team members to successfully work with the content. This latter description, when
triangulated with the teacher’s email around May 14, provides further clarification
of what the teacher meant by“students often entered the room needing special
attention.”Finally, in the chain of activity and planning actions Brad inscribed, he
made visible the basis for the mentor-teacher’s claim that they were meeting the
university’s expectations for competent performance in planning and teaching.
As this brief analysis of Table16.2was contrasted with the mentor-teacher’s
description of what the supervisor could expect to see, Brad’s description provided
convergent validation of the chain of actions that the supervisor would be able to see.
The backward mapping process, therefore, provided a means of triangulating inscribed
activity in the classroom by the team as well as the ways in which planning was a
process among the actors that served particular purposes that were undertaken by the
teacher-candidates in multiple spaces at multiple times. This process was not captured
intherequiredlessonplanthattheECTEprogramintroducedto,andexpectedfrom,
the teacher-candidates. This distinction was one not visible in the analysis of email
conversations, providing further evidence that the epistemological differences were
rooted in different assumptions about what counts as evidence of planning and teaching
competencies grounded in different institutional spaces.
16.9 Discussion and Implications
In this study, we demonstrated how an interactional ethnographic analysis of points
of contact between afield-based team and university actors, each representing a
different languaculture, made visible a series of frame clashes. These frame clashes
were grounded in differing expectations for what should be happening in the
classroom, or should be displayed as meeting standards and requirements of the
program. These frame clashes made visible differences in cultural expectations of
the institutionally based actors. These frame clashes were often bidirectional; that
is, the clash had consequences for how each actor viewed their work, met their
responsibilities, and took up, or not, what the other proposed.
Table 16.2 Transcript of February interview with Brad
Brad Amy and I would meet on Tuesday in between (university) classes
And we would bring ideas together
what we need to discuss with Megan
And on Thursday,
we would all meet to reflect on the week
and then discuss what was going on next week,
as far as,
I would try a math lesson
and Amy would try a social studies lesson,
or what kinds of assignments we would be working on
and who would need to pull out students for assignments16 Researching the Intersection of Program Supervision and Field... 249