Public Teaching as a Setting for Observation

• In Event: Investigating Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Instructional Laboratories to Enhance Teaching Practice

Abstract

Objectives
To explore the affordances of Public Teaching (PT), this study examined the experiences of participants in the Teaching and Coaching Laboratory (TCL). TCL is a professional development program centered on observations of PT within an instructional laboratory classroom. We asked: How do observations of PT classrooms differ from those of conventional classrooms?

Perspectives
Observations of teaching, both for in-service and pre-service teachers, are often incidental and oriented around everyday events of the classroom (Weade & Evertson, 1991). In contrast, teachers in PT classrooms employ particular moves to intentionally make more visible to observers the high-quality, research-based practices that Lewis (2007) describes as typically invisible.

Many coaching models employ model teaching (Aguilar, 2013; Barkley & Bianco, 2010; Casey, 2011) and instructional modeling is widely acknowledged as an effective technique for students (Fisher & Frey, 2015; NASEM, 2018; Stickler & Sykes, 2016). It follows that helping observers alternate between apprentice observer and expert practitioner (Lave & Wenger, 1991) as they critique modeled instruction will support transfer into enacted practices.

Methods and data sources
Data were collected over two years and include 13 participants from two TCL cohorts. As a follow-up to TCL experiences, participants observed two teachers' video lessons. Both videos featured 5th-grade mathematics discussions; only one was from a PT setting. Participants were directed to anchor their observations in group discussion-related practices. The number and type of teacher actions observed were compared across the two fifth grade settings. Inductive coding was used to identify consistencies across participants. Following the observations, participants engaged in a facilitated conversation about the experience of observing the two teaching settings. These discussion responses were transcribed and inductively coded.

Results
Two foci emerged from the data: visibility of teachers’ practice between the two instructional settings and variability of the practices employed by the teachers. In both cohorts, more observers cued on the same points of instruction in the PT classroom than in the conventional setting. Additionally, points at which participants recorded discrepant observations appeared in fewer of the PT observations than the conventional classroom. In all, participants identified a larger range of instructional practices in the PT classroom. Analysis of the debrief discussions revealed the majority of participants perceived a better understanding of the teachers’ moves in the PT setting. Participants noted the two classrooms were comparable, but there was an awareness of a wide range of variations between the classrooms. These included but also extended beyond the visible aspects of instruction anchored in the observation.

Significance
The variability illuminated through the data suggests the complexity of observation. It is critical that observation opportunities for teachers account for this complexity to maximize the visibility of high-quality, research-based practices. By leveraging a PT setting to make these visible, educators are more effectively positioned to move from the study of practice to enacting practices (Lave & Wenger, 1991). More so than observations in typical classroom settings, PT classrooms have the potential to help teachers bridge the gap between theory and enactment and can provide a rich opportunity for professional development.

Authors

• Kate Kniss, Albany County School District #1

• Andrea Hayden, University of Wyoming/Albany County School District #1

• Clare Gunshenan, University of Wyoming

• Kate Muir Welsh, University of Wyoming

• Ariane Eicke, Wyoming

• Cynthia H. Brock, University of Wyoming