Promoting Agency and Authority Through Math Talks

• In Event: 45.046 - Teacher Learning to Position Students as Capable in Class Discussions: Looking Across Subject Matter Domains

Abstract

Purpose. Since 2011, the Elementary Mathematics Collaborative (EMC; a pseudonym) has been working with teachers to transform mathematics instruction. A central goal has been supporting students’ sense of agency and authority, providing them with opportunities to see themselves and each other as powerful doers of mathematics. This poster will examine EMC leaders’ strategies for working toward whole-class discussions that accomplish this goal.

Grounding Framework. Positioning students as capable mathematical thinkers involves altering traditional instruction to provide students with space to develop their own ideas and then centering those ideas as objects of discussion and resources for learning (e.g., Cobb, Gresalfi, & Hodge, 2009). Similar to students, teachers need to make their own sense of their work and develop identities as professionals capable of investigating and solving problems (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Author, 2017). Supporting teacher agency and authority therefore goes hand in hand with supporting student agency and authority.

Methods. I observed EMC activities including 4 all-day workshops, 6 follow-up meetings, and 16 coaching cycles spread between 5 elementary schools, making field notes and video recordings (transcribed). The data corpus also includes notes from numerous conversations with EMC leaders. The present analysis focused on identifying strategies EMC leaders employed to support teacher agency and authority.

Findings. EMC leaders used various strategies to support teacher agency and authority in learning to position students as capable during whole-class discussions. One was introducing a framework of “five dimensions of mathematically powerful classrooms” (Schoenfeld & the Teaching for Robust Understanding Project, 2016), highlighting student agency, authority, and ownership within this framework. This “empowered teachers,” as EMC leaders described, shifting attention from following protocols (teachers’ initial focus) to a purpose that they all seemed to share, whether or not they found the protocols compelling.

Additionally, teacher collaboration was emphasized. The coach’s role was to facilitate conversations between teachers, anchored in the open-ended questions in the framework. This positioned teachers as knowledgeable and capable of learning together.

EMC leaders also worked closely with school and district administrators to develop a common vision for mathematics instruction. This work expanded administrators’ thinking and with it, teachers’ space to exercise agency and authority over transforming their practice.

Tensions did sometimes surface between supporting teacher and student agency and authority. For example, teachers labeled students “high” and “low” and used these categories to make decisions that limited students’ opportunities. The coach rarely countered such comments directly, focusing instead on reiterating the shared goal of supporting “all students” to develop a sense of themselves as powerful mathematical thinkers. How this strategy functioned warrants further study.

Significance. There is some evidence of EMC’s effectiveness, suggesting that their approach to supporting teacher and student agency and authority contains valuable lessons for other teacher educators. Additionally, this study contributes to understandings of how supporting teacher agency and authority intersects with supporting student agency and authority and the tensions this work entails, which must be navigated in order to position more students as capable.

Author

• Nicole Louie, University of Wisconsin - Madison