The Subject Matters for Teachers' Perceptions of Responsive Teaching

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

Abstract

Purpose

This paper argues that the subject matters for what teachers consider to be responsible, responsive teaching. Analysis focuses on establishing patterns of responsive teaching in science and mathematics, and understanding how the discipline influences how teachers respond to student ideas and reasoning. We argue that understanding these dynamics is important for teacher educators working with elementary teachers, who generally teach across disciplines and who often do not have strong backgrounds in mathematics or science.

Perspective

We situate this work within efforts to establish more empirically-grounded and practice-based accounts of pedagogical content knowledge (Ball & Bass 2003; Kazemi et al, 2009; Putman & Borko, 2000). We align with work that seeks to better understand and support teachers’ learning of “high leverage” practices within disciplinary areas (Franke & Chan, 2006). We consider the ways in which content knowledge and backgrounds become consequential as teachers interact with students in different disciplines.

Methods and modes of inquiry

Primary data come from a semester-long course within a STEM certificate program for practicing elementary teachers. Analyses sought to examine the nature of differences and similarities across subject areas. Iterative coding yielded categories and revealed patterns of variation. Several cases were chosen for closer analysis that either represented typical patterns or that contrasted to prevailing patterns. Categories were then used to structure a closer comparative analysis of parallel assignments and participation in course activities for selected cases.

Data sources and evidence

Data include (i) video records of course meetings and (ii) course assignments such as written reflections and activities involving analyses of students’ scientific and mathematical thinking, field-based assignments involving instructional design and implementation, observations of teaching, and written assignments probing the teachers’ own mathematical and scientific thinking.

Results

We build on a previous study of mathematics and science methods preservice coursework that revealed that the same prospective teachers often attended differently to student thinking and participation across subjects, due to their orientation towards and relationship with the disciplines of mathematics and science (Coffey & Edwards, in revision). This paper focuses on data from a professional development setting. Contrasts in what participants noticed in videos of math and science teaching suggest the extent to which school standards and school curricula shape teachers’ ideas of the nature of the discipline, constraining their sense of what counts as “responsiveness.”

Scholarly significance of the study

This work contributes to teacher education literature that shifts the focus of pedagogical content knowledge from requisite teacher knowledge to practices through which that knowledge is employed, importantly in interaction with and in response to students’ ideas and reasoning (Kazemi et al, 2009). We highlight the capacity of teacher education and professional development to help teachers establish practices of disciplinary attending that contribute to more robust notions of disciplinary learning and understanding and deeper conceptual understandings – for teachers and their students. We argue for the importance of supporting teachers’ navigation across subject areas – including across the nature of the discipline and the disciplines as represented in school and text.

Authors

• Janet E. Coffey, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

• Ann R. Edwards, Carnegie Foundation