Negotiating identity and science teaching in a high-stakes testing environment: an elementary teacher’s perceptions

To document, examine, and explicate the interactional and contingent characters of practice, identity, and action, I video recorded science lessons that Daisy taught during 2003–2005 school years. My major interest was in the science classroom settings in which Daisy’s actions and interactions occurred because video recording provided me with the opportunities to analyze the emerging uniqueness of those ecologies and participants. In addition, video recording afforded me to observe individuals (Daisy and her students) in action such as participating in science manipulations, using science artifacts, discussing about science experiments and outcomes, and participating in the organizational frameworks. Similarly, by video recording Daisy’s science lessons I was also able to capture social and professional interactions that occurred during science lessons such as negotiations, identity formation, shared understanding, trajectories of teaching science through inquiry, and student engagement. Thus, video recordings provided me with the real time contextual resources with which to analyze ‘situated’ actions as they emerged within the local ecologies. Video ethnography therefore allows me to present a complex and overlapping multiple identities of Daisy in an elementary science classroom. Video ethnography also allows me to describe these multiple identities and map their development over time. In addition, video ethnography helps to record the interactions between teacher and context during the teacher’s career growth. To further understand Daisy’s actions and interactions during the science lessons several interviews were conducted based on the video recordings. All the interviews were tape recorded and transcribed. The interviews allowed me to clarify what was said, why it was said and in what ways, thus allowing me to begin to explore potential relationships between aspects of the actions and the interactions both at the personal and the professional levels.

I videotaped 10 science lessons spread over an 8-month period during 2003–2005. Each lesson was approximately 40 min in duration. During the videotaping, the camera followed Daisy to capture the interactions between the students and her, Daisy’s classroom decisions, and curricular choices. I interviewed Daisy on a total of eight occasions. All the interviews lasted between 60 and 90 min. Four of those interviews were based on the videotaped lessons. Daisy was interviewed based on the videotaped lessons with stimulated recall format interviews. I chose 3-3-min segments from teacher’s videos after reviewing, analyzing, and summarizing the footage. Daisy was not told about this choice of video segments. The second set of three interviews was based on Daisy’s personal life experiences, beliefs, goals, and on reflections about her practice as an elementary teacher. Semi-structured interview questions were used during both the interviews. I wrote reflective summaries of classroom observations. These observations included student teacher interactions, curriculum enactment processes, Daisy’s comments, and school and classroom social contexts. Daisy was observed at least three times per month for 8 months.