Instructional Decision Making and Agency of Community College Mathematics Faculty.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates instructional decision making of community college mathematics instructors and examines the similarities and differences in reasons and agency between full- and part-time faculty. Understanding instructional decisions gives insight about why teachers teach the way they do, knowledge that can then be used to effectively implement new reform practices. By drawing on socio-cultural and psychological perspectives to examine teachers’ decision making I acknowledge the role that the social context, beyond the immediate instructional situation, plays on individual teachers and their decision making. Using constant comparative analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics, I examine the discourse from professional development sessions for two groups of faculty—full-time (N=11) and part-time (N=9) faculty. In the sessions the instructors discussed animations of a trigonometry lesson in which classroom norms were breached in various ways. This discussion included justifications for actions represented in the animation and actions the instructors would take. The analysis demonstrates that these instructors draw on two kinds of rationales, professional and personal, that justify instructional decisions. No difference was found in the types of reasons discussed between the full- and part-time faculty, but there was a difference in the agency conveyed by the two groups and in the dynamics of the group discussion. Compared to the full-time faculty, the part-time faculty indicated significantly less agency and more frequently indicated requirement in their instructional decisions. The part-time group positioned themselves more as equals and their discussion was more open and collaborative than that of the full-time faculty. The difference in agency between the full- and part-time faculty illustrates the need to attend to the socio-cultural and psychological influences on teacher decision making, in particular to how the working environment influences individual teachers’ decision making. Based on these findings, I argue for the need of a theory on why teachers teach the way they do that attends to teachers as individuals and the environment in which they teach so that the interaction between the two can be further examined.