Negotiating Power and Agency in Coaching to Support Ambitious Teacher Learning

• In Event: 21.051 - Mathematics Coaching for Sense-Making: Shifting the Lens to Teachers in the Coaching Relationship

Abstract

Objectives
Developing ambitious and equitable mathematics teaching involves recognizing and working against fundamentally inequitable hierarchies that pervade the dominant culture of US schools. To engage in this sizeable undertaking, teachers need ongoing, work-embedded opportunities for learning and thought partners with whom to do it. Coaching holds promise for supporting ambitious learning for teachers, as it offers learning experiences that are integrated with teachers’ own classrooms, students, and schools (Desimone & Pak, 2017; Woulfin, 2014). When combined with other efforts to support teacher learning it can, at least in theory, support teachers to connect ideas they may encounter in spaces outside of their classrooms (such as professional development workshops) to the particularities and challenges of their day-to-day teaching practice (Woulfin, 2014).
However, coaching offers no simple solutions. A widely-documented challenge in coaching relates to the need for coaches and teachers to develop productive working relationships (Anderson-Levitt, Feldman, & Minstrell, 2014; Feger, Woleck, & Hickman, 2004; Neufeld & Roper, 2003; Poglinco et al., 2003). When these relationships do not develop productively, research has suggested that some teachers or coaches have the wrong dispositions, skills, or other attributes (Anderson-Levitt et al., 2014). Teachers are framed as resistant or defensive and coaches as lacking “people skills.” These explanations yield limited solutions, implying potential courses of action such as asking teachers to change, ignoring resistant teachers, screening coaches for “people skills,” or developing strategies for teaching them these skills. This study investigates challenges in teacher-coach relationships that relate to their culturally-situated nature, rather than to the attributes of individual teachers and coaches.
Perspectives, Data Sources, and Analytic Methods
This paper suggests that attention to power, agency, and the culturally situated nature of teacher learning can provide an understanding of difficult coaching that is more robust and generative. It employs the notions of figured worlds (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 2001) and frames (Goffman, 1974; Hand, Penuel, & Gutiérrez, 2012) to examine these issues in one coach-teacher relationship, employing close analysis of video recordings of coaching interactions, both in coaching conversations and in lesson enactments.
Results and Conclusions
Analyses reveal that (1) this teacher’s agency and power were significantly constrained in her work with her coach; (2) there were consequences of this arrangement, both for her learning and for the work required for her to stay engaged in coaching; and (3) when power and agency were re-negotiated in ways that resulted in the teacher making consequential choices, the nature of her work shifted dramatically and learning became newly available. The paper examines the interactional work the teacher and coach did as they renegotiated power and agency, providing an example of how problematic coach-teacher relationships can be transformed.
Scholarly Significance
This paper highlights the importance of attending to teachers’ own experiences of agency and empowerment as they engage with coaches in learning toward the development of ambitious and equitable classrooms. It provides new tools for studying and working toward coaching toward ambitious and equitable classrooms and comments on implications for coaching and the training of coaches.

Author

• Evra Marie Baldinger, San Francisco Unified School District