How Responsive Coaching Mediates Elementary Teachers' Enactments of Responsive Science Teaching Practices

• In Event: 67.067 - MTCC Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: 67.067-12 - Investigating How Instructional Coaching Supports Teacher Learning and Development Across Disciplines Using Core Practices

Abstract

Objectives: This paper proposes a framework for responsive coaching. To test this framework, I analyzed professional learning trajectories of three upper elementary science teachers over a year as they experimented with responsive teaching practices with my support as their science instructional coach. These questions guided my study: Is it possible for responsive coaching to support elementary teachers in taking up responsive teaching practices? If so, what dimensions of responsive coaching appear to support teachers’ pedagogical experimentation aimed at being responsive to their students’ science ideas?

Perspectives: Coaching has been and continues to be a popular support for teachers’ professional learning (Russo, 2004); however, not all teachers receiving coaching support appropriate new forms of instruction (Supovitz & Turner, 2000; Teemant et al., 2011). Therefore, it is important to study and specify the nature of coaching interactions (Gibbons & Cobb, 2016) as certain characteristics seem to influence the coaching relationship and improve teacher practice, such as: trust-building (Anderson, Feldman, & Minstrell, 2014), sharing a vision of instruction (Gibbons, Kazemi, & Lewis, 2017), and using a combination of coaching approaches to address teachers’ individual needs and interests (Sailors & Price, 2015). Building from these characteristics, I name five dimensions of responsive coaching and argue that responsive coaching, used in combination with other conditions, supports shifts in teacher learning and classroom practice over time.

Methods and Data Sources: For this multi-case study, I served as the science instructional coach for three upper elementary teachers at different schools, engaging each teacher in 12 or more coaching cycles across the school year. I selectively transcribed episodes of joint-negotiation during audio segments of our co-planning and debriefing conversations to code for dimensions of responsiveness in my coaching. I examined if/when these negotiations resulted in observable actions or behaviors in subsequent lesson observations using my field notes and video of these lessons. In particular, I traced teachers’ development around three focal teaching practices that were likely to provide opportunities for these teachers to be responsive to their students’ science thinking. This study analyzes teachers’ pedagogical experimentation pathways with science teaching practices over a year and explores how dimensions of the coach’s responsiveness mediates teachers’ continued experimentation

Results: Teachers experimented with responsive teaching practices in recognizable, yet varied ways. Tracking teachers’ experimentation with each practice over time revealed unique patterns of incremental improvement, plateaus, and/or regressions. These phases, when recognized and problematized with the coach during coaching cycles, provided opportunities for teacher learning during joint teacher-coach negotiations which ultimately supported teachers’ continued yet varied experimentation with these teaching practices.

Significance of the study or work: This study addresses a gap and elaborates on existing literature by (1) focusing on how elementary generalists (non-specialists) take-up and enact responsive teaching practices, (2) extending what we know about how coaching relates to when/how teachers try and take up new practices, and (3) defining what responsiveness specifically looks like in support of teacher learning and its effects on teachers’ sustained pedagogical experimentation and uptake of teaching practices.

Author

• Carolyn Colley, University of Washington