Efforts to Conceptualize Key Structures of Teaching Practice in the Content Areas

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session investigates four conceptual structures that offer alternative ways to organize and interpret the work of teaching: core practices, professional scripts for teaching, instructional regimes, and teaching personas. Each of these structures makes visible and bundles together some of the interactive, cognitive, and interpersonal aspects of teaching by naming and foregrounding particular dimensions of the work. Each structure is situated within one or more subject areas (ELA, science, mathematics, and social studies). This symposium provides a unique opportunity to understand what each structure offers for examining teaching and to study these structures in tandem as tools for understanding teaching. The symposium also considers key challenges involved in capturing and naming the work of teaching in different ways.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 1: Teaching and Teacher Education in the Content Areas

Chair

• Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Papers

• Core Practices in Science Teacher Education: The Value and Challenges of Being Explicit About Rigorous and Equitable Instruction - Mark A. Windschitl, University of Washington; Karin Lohwasser, University of Washington

• Identifying Key Structures for Teaching: Teachers' Professional Scripts for Practice - Rebecca Gadd, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Instructional Regimes as a Tool for Classroom Observation - Kolby Gadd, University of Michigan

• Enacting a Teaching Persona in English Language Arts and Social Studies Classrooms - Martha Curren-Preis, University of Michigan

Discussant

• Robert E. Floden, Michigan State University