Collaborative Professional Learning and Disciplinary Literacy: An Approach for Systems Coherence During Pedagogical Change

The purpose of this study was to explore what role collaborative professional learning may have on teachers’ collective efficacy when confronted with pedagogical change. Academic standards introduced between 2010 and 2014 included new content-specific communicative practices including discipline-specific language, discursive methods, and ways of knowing. Adoption of the new standards accompanied a shift to standards-based assessment and reporting, and teachers at this international school offering an American curriculum felt unprepared to simultaneously implement these changes. As a means of empowering and equipping a multi-disciplinary, grade-level team of five high school teachers to accomplish these pedagogical changes, I designed a series of workshops centered on the theory, strategies, and tools of Disciplinary Literacy. Guided by an interpretivist lens grounded in the theories of Transformative Learning, Collective Efficacy, and Disciplinary Literacy, I adopted a mixed-methods action research approach to answer the following research questions: 1) what role does collaborative professional learning have on teachers’ collective efficacy when confronted with pedagogical change; and 2) in what ways does an understanding of Disciplinary Literacy equip teachers to address the pedagogical changes of adopting and reporting to communicative practice standards in their subject areas? Findings from the study indicate the important nuances between collective efficacy and collaborative teamwork, the critical significance of ensuring systems coherence during paradigmatic pedagogical shifts, and the potential role of Disciplinary Literacy as a tool for systems coherence when implementing standards-based learning through concept-based, transdisciplinary units centered on authentic, topical issues of global competency and social justice.