Teachers' Interpretations of “CGI” after Four Years: Meanings and Practices

Abstract

Twenty primary teachers were interviewed who, three or four years earlier, had participated in in-service workshops on Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI). Three patterns of CGI use seemed related to the meanings teachers constructed for CGI itself. Teachers who reported developing their use of CGI until it formed the mainstay of their mathematics teaching saw CGI conceptually. They also reported learning mainly through their interactions with students and other teachers and developing beliefs about the conceptual nature of mathematics, the constructivist nature of learning, and the students' central role in that learning. Teachers who reported never having used CGI more than supplementally saw CGI as a group of procedures and espoused more traditional beliefs in these areas. Teachers who reported using CGI more at first, but less currently, showed a marked incongruity between their espoused beliefs and reported practices. The authors ask whether additional reseacher support, collegial interaction, or perhaps prescriptiveness in the intervention might have helped teachers in this third group enact their conceptually based beliefs.