Brandon Sherman

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/30179

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ESL Teachers’ Acting Agentively Through Job Crafting
(Taylor & Francis, 2018) Haneda, Mari; Sherman, Brandon; School of Education
Worldwide, countries strive for effective ways to educate migrant children, and the United States is no exception. In this context, this qualitative study examines how a group of ESL teachers in U.S. elementary schools acted agentively and redesigned their work through job crafting (Wrzesniewskum & Dutton, 2001) so as to provide optimal support for English learners. Key findings indicate that, despite institutional constraints, teachers found ways to organize their work to align their practices with their educational goals. In some cases, they were able to negotiate with key school personnel to reconfigure their instructional practices, and in others they created multiple advocacy roles beyond the classroom. Based on our findings, we suggest that, in preparing ESL teachers, attention needs to be paid not only to pedagogy but also to the wider scope of their roles as advocates who navigate the micro-politics of school organization.
The digital ecologies of Korean college students: An exploration of digital self-directed learning
(2018) Briggs, Neil; Sherman, Brandon
The wealth of readily available online digital English language learning resources presents vast opportunities for students to engage in self-directed language learning. The extent to which such resources are known to students, however, let alone how they are being utilized, typically remains largely unknown to teachers. In order to design a curriculum that maximizes student learning opportunities by guiding them towards online digital resources that afford self-directed learning, it is essential for teachers to first develop an intimate understanding of the students’ relationships with such resources. This may include awareness, patterns of use, and the variables that constrain them from using the resources more extensively. To accomplish this objective, the Self-Directed Digital Study Instrument (SDDSI) was developed and implemented to survey 197 Korean college students. While the results of this study are indicative of a reality in which digital resources are being underused, they also point towards an area of great potential for pedagogical change in Korean post-secondary English learning education. In contrast to the traditional pedagogical model, the results suggest that self-directed learning or even self-determined learning models, facilitated via various digital resources, can present students with opportunities for more deeply engaging, individualized, and self-directed approaches to language learning.
Differentiating Mathematics Instruction for Multilingual Students using Critical Sociocultural Practices
(TODOS: Mathematics for ALL, 2018) Teemant, Annela; Sherman, Brandon J.; Wilson, Amy
This paper defines and elaborates on a three-tiered transformative approach to differentiating mathematics instruction for multilingual learners, which includes increasing use of small group instruction, improving the quality of assistance during learning, and creating a culture of recognition that affirms all learners. Using supporting evidence from instructional coaching studies, this paper identifies challenges faced by general education mathematics teachers at each tier of differentiation. While coached elementary and secondary teachers made significant gains in implementing this approach to differentiation, secondary mathematics teachers, in particular, had significantly less growth. Implications for increasing mathematics teachers’ knowledge and skills in differentiating instruction for multilingual learners are addressed.
Ways of Interacting: What Underlies Instructional Coaches’ Discursive Actions
(Elsevier, 2019-02) Haneda, Mari; Sherman, Brandon; Bose, Frances Nebus; Teemant, Annela; School of Education
A Rhizomatic Case Analysis of Instructional Coaching as Becoming
(Routledge, 2020) Sherman, Brandon; Haneda, Mari; Teemant, Annela; School of Education
Drawing on rhizomatic theory, we examine the professional development approach of instructional coaching as a space of becoming. Analyzing episodes from a year-long coaching collaboration, we show how teacher/coach interaction can be understood as a complex and shifting network of material and discursive elements that can combine to produce surprising outcomes. Thinking through key rhizomatic figurations of assemblage, rhizomatic lines, and territorialization, we examine coaching across intra-actional events: how happenings in coaching conference extend and intertwine with larger assemblages of the classroom and school. We show how rhizomatic ruptures emerging in practice may open up new possibilities for teachers and students.
Language Learners as Digital Bricoleurs: Exploring Independent Learning in Individual Digital Ecologies
(2020) Sherman, Brandon; Briggs, Neil
Though there is a wealth of digital resources available for independent computerassisted language learning, language teachers may find mixed success in supporting learners in using it. Teachers need to understand their learners and how educational information-communication technology and the target language are integrated in their lives. We present the concepts of digital ecology and digital bricolage. Building on a prior survey study on English learner technology use at a Korean college, this qualitative case study explores ways that four Korean college students integrated technology and English into their lives. Drawing on a priori and emergent themes from interviews, we explore students’ digital ecologies and their processes of digital bricolage. We found that types of technology use varied across these cases, suggesting the value of digital ecologies for thinking about student technology use. Further, variations of technology use across the cases suggest that learners draw selectively from their available digital ecologies based on their perceptions of what it means to learn English and their personal priorities. We propose a framework for understanding language learner digital bricolage based on formality and instrumentality. This framework is of value to researchers and teachers who want to support students in digitally mediated self-directed language learning.
Unravelling effective professional development: a rhizomatic inquiry into coaching and the active ingredients of teacher learning
(Routledge, 2020-09) Sherman, Brandon; Teemant, Annela
Teacher professional development (PD) is about change. One of the most prominent lines of research on PD addresses what makes it an effective change process. This research produces critical features of effective PD, the seemingly active ingredients of teacher change that are meant to guide professionals in the design, implementation, and evaluation of PD programmes. Embedded within this research is a linear, hierarchical, causal mono-logic model that is the hallmark of Western rational thought. Rhizomatic thought, with its non-linear perspectives, offers a contrast, highlighting the unpredictable multiplicity of complex systems that embrace the emergent dynamics of becoming and hybridity. In this paper, we look at features of effective PD through a rhizomatic lens, with a focus on PD as mapping and tracing. Drawing on vignettes from five case studies from a year-long pedagogical coaching PD programme, we explore how effective features of PD can be unravelled in practice and rewoven into vibrant hybridity within real-world school contexts.
An equity framework for family, community, and school partnerships
(Taylor and Francis, 2020-12-11) Teemant, Annela; Borgioli Yoder, Gina; Sherman, Brandon J.; Santamaría Graff, Cristina; School of Education
Equity has often been identified as a foundational concept for truly inclusive and reciprocal partnerships among schools, families, and communities. Equity can be difficult for schools to achieve without cultivating new paradigms for interacting with historically marginalized students, families, and communities. In order to bridge the ideal of equity with radical, scalable, and sustainable institutional change, we developed an equity framework for cultivating mutual interdependence among families, communities, and schools in partnership. Rooted in sociocultural and critical theories, this framework builds upon the values of mutual respect, democratic participation, critical consciousness, and sustainability. These values then support cycles of collaborative action amongst stakeholders leveraging problem posing and community organizing to address inequities. In our article, we discuss the underlying theory supporting the framework and elaborate upon its implications for practice.
Enduring principles of learning: Pathways to vital learning in vibrant classrooms [Practitioner Brief No.2]
(Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis, 2021) Sherman, Brandon James; Teemant, Annela; School of Education
Agency, identity, power: An agentive triad model for teacher action
(Taylor & Francis, 2021) Sherman, Brandon; Teemant, Annela; School of Education
Teacher action and change is a complex and nuanced phenomenon that has been theorized across diverse literature in terms of identity, agency, and power. Drawing on this literature, this article offers specific articulations of teacher identity as interpretive framework, power as legitimate action, and agency as moral coherence. We posit a model of teacher agency understood in the interplay of individual beliefs, values, and ideals with institutional roles, authority, and institutional action, producing (or not producing) authentic action. This model draws a distinction between agency and power, and highlights dynamics of equilibrium and discord that may emerge between who teachers are and what they do. The agentive triad model serves as a theoretical tool for guiding or supporting teacher growth and agentive action, and for understanding the dynamics between institutionally legitimized roles and teacher identities.

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