Beginning Teachers Studying Adolescents’ Thinking as a High-Leverage Practice? Synthesizing Pedagogies of Investigation and Enactment

• In Event: Poster Session 9
  In Poster Session: Innovative Initiatives in Teacher Education

Abstract

Increasingly, researchers call for teacher education to emphasize high-leverage or core practices that advance student achievement, represent the complexity of learning, and can be mastered with regular use. What counts for high-leverage practices, however, remains unsettled. In this paper, we draw from a qualitative study of beginning social studies teachers’ subject-specific, research-grounded investigations of adolescents’ thinking to argue that when novices carry out such inquiries, they engage in a potentially high-leverage practice that sits at the nexus of investigative pedagogy and instructional activity. Yet linking this nexus to schoolteaching practices may be impeded by institutional factors that devalue systematically studying students’ thinking as a way to impact instruction. This study bears implications for defining and promoting high-leverage practice through teacher education.

Authors

• Kevin W. Meuwissen, University of Rochester

• Andrew Thomas, University of Rochester