Practices for Facilitating Video-Based Discussions in Mathematics Professional Development

• In Event: Facilitating Teachers’ Learning: Practices That Support Math Teachers in Developing Ambitious Practice

Abstract

A small but growing body of research suggests that attending to the preparation and support of PD leaders is essential to sustainability and scalability of any PD program. However, our understanding of what these professionals must know and be able to do is limited (Borko, Koellner, & Jacobs, 2011). Implementing the Problem-Solving Cycle (iPSC) was designed to investigate these issues in a 5-year program of design and research aimed at preparing Teacher Leaders (TLs) to implement the Problem-Solving Cycle model of PD. The PSC is an iterative, long-term approach to PD. Each cycle consists of a series of interconnected workshops, organized around a rich mathematics task. Video clips from participating teachers’ lessons are used to support their exploration of mathematics, student thinking, and pedagogical practices. The Mathematics Leadership Preparation (MLP) model, developed to support TLs as they facilitate the PSC, includes a summer leadership academy and multiple cycles of structured guidance for facilitating the PSC.

Objectives
This paper examines the PD that the TLs provided for teachers in their schools. We focus on facilitation practices that fostered rich conversations among teachers during video-based discussions in the workshops. We address the following research questions:
• What facilitation moves did TLs use to foster video-based discussions about mathematics, student thinking and instructional practices?
• How do facilitation moves vary across TLs, and how is the variability related to the cognitive and mathematical depth of the discussions?

Methods and Data Sources
Primary data source consist of videos of all video-based conversations led by seven TLs during the final cycle of PSC workshops conducted during the project. In the initial stage of analyses we used an observation protocol adapted from the Professional Development Observation Protocol (PDOP, Banilower and Shimkus 2004). Based on these findings, we coded 12 facilitation moves and over twenty labels for mathematical, pedagogical, and student thinking topics. Conversation units were coded using the same topic labels and seven labels for the cognitive and mathematical depth of the conversations. We are analyzing the coded data to identify patterns in the nature and depth of the conversations, and the relationships between types of facilitation moves and characteristics of the conversations.

Conclusions
Our first phase of analyses indicate that TLs rated higher on our adaptation of the PDOP and a larger percentage of their conversations were coded at the highest cognitive level. There were also differences in the substantive focus of TLs’ facilitation moves across all conversation units; a larger proportion of the highly rated TLs’ moves were specific rather than general in nature. Initial analyses suggest that differences in facilitation practices are associated with differences in the cognitive depth of discussions, and that some facilitation moves are more effective at encouraging teachers to critically analyze student reasoning and think deeply about their teaching.

Significance
This research contributes to our understanding of facilitation practices by identifying how effective TLs create an environment for analytic discourse around mathematics, student thinking, and instructional practices. These findings have implications for the preparation and support of PD leaders.

Authors

• Hilda Borko, Stanford University

• Karen A. Koellner, Hunter College - CUNY

• Jennifer K. Jacobs, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Edit Khachatryan, Stanford University

• Charmaine Mangram, Stanford University

• Rajeev Virmani, University of San Francisco