CPED @ Duquesne^b

Notes:
a. Adapted from Assignment #2, Stanford Convening (June 2007); updated for Assignment #3, Vanderbilt Convening (October, 2007).
b. E-mail contact: mccown@duq.edu

Working Papers by CPED @ Duquesne, a collective authorship, reflect the work on many faculty and administrators in the School of Education. Working papers are used as internal documentation of design deliberations, design proposals, and the testing of prototype designs. Working papers document the arguments-the claims, reasons and evidence, warrants, and qualifications-that emerge from the design cycles that are employed in CPED @ Duquesne. The arguments comprise data within the design research protocol that drives CPED @ Duquesne. Therefore, before quoting material in this or any CPED @ Duquesne Working Paper, please contact the Primary Investigator to determine if a revised or published version is available.

Purpose

1. The purpose of this working paper is to argue the claim that our pilot is informed by the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), stewardship, and signature pedagogy.

2. Our pilot initiative comprises of three parallel efforts: the re-design of our EdD in educational leadership; the initial design of a CID-informed PhD; and the development and utilization of a design-based research protocol. In the course of building our argument we claim that stewardship frames our pilot initiative. We argue also that there is a need for a signature pedagogy. Our arguments are built by addressing questions developed by the CPED consortium.

Influence from Earlier Work of the Carnegie Foundation

3. We begin by addressing how the Carnegie Foundation's work informs our pilot project. In particular, we address the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL); the concept of stewardship, deriving from the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate; and the emerging construct of signature pedagogy.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

4. The scholarship of teaching and learning is "a concept of moral action, aimed at cultural change" (Shulman, 2002, p.vii). Over the last two decades SoTL has evolved into the bedrock for serious investigations of the teaching-learning process (see Boyer, 1990; Huber, 1999; Huber & Hutchings, 2005; Hutchings, 2000, 2002; Huber & Morreale, 2002).

5. The moral claim that underlies SoTL is what Shulman (2002) called the pedagogical imperative, an obligation that comes with ‘messing around' with teaching and learning. Having signed on to mess with teaching and learning, we are obligated to make our CPED efforts "public and thus susceptible to critique. It then becomes community property, available for others to build upon." (Shulman, 2004, p. 43).

6. SoTL-and its underlying moral claim-is the reason why our pilot initiative includes developing and utilizing a design-based research protocol. Because our pilot initiative will expand to deliberations of all doctoral programs in our School of Education, we expect the pilot protocol to be helpful well beyond the pilot phase. The protocol will help us argue our design decisions, document the theoretical and empirical antecedents of those decisions, and develop and test the "proto-theories" that are consequences of design decisions (Barab & Squire, 2004; Cobb, 2001; Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer & Schauble, 2003; Collins, 1992; Dede, 2005). "[D]esign-based research, which blends empirical educational research with the theory-driven design of learning environments, is an important methodology for understanding how, when, and why educational innovations work in practice." (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003, p.5).

7. By researching the learning environments that emerge from our pilot initiative and subsequent design efforts with other doctoral programs, we will model the pedagogical imperative and perhaps influence the formation of our future doctoral students. It is an empirical question.

Stewardship

8. The frame of stewardship developed because, while some of us were revisiting our extant EdD, others were inspired to develop a new PhD that reflected the lessons learned from the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate or CID (Golde & Walker, 2006). Although we intend to implement the new PhD program after the pilot initiative, its initial design will function as a foil for the re-design of our professional practice doctorate in educational leadership.

9. Berliner's CID Essay (2006) identified 5 steps that could be taken to improve PhD preparation. Berliner's 5th, as we came to call it, was "Develop an Understanding of Educational Policy" (p. 282) and has yielded deliberations of stewardship for the discipline and profession of education. Richardson (2006) addressed the distinction in her CID Essay as well, but in terms of the field of study and the enterprise of education.

10. Our focus on a stewardship of practice has guided us to questions regarding the assessments, especially capstone assessments. We will focus on the knowledge capacities inherent in stewardship (generation, conservation, and transformation) and the moral formation of those who would (in the context of our pilot initiative) lead schools and school districts.

11. As we move beyond the pilot initiative, we will deliberate how to assess the stewardship of those who would educate teachers, design instructional technology, and provide psychological and counseling services.

The Need for a Signature Pedagogy

12. Signature pedagogy arises from the Carnegie Foundation's Preparation for the Professions Program (PPP), an investigation of the professional preparation of engineers, clergy, lawyers, physicians, nurses, and educators. Substantial publications have or will soon appear from the studies of engineering, the clergy, law, medicine, and nursing.

13. Not so for education. Education lacks a signature pedagogy.

14. Shulman characterizes signature pedagogies as the salient, pervasive teaching practices that prepare aspirants for three fundamental aspects of professional work: "to think, to perform, and to act with integrity." (p.52, original italics). At present, we see these aspects of professional practice as aligned with stewardship and are using the alignment to instigate the design of capstone assessments.

15. According to Shulman (2005), signature pedagogy is considered to have three dimensions: a surface structure (what the teaching ‘looks like'); a deep structure (assumptions about teaching and learning in the field); and an implicit structure (beliefs about what should be valued in the field, including professional dispositions).

16. As we contemplate capstone assessments, we are intrigued by the deep and implicit structures especially as they align with assessment and evaluation, which are the key components for developing a signature pedagogy.

17. If we think of evaluation, literally, as the placing of value, we can examine how value is placed. Imagine, for example, two members of a university tenure and promotion committee. They are looking at a candidate's teaching record. Both evaluators observe the same variation in a grade distribution, something approximating a normal curve, let's say. The first evaluator infers from the data that the course is rigorous and that the instructor maintains very high standards. The second evaluator infers from the same data that the instructor failed to facilitate the learning necessary to achieve the high standards of the course. The inferences reveal what each evaluator is willing to claim and accept as evidence. The two evaluative performances reveal disparate assumptions regarding the teaching-learning process. (see McCown & Hopson, 2006; Schreiber & McCown, 2006).

18. In our pilot initiative, we are seeking to reveal the assumptions about teaching and learning that operate in our educational leadership program. Examining our evaluative practices allows us to see if our words match our deeds. By what assessments do we generate data, render evidence, and make claims? What arguments do we make, what accounts of our students' learning and the quality of their preparation do we render? (see Shulman, 2007)

19. So, as a starting point, we are examining how we have placed value with regard to the competence and formation of our doctoral students and with regard to the quality of our preparation program.

20. Using the frame of stewardship, self- examination of evaluation practice should help us imagine the assessments of competence and formation that would distinguish practitioners from academicians. For example, we are entertaining the possibility that generating, conserving, and transforming knowledge requires all doctoral students to inquire (see Boote & Biele, 2005; Eisenhart & DeHann, 2005; Maxwell, 2006), argue (see Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2003; Kelly & Yin, 2007), and teach at high levels of competence and with clear understanding of the moral consequences of those actions (see Golde, 2006; Hostetler, 2005).

21. Within inquiry, argument, and teaching, however, we have some preliminary ideas for distinguishing the capstone assessments of practitioners and academics. By starting with the end in mind (Shulman et al., 2006), we are imagining potential contributions to the problem of an "unsigned pedagogy", including implications for laboratories of practice, and studying how other institutions have placed value, especially those that have been recognized for developing a "professionally anchored" capstone assessments (Murphy & Vriesenga, 2005; Dembo & Marsh, 2007).

22. As we move beyond our pilot initiative, we will be able to test the generalizability of our efforts to distinguish practitioners and academics.

Signature Pedagogy and Our Pilot Initiative

23. As we consider the need for a signature pedagogy in the context of our pilot initiative, we find our interrogation of the concept rippling through a number of discussions within our School of Education (McCown & Hopson, 2006; Shulman et al., 2006). We expect that ripple effect to continue both during and after the pilot phase.

24. Therefore, it is and will be documented in the questions we raise and in the prototypes we generate and test. At this point, the prototypes we are testing are conceptual rather than empirical, but we are testing ideas.

25. As we hypothesize capstone demonstrations of-and opportunities for-learning, we are intrigued by the deep and implicit structure dimensions of signature pedagogy especially as they align with the work of our colleagues on "systematic and intentional inquiry" (e.g., Moss, 1998; 2001; 2002; Moss & Shank, 2002; c.f., Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993).

26. The work drives the design and development of learning environments (online and face-to-face) in our Center for Advancing the Study of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). Duquesne's CASTL shares an acronym (and a commitment to the scholarship of practice) with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, but they were developed independently.

27. Duquesne's CASTL learning programs connect theorizing and practicing in the person of the educator, within the educator's workplace, while aiming to create situated meaning and construct specifically relevant understandings. A disposition toward systematic and intentional inquiry-in direct opposition to the "absolute answer" mindset perpetrated by "best practice" forms of professional development-encourages educators to engage in professional learning as informed skeptics who constantly "construct knowledge that is organic, always unfinished, deriving from judgment and belief and revealed though action" (Moss, 2002).

28. In the context of signature pedagogy, we are interrogating "systematic and intentional inquiry" in two ways (see Moss & McCown, 2007).

29. First, does systematic and intentional inquiry "qualify" when compared against the dimensions of a signature pedagogy? Our short answer is "yes". There are characteristic instructional strategies and learning opportunities that can be seen in the various learning environments built from systematic and intentional inquiry.

30. As indicated above, there are assumptions about the nature of teaching and learning for educators. And the approach places value on outcomes that are assumed to be critical to effective educational practice.

31. One of the hypothetical assessments we are exploring, for example, would yield data regarding the ability to reveal and challenge assumptions that operate in one's practice. Not the assumptions expressed verbally, but the assumptions that are expressed in professional performance. That exploration derives directly from our colleagues' work on systematic and intentional inquiry.

32. Second, is systematic and intentional inquiry a case of signature pedagogy, a case for signature pedagogy, or both? This second interrogation has been the source of some interesting and, for some of us, absolutely fascinating discussions about the concept of signature pedagogy: how it has been used; if and how it might evolve into a theoretical construct, what a theory of signature pedagogy might look like, and some others.

33. We have noted, for example, that the Carnegie Foundation found no signature pedagogy for education and that CADREI has promulgated evidence-based principles that "are widely seen as capturing teacher education's signature pedagogy" (p. 2, 2005). Many of our discussions to date have eventually gotten to the question: What is the unit of analysis? That basic question has taken several forms and has been framed both theoretically and empirically, i.e., politically (see Falk, 2006).

34. Theoretically, we have wondered if the dimensions of signature pedagogy accommodate a multi-level construct that can define a field, specialties within a field (e.g., teaching, teacher education, educational leadership), or even programs within specialties? Can the concept be used to guide design-based research within programs and for comparative and synthetic research across programs? Whose signature is on the pedagogy and how does it get there?

35. If CPED is successful, we might generate an answer to that question. Both our pilot initiative and our subsequent efforts will provide opportunities to examine theoretical implications of signature pedagogy.

36. On the empirical side, our discussions have recognized the political need for the field of education to have a signature pedagogy.

37. As noted earlier, Shulman (2005) characterizes signature pedagogies as the salient, pervasive teaching practices that prepare aspirants for professional work.

38. There are several reasons why it is important for the profession of education to have a signature pedagogy. 1) It would help us characterize our professional culture: the outcomes on which we place value; what evidence is accepted; the rigor we demand. 2) It would establish the authority of the profession in the policy arena so that we might be seen as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. 3) It would differentiate the disciplines that contribute to the profession from the profession itself. 4) It would inform SoTL and, consequently, help us make our teaching and learning susceptible to critical review.

39. If we are unable-as a field-to frame and communicate how we prepare educational professionals, how can we render compelling accounts that are taken seriously? In the language of stewardship, we have failed to demonstrate the transformative capacity that we will expect of our doctoral students.

40. We have a need for and, therefore, an opportunity to build a signature pedagogy and, into the bargain, our transformative capacity. Our plan is to develop prototypes and to seek critical review and comment on our thinking. We are starting our search for critical review within the field in hopes of developing our capacity to transform what we learn and, eventually, use our growing capacity to educate those outside our field and our profession.

41. As a starting point, we have submitted successfully proposals to UCEA (a cross-institutional paper) and to AACTE. We have also submitted CPED-related proposals to AERA. We hope in the future to partner with others in CPED on presentation proposals as a step toward creating "community property". We look forward to cross-institutional examinations of how we teach. "All who teach are obliged to think about how they teach, as well as the content of what they teach. The stakes are too high for us to tolerate anything less." (Lee Shulman)

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