate for her students more forcefully in the future. Her students were unable to develop multiple perspectives or suggest strategies to solve the problem. Her beliefs about the learning potential of the innovation were unrealized because she did not resolve two contradictions. Teacher C widened her object overall from her pre-unit motive for implementing the innovation cluster, initially stated as using the online dialog to develop the ability of her students to type a sentence, a level 2 on the coding scale, into her belief that her students could communicate collaboratively and develop problem-solving strategies in an authentic-based unit, a level 5. Her change was based on her process of identifying and overcoming her primary belief contradiction that her students were unable to develop advanced learning processes. She credited the professional development programs, online with the other teachers and with the researchers, with her ability to implement the unit more fully than she originally anticipated and ultimately changing her beliefs about the learning abilities of her students. Teacher D widened her object overall in order to collaborate with the other teachers but she did not change her beliefs about the learning processes afforded by implementing the unit and the CBLE unit design. A potential side issue resulting from this study could be the identification of the beliefs of the students in relationship to the beliefs of the teacher’s. When interviewed after the unit, the students in her classroom expressed a real interest, motivation and a deep understanding of the problem and its complexity which was totally in opposition to how Teacher D conceptualized the unit as being “too difficult” and “boring” for her students.

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Figure 6. Transformation Model Professional Development Implications In response to the first issue, the identification of contradictions in collaboration processes, the researchers found that teachers implementing innovation who are working in local contexts with little collaboration experiences can benefit by collaboration outside their local environment with teachers implementing similar innovative units. However, teachers who are already working at a high level of innovation in collaborative and supportive local contexts may not benefit, or can even reduce the effectiveness of their reform units, as a result of collaboration. As a result, collaborative professional development processes of innovative educators should be modified to fit the level of previous collaboration and innovation of the participating teachers. In response to the second progressive issue, the identification of contradictions in their local context, teachers who are implementing innovation should proactively develop communication support structures in their local community that allow them to resolve the eventual contradictions in their local activity setting. Training in anticipatory problem-solving and proactive communication processes are beneficial constructs for reform-based professional development models. In response to the third issue, the identification of contradictions in motive for innovation, teachers implementing units with innovative tools designed to develop advanced learning processes in their students can

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have primary contradictions between their beliefs about learning and the pedagogical processes required for practical implementation of these mediational tools inserted into their practice. Identification of the gestalt theories of educators and the differences between the educator’s phronesis, their theory of learning, and espisteme, their actual practice in the classroom, (Korthagen, 1993) and reflection on these concepts (Schön, 1983) can benefit teachers implementing innovation by aiding them in addressing potential contradictions between their paradigm and their praxis as they implement new learning tools into their classrooms. Research Implications There are several important aspects endemic to the design and implementation of this study. It was a study of innovative instructional reform efforts in classrooms integrating technology at a high level. Teachers implementing reform are by definition making changes and developing new learning environments. Many times they are implementing new tools in order to develop these challenging learning environments. Designing studies that attempt to identify the influence of defined aspects of the innovative teachers’ work activity through systemic and contextual analysis can aid educational researchers hoping to understand how teachers design and implement innovative learning environments. Educational studies based on research of complex human systems, studies of innovations, studies of productive professional development for educators and studies of learning and development can potentially help to clarify the intriguing mixture of concepts and skills necessary for educators to successfully implement innovative tools in order to reform their classrooms and subsequently help in the design of productive professional development programs for educational innovators. References Barab, S. A., Hay, K. E., & Yamagata-Lynch, L. C. (2001). Constructing networks of activity: An in-situ research methodology. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 10 (1&2), 63-112. Bereiter, C. (2002). Education and mind in the knowledge age, New Jersey. Lawrence Erlbaum. Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist, 26, 369-398. Bruce, B. C., Peyton, J. K., & Batson, T. W. (1993). Network-based classrooms: Promises and realities, New York: Cambridge University Press. Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research, Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit. Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamäki, R. (Eds.). (1999). Perspectives on activity theory, Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Il’enkov, E. V. (1977). Dialectical logic: Essays in its history and theory, Moscow: Progress. Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L., & Wilson, B. G. (1999). Learning with technology: A constructivist perspective, Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill-Prentice Hall. Jonassen, D. H. (2000). Toward a design theory of problem solving. Educational Technology Research and Development, 48 (4), 63-85. Korthagen, F. (1993). Two modes of reflection. Teacher and Teacher Education, 9 (3), 317-326. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press. Means, B., & Olson, K. (1995). Technology’s role in education reform: Findings from a national study of innovating schools, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Pea, R. (1993). Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for education. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations, Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 47-87.

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