Ensemble Work: Algebra Teachers Lead a Collaborative Learning Community Across Grade-Level and School Boundaries

• In Event: 61.086 - Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: 61.086-19 - Democratized Knowledge: Mathematics Teachers' and Researchers' Reciprocal Learning

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation will report preliminary findings from a hybrid group of middle grades/ high school algebra teachers in a large urban district that is undergoing structural changes. The teachers are meeting across schools for the 2014-2015 school year. In this session, the teacher and participant researcher will report reciprocal learning.
Theoretical Framework
Stein, Kaufman, Sherman, and Hillen (2011) argue that access to algebra--that is, who has access and when—lies at the core of equity issues. Increasingly, selected students in the middle grades are offered access to Algebra I. Teachers’ examination of students’ work will broaden their understandings of students’ algebra learning trajectories across the represented grade levels (Kazemi & Franke, 2004) as teachers engage in cycles of lesson enactments and investigation (Lampert, Franke, Kazemi, Ghousseni, Turrou, Beasley, Cunard & Crowe, 2013). This is complementary to the Japanese Lesson Study model (Lewis & Hurd, 2011) where teacher-learning is embedded in collective lesson preparation and enactments occurring in communities of practice (Wenger, 2000). The activities of this group align with McDonald, Kazemi and Kavanagh’s (2013) call for development of a common language to enact a cycle of instructional activities, dialogues, and routines to support ambitious teaching and students’ learning gains.
Methods
Teachers select an individual teaching goal at the group's participation summer Lesson Study Institute before the 2014-2015 school begins. They will select a mathematics problem to fit this goal from a repertoire that includes Model Eliciting Activities (Zawojewski, Lesh, & English, 2003) and other sources of lessons aimed to reveal students’ mathematics thinking. Teachers will practice and calibrate observations of effective mathematics teaching in the afterschool sessions using the Levels of Classroom Discourse rubric (Hufferd-Ackles, Fuson, & Sherin, 2004) and in mutual observations in each others’ classrooms across schools.

Data sources
These include video data from ten after school meetings, field notes and students’ work from classroom enactments, teacher interviews, focus group sessions, and teacher surveys about teachers’ perspectives about how their participation in this teacher-led group.
These data sources will be analyzed using a grounded theory approach seeking emergent themes with exemplars from the interview and video data sources. Participants will score each other using the observation rubric. These quantitative data and teachers’ surveys will be analyzed using descriptive statistics, Rasch and ANOVA techniques.
At the time of this July 2014 submission, six teachers from four schools including one high school are poised to begin to work together for the 2014-2015 school year by participation in the August 2015 Lesson Study Teacher Institute.

Additional question for this Working Group Roundtable
One teacher and the participant/researcher will describe aspects of learning among the participants in the context of this teacher-led group.

Authors

• Della R. Leavitt, Independent Scholar

• Tun Bhothinard, Chicago Public Schools

• Jason Gil, Chicago Public Schools

• Lidia Paredes, Chicago Public Schools