Branching Decisions: A Means for Examining Teachers' Decision Paths for Pedagogical Choices

• In Event: 66.072 - Multimedia Online Experiences as Research Tools to Study Mathematics Teaching Knowledge at Scale

Abstract

Objective & Perspective
Various methods have been used to examine teachers’ decision-making over the years, typically including specific tasks associated with representations of practice (Bishop, 1976/2008; Shavelson & Stern, 1981). These tasks have included stimulated recall (Thompson, 1984), teachers’ self-described vignettes (Elliott, 2009), analyzing and discussing video vignettes (Kersting, 2008; van Es & Sherin, 2002), and others. While these approaches include opportunities for examining sequences of decision-making, they do not allow for a larger consideration and comparison of potential paths that may be taken as consequence of decisions. Such an approach, until recently, has not been methodologically feasible. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to describe a means for approaching this phenomenon incorporating comic-based representations of practice via multimedia questionnaires.

Methods & Results
Branching decisions are cartoon-based representations housed in the LessonSketch.org platform. They include contextual information for a classroom and scenario, followed by an initial stem of a given scenario. Similar to Bishop’s (1976/2008) “stop-the-action” technique, events pause at a key moment and the participant is given a set of three to four actions to choose from. However, each chosen action has a different consequence branching into a different overall scenario. Along each path, different sets of actions are provided at key points and the sequence repeats itself. Figure 1 illustrates a cross-section of a branching decision where two second-grade children provide their representations of 308 in expanded form, one child wrote 30+8 and another wrote 300+80. While both hypothetical actions appear similar on the surface, the first does more to press for meaning (Kazemi & Stipek, 2001) by soliciting more student description through use of representations. By consequences of each action, the scenarios that follow include obvious differences. Each consequence is then followed by another set of actions particular to the decision path caused by the branching.
In spring 2014, a pilot to assess branching decisions as a proof-of-concept was conducted. Fourteen preservice elementary teachers (PSTs) completed the branching-decision at the beginning of a methods course. Of the 39 possible paths, a subset included actions that press for meaning. Comparison of paths pressing for meaning to those not, a statistically significant difference was found suggesting PSTs were more likely to not press for meaning at the beginning of the course (χ2(df=1)=4.57, p<.05). While preliminary, these results illustrate one way in which branching decisions can examine decision-making.


Figure 1. Cross-section of a branching decision.

Scholarly Significance
Application of branching decisions to the study of teachers’ decision-making is a significant contribution to the field, and one previously technologically infeasible. Within a branching decision, certain paths may include entirely different sets of actions while holistically being pedagogically similar to each other. This affordance allowed for comparison between PSTs who chose actions pressing for meaning to those that did not. Yet, results can be further examined to compare distinctions between one PST and another. Thus, branching decisions can account for variance in particular decision-making of teachers with similar pedagogical decisions via a shared hypothetical scenario targeting key pedagogical constructs.

Author

• Karl Wesley Kosko, Kent State University