Responsive Teaching: Three Teachers Articulate Their Process and Practice

• In Event: 72.042 - Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Reflection on Identities and Practice in Teachers' Lives

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the concept of responsive teaching as an aspect of three teachers’ decision-making processes in heterogeneous classrooms in a high poverty school. Though the original goal was primarily to investigate teachers’ instructional responses, the three participants emphasized decisions related to students’ emotional, social, and behavioral needs. Both narrative analysis and traditional content analysis were used to examine the data. Through a narrative lens, I attempted to represent teachers’ individual stories of responding to students’ needs. Content analysis offered a means to consider thematic connections observed across the teachers’ collective narratives. The concept of an ethic of care was used to frame the ways each teacher articulated her responses to students’ emotional, social, behavioral, and instructional needs.

Author

• Alexis Jones, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign