Early Career Elementary Teachers' Mathematics Lesson Planning Practices: Unpacking the Teacher-Intended Curriculum

• In Event: Studying Early Career Elementary Teachers’ Instruction at Scale: Factors Related to Planning and Teaching Mathematics

Abstract

Objective: This paper discusses findings from a study of elementary ECTs’ mathematics lesson planning practices.

Perspective: Lesson plans represent the teacher intended curriculum (Remillard & Heck, 2014), and have direct influence on the enacted curriculum (Stein, Grover & Henningsen, 1996). Factors that influence the teacher intended curriculum include the district-sanctioned “official” instructional materials as well as supplemental resources not explicitly sanctioned as the official curriculum (Remillard & Heck, 2014). In addition, when teachers plan is relevant as an indicator of how responsive plans are to the learning needs of students (McCutcheon, 1980). Moreover, one of the most influential knowledge resources an ECT has for planning may be the knowledge of school-based colleagues (Author et al., 2011).

Data Sources and Methods: To capture the nature of these factors in elementary ECTs’ mathematics lesson planning, we conducted an interview in fall 2015 and spring 2016 with each participating ECT from the EMT study (n = 150) in conjunction with classroom observations of their mathematics instruction. Each audio-recorded interview was fully de-identified and transcribed before analyses. Participants’ responded to the following set of questions: How did you start? How did you decide what content to focus on? What resources did you use when you planned this lesson and why? How did you decide to use these resources? When did you do the planning of today’s lesson? Did you talk with any other teachers or staff to help you prepare for this lesson?
After an initial, collective process of open coding and determining an agreed-upon set of codes, raters were assigned responsibility for coding a single question and reviewing the codes assigned to make sure codes had been applied consistently and to make revisions if needed.

Findings: The majority of ECTs indicated that they planned for their mathematics lessons on a weekly basis, with some modifications made the “morning of” enactment. In addition, ECTs indicated using supplemental materials, including social media resources such as Teachers Pay Teachers, when planning, with pacing guides or curriculum maps arising as the second-most frequently used resource. The number of ECTs mentioning using learning standards as a resource increased across the year. Overall, most ECTs engaged in some aspects of mathematics planning with other school-based colleagues rather than planning alone. The nature of these discussions could be described as one of four types: (1) informal collegial conversations; (2) formal collegial conversations; (3) informal planning and (4) formal planning.
 
Significance: This study addresses a gap in the literature about the mathematics lesson planning practices of elementary ECTs, from analyses of a large corpus of data from ECTs teaching in both urban and suburban contexts and working in districts with robust teacher evaluation practices and pressures to enact instruction aligned with curriculum standards (e.g. Common Core; NGSA & CCSSO, 2010). The findings suggest several implications for teacher preparation and teacher professional development, namely the need to support ECTs to collaboratively plan with colleagues, as well as carefully curating and utilizing supplemental curriculum resources.

Authors

• Kristen Bieda, Michigan State University

• John L. Lane, Michigan State University

• Amanda Opperman, Michigan State University

• Kim Evert, University of Virginia

• Sihua Hu, Northwestern University

• Nicole Christine Ellefson, Michigan State University