Veronica Morcom

A sociocultural view of learning positions teachers as mediators, to teach a curriculum that reflects what is valued by society. But in addition it is proposed that a specific focus on mediating relational agency to support collaboration further builds teacher and students capacities for learning. Peer interaction supports the development of communication, social and emotional competencies required for effective collaborative learning. But a deeper understanding of social and cultural challenges for schools accustomed to a traditional approach is required before change can occur. Relational agency is a two-way process, to become responsive so you can both receive and give support to peers. The data are drawn from three year-long projects conducted by the teacher/researcher with her students and other teachers who were mentored to develop new practices that challenged the status quo at their school. Rogoff's analytical planes are used as a framework to analyse the data and the findings are presented as four case studies related to bullying, conflict resolution, student leadership and teacher mentoring. The evidence-based social practices in this research can be adapted by other teachers interested in mediating relational agency to develop social and emotional skills to support a collaborative classroom (Morcom, 2014, 2015, 2016).

Teacher retention in the classroom is a pervasive and complex global issue with large numbers of graduate teachers leaving the profession after 3-5 years and experienced teachers feeling frustrated with constant change (Darling-Hammond, 2003; Fullan, 2001). Mentoring is one means to support new teachers’ transition into the classroom and retain experienced teachers through renewal of practice. However, mentoring remains ‘a contested concept’ without conceptual cohesion and often used for multiple purposes that can be in conflict with each other (Kemmis, Heikkinen, Fransson & Aspfors, 2014). Different purposes create different mentoring practices resulting in different mentee dispositions that orient them differently to themselves, to others and their professional work (Kemmis et al., 2014). Vygotsky’s cultural historical theory (1978) and Hedegaard’s (2014) concepts of demands and motives are used as theoretical frameworks to underpin conceptualisation and interpretation in the current research. The aim was to examine the dispositions, motives and practices of three teachers, mentored by a teacher-leader to navigate the demands made on them by students, parents and the school administration. ETC. Two teachers were experienced year 1 and 4 teachers and the third was a year 4 teacher in her second year. The teacher-leader taught a year 2 class that included students previously taught by the year 1 teacher who was being mentored. All teachers had worked on various school projects together but not in a formal mentoring program with each other. Qualitative methods were chosen as suitable for data collected from the naturalistic setting of the classroom and to highlight teachers’ perspectives from the formal teacher focus group meetings (Patton, 2002). The main sources of data for this paper are based on the transcripts of the teacher focus groups, pre and post teacher surveys, teacher reflective logs in emails, and the teacher mentor’s reflective log that provide insights into the issues that underpinned different teachers’ motives and orientations to engage in new practices in the classroom. The data are examined using Hedegaard’s (2014) institutional, activity and person perspectives. New demands in transitions created the possibility for teachers to renew their classroom practice. Although teachers expressed interest and value in the research project and commitment to innovate in the classroom, institutional demands restricted the practice teachers perceived was possible. Examining teachers’ participation in the mentoring activity shows the dynamic of teachers’ motives and orientation to the demands made on them by the principal and parents despite the support they experienced from each other and the teacher-leader. Teachers develop motives through participation in institutional practices which are embedded in the “the dynamic relation between person and practice” (Hedegaard and Chaiklin, 2005, p. 64). The findings lend support to Weldon’s (2018) analysis that environmental factors are important in understanding teacher attrition. The current research has implications for how mentoring is conceptualized and implemented in schools where the purpose is pedagogical renewal and retention. Developing robust professional cultures that support renewal require school policies that articulate an understanding of mentoring as an integral part of everyday practice for all teachers (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2000).

In this paper we examine an intervention, ‘cooperative marbles in a jar’, as illustrative of Vygotsky’s (1999) method of double stimulation. The intervention was part of a larger longitudinal study conducted with primary aged students which aimed to examine how to develop a collaborative classroom where agency of the teacher and students was valued and supported. The first author was the classroom teacher and the second author the co-researcher/university professor who visited the classroom weekly. The teacher/researcher’s role, as a facilitator and ‘guide on the side’, was to allow students to take responsibility for their learning and develop shared understandings about collaborative values. The classroom social practices, such as the weekly classroom meeting and daily social circle, provided opportunities for students to practise these values and to participate in authentic activities to promote social knowledge and sharing of ideas. The focus was on student decision making about the direction of classroom activities and the creation of possible interventions in the development of a collaborative classroom. During weekly classroom meetings students raised issues about friendships, group work and the physical arrangement of the classroom as well as setting up incentive strategies to promote cooperation. The intervention emerged from the weekly classroom meeting discussions. The first stimulation was the problem students identified of their peers not cooperating in groups. The second stimulation was the tool of marbles in a jar which the students developed through discussions in the classroom meeting. Research data sources included regular reflections by students and researchers about the classroom social practices, which were videotaped by the second author, and interviews with the students and their parents. This paper explores how students and the teacher developed this formative intervention and sustained an effective new practice with positive outcomes for students. The significance for teachers of such research lies in developing authentic educational practices that prioritise students’ agency by giving voice to their concerns and having the confidence in students that they can resolve their issues for learning.

Students’ interaction with others significantly affects cognitive growth and the development of higher mental functions (Vygotsky, 1997, 1998). In the current research, students had opportunities to negotiate the conditions for their learning through the development of collective social practices that created a collaborative classroom. Students took responsibility for their participation in the Daily Social Circle and the Weekly Classroom Meetings. Students were or became the subjects of the collective activities, and the teacher’s role was to promote student cooperation and collaboration. The collective and personal sources of qualitative data are: the dialogue created during the Daily Social Circle and the Weekly Classroom Meetings; parent and student interviews; teacher/researcher observations and students’ reflection logs. The subject of the collective activity was social problem solving to develop student collaboration that ultimately supported learning and development. The collective activities were a source of social development for students but also the students themselves were the source of development for each other, through dialogue and the co-construction of new ideas during social practices. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory and the concepts of social situation of development, crisis and the zone of proximal development will be used as analytical tools for the data analysis (Vygotsky, 1994). The theoretical and practical relevance of this research for pre-service teachers is related to how Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory contributes to a richer interpretation of classroom practices and the practical strategies that can be implemented to facilitate how students interact with each other to support their development and optimise learning.

When teacher time and attention is directed to manage student misbehaviour teachers need a clear vision and an understanding of the values being promoted in the classroom. There were thirty one year 4/5 students who participated in the year long qualitative study, many of whom behaved in an antisocial manner. The aim of the study was to realign participation to build the prerequisite skills for collaboration. A manual open coding system of emerging patterns and themes (Yin, 2012) was used to analyse the data. The teaching and research elements were based on the principles of good practice for values education with a collaborative focus. Y charts were used to negotiate five class agreements to make values explicit and develop a shared values language. Other data sources included sociograms, lift ups, students’ reflection logs and interviews, teacher observations, weekly class meetings, parent surveys and feedback from other teachers. The outcomes of the research were that students widened their friendship networks based on mutual respect and trust which realigned participation to work effectively with each other. The challenge for teachers is to understand the values communicated to students through classroom practices and develop expertise and confidence to take risks and realign student participation.

In this paper we examine participation processes to develop a collaborative primary school classroom in which all students had opportunities to contribute to transforming classroom practices. It is informed by Stetsenko’s reconstruction of Vygotskian sociocultural concepts, proposing a transformative activist stance perspective, which defines learning as “contributing to collaborative practices of humanity” rather than as merely participating in those practices. The teacher has an active role and in terms of Valsiner’s notion of ‘canalization’, the teacher channels a student’s activities in certain ways so that development is organised in a particular direction, consistent with the teacher’s goals and values. A year-long ethnographic study in a Year 3 classroom was used to understand how a teacher channels student participation to create a collaborative classroom and what changes in participatory roles and contribution are possible. The teacher developed a range of participatory opportunities, including social circles and class meetings, which provided a means for all students to participate in authentic decision-making and collective action. Thirty hours of recorded class meeting and group interactions were analysed qualitatively using fine-grained micro level analysis method (Kovalainen & Kumpulainen). The paper discusses the range of communicative functions used in different activities, the changing participatory roles and resultant action and the changing role of the teacher over the year. The research highlights ways that a skilful teacher can guide and direct student participation and action, so that the students understand how they contribute to transforming collaborative practices that have currency beyond the classroom.

In this paper we examine ways teachers guide and scaffold motivation in a primary school classroom. Motivation is conceptualised as negotiated participation. Three sociocultural concepts are used to examine motivational development: zone of proximal development (Goldstein, 1999; Vygotsky, 1978), canalisation and self-canalisation (Valsiner, 1997), and mastery and appropriation (Wertsch, 1998). When motivation is re-conceptualised in social terms and considered from the perspective of sociocultural developmental psychology, the complex interrelations of persons and contexts involved in motivational development and change become the focus of research rather than change in specific motivational variables. The larger project was a year-long ethnographic study in a year 3 classroom, and interviews the following year. Multiple data sources included classroom observation, interviews, sociometric surveys, school documents, and reflective accounts of the students, their parents and the co-researchers. Video recordings of classroom activities made it possible to revisit interaction and observe and analyse a particular student's participation and dialogue. The analyses for this paper focuses on two students, Tina and Trent. There are clear instances that when the teacher provided social guidance both students were working within their affective zone of proximal development. Tina was always keen to provide her opinion, but not always appropriately in relation to the functioning of the class community. The teacher's actions appeared to be supporting but also transforming Tina's self-canalisation of participation in that class. When Tina moved to another class in year 4 with different participation structures, Tina initially resisted her new teacher's canalisation of ways to participate. Tina had not only mastered the cultural tools of decision making in year 3 but she had appropriated them and made them her own. Trent's motivational journey is different. Accounts of his journey show that the broader scaffolding provided by the teacher through the daily social circle and weekly class meeting enabled him to master, but not appropriate, the practices of the classroom. In the following year, Trent did not resist the new teacher's canalisation of ways to participate in that classroom. The accounts of student motivation journeys show that development is not linear. Guidance of others contributes to canalising possibilities for development, while the individual also contributes to possibilities for development through self-canalisation processes. Thus students may master the cultural tools for participation in a particular context but not necessarily make those tools their own, with implications for their motivation and learning. Each of the sociocultural concepts helps to describe aspects of motivational development that illuminate different parts of the complex process. We discuss how these differences can enable closer examination of classroom interaction to support motivation and learning. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of social interactions and cultural practices in promoting and constraining students' motivational development.