Learning Ambitious Teaching: Cases From Across the Disciplines

Session Type: Working Group Roundtable

Abstract

We spotlight four studies of attempts by novices to enact ambitious teaching practices. In each study, novice attempts provide an occasion to probe the nature of ambitious practice in a particular subject area (history, mathematics, or science), and what is required to support it. The combination of shared theoretical commitments and distinct disciplinary perspectives brought by the four research teams affords a unique opportunity to interrogate the construct of ambitious teaching. Specifically, by recognizing distinctive elements of ambitious practice made visible in attempts of novices in different disciplines, we seek to foreground ways in which the very focus on disciplinary practice is central to the development and enactment of ambitious pedagogy, and to discern the consequences of this constitutive role.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Section 2: Teaching of PK-12 Students in the Humanities and Other Content Areas

Chair

• Marcy Singer-Gabella, Vanderbilt University

Papers

• Possibilities and Pressure Points in Leveraging Student Thinking in Mathematics - Marcy Singer-Gabella, Vanderbilt University; Barbara S. Stengel, Vanderbilt University

• The Role of Subject Matter in Learning to Leverage Student Thinking in Math and Science Teaching - Janet E. Coffey, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Ann R. Edwards, Carnegie Foundation

• Successes and Challenges in Learning to Teach History: Novices’ Uptake of Core Practices - Chauncey Monte-Sano, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor; Jared Aumen, University of Michigan; Anne Bordonaro, University of Michigan

• Preparing Novices for Ambitious Science Teaching: A Focus on Equitable Science Pedagogy - Manali J. Sheth, Iowa State University; Melissa Lee Braaten, University of Wisconsin - Madison