Teacher-Directed to Student-Engaged Pedagogy: Exploring Teacher Change

Abstract

An under-explored issue in teacher education is the active documentation of pedagogical usage after initial training and practice implementation have been completed. In this phenomenological study, the researcher contacted previous graduate students who earned a teaching-endorsement credential for working with Gifted/Talented learners to explore the application of a pedagogical method developed specifically to shift from teacher-directed to student-engaged pedagogy. Common impediments to pedagogical change are described and discussed. Participants did overcome impediments, changing their pedagogical approach from teacher-directed to student-engaged approaches over time. Each shared their particular circumstances for needing to change their teaching approach. But in all instances, student performance and outcomes drove and supported the continued expansion of the change process. Future empirical work in teacher development and in-service pedagogical change based on results is suggested to further this line of inquiry.

1. Introduction

An under-explored issue in teacher education is the active documentation of pedagogical usage after initial training and practice implementation have been completed. Once the training and required grading have occurred to earn the credit, in-service early-career teachers commonly drift back to a comfortable means of working in classroom spaces, i.e., what they are used to experiencing or have been doing during early field experiences. In my more than twenty-year experience as a teacher educator working with in-service teachers, this often means resorting to teacher-directed instruction (lecture, question/answer, worksheet completion, and quizzing/testing) as a measure of classroom performance—for students and the teacher’s personal reflection on teaching effectiveness.

Research supports this contention; in that didactic, authority-based instructional approaches are common teaching structures used in classrooms (e.g., Blanton, Berenson, and Norwood [1]; Foss and Kleinsasser [2]; Steele and Widman [3]; Hewson, Tabachnick, Zeichner, Blomker, Meyer, and Lemberger [4]). Indeed, as teachers feel strained to meet compounding assessment expectations and documentation requirements, transmission-based approaches to instruction are considered the most efficient and expedient means of covering the breadth of required content and efficiently capturing assessment data (e.g., Barrett [5]; Gallant and Riley [6]; Hursh [7]; Parr, Gladstone, Rosenzweig, and Wang [8]; Tricarico, Jacobs, and Yendel-Hoppey [9]; Valli and Buese [10]).

2. Rationale for the Study

Schooling is very structured. Adults (teachers) say, and students do. That is the expectation, with punitive results levied on students to get them to toe the line. Changing this dynamic to giving control over to learners is foreign to teachers who have been inducted into building-level expectations for teacher and student behavior to keep the education assembly line moving efficiently. Daily, I fought to overcome years of experience and training that I was supposed to control all aspects of instruction as the teacher to raise test scores.

(Ren, personal communication, August 2021)

Post-training exploration of teacher change is underrepresented in the teaching and learning literature (Dole, Bloom, and Kowalski [11]). In this phenomenological study, the researcher contacted previous graduate students who earned a teaching-endorsement credential for working with Gifted/Talented (GT) learners to explore the application of a pedagogical method developed specifically to shift from teacher-directed to student-engaged pedagogy (e.g., the Open Architecture model) (Schultz [12,13]). Candidates for the endorsement already held teaching licensure and were in-service, seeking additional training in order to fulfill requirements for tenure, broaden their area of teaching expertise, and/or to earn pay increases.

For clarity, Gifted/Talented learners are defined as students who are able to learn quicker than chronological age mates and are able to apply skills independently with little to no practice repetition. GT students in Midwest State—a pseudonym for where the study took place—have been formally identified as having intellectual ability two or more standard deviations above the mean on normed intelligence tests.

The Open Architecture (OA) model (Schultz [12,13]) is based on a commonly used four-step problem-solving model that has been reconfigured to be iterative rather than sequential (see Figure 1). This means OA users can begin exploration of a construct/theme/problem from any of the quadrants depicted and actively work through the complete model at least one time before considering the project complete.

The researcher philosophically shifted the focus of model usage from teacher-directed deployment in classroom settings, where learners reacted to the teacher assignment of tasks to student-engaged pedagogy. Students choose where to begin their project within the structure of the model and are encouraged to take full responsibility and ownership of their learning by self-directing how they “cycle” through the model to complete their project. The teacher in this setting serves as a learning facilitator rather than decision maker.

As part of the GT endorsement program, participant teachers completed an advanced curriculum-development course focused specifically on differentiation of the regular curriculum to establish a student-engaged pedagogical approach to meet the needs of high-ability and advanced-level learners. Candidates used a student-engaged instructional model developed by the researcher (the OA model) and were exposed to the theoretical implications associated with student-engaged pedagogy. Each developed a working unit plan that they taught in a field setting with formally identified GT learners.

The field-sites were GT pull-out or self-contained GT classroom settings with an experienced GT-endorsed and licensed cooperating teacher supervising the practicum experience within her or his classroom. Practicum lasted five weeks during the middle third of a university semester, with participant teachers (GT-endorsement candidates) working exclusively at the practicum field-sites during this period. GT-endorsement candidates taught their unit plans, gathered assessment data from the setting regarding the unit plans (including GT student performance data, feedback from their cooperating teacher, and a daily reflective journal documenting the experience from the endorsement candidate perspective), then returned to campus to debrief their OA unit experience and reflect on the training experienced in the course.

Each of the teacher participants in this study reported high levels of success using the OA model during their graduate internship experience working with learners. The results reported are a follow-up with these teachers after five or more years of service as teachers after successfully completing their graduate degree.

Research questions addressed in this article are a subset of a larger study. They are as follows:

• How do participant teachers describe the process of implementing and experiencing pedagogical change in their teaching spaces and places?
• What impediments to pedagogical change have participant teachers identified and/or experienced in their craft and practice?
• How do participant teachers describe the impact value of the OA model on student engagement and learning?

3. Methodology and Participant Teacher Demographics

The five-year postgraduate degree teaching threshold was chosen to explore the experiences participant teachers reported regarding pedagogical change. The researcher was looking for the “staying power” of in-service professional development where pedagogical change to a more student-engaged approach was an outcome goal and how teachers retrospectively described their experiences initially implementing and then reflecting on the viability and usefulness of how student-engaged pedagogy altered the teaching and learning environment.

All participants were licensed teachers who earned a GT endorsement as part of a graduate degree program at Midwestern Public University. The GT endorsement is a K-12 licensure add-on. This allows teachers to expand their ability to teach at varied grade levels or across licensure bands in Midwestern State.

In all, 28 active teachers meeting the above criteria were invited to participate in a survey requesting information about the implementation of the OA model in their teaching. Eighteen completed the survey in the Fall of 2019. Of the eighteen respondents, twelve were invited to take part in follow-up interviews based on their having used the OA model at or after a five-year teaching threshold beyond graduate degree completion. This invitation was made in Fall 2019. Eleven respondents agreed to take part in follow-up interviews targeted for Spring 2020.

This article is based on eight respondents who initially agreed to follow-up interviews, endured the COVID-19 impact on education during 2020–2022 which caused a pause in the data collection, and agreed to continuing with follow-up interviews in 2022 (see

Table 1. Participant teacher demographics.

Teacher	Gender	Overall Years Teaching	Years Using OA Model	Grade/Level	District/Building	Ethnicity	Primary Served Student Ethnicity
Carly	Female	7	5	5th/GT Specialist	Suburban	Caucasian	Caucasian
Susan	Female	16	9	3rd/Elementary	Urban	Hispanic	Black
Scott	Male	11	7	9–12/English Language Arts	Urban	Caucasian	Hispanic
Meredith	Female	8	6	9–12/Mathematics	Suburban	Caucasian	Caucasian
Connie	Female	9	5	7–8/Math and Science	Suburban	Caucasian	Caucasian
Joseph	Male	8	5	9–12/Social Studies	Urban	Black	Black
Martin	Male	11	7	4th/Elementary	Rural	Caucasian	Caucasian (Large Hispanic transient population)
Ren	Female	14	10	5–8/GT Specialist	Suburban	Caucasian	Caucasian

). Three of the original eleven interview volunteers were unable to be contacted after the COVID-19 impact. All participant teachers chose pseudonyms used in this study.

4. Analytic Framework

The empirical data for this article is a subset from a larger study associated with gaining an understanding about the nature and needs of teachers as they focused on learning how to modify or otherwise accommodate advanced-ability learners in the regular mixed-ability classroom setting and how the impact of modifications and accommodations affected learners by ability and performance band (i.e., outcomes from student completion of activities, assessments, and overall grade-level competency expectations), including how students took or avoided responsibility and ownership for their learning. In this article, the focus is specifically upon the teachers and their phenomenological experience using a pedagogical approach that was specifically developed to engage advanced-ability learners and that was not part of the undergraduate teacher education training program at Midwest Public University.

The decision to present the findings, results, and conclusions phenomenologically was purposeful. Participant teachers shared their lived experience undergoing pedagogical change from teacher-directed instructional approaches aimed at aligning instruction to assessment frameworks (Hursh [7]) to student-engaged pedagogy, which allows the learners to dictate not only the process but learning outcomes (Armstrong and McMahon [14]; hooks [15]). This is a struggle for participant teachers who are very concerned about student accountability outcomes as measured by Midwest State through mandated statewide testing.

The researcher is a trained educator, having completed teacher education prior to the shift from diagnostic testing to high-stakes accountability testing as a measure of learning and, in parallel, teacher performance (Barrett [5]; Hursh [7]). This experience is used by the researcher as a foundation for developing studies exploring the implications of the change in teaching philosophies and identifying patterns associated with curriculum design, development, theory, philosophy, and assessment practices (Scott [16]).

As a phenomenologist, I work to not interpret findings and impose my will. Rather, I provide the experiences of participants as they describe them in their words with minimal alteration other than to allow for building the narrative vignettes to address research questions and/or to highlight intriguing points of confluence (e.g., essences) amongst participant responses to questions or common experiences (Crotty [17]). I rely on my experiences of over more than twenty years as a teacher educator and researcher as the foundation for developing phenomenological questions intent on eliciting experiential responses from participants based on their lived realities (Scott [16]; van Maanen [18]).

In the next section, the experiential nodes of confluence are presented as the findings. These arose out of the initial broad survey used in the larger study and served as placeholders for eliciting deeper engagement with participant teachers about their specific change-process experience. These experiential nodes were offered to teacher participants with the request they respond back with their take on what I considered intriguing essences of the discussions across the complete group of teacher participants.

The conclusion section of this article was co-constructed with the teacher participants to verify the integrity of the phenomenological work and allow each teacher participant to provide readers with their self-determined most important contribution to the effort of understanding the pedagogical change process (see Banks et al. [19] and Martin [20] for a discussion about co-constructed research). The findings were provided to teacher participants for background and verification prior to co-construction of the conclusion section. This was an iterative process of honing and clarifying until all stakeholders felt confident the findings and conclusions met the mark for presenting the complex lived realities of undergoing philosophical pedagogical change. The process involved two revisions of the findings (but no rejection of the nodes of confluence) and three rounds of revisions of the conclusion to complete. Dialogic conversations primarily occurred via telephone and through email attachments.

5. Findings

The following sub-headings represent nodes of confluence in the experiences shared by participant teachers during interviews. They are specific to this study and should not be considered generalizable or exhaustive of the pedagogical change process. They represent the experiences of the participant teachers in this study who have a longitudinal relationship with the researcher—who served as a graduate teacher educator and gifted education specialist during their process of earning a GT teaching license endorsement.

5.1. On Pedagogical Change

The role of a teacher is believed to be clear but hardly is based on social and cultural biases existing within the structure of education. Schools emulate a production or assembly line. Raw materials (unschooled children) enter and work their way through the grades ultimately graduating, with benchmarks set for assessing the progress and overall worth of the educational process. These benchmarks are meant to be waypoints for the learning process in order to assess both the student’s abilities and the teacher’s instructional processes as meeting the required benchmarks. The outcome of the benchmark assessment is to measure progress and serve as a diagnostic indicator for where additional resources or retooling need to occur for course correction leading to the ultimate goal—a graduated competent citizen—at the end of the public school structure. Over time, the diagnostic intent of benchmark assessments has been replaced by value measures, making yearly competency testing very much a high-stakes enterprise for both learners and teachers (Barrett [5]).

The aforementioned brief historical overview of social changes and perceptions about education, teaching, and learning has led to an emphasis on measurement as the sine qua non of yearly schooling. As test performance and adequate yearly progress outcomes are used to both quantify and qualify the value of schooling, down to the level of individual classrooms, educators (teachers and administrators) have narrowed instruction to home in on what the assessments measure in an effort to assist students in performing well on “the tests”.

This instructional narrowing also includes streamlining curriculums based on knowledge acquisition expectations associated with each grade level. Instructors work to dial in knowledge coverage to meet the standardized tests.

This leads to school-building-level emphasis on identifying what instructional strategy works best to prepare students for successful performance on the standardized tests. Innovative practices or any pedagogical change that does not align with what has been identified as directly preparing students for standardized testing is risky. So much so that teachers within a building will often shun a teacher who is even considering pedagogical change. And new teachers are often assigned a mentor who trains them on not only what to teach but how to do so in order to uphold test score expectations. There is a high degree of striving for instructional conformity in grade levels and within school buildings where students have historically been meeting standardized performance outcomes.

As a teacher educator for more than twenty years, the researcher has repeatedly experienced pre-service and first-year teachers frustrated by the lack of support in their field placements (or first job setting) for any pedagogical approach not currently used in the setting. Indeed, years of follow-up conversations with hundreds of teachers underscores the following composite advice provided to teacher candidates and first-year teachers: “Forget what they taught you in teacher training. You need to teach the way we know works so students perform well on the tests. You don’t want to be trying anything that jeopardizes students’ scores if you want to get and/or keep your job”.

The researcher sought participants for this study knowing that the pressure to conform to expected teacher behaviors during the first years of in-service work beyond learning a student-engaged pedagogical approach was palpable for newly trained graduate degree teachers. Indeed, this is commonly something I point out to graduate students. As Joseph (personal communication, November 2021) shared, “You gave us a pass on the expectation we would use the OA model our first year teaching after learning about it. At the time, I thought that sounded ridiculous. Why would you teach us something and not expect us to use it in our classrooms right away?”.

Seeking teachers who had more experience and thus confidence in their ability to adapt instructional approaches and implement student-engaging strategies to meet learner needs seemed a worthwhile endeavor in order to address the research questions. Secondarily, teachers with more years in service also had the ability to be reflective across a greater expanse of experience.

5.2. Once Rhythms of the School Year Are Experienced/Recognized

“As I reflect back on those first couple of years of teaching, I did experience the pressure to conform along with the dread of knowing I was working each day just to survive and stay one step ahead of the avalanche of paperwork teachers are required to gather and complete as evidence of learning. I wasn’t prepared for that. I was so naive. I thought teaching was, well, teaching” (Joseph, personal communication, November 2021).

As participant teachers became more comfortable with the unfolding rhythms of the school year, they describe a change in focus in their instruction. Emphasis shifted to student needs instead of personal survival.

“It took me two years of moving through the school year before things began to slow down for me. Once this happened, I could focus on what was, and wasn’t, working in my teaching—and why” (Meredith, personal communication, September 2021). For Meredith, this meant the ability to identify the background experiences students came to class with and where they both excelled and were limited ability-wise.

For Scott (personal communication, August 2021), “two years in I finally stopped believing what other experienced teachers kept telling me I needed to do to survive. I started believing in me and what my eyes and heart told me were important. That meant I needed to focus on the kids, not just surviving and pushing hard to cover standards”. This shift in confidence provided the impetus to change his teaching from covering content to addressing student needs. “Once I began meeting kids where they were developmentally and ability-level, there was a shift in the culture of my classroom. Things became calmer and more positive overall. Kids stopped being so challenging and softened up to learning” (Scott, personal communication, August 2021).

5.3. On Pushing Past the Pressure to Conform

Participant teachers all spoke about the unsettling first years of teaching as a time where very little experimentation or differentiation happened in their classrooms. Most felt anguish that they got the job done but looking back did not give students opportunities to truly learn. “I used to focus on the low-level learners… I would ‘drill’ students to the point anyone with the competencies was bored to death and stopped learning while they were waiting for others to catch up. Looking back, I personally failed a lot of kids who could learn a lot more than I was offering” (Connie, personal communication, October 2021). Connie admitted that her pursuit of a graduate degree had a lot to do with knowing she needed more teaching expertise. Other participant teachers had a similar drive. And some teacher lore also prompted the majority of respondents to seek the GT license endorsement as part of their graduate degree program.

I heard from many seasoned teachers that they wished they would have done GT and pushed me to get the credential so I wouldn’t have to deal with all the problems. I focused on picking up the GT endorsement because it provided a way for me to broaden my employability and to work with kids who would be easier to deal with on a daily basis.

(Meredith, personal communication, September 2021)

The teacher myth that GT students are motivated and easy to work is far from reality. “I had no idea that the GT kids were not highly motivated and also were the most challenging group to teach. This became obvious during the several practicum experiences required as part of the GT endorsement” (Meredith, personal communication, September 2021).

All participant teachers shared that the myth that GT students are easy to work with had a negative impact on how other teachers viewed them. And this negativity had an impact on their professional sense of self.

I only hear from other teachers without GT training how lucky I am and that it must be so easy to work with the bright kids, the ones who do the work and aren’t daily challenges. I’ve stopped trying to push back on this myth. It only saps my energy. I just live with other teachers’ negative thoughts about my ‘luck’ to have such a cushy job.

(Carly, personal communication, November 2021)

Carly took a position as a Gifted/Talented specialist, and part of her contract required her to earn the GT Endorsement specialization for her license within the first two years of teaching.

I was an anomaly to other teachers, so no one tried to mentor me into compliance with their expectations about what I should be doing. This gave me freedom but left me disconnected from other teachers. I am glad I already had two years of teaching experience before switching into this role as a GT specialist. I already knew my teaching needed to change.

(Carly, personal communication, November 2021)

This incentivized her to immediately implement anything she learned during her graduate work.

Ability-wise, my students are probably the most diverse group of 5th graders you’ll find. Some are brilliant in mathematics but only reading at a 3rd-grade level. Others are very empathetic but inept at following even simple directions in a sequence. But I only hear from other teachers without GT training that it must be so easy to work with the bright kids, the ones who do the work and aren’t daily challenges. I’ve stopped trying to push back on this myth. It only saps my energy.

(Carly, personal communication, November 2021)

Pressure to conform to existing ways of doing things—the status quo. Surviving the transition into in-service teaching. Understanding that high-ability and identified Gifted/Talented students are not the easy children to teach. Realizing that prior experience and expectations about learning do not seem to match the reality of classrooms. These aspects of being a teacher are unrealized by newcomers to the profession yet present great stress on the ability of teachers to adapt to the environment they teach within.

Adaptation to conditions can also mean a constantly changing student population. In urban settings, non-attendance patterns and student movement due to family circumstances compound the ability for teachers to merely cover the content. And in rural agricultural settings, other accommodations need to be addressed. Martin (personal communication, September 2021), an experienced teacher who professionally moved to a new rural school district, shared:

A unique aspect of this setting is that we have a large—upwards of 25%—influx of students in the fall due to the migrant worker families that follow the agricultural picking seasons for work. From mid-September to late October, every seat is filled in the building and an almost constant din of multiple languages can be heard in the hallways.

My first couple of years working here were very challenging since I do not speak any Spanish. It was very difficult communicating until I started to pick up the language from being immersed in it and needing to communicate. I initially thought the migrant kids were way behind, because my assumption was that they were never in any one place long enough to learn and that they weren’t communicating in English.

Out of necessity, I immediately put into practice the OA model. I needed to get kids active as soon as possible, but lacked any knowledge about where they were developmentally as they entered my classroom. Teachers will tell you it takes sometimes an entire grading period of 9 weeks or so to get to know your students well enough to be able to meet needs. I don’t have that luxury.

Martin provided an example, shaped by necessity, for moving to a student-driven pedagogical approach. Recognizing that student responsibility and ownership of learning was crucial to success, Martin was willing to, as he stated, “give over control to the children in the hopes I could get a handle on teaching methods that worked even if I was uncomfortable”.

He remained committed to learning what he needed to be successful.

In my case, A, I couldn’t communicate well. B, I didn’t know the children. C, at least a quarter of my class was going to be with me for only about 9 weeks total. And D, I had a lot of negative biases about migrant worker families that tainted my thinking and planning… What I learned was that the children were very bright, and my preconceived notions were a huge detriment to my teaching… I credit the OA model with making me understand that control for learning has to be in the hands of the children. I can steer things to make sure we address competencies, but the children enact learning and enjoy it much more when they have choice and decision-making authority… I’m just the guide trying to orchestrate the chaos and fun that happens each day.

(Martin, personal communication, September 2021)

5.4. On Camaraderie in Teaching

Like all individuals acclimating to a new setting, teachers look for support from their work peers in order to gauge their job performance. Teaching is a primarily solo action during the day, but outcomes are judged in the aggregate on student performance comparisons. Does the peer negativity described above impact early in-service teachers’ classroom pedagogy?

The results from this study provide a foundation for future work on this topic. For instance, Connie (personal communication, October 2021) stated plainly, “Peer pressure and fitting in is so important in junior high school—for kids and for teachers trying to get their footing”.

“I was frustrated with my teaching and tired of listening to other teachers [complain] but do nothing. I didn’t want to be one of those teachers—even though I knew changing my teaching was going to put me on the outs with the other teachers. And it did,” stated Joseph (personal communication, November 2021).

As the new teacher in the building, I wanted to fit in with the other teachers. I listened to them and tried what they said to try with little success. I broke from my peers and began involving students in making choices for learning. It worked for the kids. A lot began performing really well. The downside was a lot of bridges were burned with my colleagues. I was no longer a team player, and several said I was making everyone else look bad.

(Susan, personal communication, October 2021)

The other five participant teachers shared similar peer relationship stories. The evidence suggests the embedded culture of teaching in schools is an impediment to pedagogical change, even if clear evidence exists that change is warranted and needed.

6. Conclusions

Participant teachers did overcome impediments, changing their pedagogical approach from teacher-directed to student-engaged approaches over time. Each shared their particular circumstances for needing to change their teaching approach. In all instances, student performance and outcomes drove and supported continued expansion of the change process.

Each participant teacher shares their self-described most important contribution to this study in the following paragraphs. This written conclusion was co-constructed by the researcher and participant teachers through a process of revision and “member checking” until all approved the final output below as appropriately representing their individual experience and the overall pedagogical-change experience addressing the research questions.

Most respondents commented on how being introduced to the Open Architecture model (OA) was foundational to their willingness to experimentally implement change, then reflect on the results before judging the worth or viability of continuing and/or extending the pedagogical approach. Joseph shared a common theme:

I pulled out my old notes and did what you suggested… I shared with my students that we were going to try something experimental—one time to see what happens. They absolutely loved it. There was an excitement in this class that I had not experienced to that point of the year—it was the third quarter when I ran the OA experiment. The most shocking thing to me was that my non-producers were begging for more activities using the OA model… OA showed immediate positive results, but I was feeling too stressed and overworked to use it more… It was at this point that I took a hard look at what I was doing as a teacher. I decided I would spend the summer building out OA activities and units for my classes. It was a lot of work, but I wasn’t going to let down any more students… These kids don’t have many opportunities to shine, and their grades in other classes show it. In my class using OA work, they soar.

(Joseph, personal communication, November 2021)

Cultural differences were also pointed out as enabling learning when children were charged with taking control of their learning. For Martin, this was a pleasant surprise:

What I found was that OA allowed all the children to be resilient and helpful to one another. My first OA theme was on community, giving the children the opportunity to focus on each other instead of me and suffering through the content I was trying to present… They learned from each other and were very willing to teach each other about their cultures. What I learned was that the children were very bright, and my preconceived notions [about migrant individuals] were a huge detriment to my teaching… I can steer things to make sure we address competencies, but the children enact learning and enjoy it much more when they have choice and decision-making authority… Parents also credit me with their children’s independence and confidence in learning. I try to tell them it’s the model and the children… All of this came about because I was panicked and launched into using the OA model, hoping to survive—not expecting to thrive.

(Martin, personal communication, September 2021)

And Susan described overcoming the impediment of teachers feeling they need to control the learning environment cogently:

The only way I can meet the broadest set of needs for children is using the OA model to let them take responsibility and ownership of their learning. Once I put OA into action, a lot more children started getting involved in class and learning. This relieved a lot of pressure I was feeling to control everything… I have found that more than 85% of children who excel in my class turn up identified as Gifted/Talented when tested in 4th grade… OA works for, and with, the low-income, high-needs minority students that I serve. I have strong evidence of this and try to share it often with my teaching colleagues, who feel pressure, stress, and despair about trying to control and meet the complex needs of the children.

(Susan, personal communication, October 2021)

While Connie poignantly described a sad truth happening in many classrooms: “OA gave me a way to stop feeling like I had to control and plan for every ability level in the classroom—which meant I only planned for the least able in reality, leaving the other kids just waiting to learn something new” (Connie, personal communication, October 2021).

How would participant teachers continue using OA and/or broaden their pedagogical approaches to provide more learner responsibility for and ownership of education and less teacher-directed approaches?

One reality of the OA model is it takes time to prepare students for implementation. Teachers might feel pressure to be teaching content because there is so much to get covered in a year—but you have to build the foundation so learners can take charge. It took me a couple years to get evidence that what initially felt like I wasn’t making any progress with the students for the first half of a grading period actually gave us the ability to fly through content, especially in the second half of the year when the kids really take ownership for their learning. Each year, I look forward to the second semester. I don’t feel forced to teach content. I more or less sit back, ask probing questions, and am in awe of how far my class is able to go.

(Carly, personal communication, November 2021)

I firmly believe OA gives me a way to let the wheat separate from the chaff so I can build challenging materials for the brightest children in my class—who often complain that school is boring for them when they enter my classroom at the beginning of the year. OA works for, and with, the low-income, high-needs minority students that I serve.

(Susan, personal communication, October 2021)

Students become consumed by the work they choose to take on. They work hard, and typically their performance is head and shoulders above what I see submitted up to the point of launching the OA activities… [OA] allows the best students to really shine and go way beyond my grade-level expectations for their performance. As I have built more OA activities into the curriculum, I see an increasing percentage of students come around to taking ownership for their learning—becoming excited to learn.

(Scott, personal communication, August 2021)

“I knew I needed to get better pedagogy experience and worked hard to learn how OA worked, right along with my students… Challenging? Yes. Beneficial? Yes—to me and students. We all learned how to learn, which was eye-opening to me” (Meredith, personal communication, September 2021).

With OA, students have a lot more control of their learning, and my job is to serve as a guide instead of being the font of knowledge for them. It takes some time and practice for students to learn how to be responsible for their learning. They are pushed to being compliant to authority—the teacher—and not challenging what the teacher says or does. That has to be unlearned, and the kids need to develop a level of trust in you that just doesn’t exist in most classrooms. You have to show and continuously model a questioning mindset. And you have to show confidence in them so they begin to feel able to take charge of learning without being punished or otherwise called out in front of peers… I love this about my teaching.

(Connie, personal communication, October 2021)

I have earned teaching awards and recognition from students stating that my class was one that gave them hope that learning was something challenging, but in their control. I am so glad you reached out to us to get feedback about the OA experience we had in class, in practicum and on into our teaching lives. My students owe you a great deal; I owe you a great deal. You planted seeds in us and hoped that they would sprout. In my case, the seeds sprouted and blossomed—and my teaching but especially my students have grown exponentially from the experience.

(Joseph, personal communication, November 2021)

“I’m just the guide trying to orchestrate the chaos and fun that happens each day. I have many OA themes we roll with each year. And it’s really nice to see the migrant families, who come back seasonally. They are very warm people and share how much their children absolutely loved our time together” (Martin, personal communication, September 2021).

It took time and evidence, but… I made a lot of headway—both with the regular ed teachers who had a lot of preconceptions, but with the students as well as they took ownership of their learning, which is what the OA model encourages… I’m now several years into using OA and campaigning with the regular ed teachers in our district on behalf of the GT kids. There is broad awareness that GT learners have huge ability differences—both strengths and limitations. And I get invited into regular ed classrooms to co-teach the curriculum so there is tight alignment between GT enrichment and the regular ed curriculum.

(Ren, personal communication, August 2021)

7. Pandemic Interruption/Disruption, an Important Limitation, and Future Considerations

This overarching study was begun prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The follow-up interview-phase of the work, analysis, and co-constructed conclusion for this article occurred after various COVID-19 impacts (e.g., building closures, requirement to teach hybrid courses/grade levels, requirement to teach distance learning without training or equipment, requirement to be available to students/families well beyond regular school hours, etc.) participant teachers endured within their local school districts. A significant impact on teaching, student behavior, student performance, and overall mental health was noted by every participant teacher. Indeed, the majority of the raw interview data tethered to the pandemic, which participant teachers were unable to set aside since direct impacts remained as present as at the beginning of the pandemic on everyone’s professional and personal lives.

I chose not to include these results in this article since the emphasis herein was upon exploring the process participant teachers underwent during the transformation of their teaching approaches to be more pedagogically student-engaged and facilitative rather than teacher-directed.

This process fundamentally occurred prior to the impact imposed upon education by COVID-19. Another article is in preparation associated with the rich and deep results provided by participant teachers regarding their lived experiences working through the pandemic.

The longitudinal documentation, interpretation, and discussion about the application of theory and curricular models is scant in the teaching and learning literature. Each teaching/learning situation and setting is different, making it very difficult to identify scalable approaches that can be generalized or at a minimum transferred across the sector. This is an area ripe for research, with the hope that this article provides an attractive point for additional work in this area.

Ironically, the difficulty of generalizability supports broad-based pedagogical training for educators. Having an array of options available for implementation means a greater likelihood of meeting learner needs appropriately and differentiating the curriculum to best provide students with a manageable level of developmental challenge (Vygotsky [21]). As detailed in this article, under-explored teacher culture and the press to conform impacted early-career teachers more so than a lack of pedagogical knowledge. This is an area in need of broader descriptive accounting and empirical research.

A noteworthy result that was discussed by each participant teacher was that student performance and outcomes drove and supported the continued expansion of the pedagogy change process. Based on my experience, this result should be used as a focal point for teacher educators and consultants seeking to overcome skepticism of pre- and in-service teachers undergoing advanced curricular training.

The longitudinal and more personal nature of the relationship existing between the participant teachers and researcher provides a level of trust which, I believe, is unique and should be noted as both a strength and possible limitation of this study. Did I capture the essence of truth? Or the benevolence of helpful former students contributing to my research? That is this qualitative researcher’s constant waypoint for checking back into the literature, looking for parsimony with others’ findings and results, constant “member checking” with research participants, and broadening my methodological repertoire to diversify empirical approaches to understanding.

Future empirical work in teacher development and in-service pedagogical change can be fruitful in promoting awareness about and understanding the issues associated with teacher retention, especially in association with the conformity pressure placed on teachers to continue using teacher-directed instructional methods in order to keep test scores high. This empirical work is best approached initially through a qualitative research lens in order to add breadth and depth to the descriptive accounts of beginning teachers who often feel they are merely fighting for survival during the first years of in-service teaching.