Learning Responsiveness: How Elementary Mathematics Teachers' Practice Changed Through Side-by-Side Coaching

• In Event: The Promise and Pitfalls of Mathematics Coaching: New Evidence Regarding Coaching Practices and Their Impact

Abstract

Learning to be responsive, by “taking up and pursuing the substance of student ideas” (Robertson, Atkins, Levin, & Richards, 2016, p. 2) as they emerge in the elementary mathematics classroom, is challenging work for teachers. While teachers can readily learn to ask questions which open conversation about student thinking, they struggle to ask follow up questions or decide how to respond in ways that are productive for student learning (Franke et al., 2009; Jacobs, Lamb, Philipp, & Schappelle, 2011). Teachers cannot plan for responsiveness; instead, responding requires skillful improvisation. Typical forms of professional development (PD) are ill-suited for developing responsiveness, because they provide support before or after teaching, not during, when teachers struggle. I hypothesize that learning to be responsive in the moment requires PD situated within the context of teaching. I present findings from a study of elementary mathematics teachers who engaged in side-by-side coaching, in which the coach and teacher moved through the classroom together discussing how to respond to student thinking, and describe what teachers learned through this joint activity.

Methods
Three elementary teachers (grades 1, 2, and 4) participated in a month-long period of side-by-side coaching focused on learning to respond to students as they worked on collaborative, inquiry-based mathematics. Data consisted of video recordings of 5–6 mathematics lessons before and 4–5 lessons after the coaching period. I qualitatively analyzed the teacher-student interactions which focused on mathematics during students’ work time, and used cross-case analysis (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana 2014) to compare the nature of teacher-student interactions before and after the coaching period and identify themes of change.

Findings
Side-by-side coaching supported participants’ learning to respond to student thinking in the moment by developing and enacting a genuinely curious stance toward student thinking. This broad change was composed of changes in teachers’ dispositions and practices. Teacher dispositions changed in four interrelated ways. Teachers exhibited changes in (1) their implicit purpose, from completing tasks or managing behavior to supporting student thinking; (2) vastly reducing control over student ideas and next steps; (3) staying in the moment with student thinking, rather than predetermining the course of conversation; and (4) patience for students, providing more wait time and fewer signals to speed up.
Teachers expanded their practices in four ways: (1) increased use of eliciting moves to surface student thinking, (2) shifting from closed to open questions, (3) increased repertoire of moves to support meaning making, such as making connections; and (4) use of a purposeful closing to the interaction, which affirmed the students’ plan or highlighted key student ideas. Together these changes in teachers’ dispositions and practices supported learning responsiveness.

Significance
This study provides evidence that embedded PD in the context of teaching through side-by-side coaching can be productive for teacher learning, giving both professional developers and researchers interested in promoting responsiveness a new tool. Further, the findings demonstrate that learning to be responsive involves changes to both teachers’ dispositions and their enacted practices, and that these can be simultaneously grown while teaching.

Author

• Jen Munson, Stanford University