Relationships Between Elementary Teachers' Shifts in Framing, Noticing, and Pedagogical Practices in Engineering Education

• In Event: Conceptualizing Teacher Noticing in Research on Teaching and Teacher Learning

Abstract

Objectives
In this poster, we position teachers’ shifts in noticing as an integral part of improving their engineering teaching. Rather than considering noticing in isolation, we examine relationships between teachers’ noticing, pedagogical practices, and how they frame (Goffman, 1974; Tannen, 1993) teaching engineering. While prior work has theorized connections between these constructs (Richards, et al., 2020; Kang & Anderson, 2015), our goal is to draw on these relationships to study teachers’ shifts in an online graduate program.
Framework
We position noticing as a component in the complex, dynamic ecology of teachers’ pedagogical reasoning. We consider the bi-directional relationship between framing and noticing (Russ & Luna, 2013): what teachers notice will shape how they frame what is taking place, likewise their framing will impact what they notice. We also consider how teachers’ pedagogical practices play a role in this web: teacher’s framing will impact the pedagogical practices they draw on, likewise these practices will have different affordances for noticing and framing. Therefore, teachers’ learning to notice would involve not just improving their abilities to notice or to draw on particular pedagogical practices, but also shaping how they frame classroom activities. We seek to characterize the complexity of relationships and emergent patterns between teachers’ framing, noticing, and practices (Zellermayer & Margolin, 2005).
Data Sources/Methods
We conducted a cross-case analysis of eleven elementary teachers enrolled in an 18-month program in engineering education. Primary data sources were semi-structured interviews, which included teacher reflections of classroom videos. Using thematic comparative coding and narrative analysis, we examined shifts and patterns in teachers’ noticing, practices, and framing.
Findings
We describe two main patterns of teachers’ shifts. One group began with stable framings of engineering teaching (N=5); their shifts were in specific areas of noticing and practices. For instance, Daphne, Remi, and Vanessa (pseudonyms) stably framed their teaching of engineering as opportunities to center learning around student thinking and engaged in highly-responsive teaching practices. Vanessa shifted towards noticing students’ mechanistic reasoning, while Remi and Daphne demonstrated greater noticing of students’ equitable participation.
Another group (N=6) demonstrated meaningful shifts in how they framed teaching engineering. Earlier, these teachers often framed teaching engineering as a way to direct students towards specific goals. Later, these teachers reframed teaching engineering as opportunities to engage with students’ thinking. However, there was variability in their relationships between framing, noticing, and practices, namely in the different ways noticing and practices supported teachers’ reframing and how shifts in framing prompted new noticing and practices. However, for all these teachers, we noticed that meaningful shifts in noticing and/or practices were associated with meaningful shifts in their framing.
Significance
These findings further support the importance of attending to teacher framing as part of supporting noticing and to recognizing the complexity between framing, noticing, and practices. Additionally, this analysis links shorter term, context-dependent teacher reflections with longer-term shifts towards stabilities in teachers’ framing. Lastly, we see opportunities in centering framing to link moment-to-moment noticing and practices with broader ideological narratives, building on the framework from Gresalfi & Hand (2019).

Authors

• Rebecca D. Swanson, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Jessica Watkins, Vanderbilt University