Conceptions of and Research on Responsive Teaching

• In Event: Differing Notions of Responsive Teaching Across Mathematics and Science: Does the Discipline Matter?

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this poster is to provide background information about conceptions of and research on responsive teaching, aimed at attendees who are new to this literature (Ball, 1993; Brodie, 2011; Sherin, Jacobs, & Phillip, 2011; van Es, 2011). By consolidating this general introduction to the literature on one poster, we “free up” the other posters to zoom in more quickly on the particular issues (and associated literature) that they address.

Perspective

We give equal weight to perspectives from research on noticing and responsiveness in mathematics teaching (Pierson, 2008; Sherin, Jacobs, & Phillip, 2011; van Es, 2011) and in science teaching (Levin, Hammer, & Coffey, 2009; Maskiewicz & Winters, 2012; Hammer, Goldberg, & Fargason, 2012). Most of this work conceptualizes noticing and responding as skills teachers can learn while also acknowledging that contextual factors influence whether the skills are activated in a given moment (van Es & Sherin, 2008).

Data Sources/Methods

This poster is a synthetic review of previous literature; we outline shared assumptions that cut across most of the studies in this area while also highlighting areas of non-consensus that warrant further discussion—the major purpose of this session as a whole.

Results

We find that most work on responsive teaching identifies two broad dimensions of responsiveness: (1) Specificity, the degree to which teachers notice and attend to fine-grained details of individual students’ reasoning, as opposed to just making broad generalizations about what “the class was thinking”; and (2) Interpretiveness, the extent to which teachers attend to, interpret, and respond to the substance of students’ ideas as opposed to merely evaluating whether the student is right or wrong (Brodie, 2001; Sherin, Jacobs, & Phillip, 2011; van Es, 2011). Yet, there is divergence in the extent to which researchers code teachers for attending to particular, pre-identified aspects of student thinking and for responding in ways that draw on particular pedagogical content knowledge (Hammer, Goldberg, & Fargason, 2011; Jacobs et al, 2011). This is where disciplinary differences may arise; we leave this as an unresolved issue.

Significance

Although the primary point of this poster is to provide attendees with an introduction to this area of research, the synthesis of previous research on responsive teaching across mathematics and science is a contribution to the literature and could facilitate ongoing discussions and debates of the type this session aims to stoke.

Authors

• Amy Robertson, Seattle Pacific University

• Jennifer Richards, University of Washington