Dissertation
Social Studies teachers’ collaborative negotiation and principled adaptation of student-driven inquiry into complex social issues: iterative design of a teacher professional learning workshop
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2026
DOI: 10.25820/etd.008353
Abstract
Student-driven inquiry into complex social issues (SdICI) is a way for young people to do civic identity work at school: In examining different perspectives of how we did, do, could, and should live together, students figure out who they want to be as member of various communities. And although there is empirical evidence for the benefits of inquiry-based learning and engagement with authentically complex social (or socioscientific) issues, it does not seem to happen very much in public K-12 social studies classrooms. Reasons for that lie at various levels of the learning ecology in that the existing educational infrastructure constrains educators by prioritizing standardized assessment—which requires specific content delivery—, transmission-focused instructional strategies, focus on textbook usage, and, through this, is sowing doubt about teachers’ self-efficacy to facilitate SdICI. Despite scholarship on teacher preparation for inquiry-based teaching, we know relatively little about how inservice teachers come to value and interpret student-driven inquiry into complex social issues as a tool for civic identity work and which specific educational infrastructures they perceive as necessary, supportive, or hindering to integrating student-driven inquiry into their existing curricula.
The goal of this dissertation is empirical analysis of design principles created to support teacher professional learning of SdICI as an instructional approach and its principled adaptation to maintain its integrity in participants’ school-specific learning contexts. In this investigation, I iteratively designed a TPL workshop to examine how the design principles modeling, reflection, unstructured time, distributed collaborative sensemaking and principled negotiation, and principled adaptation for implementation can be effectively applied and which levers in the educational ecology afford or constrain SdICI’s principled enactment.
The understanding gained from this design-based research (DBR) furthers the theoretical foundations of teacher professional learning in the fields of learning sciences, social studies education, and teacher education more broadly. The analysis is focused on one element of TPL and how social studies teachers, their colleagues, and other pieces of educational infrastructure are agentic elements in adapting the complex learning ecology to favor SdICI. First, I examine how the workshop design afforded or constrained participants’ distributed collaborative sensemaking and principled negotiation of what SdICI should be within their local contexts (research question 1). Second, I extrapolate which supports and barriers for the implementation of principled SdICI participants perceive, where in the learning ecology they are located, and how this impacts TPL design for SdICI (RQ2). Throughout these analyses, I examine the role that educational infrastructures and perceptions of their impact play in facilitating teachers’ willingness to invest in reform efforts to bring SdICI to their classrooms. Findings support future designs of sustained TPL with built-in infrastructuring to create suitable conditions for SdICI.
This investigation was conducted in the summer of 2024 with eleven educators from Iowa who were invited to a teacher professional learning workshop about student-driven inquiry into complex social issues. They were purposefully sampled for the different expertise they had: five high school (grades 9-12) social studies teachers who had taught combinations of U.S. history, world history, government, Advanced Placement, and sociology courses; three teachers from middle schools (grades 6-8) where social studies is largely an integrated subject; one instructional coach; one middle school librarian who actively supported existing social studies inquiry projects; and one at-risk coordinator. I interviewed all participants before and after the workshop, video recorded all workshop sessions, collected a reflection journal, received lesson/ unit plans of the teachers’ SdICI designs, and kept notes on my design choices and observations throughout the study. I used a combination of reflexive thematic analysis and interaction analysis to analyze these data in response to the research questions.
From these analyses, I derived four key findings: First, teachers benefitted from the distributed expertise between participants and other pieces of the educational infrastructure like state standards. They appreciated examples of SdICI paired with the stimulating collegial exchange and dedicated time to make sense of what SdICI is and what it can be in their own classrooms. Second, the participants identified many barriers to using SdICI in secondary social studies but also saw authentic examples of where supports for this instructional approach lie. This motivated some to create SdICI adaptations that were more or less principled SdICI. Third, the design principles of modeling, reflection, unstructured time, distributed collaborative sensemaking and principled negotiation, and principled adaptation were confirmed as effective choices for TPL design, yet they require more detailed descriptions and sub-principles to support their specific application. Fourth, I identified layers of the learning ecology and related educational infrastructures to be addressed through design components in sustained, system-aware TPL that establishes SdICI—it will enable TPL providers to anticipate locally targeted supports while also consciously designing to harness distributed expertise across schools and to prevent siloing.
Findings from this study further our understanding of teacher professional learning and its principled implementation in schools. The strength of the design principles proposed here depends on their principled interpretation to serve the content and reform efforts they are meant to foster. The findings also make the case that infrastructuring concerns need to feature early on in any TPL design process and that designers need to understand various layers of the learning ecology in their general and locally specific instantiations.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Social Studies teachers’ collaborative negotiation and principled adaptation of student-driven inquiry into complex social issues: iterative design of a teacher professional learning workshop
- Creators
- Bianca Schamberger
- Contributors
- Pamela M. Wesely (Advisor)Eric B. Freedman (Advisor)Kay E. Ramey (Committee Member)Keith C. Barton (Committee Member) - Indiana University
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Teaching and Learning
- Date degree season
- Spring 2026
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.008353
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xv, 362 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2026 Bianca Schamberger
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/27/2026
- Description illustrations
- illustrations, tables
- Description bibliographic
- Includes biblioigraphical references (pages 239-312).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
Social studies education is meant to support students’ civic identity work so that our young people become critically informed, active members of a pluralist democracy. One way to do that is through student-driven inquiry into the complex social issues (SdICI) facing our communities in the real world. But social studies teachers don’t automatically know how to facilitate such learning or don’t have the systemic resources to do so. That is why this study examined design principles to set up a teacher professional learning program to strengthen student-driven inquiry into complex social issues.
In two separate workshops, I used modeling of an example unit, time and tools to reflect on it, and the combination of different tools and education experts like classroom teachers from middle- and high schools as well as librarians and instructional coaches to help teachers generate SdICI units that promote students’ civic identity work. Between the workshops, I evaluated my design and adjusted it to better serve the teachers’ needs. I also used it to find out where the educators saw barriers and supports for doing SdICI in their classrooms and located them in the learning ecology.
Knowing where obstacles and reinforcement of this pedagogical strategy may come from will support new partners’ sustained reform efforts that can establish SdICI in social studies education.
- Academic Unit
- Teaching and Learning
- Record Identifier
- 9985176973902771
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