Mediating research and practice: The dilemmas of designing didactic sequences by integrating teacher knowledge and research on teachingEntre recherche et pratiques : concevoir des séquences didactiques en intégrant les savoirs des enseignants et ceux de la recherche

Abstract

Dans cet article, nous discutons les possibles rapports dynamiques entre recherche, politique et pratiques, à partir du ré-examen d’une expérience d’un an de développement de matériels didactiques avec des enseignants d’écoles multi-niveaux situées en milieu rural. Nous cherchons à montrer et comprendre la dialectique entre, d’une part, notre savoir, construit dans le domaine de la recherche académique sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage et, d’autre part, le savoir acquis par les enseignants à travers leur formation et leur expérience. Notre point de vue rejoint celui des chercheurs plaidant pour une collaboration étroite entre équipes de recherche et enseignants en exercice, comme moyen de dépasser les résistances aux réformes pédagogiques introduites par des experts extérieurs ou par les autorités hiérarchiques.
Mots-clés (TESE) : didactique, réforme de l’enseignement, recherche, classe hétérogène, savoir

Full text

ÉCOLE NORMALE SUPÉRIEURE DE LYON
Institut français de l’Éducation
Recherche, politique
et pratiques en éducation /2
Coordonné par Sylvain Doussot
& Jean-Yves Rochex
Numéro 201
octobre-novembre-décembre 2017

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DOSSIER–RECHERCHE, POLITIQUE ET PRATIQUES EN ÉDUCATION /2
Espaces, acteurs et supports de médiation
Introduction 5
Claude Lessard – Le Conseil supérieur de l’éducation du Québec: un organisme
de représentation citoyenne pour éclairer les politiques publiques en éducation 7
Denis Paget – Le Conseil supérieur des programmes: un OVNI dans le ciel de l’Éducation nationale ? 19
Entretien avec Anne Armand – Les inspecteurs généraux, entre décideurs et chercheurs en éducation 27
Marie Gaussel, Anne-Françoise Gibert, Claire Joubaire & Olivier Rey – Quelles définitions
du passeur en éducation ? 35
Xavier Pons – Réforme administrative et recherche dans les revues d’interface: l’exemple
de l’accountability en éducation en France 41
Elsie Rockwell, Tatiana Mendoza von der Borch, Valeria Rebolledo Angulo & María Esther
Tapia Álvarez – Mediating research and practice: The dilemmas of designing didactic sequences
by integrating teacher knowledge and research on teaching 53
Réjane Monod-Ansaldi, Michèle Prieur, Bertille Joseph, Benoît Meslin, Isabelle Lermigeaux-
Sarrade &Séverine Thiboud – Les fonctions de passeur à l’épreuve de l’expérimentation au sein
de l’institut Carnot de l’Éducation 61
VARIA
Olivia Gross & Rémi Gagnayre – Caractéristiques des savoirs des patients et liens avec leurs pouvoirs
d’action: implication pour la formation médicale 71
Isabelle Roux-Baron, Sylvie Cèbe & Roland Goigoux – Évaluation des premiers ef fets
d’un enseignement fondé sur l’outil didactique Narramus à l’école maternelle 83
Bruno Vilette, Jean-Paul Fischer, Emmanuel Sander, Gérard Sensevy, Serge Quilio
& Jean-François Richard – Peut-on améliorer l’enseignement et l’apprentissage de l’arithmétique
au CP ? Le dispositif ACE 105
NOTES CRITIQUES
Ebersold Serge – Éducation inclusive : privilège ou droit ? (Marianne Woollven) 121
Octobre Sylvie & Dallaire Christine (dir.) – Jeunes et cultures, dialogue franco-québécois
(Olivier Vanhée) 125
Wineburg Sam – Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) (Lucie Gomes) 124
ABSTRACTS 127
s o m m a i r e

Mediating research and practice:
The dilemmas of designing didactic
sequences by integrating teacher
knowledge and research on teaching
Elsie Rockwell
Tatiana Mendoza von der Borch
Valeria Rebolledo Angulo
María Esther Tapia Álvarez
Dans cet article, nous discutons les possibles rapports dynamiques entre recherche, politique et pratiques,
à partir du ré-examen d’une expérience d’un an de développement de matériels didactiques avec des
enseignants d’écoles multi-niveaux situées en milieu rural. Nous cherchons à montrer et comprendre la
dialectique entre, d’une part, notre savoir, construit dans le domaine de la recherche académique sur l’en-
seignement et l’apprentissage et, d’autre part, le savoir acquis par les enseignants à travers leur formation
et leur expérience. Notre point de vue rejoint celui des chercheurs plaidant pour une collaboration étroite
entre équipes de recherche et enseignants en exercice, comme moyen de dépasser les résistances aux
réformes pédagogiques introduites par des experts extérieurs ou par les autorités hiérarchiques.
Mots-clés (TESE) : didactique, réforme de l’enseignement, recherche, classe hétérogène, savoir
Introduction
The dynamics of mediation between research, policy
and practice has proved to be an extremely complex
process, largely ignored in mainstream educational
discourse. One facet arises between specialist or
“expert” knowledge constructed in the context of
research laboratories and the specific knowledge tea-
chers gain and constr uct through years of training and
classroom practice. In this article we approach this
aspect through a reflection on a year-long experience
in conducting a workshop with teachers for the 53-60
dossier

purpose of producing didactic strate gies for math and
language instruction in multigrade schools. Our
documentation of the experience offers ample insight
into the tensions and outcomes of a di alogue between
academic research on teaching and learning and the
knowledge that teachers use in everyday practice. In
framing our perspective, we drew on scholars who
have called for closer collaboration between research
teams and in-service teachers as a way to overcome
perceived teacher resistance to educational policies
and reforms imposed by authorities or proposed by
external experts.
Our experience is framed in a context marked by
this dilemma, as the federal government in Mexico,
following international trends, had launched an edu-
cational reform (2013-2018) reinforcing centralized
control, instating high -stakes teacher assessment, and
imposing a highly-scripted and regulated universal
curriculum. The continual modifications of the national
competency-based curriculum since 2009 as well as
the recent teacher assessm ent and recertification p ro-
cess have led education authorities to fund a series of
required short-term courses, generally outsourced and
wrapped in the dis course of ef ficiency and qualit y. For
example, teachers had to take a course on producing
the “evidence” they were required to submit online as
part of the evaluation of their practice. Most courses
provoke, as Gather Thurler (2000) notes, rejection and
defensive strategie s among teachers. The trend has led
to the teachers’ belief that it is useless to seek training
with distant “exper ts” who are unaware of their specif ic
problems and needs; paradoxically, it has also culti-
vated a simulated acceptance among teachers that
only “the experts” are knowledgeable.
Our project took place before the new curriculum
was launched, and was situated in a rather marginal
niche, as local educ ational authorities in one state had
obtained minimal f ederal funding to foster the aims of
“equity and inclusion” in mu ltigrade schools located in
rural communities. O ur task was to design and conduct
a 60-hour workshop with 200 multigrade K-9 teachers
in order to develop better didactic strategies for math
and language instruction. We1 interviewed around
1 We always refers to the research team, which included
Rockwell, a senior researcher specialize d in the history and anthro-
pology of s chool cultures and t eacher practice s; Rebolledo Angu lo,
an anthropologist with a doctorate in Educational Research, who
had conducted an ethnographic study on language teaching in a
bilingual one-room primary school; Tapia Álvarez, an elementary
school teac her and teacher-trai ner specialized i n language instruc-
24candidates proposed by the local team in charge of
the project and incorporated 11 of them as facilitators
(a term recently used in official documents). They had
different educational and professional trajectories and
worked in the different levels and modalities of the
school system2. Most had previous experience in lea-
ding courses or workshops for teachers. Although they
had not designed didactic materials before, their
knowledge of the rural communities and of the every-
day functioning of the school system were most
valuable. We worked closely with them to design the
workshop, yet they were directly in charge of sessions
with the teachers. When we decided to produce the
manual (Rockwell, Rebolledo Angulo, Mendoza
vonderBorch etal. 2017), they also contributed to the
final elaboration and design of the strategies that had
been agreed upon in each group.
The experience posed theoretical as well as prac-
tical challenges. While recent international mandates
have promoted the importation of foreign “evi-
dence-based best practices”, many comparativists
signal the need to attend to contextual diversity and
to develop viable practices based on research conduc-
ted with local educators (Steiner-Khamsi 2000). The
first approach stresses a hierarchical opposition
between expert knowledge and practical experience
and has often generated further resistance to educa-
tional innovation. In Mexico, the situation has been
aggravated by the political urgency of a top-down
implementation of radical reforms through a centra-
lized and hierarchical institutional structure (Ezpeleta
2004, 416), intent on generating laws, regulations and
directives in order to prescribe and control classroom
practices. The apparent failure of a recent reform
(2006-2011) headed by delegates of the off icial teacher
union led to the opposite pole, a fast-track enactment
of educational laws (2013) and adoption of policies
designed by experts, largely following international
models, with complete exclusion of the teacher corps.
Meanwhile, the slow process of educational
research in Mexico has been caught in the middle ter-
rain, although it has produced valuable knowledge
tion and Mendoza von der Borch, with long experience in teacher
training and textbook production in mathematics. Moisés García,
specialized in mathematics instruction, was also part of the team.
The projec t was financed by the Ministry of Education of Tlaxcala
(USET) and the Cinvestav.
2 These included regular preschools, 6-year primar y school and
3-year rur al secondary sch ools, plus a few indi genous bilingual a nd
special education schools, all with multigrade groups.
Revue française de pédagogie | 201 | octobre-novembre-décembre 2017
5 4

both of didactic sequences that favor significant lear-
ning and an unders tanding of the constraints and pos-
sibilities of actua l classroom situations and local schoo l
cultures. In this context, work with rural multigrade
schools, marked by greater diversity and difficult tea-
ching conditions, of fered us a test-case for the integra -
tion of our research knowledge with the teachers’
experience in the development of viable teaching
strategies. Th e present analysis allows us to retrace our
steps and examine t he interface between te aching and
research cultures, understood not as closed systems
but rather as interlacing networks of knowledge, pers-
pective and argu mentation. The experien ce led, in this
case, to tentative though valuable outcomes.
Theoretical challenges
The discrepancy or incongruity between the perspec-
tives of researchers and those of classroom teachers
has been well documented. Over a century ago, John
Dewey (1902) addressed th e issue of apparent rejection
of novel pedagogical proposals designed to “follow
the nature of the child” by analyzing closely the “edu-
cational situation” that placed constraints upon what
teachers were actually able to do within the existing
spaces and times of schooling, given the impinging
administrative and bureaucratic structures and the
normative content of the curriculum. Subsequent
research on teaching and change has substantiated
this view, as teachers resist pedagogical and curricular
norms handed down through governing bodies (Tyack
&Cuban 1995; Fullan 2016; Gather Thurler 2000; Viñao
2001; Westbury 2008) or fashion their own teaching
cultures through selective hybridization of novel pro-
posals and previous practice (Anderson-Levitt 2001).
As a result, teachers are held responsible for not
following the official prescriptions and thus causing
the “failure” of reforms. In contrast, Fullan (2016) has
argued that the cause of the “spectacular lack of suc-
cess” of social reforms is ne glecting to understand th at
teachers experience changes differently from the way
they were planned. Le vinson and Sutton have pointed
to the need to study “policy as/in practice” (Sutton
&Levinson 2001; cf. Westbury 2008) in order to com-
prehend the successive mediations that take place
between initial policy formulation and actual reper-
cussions in classrooms. Others argue that the imple-
mentation of refor ms is hampered by the intervention
of multiple actors who operate in a relatively frag-
mented and contradictory manner ( Viñao 2001; Fullan
2016). In fact, reformed curricula, laid out in lengthy
specialized do cuments, tend to accumulate ever more
contents to be taught in the same fixed time-frame
(year, grade or level). Given the strong temporal
constraints of scho oling, teachers are forced to choose
and adapt, as covering all that is mandated would be
virtually impossible (Chartier 2007).
The specific logics of policy-makers, researchers
and teachers are often at odds when converging on
the classroom situation, giving the impression that
school cultures are inherently conservative. Yet Viñao
has also pointed out the “danger of giving an exces-
sively stable and immutable impression of the educa-
tion institutions […] The very same school culture is
something alive and changing, with its own internal
dynamic… creating its own products [and] transfor-
ming and adapting them to its requirements and
digesting successive education reforms” (2001, 43).
Thus, rather than understanding “cultures of schoo-
ling” or “teacher cultures” as obstacles to change, we
might heed scholars who seek to understand the
ongoing assembly of the knowledge required for tea-
ching through selective appropriations of traditions,
resources and innovations, and their adaptation to
particular sociopolitical and cultural contexts over
long periods of time (Isambert-Jamati 1990; Chervel
1998; Rockwell 1999; Anderson-Levitt 2001).
By studying the complexity of the actual reforms,
many scholars have moved away from notions such as
“adoption” and “implementation” of educational inno-
vation towards models of mutual collaboration and
construction of p roposals between classroom tea chers
and researchers. For example, Perrenoud’s sixth
“challenge” for training teachers is to “begin with, but
not be bounded by, [teachers’] practices and expe-
riences in order to compare, explain and theorize
[them]…” (Perrenoud 2001, ch.8). Perrin-Glorian (2009)
has problematized the transmission to teachers of
didactic situations designed through controlled
research (Brousseau 1998); she suggests that design
should include fro m the beginning « a much more dia-
lectical adaptation in relation to ordinary [classroom]
practice » (2009, 68)3. The problem becomes one of
determining which elements of the proposed activity
are fundamental for the students to ac tively construct
3 “…il s’agit de passer de l’idée de transmission qui pose le
problème de façon descendante de la recherche vers l’enseignement
à une idée d’adaptation beaucoup plus dialectique relativement
aux pratiques ordinaires” (Perrin-Glorian 2009, 68).
5 5
Mediating research and practice DOSSIER

concepts, and which can be modified by teachers as
they appropriate and adapt the didactic proposals to
their own classroom conditions and ways of teaching.
She also insists on modifying the original proposals
themselves when th ey prove to be unsuitable or unma-
nageable in ordinary classroom conditions or to
require too heavy an investment of time and materials
on the part of teachers.
In practice, we found that reframing the “interface
of research with teaching” is easier to imagine than to
achieve. Given the short time-span of our workshop
—60 hours per group in four 12-hour sessions held
every two weeks—we decided to begin with contents
and activities that were familiar to the teachers and
extend or enrich them to enable multigrade instruc-
tion. Each facilitator worked with a mixed group of
teachers of different levels (K-7) who would propose,
try out in prac tice and then share the results of possib le
activities to teach one of the 20 topics (e.g. words, ins-
tructions, multiples, area). Each group was to agree on
an activity that could be “stretched out” by progres-
sively increasing the difficulty in order to both include
and challenge all students that come together in mul-
tigrade classes. For example, the activity of stringing
colored beads following certain patterns, common in
preschools, was extended first by having students
draw and color series w ith single and double multiples
and then by posing problems on multiples that
required imagining and/or calculating series with lar-
ger numbers. The groups eventually produced twenty
such “didactic strateg ies” which formed the core of the
proposal.
The facilitators were the fundamental mediators.
In biweekly me etings, they gave voice to the ideas and
knowledge that teachers expressed during each
workshop session. They also transmitted to the tea-
chers the recomme ndations that we offered as specia -
lists in didactics of language and math. They became
two-way interpreters. They often made us realize the
importance of understanding the meanings and
nuances of the terms used by the teachers, and of
adapting our own language to make ourselves
understood. To a large extent, this became a crucial
step in assuring that the mediation process could lead
to the construction o f viable and useful didactic str ate-
gies. Moreover, together w ith the teachers they contri-
buted their exp erience, and put into practice the evol-
ving strategies and brought photos and students’ work
to document the process. We, as researchers, took
turns to accompany some sessions directly, to be avai-
lable for consultation or interact at certain moments
with the groups.
Divergence and convergence
of perspectives
In managing the project, we experienced moments of
tension, but also eventual convergence in the media-
ting process undertaken to produce the didactic
manual. The group of in-service teachers and facilita-
tors participating in the workshop was quite diverse,
and we, as researchers, a lso had different perspe ctives
and experiences. In conducting the workshop, we
endeavored to combine the different outlooks; ten-
sions inevitably emerged but tentative solutions also
came forth.
Initial sources of discrepancy
A central point of discrepancy between us as resear-
chers and the teachers was related to the feasibility of
activities in actual teaching conditions. Conditions
such as access to material resources and the need to
maintain pupil attention in the classroom strongly
influenced their selection of activities. For example,
during a discussion on teachi ng surface area, the math
specialist suggested using geoboards to transform
triangles, rhomboids and other shapes into rectangle s
with the same surface and calculate the relative areas
by counting units. Teachers objected arguing that it
was not feasible be cause good geoboards are not eas y
to build, and commercial ones were poorly made. A
fundamental contribution made by teachers and faci-
litators was the selection and adaptation of the strate -
gies to their institutional conditions: the use of time,
space, resources, and the mandated curriculum. Pro-
posals that were not generally feasible in classrooms,
even though practiced by certain teachers—were dis-
carded or replaced by simpler versions to accomplish
the same goal; thus, rather than setting up a corner
play-store so students could practice selling and
buying, as one teacher had done, the group invented
a board game representing a store.
Some tensions emerged among teachers in each
group. A few stemmed, we thin k, from teachers’ recent
access to a supply of attrac tive commercial gadgets for
teaching. Some teachers proposed games and activi-
ties involving novel materials, arguing for their ludic
qualities. For example, one group favored a game
Revue française de pédagogie | 201 | octobre-novembre-décembre 2017
5 6

called Twister, adapted to test knowledge of number
series. Proposals such as these, centered on diversion,
reflect curricular norms that stress the value of “play”
and of using “didactic materials”, and yet have entered
classrooms with little attention to their possible sup-
port of students’ conceptual development. They also
reflect the enormous amount of materials available to
teachers through the internet, training courses and
commercial textbooks. Teachers have chosen these
options, among other reasons, to better regulate and
control the class and prevent children from getting
bored or disruptive.
However, other teachers recovered traditional
Mexican games, such as Rayuela, which involves tos-
sing an object towards a target line drawn on the
ground. It was adopted by the teachers as a strategy
for comparing different ways of measuring the dis-
tance from the targ et line: handspans, stable units su ch
as a drinking straw an d finally, the metric units of mea-
suring tapes. It would help students to progressively
develop the notion of a standard unit, required very
little preparation, and could easily be repeated by the
students of different ages among themselves.
However, it was difficult for the p roponents to convince
their peers of t he relative advantages of these ac tivities
in face of more alluring g ames such as Twister, without
the stronger argum ents offered by the researche r who
valued the new option and the additional potential it
offered for estimating distances and comparing results
with actual measurements.
Once an activity had been chosen by a group,
other tensions arose among the teachers regarding
details of the activity. The facilitators identified these
tensions and transmitted them to the researchers. In
the case of the game Rayuela, for example, the facili-
tator told one of us that there was a controversy over
the smallest metric unit to be used to measure the
distances: some teachers had used millimeters, others
considered that it was too sm all and difficult to handle
in the game. Both defended their positions claiming
that they practiced the game with their own students,
yet agreement favored the second option. After the
workshop, the facilitator also commented that the
game, originally proposed as a way to approach frac-
tions, had turned into an activity in measuring length.
She convinced us that the group’s topic, fractions, was
indeed crucial for the teachers (in fact, it had been
mentioned several times in choosing the topics). She
therefore prop osed adding a second strategy, by reco -
vering an activity initially proposed by some teachers,
based on folding strips of paper to obtain strips of ½,
¼, and so on of the original length. These strips and
their fractions could then be used to measure lengths,
without resorting to metric units, but rather assuring
comparison of fractions.
Finally, divergence among specialists and teachers
was evident when some teachers wished to link the
task to the official curriculum. They understood the
proposed activities as “filling in” certain moments of
the day, but not as suitable for institutional lesson
plans. In contrast, we were aiming to build core activi-
ties that could be repeated by students at different
levels of schooling an d that would progressively stren-
gthen their reading and writing skills and basic math
strategies. Although during the workshop teachers
had agreed that the graded curriculum offered few
opportunities to work with multigrade classes by fol-
lowing each child’s nee ds, when they returned to their
schools due to of ficial supervision they fou nd it increa-
singly challenging to set aside the sequential graded
curriculum that ignores the existence of schools with
multigrade classes (48 % in México).
Building proposals through various
contributions
Many of the tensions discussed above were resolved
through various contributions. As teachers put into
practice some of the activities being considered and
shared the results with visual evidence put online or
brought to the sessions, the teaching strategies were
further developed in the groups.
For example, when dealing with the topic of wri-
ting instructions, some teachers wanted to have stu-
dents follow recip es with actual cooking activ ities. We
problematized the proposal asking how students
might learn to both understand written instructions
and to produce them, and h ow to enhance the activity
to challenge the more advanced students. The tea-
chers began to discuss what they hoped students
would learn and concluded that the purpose should
be to teach them to give instructions in writing. They
decided that the students themselves should produce
instructions w ith the steps to follow for an activit y and
then share them with classm ates to see how they were
followed. Thus, they could identify their errors when
something went wro ng and learn how to express each
and all steps clearly, in order to be understood. Tea-
chers were enthusiastic with this idea and proceeded
to design the successive versions of the strategy and 5 7
Mediating research and practice DOSSIER

place them in order of difficulty. Another issue in this
group involved the spe cial education teachers, who at
first claimed that the whole topic was impossible for
their students. The facilitator suggested using daily
activities, such as washing your hands, for which they
could write or draw instructions, and the teachers
accepted it. The suggestions helped broaden the
range of activities beyond recipes, to include such
things as invented games or experiments.
In another group, in the first attempts to design a
strategy for teaching surface area, several diverging
ideas were presented. An activity proposed by some
teachers (coloring figure ground worksheets) would
not lead to the topic of areas and the geoboard sug-
gested by the math specialist was not prac tical. As the
search continued, another one of us suggested that
something similar could be done with by tracing
figures on squar ed paper and counting units. This ac ti-
vity had the didactic value of allowing students wit-
hout previous kn owledge of the formulas to approach
area by counting the squares one by one, and leading
them to devise bet ter procedures (such as counting by
rows, regrouping and adding) when tracing larger rec-
tangles where counting was difficult. Furthermore, it
required practically no material and was easily
managed in the classroo m. When tested with students,
the results satisfied teachers. To construct the simpler
versions, we recovered a proposal by another teacher
and a facilitator to form or replicate different figures
with the same quantity of like-sized squares of paper.
Many solutions to enrich an a ctivity came from the
facilitators. An example was with word cards, which in
traditional practice tends to lead to classifying cards
according to word families b ased on phonetic or lexica l
criteria. The facilitator working with this topic led the
group in a different direction by proposing rather to
allow children to build different possible groupings
based on familiar sp heres of everyday life, where words
could be alternatively placed in different groups. For
example, a particular meal could belong both in “the
kitchen” or in “the feast”. This would also allow stu-
dents to identify meanings closer to their own worlds
and form groups of words related to proximal or distal
domains or even to other languages.
Examples such as these show various types of
knowledge in play. The knowledge teachers possess
was balanced with our knowledge of math and lan-
guage instruction and of the possible learning advan-
tages of certain procedures and activities, as well as
our ethnographic understanding of classroom tea-
ching practices in rural schools. These had different
sources yet were each indispensable for the construc-
tion of a didactic proposal that might be both reco-
gnized as feasible by the teachers and significant in
terms of possible learning outcomes.
By the end of the work shop, all groups had agreed
on activities that had seemed to work in practice at
least in some schools. Interestingly, there was much
sharing across grade levels, which led to the develop-
ment of activities used for the younger children into
more challenging versions for older students or vice
versa. Thus, a suggestion made by one group was
adopted by all: instead of classifying the successive
activities by grade or age level, they were simply iden-
tified as versions A, B, C and D, with the idea of leaving
the choice of versions to use with a particular mul-
tigrade class up to each teacher.
The final process of writing up the strategies was
undertaken by the research team and the facilitators.
Although we had rough drafts from each group, there
were many gaps and styles of presentation, and some
proposals required further discussion and classroom
trials. In some case s, we had to design some of the sim-
pler or more complex versions of each activity, in order
to complete the four-phase sequence of our proposal.
Some facilitators continued elaborating the proposed
strategy with students, offering verbal and visual evi-
dence. Our direct observations and the testimonies
and photographs of these experiences allowed us to
gain a different viewpoint and rethink details, such as
instructions that were hard for students to follow, or
easier and more durable ways to make materials wit-
hout reducing the va lue of the strategy. Thus, although
the manual recovered the activities produced in the
workshop, the final product was an elaborated and
illustrated version of the original workshop materials.
Discussion: meeting the challenge
of integrating knowledge
The indication of recovering teachers’ knowledge and
integrating it into didactic strategies produced by
experts is often voiced, nevertheless it proved to be a
complicated task, requiring hours of discussion among
teachers, facilitators, specialists, and eventually with
graphic designers and editors.
Our team’s approach included two research tradi-
tions. Qualitative classroom research, in our view,
attempts to comprehend the complexity of classroom
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5 8

interaction within specific contexts in order to grasp
not only what teachers actually do but also why they
teach in certain ways. This allowed us to anticipate
conditions affecting didactic proposals in practice,
such as material and time constraints. Given our
approach to learning math and language, we kept an
eye on the connection of proposed activities with the
concepts students were to learn. We took care of the
ways in which activities might foster participation,
reorienting som e of them to allow students to appro ach
problems and deploy diverse methods, use their own
procedures, and verify their anticipations. Thus, the
final versions of the activities were designed to both
allow and compel students to advance on their own.
Teachers generally considered the dynamics of
time and classroom manag ement, kept an eye on what
was feasible, and on the need to make activities more
explicit and avoid unmanag eable proposals. They of fe-
red insights into what available activities had actually
taken root in school cultures, under what conditions,
and which have had scarce echo in practice, although
considered effective in experimental research on lear-
ning. Teachers and facilitators gave us tips and war-
nings and we in turn gave suggestions and sought
materials and recomme ndations for the teachers. Thus,
during the whole process of the workshop and final
design, many different levels of mediation occurred
among and between researchers, facilitators and
teachers.
In order to integrate these diverse views, it was
necessary to ack nowledge that all contributed valu able
knowledge, a stance that was not easy given the eva-
luative policy context that teachers faced at the time.
Our task was not only to re cover teacher proposals, but
also to convince them to share, discuss, put into prac-
tice and then comment on what occurred with pro-
posed activities. This experience shows that both trai-
ning and the production of materials with in-service
teachers depend on a relationship in which the tea-
chers feel fre e to give an account of their own practices,
rather than only offering the discourse they believe is
expected of them given the normative context.
Constructing this sort of trust requires an open and
respectful attitude and ability to admit that some
research-based proposals are not feasible under ac tual
teaching conditions. Ever yone involved had to learn to
accept that their ideas were tentative and could be
discarded or modified in the process.
The prolonged interaction among participants was
invaluable. The desig n of a workshop that allowed tea-
chers to take up proposals and test them with their
own students, in order to bring evidence and reflec-
tions back to the discussion , helped modify and enr ich
the proposals. Some technologies, such as cellphone
photos, videos an d social networks, en hanced the sha-
ring process among participants, though not all had
access or time to use them. Finall y, only ample time for
personal face-to-face co-construction makes this sort
of mediation possible.
Conclusion
In reviewing this experience, we have attempted to
show that mediation among researchers, facilitators
and teachers is not only necessary but vital to the out-
come of proposed policy changes. We consider that it
is no longer fruitful to draft proposals at a distance
from teachers’ everyday life and working conditions.
In spite of their strong theoretical grounding, such
innovations are ofte n not feasible in actual classrooms.
Nor is it possible to trans fer to teachers the task of desi-
gning all activi ties when their training has not provide d
them with sufficient access to results of didactic
research on the teaching of specific contents. Thus,
participation of all sides is essential and their separate
yet overlapping realms of expertise are reconcilable.
Our workshop proposed a form of in-service pro-
fessional developm ent in which teachers are regarded
as active participants whose experience is considered
valuable and has to be taken into account. In the pro-
cess we generated analy sis of the learning value of the
activities they proposed and invited further develop-
ment to meet the diversity of trajectories in a mul-
tigrade class. Critique and alternative solutions were
forthcoming, particularly after testing and commen-
ting on results.
During the workshop there were moments of ten-
sion and resistance. The reform context in which the
workshop took place had placed teachers under pres-
sure to comply with the official scripted curricula. The
workshop was one more required course among many.
It was difficult for them to break with the custom of
applying novel strategies with little reflec tion on their
educational value, as well as with the pressing ne ed to
solve contextual demands. Both federal and state
authorities have since taken on ot her priorities, no lon-
ger attending multigrade teachers as such. This insti-
tutional situation and the graded curriculum inf luence
the decisions that guide teachers’ everyday actions.
What little subsequent information we have points to 5 9
Mediating research and practice DOSSIER

valuable individual appropriations of some of the pro-
posed strategies, as well as to a lack of further interest
among other teachers who took the course. Although
we clearly recognize that there is still much to be
learned, we wager that we chose the best path to pro-
duce teaching materials and alternative strategies for
both teachers and children.
Elsie Rockwell
Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados
(Cinvestav)
elsierockwell@gmail.com
Tatiana Mendoza von der Borch
Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados
(Cinvestav)
Valeria Rebolledo Angulo
Centro de Cooperación Regional para la
Educación de Adultos de América Latina y el Caribe
(CREFAL)
María Esther Tapia Álvarez
Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados
(Cinvestav)
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