First-Year Teachers' Skills in Leading Mathematics Discussions

• In Event: Beginning Mathematics Teaching

Abstract

Objectives
Leading mathematics discussions has received considerable attention in teacher preparation. However, there has been limited attention to the enactment of the practice by first-year teachers who must make sense of the practice in their new teaching contexts and without many of the supports provided by teacher preparation programs. This exploratory study seeks to (a) identify patterns in first-year teachers’ skills with the practice; and (b) examine whether providing a mathematics task, lesson plan, and supports for understanding the mathematics, anticipating student thinking, and scaling the task for specific learners led to similar or different interpretations of teachers’ skills with the practice.

Perspectives
Research on practices for orchestrating productive discussions (Smith & Stein, 2011), the concept of talk moves (Chapin, O’Connor, & Anderson, 2013), and the decomposition of practices so that novices can learn them (Boerst et al., 2011) informs our decomposition of the work of leading a discussion. As shown in Figure 1, we differentiate discussion-enabling practices (Boerst et al, 2009), such as anticipating student thinking, and discussion-leading practices used to manage a discussion, such as eliciting student thinking. We distinguish between the launch, orchestration, and conclusion of the discussion. Within each stage, teachers engage in particular discussion-leading practices (e.g., orchestration includes eliciting contributions and probing student thinking) that are further elaborated by techniques.

Figure 1: Decomposition of Leading a Mathematics Discussion

Methods and data sources
The participants were nine first-year teachers from a range of grade levels (1-5), school districts, and teacher education programs. Data sources included classroom video records. For each participant, we video recorded a mathematics discussion that was taught as a part of regular instruction. We then later captured the teacher’s enactment of a discussion in his/her classroom for which we provided the task, a lesson plan, and other supports (scaffolded discussion). We developed a scoring tool, based on our decomposition of the practice, to analyze these discussions.

Results
We analyzed teachers’ enactment of a discussion that occurred as part of regular classroom instruction, which revealed strengths (e.g., launching a discussion and eliciting contributions from students) and challenges (e.g., orienting students to others’ ideas and concluding). Then, we compared individual teachers’ use of particular techniques in this first discussion with their scaffolded discussion. Teachers’ observed skill with techniques associated with some practices, such as eliciting student thinking, tended to be similar across the two contexts. When differences occurred in a individual teachers’ observed skill, we typically found evidence of skills in the discussion for which we provided the task and lesson plan but no evidence of those same skills when teachers led a discussion as part of their regular classroom practice. In our full paper, we trace how this variation could be attributed to the scaffolds provided and the tasks selected for the discussion.

Significance
This paper contributes to the research base on both beginning teaching and leading mathematics discussions. Practically, understanding the ways in which beginners enact the practice of leading a discussion has implications for teacher preparation, professional development, and curriculum development.

Authors

• Meghan M. Shaughnessy, University of Michigan

• Nicole Garcia, University of Michigan

• Sarah Kate Selling, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Michaela Krug O'Neill, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Sabrina Bobsin Salazar, University of Michigan

• Charles Wilkes, University of Michigan

• Amber Willis, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor