Change in Two Teachers' Conceptions of Math or Writing Instruction after In-Service

Training
Author(s): James H. Mosenthal
Source: The Elementary School Journal, Vol. 95, No. 3 (Jan., 1995), pp. 263-277
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1001934
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Change in Two Abstract

Teachers' Conceptions In this study I documentchange in 2 elementary

teachers' thinking about instructionin reading
of Math or Writing or math after 11/2 years as participantsin in-
service programs(Summermathfor Teachersor
Teachers College Writing Project). These pro-
Instruction after In- grams are designed to promote constructivist
practices in teaching. I focus on the teachers'
Service Training conceptions of subject matter implicit in their
discussions about teaching a subjectby charac-
terizingmath and writingin termsof the tension
between seeing a subject as a coherentbody of
content and as a process of inquiry. Data from
James H. Mosenthal interviews conductedbefore and after teachers'
University of Vermont participationin the programsindicatedthat,over
time, teachersgave strongeremphasisto inquiry
as a component of a subject and as a goal of
instruction.This change was revealedin changes
teachersmade in organizinginstructionand in-
teractingwith students but was also implicit in
teachers'explicationsof their instructionand in
the questions they raised about interactingwith
students duringinstruction.

Over the past 15 years, in-service programs

designed to change teachers' conceptions of
what it means to teach a specific subject
have been developed. Often, changing
teachers' thinking entails making radical
changes in instructional routines. For ex-
ample, teachers in the Summermath for
Teachers Program learn to focus instruction
on alternative ways of solving mathematical
problems as opposed to emphasizing cor-
rect solutions. They learn to teach math
through conferences with individuals, pairs,
and small groups of students and through
using manipulatives to construct solutions
to mathematical problems. Teachers in the
Teachers College Writing Project learn to
The Elementary School Journal emphasize ways to solve writing problems
Volume 95, Number 3
that come up in students' writing projects
? 1995 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0013-5984/95/9503-0004$01.00 as opposed to focusing on correct textual
264
products. They learn to teach in a writing
workshop dominated by conferences with
students who are working on texts they
have chosen to write and to publish. Over
time and with the classroom-based work of
Summermath and the Writing Project staff,
these approaches to teaching math and
writing become routine and are incorpo-
rated into teachers' instruction.
Though the more organizational aspects
of classroom instruction are changed in the
situations characterized above, it is not clear
how the teachers' thinking about a subject
and related instruction is changed. In this
study I attempt to characterize this change
by examining how two teachers describe
their instruction before and after partici-
pation in the Summermath or Writing Proj-
ect programs. Given their focus on math or
writing instruction and on alternative in-
structional routines, these programs pro-
vide an optimal context for investigating
change in teachers' thinking about these
subjects and instruction in them.
Change in Subject-specific Pedagogy
Shulman (1986, 1987) discussed the rela-
tion between conceptions of a subject and
its presentation to students in terms of sub-
ject-matter knowledge and pedagogical
content knowledge. He suggested that
teachers' knowledge about a subject is
bound up with other types of knowledge
operative in the teaching situation. For ex-
ample, following Schwab (1978b), Shulman
(1987) argued that subject-matter know-
ledge interacts with knowledge of other
commonplaces of a teaching situation such
as knowledge about the learner, teaching,
and the context of instruction. This know-
ledge of the teaching situation is the teach-
er's pedagogical content knowledge and de-
termines how a teacher represents a subject
to learners. (On pedagogical content know-
ledge, see also McDiarmid, Ball, & Ander-
son, 1989; Wilson, Shulman, & Richert,
1987.)
Grossman (1990) built on Shulman's
ideas in discussing the relation between sub-
THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOL JOURNAL
ject-matter knowledge and pedagogical con-
tent knowledge. Subject-matter knowledge
is equivalent to disciplinary knowledge,
whereas pedagogical content knowledge
concerns how subject matter is represented
to students so that it is accessible to them.
According to Grossman (1990, p. 8),
"Teachers must draw upon both their
knowledge of subject matter to select ap-
propriate topics and their knowledge of stu-
dents' prior knowledge and conceptions to
formulate appropriate and provocative rep-
resentations of the content to be learned."
In terms of the relation between subject-
matter knowledge and pedagogical content
knowledge, Shulman and Grossman noted
the importance of considering content in
making instructional decisions. However,
as Grossman (1990) pointed out, in teaching
situations, subject-matter knowledge and
pedagogical content knowledge may not ex-
ist as clearly separate types of knowledge
in the minds of teachers. If teachers' con-
ceptions of a subject are developed through
teaching it, the subject matter may be so
integrated with its representation to stu-
dents that the two (conception and repre-
sentation) are indistinguishable. Such a sit-
uated perspective on teaching subject
matter is supported by recent work on sit-
uated learning (Brown, Collins, & Duguid,
1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Newman, Grif-
fin, & Cole, 1989).
In investigating change in teachers' con-
ceptions of subject matter and subject-
matter instruction, I do not distinguish sub-
ject-matter knowledge from pedagogical
content knowledge. Rather, I describe
teachers' conceptions of a subject implicit
in their talk about teaching it. In the present
study, the teaching situation is radically
changed by the in-service program in which
the teachers participate. By implication,
how a subject is represented to learners is
also changed. One might expect, therefore,
a complementary change in teachers' con-
ceptions of a subject over time.
In documenting this change, I borrow
Schwab's (1978a) distinction between the
JANUARY 1995

substantive and syntactic aspects of disci-
plinary knowledge. Substantive knowledge
refers to the knowledge of concepts that
help to organize the actual subject matter
of the discipline. Syntactic knowledge refers
to a knowledge of the processes by which
knowledge (new concepts) is constructed
within the discipline. There is a necessary
relationship between these two aspects of a
knowledge of a discipline. Substantive
knowledge functions as a foundation on
which more knowledge is constructed. Syn-
tactic knowledge is knowledge of the meth-
ods of construction.
Schwab's (1978a) distinction between
substantive and syntactic knowledge is sim-
ilar to contemporary descriptions of the
subject matter of math and writing (Ball,
1991; Hillocks, 1991). At issue in the char-
acterization of subject matter generally, and
the particular areas of math or writing, is
the tension between content or substantive
knowledge of a subject and the process of
inquiry or a syntactic knowledge of the sub-
ject. It is a tension between knowing a de-
finable, coherent set of concepts and prac-
ticing a process of inquiry in which students
construct concepts in autonomous mathe-
matical or compositional activity.
This study was based on my assumption
that teachers' discussions about their instruc-
tion in a subject imply a conception of the
subject that can be characterized in terms of
the balance or tension between teaching
content and teaching the inquiry process.
Given this frame for looking at teachers' con-
ceptions of math or writing, I asked two
questions: (1) To what extent do the teachers
represent the subject matter as inquiry into
problematic situations based on substantive
knowledge? (2) How do the teachers' con-
ceptions of the subject change during their
in-service training in that subject?
Method
Overview of the Larger Study
The interview data for my study come
from the Teacher Education and Learning
to Teach study (TELT) carried out by the
TEACHERS'CONCEPTIONS 265
National Center for Research on Teacher
Education, Michigan State University
(NCRTE, 1988). Eleven programs repre-
senting the main types of teacher education
(preservice, induction, alternate route, and
in-service) were studied to learn about the
relative effects of teacher education on
learning to teach. Researchers followed
each program's participants over time to
track changes in their knowledge, skills,
and dispositions in order to learn teachers'
reactions to a program and to explore its
effects on practice. Questionnaire, inter-
view, and observational data were collected
from teachers while they participated in the
programs. Similarly, researchers observed
program staff in their work with teachers
and interviewed staff to learn about their
purposes and rationale for what they were
doing.
The two in-service programs relevant to
this article are Summermath for Teachers,
Mount Holyoke College, and the Teachers
College Writing Project. Given their sub-
ject-matter focus and the contrast in the two
subjects, these programs provide appropri-
ate contexts for studying change in teachers'
conceptions of the subjects they teach. Ten
participants in each in-service program
were studied as part of the NCRTE project.
Baseline data from the Summermath Pro-
gram were collected in the spring of 1987
and from the Writing Project in the fall of
1987. Posttraining data for both programs
were collected in the spring of 1989. Al-
though the programs still exist, staff in both
programs are continually revising and ad-
justing the content and structure of the pro-
grams. My analysis draws on data gathered
from 1987-1989 only.
The In-Service Programs
The Summermath and Writing Project
programs represent sophisticated ap-
proaches that provide intensive, classroom-
based, long-term in-service training. Both
programs hold summer institutes, conduct
year-round staff development, and promote
adventurous teaching (Cohen, 1988). I de-
266
scribe this adventurousness in greater detail
later. In training, teachers learn alternative
ways of organizing instruction and inter-
acting with students when they teach in or-
der to promote instruction in which stu-
dents exercise more autonomy in exploring
ways of expressing themselves in writing or
ways of solving problems in mathematics.
(See Mosenthal & Ball, 1992, for a detailed
discussion of the programs.)
Summermath for Teachers. Summer-
math is based on a view of mathematics
learning explicitly labeled by the program
staff as "constructivist," which holds that
individuals must construct their own un-
derstandings of mathematical principles
and concepts. According to this view, stu-
dents must be actively involved in problem
solving, and their engagement must move
from the concrete to the abstract if they are
to develop conceptual understanding and
the ability to solve mathematical problems.
Applying mathematics to novel situations,
inventing strategies, and assessing the rea-
sonableness of one's solutions are among
the hallmarks of understanding. Telling and
explaining are less the teacher's trade in this
approach. Instead, the teacher serves as a
guide, facilitating students' learning by pos-
ing problems and asking questions of stu-
dents to clarify their thinking (e.g., "What
are you trying to do?" or "What does the
1/2 refer to here?").
Describing a teacher who was doing
well, one of the program directors outlined
three key features of the kind of teaching
they were trying to foster: "One is the in-
creased use of manipulatives, . .. second is
that questioning is really improved ... to
the point where she is asking the kids ques-
tions that really get them to thinking about
the 'why' behind what they are doing, and
[third] she is giving problems that challenge
kids that aren't just routine exercises, and
she is starting to think about extensions to
problems." Summermath's vision of good
teaching puts teachers in the unfamiliar role
of guiding students to explore and make
sense of mathematics. The program staff en-
THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOL JOURNAL
vision classrooms in which students use
manipulatives regularly to represent and
solve problems, where word problems are
common tasks, and where much more of
the class period is spent with pupils work-
ing in pairs and small groups. Staff also as-
sume that all of these activities are aimed
at promoting the development of concep-
tual understanding, not just procedural
skill.
Teachers College Writing Project. The
work of the Writing Project is premised on
the writing workshop-a way of organizing
the classroom for writing. Teachers learn to
think about the workshop as a new way for
them to interact with students. The work-
shop is meant to provide a predictable en-
vironment in which students can write, dis-
cuss, and share their writing with peers and
their teacher. Typically, this structure con-
sists of a teacher-directed minilesson, a stu-
dent-directed writing and conferencing
time, and a time in which students share
their work-in-progress (Atwell, 1987; Calk-
ins, 1986; Calkins & Harwayne, 1987;
Graves, 1983).
In principle, students exercise a great
deal of autonomy in the workshop. They
choose and develop topics for texts and re-
ceive guidance and feedback from their
teacher and peers. One of the staff ex-
plained the purpose of writing instruction
in this approach: "To see kids defend a
piece of writing, to make it their own, to
articulate, talk, question-that, for me, is a
purpose."
This autonomy of the student, to a large
extent, defines the facilitative role of the
teacher. In the workshop, the teacher learns
about the student through the student's
writing. One of the project staff remarked,
"You have to know how to read students
and be interested in them. [By 'reading stu-
dents' I mean] understand that they have a
history and the moment of writing that they
do is attached to their whole history [as]
writers. That they are frequently very smart
and know where they are going [in their
writing] and [that you] have to find out
JANUARY 1995

where they are going before [you] have any-
thing intelligent to say to them."
Concern for the student's autonomy
during the workshop underlies the adven-
turousness of workshop teaching. Much as
Summermath's teachers learn to give up re-
sponsibility for getting the student to give
the correct answer, so Writing Project teach-
ers give up control of decisions made in the
process of writing a text.
Teachers
In the present study I examine interview
data from two teachers, one a participant in
the Summermath for Teachers Program and
the other a participant in the Teachers Col-
lege Writing Project. These teachers were
chosen for detailed analysis because they
illustrate cases of change in thinking about
subject-matter instruction. It is important to
note that the teachers' responses I discuss
in this article are not meant to be repre-
sentative of all teachers in the programs, nor
am I interested in comparing teachers based
on their programs. Rather, through the in-
terviews, I try to document change in teach-
ers' conceptions of math and writing.
In what follows, I use female pronouns
to refer to the teachers as well as the staff
of the two programs in order to protect their
anonymity. Both elementary teachers had
undergraduate degrees, were in their third
year of teaching, and taught in self-
contained classrooms.
The math teacher is Judith. At the time
of the interviews, she was a primary-grade
teacher in a suburban school. She was over
30 years old. At the baseline interview, she
was unfamiliar with the details of Summer-
math's program. Her baseline interview oc-
curred during the spring of 1987 prior to
Summermath's summer institute, which she
attended, and prior to follow-up classroom-
based work that began in the fall of 1987.
The writing teacher is Bonnie. At the
time of the interviews, she was an upper-
elementary-grade teacher in a New York
City school. Bonnie was under 30 years old.
At the time of the baseline interview, other
TEACHERS'CONCEPTIONS 267
teachers in Bonnie's school were involved
with the Teachers College Writing Project,
and Bonnie had observed a number of col-
leagues who had implemented the writing
workshop. Thus, at baseline, Bonnie had al-
ready started to experiment on her own
with the writing workshop in anticipation
of her participation in the Writing Project.
Interviews
In the interviews, teachers were asked
to discuss their background and experiences
in teaching as well as to respond to scen-
arios in the teaching of math or writing.
These scenarios made up most of the in-
terviews and involved common tasks of
teaching: planning, appraising curriculum
materials, responding to students, evaluat-
ing students' learning, and so on. In re-
sponding to these scenarios, teachers con-
structed their own picture of teaching or
teaching situations, revealing the relative
emphasis they gave to such factors as sub-
ject matter, the learner, teaching, and the
classroom context. As I noted, Schwab
(1978b) characterized these factors as the
"commonplaces" of teaching situations. The
purpose of the interviews was to ask teachers
to discuss common situations of teaching
and so reveal teachers' views of the situa-
tions and the interrelations among them
(McDiarmid & Ball, 1987, 1988). Thus,
teachers' responses to the scenarios reflect
their thinking about a subject and its con-
nections to other commonplaces of teaching.
Teachers were given a two-part inter-
view. The first part included questions
about the teachers' background and expe-
riences. The baseline questions in part 1 of
the interview focused on the respondents'
backgrounds in teaching, whereas the post-
training questions focused on teachers' ex-
periences in the respective in-service pro-
grams.
The second part of the interview asked
the teachers to respond to various teaching
scenarios. These scenarios differed depend-
ing on the program in which a teacher par-
ticipated (writing, math, etc.). The scenarios
268
presented to Summermath teachers and
Writing Project teachers remained constant
at baseline and posttraining. Below, I pre-
sent a sampling of the questions asked of
the teachers in both programs.
At baseline, teachers in the Writing Proj-
ect were asked background questions from
the first part of the interview such as the
following:
Have you changed your approach to
teaching writing in the past year?
Early in the fall the principal of your
school meets with each teacherto discuss
the teacher'sgoals for his or her students.
When you meet with your principal,
what would you say would be the most
important things you would try to ac-
complish across the year in writing?
At baseline, Writing Project teachers
were presented scenarios such as the fol-
lowing:
Here is a paper a fourth-gradestudent
wrote in response to an assignment that
asked him to read about dolphins and
fish and to write a report about them.
How would you respondto this student?
At posttraining, Writing Project teachers
were asked background questions that fo-
cused on their experience in the program.
For example:
Now that you have completed the Writ-
ing Project, are there things that you
would like to know moreaboutor be able
to do in teaching your classroom?
What would you say are the most val-
uable things you learned in the Writing
Project?
At baseline and posttraining, Summer-
math teachers were asked the same ques-
tions from the first part of the interview as
were the teachers in the Writing Project, but
with respect to the teaching of math. The
scenarios to which they responded were
about the teaching of math. For example,
THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOL JOURNAL
the following scenarios were presented to
the Summermath teachers:
la) How would you solve the problem,
13/4 divided by /2?
ib) Whatkind of real-worldsituationor
story problem could you create to
representthis problem?
ic) What is difficult about dividing by
fractions?
Following a discussion of textbook ap-
proaches to teaching subtraction with re-
grouping in second grade, Summermath
teachers were asked:
How would you approachteachingsub-
traction with regroupingto students in
second grade?
Teachers were told that the purpose of
the TELT study was to learn about the ef-
fects of teacher education programs on
learning to teach. The interviews were con-
ducted by three-person teams from NCRTE.
Teachers in the Writing Project were inter-
viewed by a different team than teachers in
Summermath. Each teacher was inter-
viewed by the same interviewer at baseline
and posttraining, with each interview last-
ing approximately 2 hours. Though most
questions had some scripted probes, inter-
viewers did much probing on their own.
Analysis
Initially, the 40 baseline and posttrain-
ing interviews of the Summermath and
Writing Project participants were tran-
scribed by NCRTE staff for analysis. After
reading the interviews, I ranked teachers
within each in-service program based on
the contrast between their talk about sub-
ject-matter instruction at baseline and post-
training. I selected the interviews of four
teachers, the two top-ranked teachers from
Summermath and the Writing Project, for
further analysis.
Following the principles of Glaser and
Strauss's (1967) constant comparative
method, I coded these four interviews for
JANUARY 1995

themes that were dominant in the teachers'
talk. In the case of Bonnie, these themes
included grading, conferencing, writing in
genres, and interactions among students.
Themes in Judith's responses included
"natural" teaching and learning, a math
curriculum, and meeting students' needs.
Within themes, I coded responses for re-
flecting a conception of the subject based
on coherent content and/or inquiry.
I coded the two baseline interviews be-
fore the posttraining interviews and alter-
nated the Writing Project and Summermath
interviews within baseline and posttraining.
Based on the clarity of contrast, and to allow
detailed presentation of responses, I se-
lected the interviews of Bonnie and Judith
for analysis in this study. The responses
presented in this article represent dominant
themes in their talk.
Results and Discussion
In what follows, I discuss the baseline and
posttraining responses of Bonnie and Judith
in terms of the subject-matter frame I dis-
cussed previously. I examine how, over
time, the teachers balanced a concern for
content coherence with a concern for in-
quiry in their thinking about instruction in
writing or math.
Bonnie
Baseline:A reaction to traditional con-
tent. As I noted, at baseline Bonnie had be-
gun experimenting during the first month
of school with the writing workshop ap-
proach in anticipation of her participation
in the Writing Project. Throughout this in-
terview, she referred to the tedious and
unrewarding demands of grading papers as
the reason for moving to "writing pro-
cess"-the approach to writing instruction
promoted by the Writing Project. When
asked whether she had changed the ap-
proach she had used in the past to teaching
writing, Bonnie explained, "I think proba-
bly my attitude has changed a little, the fact
that knowing that I will be doing writing
process.... I won't think of it [teaching
TEACHERS'CONCEPTIONS 269
writing] as a load on my back and having
to mark all these papers and go through
each detail and tell them where they-what
they're doing wrong. [In the writing work-
shop] the kids, when they share, they come
up with a lot of good suggestions." The in-
terviewer did not explore what Bonnie
meant by "each detail," but she seems to be
referring to details about writing products
that can be evaluated based on correctness
(e.g., spelling, punctuation, and organiza-
tion). Bonnie's response also suggests a
movement toward teaching through student
interactions. Rather than determining what
is right and wrong in her students' writing,
Bonnie invites students' peers to suggest im-
provements. Without Bonnie's exhaustive
feedback, these suggestions appear to take
on an authority that makes the social pro-
cesses in writing a legitimate part of the sub-
ject matter of writing instruction. (See
Graves and Piche, 1989, for a review of the
aspects of a knowledge base in writing.)
Bonnie's response implies two goals of
instruction: to have students respond to the
writing of their peers, and to have students
learn to discuss their writing. For example,
when asked whether students' suggestions
and questions came naturally or whether
she taught them about asking questions,
Bonnie responded, "I told them [that] if you
have a question ... [if there's] something
that you don't understand that wasn't clear,
ask a question. I go, 'But when you ask a
question, try not to make a yes or no ques-
tion.' ... [I'd ask,] 'How could we get
whoever was sitting there to tell us more
about their story? Instead of asking yes or
no, ask something that's going to make
them speak.' " Here Bonnie focuses on
teaching criteria for responding to other stu-
dents' writing in order to have students talk
about their writing. A similar focus on in-
teraction seems to characterize her thoughts
on conferencing with students: "I've been
testing out [the writing workshop] in my
room.... You know, talking to the kids. I
read them a few stories about just simple
narratives, and they like it. And then I let
270
them go back and write. And I'm working
on talking to them about their writing. I'm
not too good at that yet.... But they like
it. You know, just begin to write about what
they like. And I don't grade them." It is not
clear what goals Bonnie has when talking
with students about their writing. In con-
ferences she may focus on the same details
she did when grading papers-in other
words, she evaluates papers without grad-
ing them. Given her difficulty with confer-
ences, however, and her familiarity with her
colleagues' writing workshops, it is just as
likely that she is trying to discuss with stu-
dents their writing without dictating the
substance of the interaction.
Stressing interactions during the writing
workshop, however, may produce a conflict
between Bonnie's standards for correctness
and the new pedagogy of social processes
in the workshop. This is implied in her re-
sponse to the fourth grader's paper on dol-
phins and fish. Bonnie seems to focus on
criteria she used to use in grading students'
papers, in this case, the paper's organiza-
tion: "A lot of it is repetitive. He jumps
around.... He starts paragraphs and, I
don't know if this is a new paragraph....
I think he needs like an organization on
what he is going to say about his dolphins.
You know, dolphins [and] where they live,
and tell me about that. Dolphins [and] why
they are not like fish. Why they are like fish.
You know, set it up in different categories.
That kind of organization is very helpful in
a report like this.... This would be a good
paper if it was just organized a little. He has
the facts." Bonnie gave this response to a
writing sample shown to her during an in-
terview, and it may not represent how she
would respond to her own students' writ-
ing. However, in her response she discusses
a student's report in terms of traditional cri-
teria while moving toward a writing ped-
agogy in which these criteria for goodness
are no longer dominant.
At baseline, Bonnie reported that she
had tentatively implemented the interac-
tive, predictable routine of the workshop
THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOL JOURNAL
whose purpose is to change the relationship
between teacher and students and free them
from traditional roles such as those inherent
in grading. To the extent that the workshop
helped Bonnie to view writing as a social
process, she saw the subject matter of writ-
ing as something other than a correct textual
product.
Posttraining: Confronting content and
process. During the 11/2 years of Bonnie's
participation in the Teachers College Writ-
ing Project, two events significantly affected
her view of writing and the writing work-
shop. First, the Writing Project involved
teachers in genre writing (Calkins & Har-
wayne, 1991). Rather than basing the work-
shop on writing personal narratives, the
project focused on helping teachers assist
students to write in genres such as picture
books, autobiography, poetry, and nonfic-
tion. In her first year in the project, Bonnie's
class had completed a major project in pic-
ture book writing; in her second year, the
class wrote on a science topic just prior to
the posttraining interview.
In addition, in the second year of Bon-
nie's participation in the Writing Project,
her pupils had already been writing in the
workshop from the previous year. She
stated that teaching writing was no longer
a question of "making the workshop run,"
since the students were already familiar
with the routine.
These two events, writing in genres and
teaching students who were already famil-
iar with the writing workshop, provoked
Bonnie to ask herself a number of questions
about teaching writing in the workshop.
When asked at posttraining what she
needed to know in order to teach writing
more effectively, she struggled to explain
her naive beginnings with the workshop
and changes in her thinking about her role
in the workshop: "I think the biggest prob-
lem with me is not knowing the next step
for these kids. Like I said last year, it was
easier to keep ... if you didn't have any
experience.... I went through basic skills,
steps ... umm .... The conferences didn't
JANUARY 1995

have to be that in depth, you know, it was
just basically getting them to write, learn-
ing, letting them learn to like writing....
Now these kids have had it. I'm not exactly
sure where my minilessons should be ...
my conferencing. They're very advanced
and me not being a writer myself makes it
a little harder." Bonnie understands that the
activities of the workshop no longer answer
the question of how to teach writing. Her
comments recall those at baseline when she
said she was trying to learn to talk with
students about their writing. What is dif-
ferent in her posttraining comments is that
the workshop interactions are in place as
part of the routine of the writing workshop,
and she is now more concerned about the
purpose and content of those interactions.
She indicates this new awareness in elab-
orating on what she would like conferenc-
ing to become: "[I would like to be] able to
conference with them [so] that it'll really
make a difference in how they write. Not
just the, you know, give more details....
[But] to let them see that they need to give
the reason behind the details. You know,
you have to give more details, but why?"
At this point, Bonnie indicates an awareness
that her role is to make students aware of
their reasoning and to encourage them to
use it as a guide for writing. In the language
of this study, writing has become more like
inquiry. Expression of an idea is the goal of
writing, and Bonnie sees her role as one of
helping students to reach that goal-though
she is not yet confident about how to enact
that role. Her criteria for goodness in writ-
ing are now primarily related to students'
purposes for writing, and Bonnie is closer
to the point of view of the Writing Project
staff member who emphasized "find out
where [the student] is going."
Bonnie's concerns are focused by the
genre writing. She does not feel confident
in the writing of autobiography or poetry
and so is hesitant to start working in one of
these genres, though she is interested in
trying. It is as if the interaction between stu-
dents' intentions and the way those inten-
TEACHERS'CONCEPTIONS 271
tions are shaped by the genre in which one
writes puts Bonnie in a quandary about, as
she says, "next steps." When asked what
she found most or least valuable as a par-
ticipant in the Writing Project, Bonnie re-
called her concern for next steps and mov-
ing into the writing of autobiography: "As
far as autobiographies, I haven't read
enough myself. Finding autobiographies to
use with the class is a challenge. I guess I'm
not comfortable with it because I'm not fa-
miliar enough with it, you know, the tech-
niques.... The same thing with poetry....
I'm not exactly sure how to get the kids
involved with that, and I really would have
to do some research myself, you know,
reading poetry.... I have to go back and
look and see the techniques that a poet
uses."
It is important to note that in Bonnie's
comments the issue of genre writing brings
the text back into focus as a component of
writing. It is no longer a text defined by
criteria of correctness. Given the emphasis
on social interactions and students' inten-
tions for writing, the text is defined by its
genre, which shapes students' intentions for
writing and their interactions with the
teacher and peers. Bonnie's question about
teaching genre writing is important because
it is her own question. Raising the question
represents significant change from her base-
line concerns for implementing the inter-
actions of the workshop. This merging of
knowledge about intention and genres rep-
resents Bonnie's awareness of what prob-
lems need to be solved in the act of writing.
Intention and genre seem to come together
in the workshop to shape a conception of
the subject of writing built on social inter-
actions that occur during the writing process.
Judith
Baseline: Pursuing "natural," respon-
sive teaching. In contrast to Bonnie, Judith
was less burdened by the effort of grading.
Like Bonnie, however, she felt restricted by
existing models for teaching math and
pointed directly to the rigidity of the text-
272
book as a reason for making changes in her
approach to teaching mathematics. In re-
sponse to the same question about whether
she had changed her approach to teaching
math in the past, Judith stated:
Yes [I have changed my approach to
teaching math. When I first came in the
fall the textbooks]were here. And I said,
you know, "Well,how do we do math?"
... I had the idea that we [would go]
through this. We cover what is in the
book. So for the first, well, throughJan-
uary, we just plodded along throughthe
book. And that was awful. So then pretty
much the idea came around that, you
know, whatever you want to do, do
it.... We just sort of went with what
went naturally.I had kids generate their
own problems,"Writeme a problemthat
you need to use division on." ... So we
got more into being able to understand
it.
Judith seemed to move away from a
rigid conception of the content as it is rep-
resented in the sequence of topics and ac-
tivities in the textbook. Her motivation for
this appeared to be concern that students
"understand" content and not simply cover
it. To accomplish this, Judith moved toward
a pedagogy that was "natural." It is not
clear whether by "natural" she referred to
a more logical movement from one math-
ematical concept to another or a movement
that was more responsive to student needs
in terms of the activities used. Whatever her
concern, Judith appeared to address the is-
sue of how math is represented to students.
Although her conception of the subject was
unclear at this point, her concern for stu-
dents' understanding implied a concern for
enabling students to reason through math-
ematical problems.
Judith demonstrated her own capacity to
reason through a mathematical problem
when she was asked to explain the follow-
ing division by fractions problem: 13/4di-
vided by 1/2. Initially she became confused
when she cited the invert-and-multiply
heuristic as a way of solving the problem,
but then she gave a word problem that in-
THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOL JOURNAL
volved dividing by 2. After Judith stated
that she was aware of the contradiction, the
interviewer asked her what she does when
she is "baffled." Judith responded:
[I] sort of go back and look at all of the
steps that you know already.I think that
is why I start with kids looking at what
we already know and where we can
go.... I am not sure [if this is a problem
my kids could thinkabout].I would think
probablyin [after]a couple of days work-
ing with fractions. We have done the
whole idea for them to understandabout
dividing.... Our example has been
whatever the thing is that has been di-
vided, let's think of it as all heaped to-
gether. ... And then you would be able
to go through all the steps again. That
takingout a groupof 60 [when the things
"heaped"are seconds]is the same as di-
viding.... And actuallythat works [with
the division by fractionsproblem]to say
that every time you [have]a half ... you
are going to take out halves .... I am di-
viding. I am takingout groups of /2. And
taking-out-groups-ofis the concept we
use here.
Here Judith is able to reason from a state
of being baffled or uncertain to a state of
certainty based on the mathematical logic
of her thinking. She uses multiple sources
of information in constructing a solution
path for the problem. The division-by-
fractions problem is connected to division
heuristics, a division concept, fractions,
groups, experience in other situations work-
ing with division, and so on. From knowl-
edge in these areas, Judith is able to con-
struct a solution to the division-by-fractions
problem. It is this ability to reason from un-
certainty that she says she tries to teach her
students. The teacher's own problem solv-
ing, along with her concern for representing
the subject matter to students, implies a
conception of mathematics based on in-
quiry.
Judith's movement away from the text-
book, however, presents some practical,
pedagogical gaps for her. She is aware that
without the textbook she is not grounded
in a well-defined curriculum. Elaborating
JANUARY 1995

on what she means by doing what comes
naturally, she described a situation where
students worked on multiplication but did
not understand the concept or the proce-
dure:
So we startedbeing morecreative. .. and
going into what naturallyseemed to fit.
So we did some picking and choosing.
And where we needed to pick up some
more practicefor multiplication,and we
knew division was not going to fit yet, I
put in a section on measurements,doing
all the metric measurements . .. and
really encouragedfamilies to put in the
practicetime with multiplicationto make
them [students]ready for division. And
still with some people that did not work,
so insteadof saying, "Okay,well too bad
you do not have this," then in choosing
what was going to come next-and for
next year ... I envision myself trying to
formulatewhat sequence I want to fol-
low, what materialsI want to use for next
year.
In this scenario, students are having dif-
ficulty with multiplication. Instead of mov-
ing on to division, the teacher inserts a unit
on metric measurement and turns to parents
to help students develop the multiplication
skills required to move on to division. Pre-
dictably, this does not work for all students,
and Judith ponders the type of "natural"
curriculum that will help students develop
the requisite knowledge in multiplication.
She realizes she cannot ignore the problem,
but she does not state what she did in lieu
of ignoring it. It seems clear, however, that
she did not arrive at a solution with which
she was satisfied. Rather, she identifies her
need to develop a better curricular sequence
and to choose effective materials.
In general, Judith's decision to do away
with the textbook and to work with what
comes naturally is, as with Bonnie, a move-
ment toward learner-centered instruction
and away from the textbook. As I indicated,
however, this movement did not yield a
clear understanding of how to cover the
content and what activities to use, espe-
TEACHERS'CONCEPTIONS 273
cially in situations where students were
having difficulty.
Posttraining: From the subject to the
learner. Over 1 year later, in her posttrain-
ing interview, Judith appeared to have come
to terms with her concern for sequencing
topics and materials. When asked what she
would tell her principal are the most im-
portant things she would try to accomplish
in teaching math, she stated:
I would have obviously in mind the ob-
jectives.... All of the different areas
mathematical.... In some sense it cor-
responds with [ourmath textbook].That
the kids have a familiaritywith any num-
ber of these topics. So it's certainlythat
the kids would cover those topics. But, I
guess my goal is that they really under-
stand that it's useful for them .... The
skills that they learn,the way of thinking
about math that they come away with,
is a style of thinkingaboutmaththatthey
can plug into any situation.They can see
math problems all around them in the
world and why you need to have some
sort of facility with numbers.
It appears that Judith has come back to the
textbook as a guide to concepts to be cov-
ered, but she does not indicate that she fol-
lows the textbook sequence and instruc-
tional plans. Rather, she keeps "in mind the
objectives" that "in some sense" corre-
spond with the textbook. This network of
concepts serves as a frame for the content,
a frame not apparent at baseline, while al-
lowing Judith to move flexibly within it.
Given this frame, Judith reasserts her goal
to teach for understanding by anchoring the
study of these concepts in "useful," real-
world situations.
Here, Judith's change is captured in her
perception of a balance between flexible
curricular content and situating mathemat-
ical activity in real-world problems. This
change is complemented by a greater con-
fidence in her approach to teaching math
that seems to result from using some of the
constructivist practices promoted by the
Summermath Program. Along with the
274
greater emphasis on real-world problems,
she now uses manipulatives (which she de-
fines quite generally as any set of physical
objects), justifiable alternative solution
paths, and sharing strategies for solving
problems. When asked what has proven
most valuable to her in the Summermath
Program, Judith stated, "In addition to us-
ing manipulatives, instead of having math
just be some kind of calculation or com-
putation ... it's also a way of ... sharing
strategies of solving math .... It's a way of
thinking that there isn't just a right answer.
And that it is not the ultimate thing to
achieve the right answer. But to understand
what it is that you're doing so that if you
have a math problem there's an apprecia-
tion ... for what strategy you use to arrive
at what you're solving." This approach to
mathematics teaching is evident in Judith's
discussion of how she would approach sub-
traction with regrouping:
I would do it with problems... that were
related to something-I like to integrate
a lot of things. So if we're working on
hatchingchicks[Iwould connectthe sub-
traction to a problem about hatching
chicks].... So I make a connection to
something valuable. I would have ma-
terials available to represent these and
availablefor everyone.... I would have
probably small groups of kids working
with materials,maybe initially introduc-
ing kids by the point that you're doing
double-digitsubtractionwhere you need
to borrow.I think they would all at that
point have an understandingof how to
use the materials to represent what
[they're]showing. Then have kids work-
ing with each other, demonstratingthis,
sortof figuringout the problemand come
backtogether.And I mightsay, "It'syour
responsibilityto know how [studentx] is
going to do this. Be able to tell the group
afterwardshow she solved this."
In this description Judith's actions are
consonant with Summermath's constructiv-
ist ideas about teaching mathematics: real-
world problems, the use of manipulatives
to represent problems, group problem solv-
ing, and sharing of solution paths. Though
THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOL JOURNAL
her interview response is not entirely dis-
tinct from baseline, what is different is the
degree to which she reports that a construc-
tivist routine has been put in place that im-
plicates inquiry as a goal of instruction.
Judith is not overconfident in her ar-
guments about her teaching, however. The
balance between content and inquiry raises
new questions about how she can be re-
sponsive to the individual students in her
class, a concern that Bonnie also expressed.
In both cases, the goal is to help individuals
learn math or writing as a process of inquiry.
This was a daunting responsibility for the
teachers. Whereas Bonnie confronted her
lack of subject-matter knowledge, Judith
confronted the dilemma of knowing indi-
viduals' states of knowledge in order to
teach responsively. Her particular concern
had to do with balancing group interaction
with individual attention.
When asked what she needs to know to
teach math more effectively, Judith stated,
"I do a lot of things with kids working with
each other.... I have to trust that out there
will come some greater knowledge of how
to choose who should be working with who
at what time." This goal to have groups
function effectively is embedded within a
concern to understand the individual stu-
dent and what he or she knows. When
asked to elaborate on what she needs to
know or learn, Judith stated, "That's sort of
one of my goals right now. To actually have
more single interactions with kids. ... Sort
of set some priorities in each of the units or
in each of the topics that I'm working
with.... The other thing is, and I think it's
connected up with more individual time, is
assessing how kids are, how things are
going for each child.... Assessing them in-
dividually and making connections for
them.... [Asking] how can I make this
learning situation better for everyone or
better for the kids who are having diffi-
culty?" Her sense of what it means to assess
students' progress and make connections
between mathematical concepts is captured
well in her response to a probe about grad-
JANUARY 1995
 TEACHERS'CONCEPTIONS 275

ing a student's subtraction worksheet. teachers articulate after training. The great-
When asked whether she would grade the est influence of the Summermath and Writ-
student's worksheet, Judith responded, ing Project programs may not be in the so-
"No. I would know what I need to teach." lution they provide for the initial dilemmas
of Bonnie and Judith but rather in the way
Summary and Conclusions the subject-matter instruction they promote
Change in Teachers' Conceptions of shapes the questions that evolve in the
Subject-specific Pedagogy teachers' thinking about instruction.
At baseline, Bonnie and Judith confront From this perspective, change in teach-
traditional approaches to the teaching of ers' conceptions of a subject and related in-
subject matter. Bonnie rejects the time-
struction represents a coming together of
motivation and the pedagogical
consuming tedium of grading student pa- personal
content vision that is the programs' basis
pers, and Judith rejects the script of the
mathematics textbook. In so doing, both for rethinking instruction. Wilson and Ball
teachers reject a conception of the subject (1991) refer to this growth as the merging
matter that defines instruction in terms of of ideas and experience in the creation of a
correct textual products, in the case of Bon- "patchwork" of practice. The creation, sig-
nie, and a fixed scope and sequence of nificantly, is the teacher's. As Wilson and
mathematical topics and activities, in the Ball (1991) argue, there is a paradox in
case of Judith. On their own, before in-ser- teaching constructivist practice, for the
vice training, both teachers had moved premise is that teachers construct their own
toward learner-centered instruction. Bonnie knowledge and practice and are not simply
of the programs' tenets. In the
struggled to cultivate the social interactions managers
of the writing workshop, and Judith at- present study, Bonnie and Judith create
their own patchworks of practice. Moti-
tempted to develop a more flexible, natural
instruction responsive to her students. vated by their own teaching situations, they
At posttraining, Bonnie's and Judith's borrow and synthesize from experience,
and training in the effort to resolve
conceptions of the subject matter come into practice,
the dilemmas of their teaching situations.
sharper focus. For Bonnie, genre writing
at a new set of questions or di-
provides the purpose for the writing and By arriving
interactions of the workshop. In the post- lemmas, they show themselves to have
training interview, she reveals a conception gained higher a level of understanding not
of the subject matter in which the interac- only of what they know but also of their
tion of intention, process, and genre not capacity to inquire into these new dilem-
only defines the coherence of the writing mas, these new situations of uncertainty in
it a
act but also characterizes as process of teaching subject matter.
inquiry in which the writer works to close
the gap between intention and expression. Study Limitations and Future Research
Similarly, Judith adapts the textbook cur- I selected the cases of Bonnie and Judith
riculum while incorporating the construc- because of the distinctiveness of the
tivist routines of Summermath. Her inter- changes in the teachers' conceptions of a
view responses reveal a conception of math subject and subject-matter instruction.
in which associations among topics are co- However, these cases are only suggestive
herent, and topics are bridged by a process and utilize a small portion of the data gath-
of inquiry in which the logic of alternative ered. To gain generalizability it would be
solution paths is central. necessary, in the TELTdata, to examine the
Changes in Bonnie's and Judith's views cases of all participants in the Writing Proj-
and practices are reflected in new dilemmas ect and Summermath programs. In addi-
about subject-matter instruction that the tion, though there is evidence for change in
276
how teachers in the two programs interact
with students (McCarthey, 1992; Wilson &
Ball, 1991), it would be necessary to observe
instruction regularly during in-service train-
ing and simultaneously to conduct teacher
interviews.
Given the potential for change docu-
mented in the cases of Bonnie and Judith,
future research should examine the efficacy
of subject-specific training in other in-ser-
vice programs and teacher education con-
texts. Several questions can be posed: Is
change a function of long-term classroom-
based training? Is it a function of the quality
of training or of subject-specific training per
se? What are the implications for preservice
training in subject-specific pedagogy?
Future research also needs to look at the
relation between subject-matter knowledge
and pedagogical content knowledge. Shul-
man (1986) posed this question when he
asked how a beginning teacher changes
from being a student of a subject matter to
someone who represents subject matter to
others. In the present study, the primary
data were the teachers' interview responses
to questions about their subject-matter in-
struction. As a result, it was not possible to
separate subject-matter knowledge from
pedagogical content knowledge. Indeed, it
is not clear whether, in theory, these types
of knowledge can be separated. Based on
her sample of secondary English teachers
with a literature background but who had
not participated in a program of teacher
training, Grossman (1990) suggests that it
is possible to distinguish between the teach-
ers' subject-matter knowledge and peda-
gogical content knowledge. However,
based on her sample who had participated
in a program of teacher training, Grossman
(1990) suggests that this distinction cannot
be made as clearly. She attributes this sit-
uation to the fact that these teachers learned
disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge si-
multaneously. A similar point could be
made about Bonnie and Judith, whose con-
ceptions of subject matter were shaped by
the nature of instruction promoted by the
THE ELEMENTARYSCHOOL JOURNAL
programs in which they participated. Edu-
cators need to clarify the relation between
subject-matter and pedagogical content
knowledge in order to determine the con-
tent and direction of training in subject-spe-
cific pedagogy.
Note
This work was supportedin part by the Na-
tionalCenterfor Researchon TeacherEducation,
Michigan State University. The NCRTE is
funded primarilyby the Office of Educational
Researchand Improvement,U.S. Departmentof
Education(OERI/ED).The opinions expressed
herein are mine and do not necessarily reflect
the position, policy, or endorsement of the
OERI/ED (grant OERI-G-86-0001).I gratefully
acknowledge the influence and comradery of
Deborah Ball, Patricia Daniels, Jim Gavelek,
Sarah McCarthey,James Mead, Taffy Raphael,
Trish Stoddart,Teresa Tatto, and Suzanne Wil-
son in the writing of this article.I am especially
gratefulto DarrellMorrisand an anonymousre-
viewer for their comments on an earlierdraft.
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