Learning Together in Practice: Examining the Teacher Time-Out Routine

• In Event: 41.046 - How Can a Teacher Preparation System Be Improved? Lessons Learned From Purposeful Intervention and Research

Abstract

Objectives. Improving professional learning for educators is a crucial aspect of transforming instruction (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009). In this paper, we examine an important routine that has emerged in our work in both pre-service and in-service contexts, where teachers engage in classroom-based learning. The routine, Teacher Time Out (TTO), supports teachers to enact instruction jointly, enabling them to make instructional decisions together. TTO gives teachers permission to pause within the lesson to think aloud, share instructional decision-making with one another, and determine where to steer instruction. Because the learning needs for pre- and in-service teachers are different, in this analysis we examine how the routine played out in each context to support teachers’ development.


Theoretical Framework. Little (2002) was concerned with how to understand the relations among teacher community, teacher development, and the improvement of practice. Thus, we drew on her framework to ask the following questions for each setting. How was practice represented in the TTOs? How did norms of interaction around practice come to be organized through TTOs?


Methods. We purposefully selected two classroom-based learning activities – one during an in-service professional learning event and one during a pre-service professional learning event – to explicate the features of TTOs and analyze how the TTOs supported teachers’ opportunities to learn. In each context, we situate the TTOs in the larger professional development efforts or mathematics methods course by examining: (a) video of the TTOs within the classroom visits and accompanying field notes, (b) interviews with novice and practicing teachers, and (c) individual “exit ticket” written reflections about how TTOs supported thinking and learning. To analyze the focal TTO episodes, we coded the data to examine how the routine supported: (a) norms of interaction; (b) teachers’ orientations toward practice; (c) participation of teachers, coaches, and teacher educators to support learning of teachers and students; and (d) what problems of practice got worked on.

Results. Our analysis showed that pre- and in-service teachers used TTOs to consider and make changes in-the-moment. Thus, there was less of a need to reflect hypothetically after the fact, “What would have happened if we had had just done or said x?” In the in-service context, we found that the practicing teachers tried out opportunistic experiments in the midst of teaching (e.g., considering what type of representation to use to make a student’s response public). In the pre-service context, the novice teachers had opportunities to get support as they encountered instructional challenges, which ranged from basic problems of practice (e.g., where to stand at the board) to the more complex (e.g., how to respond to students’ thinking). In both contexts, over time TTO interactions shifted the focus from one of judgment and evaluation to one of collective consideration about teaching and learning.

Significance. The TTO became an important routine in both settings because the routine supported educators’ collaboration during instruction, rather than supporting stakeholders to discuss and analyze practice after instruction. TTOs allowed teachers to change the course of instruction in-the-moment, thereby supporting both student and teacher learning.

Authors

• Lynsey K. Gibbons, Boston University

• Elham Kazemi, University of Washington

• Allison Beth Hintz, University of Washington - Bothell

• Elizabeth Hartmann, University of Fukui