Contradictions and Tensions as Barriers or Levers for Teachers' Equity-Focused Learning With Coaches

• In Event: Teacher Learning Toward Equity and Justice to Change Systemic Inequalities

Abstract

Previous literature provides examples of contradictions and tensions serving both as barriers to teachers’ equity-focused learning (e.g. Horn, 2007) and as levers for such learning (e.g. Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010). This paper examines contradictions, tensions, and teacher learning in the case of one teacher working with a coach in the context of an equity-focused professional development program for secondary mathematics teachers. Through this particularly illustrative case, the paper investigates the questions: what distinguishes these divergent functions of contradictions and tensions? How might contradictions and tensions be used productively to support teacher learning? Findings suggest that for contradictions and tensions to support important teacher learning, teachers and coaches (or other supporters of teacher learning) should have opportunities to negotiate them explicitly.

Author

• Evra Marie Baldinger, University of California - Berkeley