Characterizing a New Dimension of Progress in Attending and Responding to Students' Scientific Thinking

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

Abstract

Purpose

A growing body of work examines how teachers’ attention and responsiveness to students’ thinking change over time. This work considers the specificity with which teachers attend to students’ ideas (e.g., van Es, 2011), the stance teachers take toward students’ ideas (e.g., Crespo, 2000), and/or the types of follow-up moves teachers make (e.g., Pierson, 2008). While these foci foreground how teachers treat students’ ideas, they do not clearly address how teachers link students’ ideas to disciplinary ideas and practices. Our aim is to bring discipline-specific considerations into the discussion of progress in teachers’ responsiveness. In doing so, we make the case that nuanced conceptions of progress in teachers’ responsiveness need to take discipline-specific considerations into account.

Perspective

Our perspective aligns with work emphasizing the “twin imperatives of responsiveness and responsibility” (Ball, 1993, p. 374) –grounding instruction in students’ ideas while helping them learn important disciplinary ideas and practices. By looking for the beginnings of science in what students are saying and doing (Hammer & van Zee, 2006), teachers can help students see their contributions as productive in the doing of science and can help students refine their scientific thinking and content understandings.

Data Sources/Methods

We report on a comparative case study of two class discussions from Mr. S’s seventh-grade science class. These discussions feature the same teacher teaching the “same” lesson in consecutive years, attending and responding to students’ ideas about the same physical scenario. We drew on a range of discursive markers to characterize his responsiveness in each case – how he revoiced students’ ideas (e.g., O’Connor & Michaels, 1993), how and when he pressed on students’ ideas (e.g., Brodie, 2011), and when he made bids to close the conversation (e.g., Schegloff & Sacks, 1999). We also examined video of teacher meetings and one-on-one interviews to probe Mr. S’s perspective on these classroom discussions.

Results

In the year 1 discussion, Mr. S foregrounded students’ identification of the causal factors or force-like entities responsible for the motion they predicted. In general, if the factor causing the motion was not apparent in a student’s explanation, Mr. S pressed the student to articulate it; if the factor was apparent, Mr. S accepted the student’s response. In contrast, in the year 2 discussion, Mr. S foregrounded students’ articulation of causal stories of what they thought would happen. This foregrounding involved his continued pursuit of different stories and more detail from students, even after they had specified causal factors. Our poster will also examine influences on Mr. S’s responsiveness in each case.

Significance

This work adds a disciplinary lens to the ongoing discussion of progress in teachers’ attention and responsiveness to students’ ideas. Doing so raises important questions about what should count as—and where we might look for—progress in teachers’ changing practices over time, and whether discipline-independent notions of responsive teaching are sufficient to capture a teacher’s progress toward greater responsiveness.

Authors

• Jennifer Richards, University of Washington

• Ayush Gupta, University of Maryland - College Park

• Andrew R. Elby, University of Maryland - College Park