Using Responsive Teaching to Turn Teacher Attention to Student Epistemic Agency

• In Event: 54.044 - Exploring Varied Approaches to Supporting Responsive Teaching in Science and Mathematics

Abstract

Purpose
Responsive teaching (RT) is heralded for supporting students in developing rich content understandings (e.g. Sleep & Boerst, 2012). In our work, we turn our attention away from those affordances, and instead explore how conversations around RT can be used to turn pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) attention to enabling student epistemic agency.

Theoretical Framework
The central tenant of RT is that the teacher will hear, interpret and respond to the substance of the students’ ideas (Authors, 2016a). In doing so, the teacher co-constructs knowledge with their students rather then creating situations for students to “acquire” the ideas. As such, the teacher communicates that, rather then problems to be fixed, the students’ ideas are the core part of the class’s intellectual material. Thus, by attending to students’ ideas, RT makes it possible for students to act as epistemic agents (e.g., Stroupe, 2014). It is our claim that this is why RT is such an effective pedagogical approach.

Methods
In our elementary science methods classes we emphasize this mechanism by drawing PST’s attention to what is happening before and after a teacher move; we ask our PSTs to justify hypothetical teacher moves by considering whether and how it responds to the student’s ideas, and the epistemological message that the move could send to the student (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Structure of a Pedagogical Argument

In this poster we demonstrate how articulating epistemological messages creates opportunities for PSTs to consider the differential impact of those messages on students in their classes. Specifically, we examine PST discussions of how their moves can influence whether and how different students see themselves and their ideas as valuable for sensemaking. We do this through analyses of video-recorded discussions from 3 elementary methods sections.

Results
To get a flavor of our data and the affordances of attention to epistemological messages, consider this PST discussing the possible effect of not to responding to a typically high performing student’s idea:

What about [if your teaching move] brought the kid down? Like he was quieter because he didn’t have the answers any more? Is that okay because he is normally the guy that talks all the time? And now you are leveling it out. Because if he talks in science he’s probably also the one talking in math…He can still feel validated in math… Is it alright if he comes down?

In this moment, the PST grapples with how his teaching might inhibit a student’s epistemic agency. In the full paper we more fully demonstrate how attention to epistemological messages through RT provides a productive entry point for PSTs to talk about differential epistemic agency in classrooms.

Significance
To date, much of the research on supporting RT has focused on drawing teacher attention to the science in the students’ ideas (e.g. Roth et al., 2011). We add to this literature by describing how the same attention, when coupled with attention to epistemological messages, can support teachers in thinking about how student agency is distributed (or not) in their classrooms.

Authors

• Leema G. Berland, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Rosemary Russ, University of Wisconsin - Madison