Exploring Teachers' Attention and Mind-Set in Science Argumentation Discussions

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Collaboration, Decision Making, and Integration in STEM

Abstract

Orchestrating science argumentation requires teachers make sense of student thinking, make instructional moves that are responsive to students, and advance their learning. We report on an exploratory mixed methods study with the goal of understanding the nature of teachers’ thinking, in order to better understand how to support teachers learning to facilitate argumentation. We analyze teachers’ reasoning about segments of audio segments of secondary science discussions. Examining what teachers attend to in these segments, our findings indicate that teachers reasoning and decision-making is imbued with fixed and growth mindsets (Dweck, 2000). The findings suggest teachers’ attention is reflexively mediated by sociocultural cues in the discussions. These findings have important implications for teacher professional development and future scholarship on teacher learning.

Authors

• Katherine Arias Garcia, University of California - San Diego

• Jessica Miguel, University of California - San Diego

• Ramon Stephens, University of California - San Diego

• Melissa Warstadt, University of California - San Diego

• Sherice Clarke, University of California - San Diego