Coaching Strategies to Support Teacher Iterative Practices When Redesigning Lessons (Poster 1)

• In Event: Reconceptualizing Designerly Thinking and Participatory Design With Students, Teachers, Administrators, and Community Members

Abstract

Purpose. The study examines how different coaching strategies influenced teachers’ ability to iteratively develop and test lesson plans to improve their teaching and understanding of student thinking, in Lesson Study—a design process that teacher teams use to improve their teaching.

Theoretical Framework. Design Studies views iteration in design as a process of both improving designers’ understanding of the context and problem and using this new understanding to better meet the needs of stakeholders (Atman et al., 2007; Schön, 1983). Running counter to more iterative approaches, lesson study uses a waterfall approach. Teachers focus on one “phase” at a time, and only create and test a lesson in the final few weeks of the process. Waterfall approaches can mean teachers test teaching practices at the end of their training, only to find that it does not support their students. Thus, traditional lesson study can take months or years to impact teaching practices.

Method. We employed a case study method, comparing coaching sessions across two semesters. Specifically, we analyzed video of coaching sessions of the extent that teachers were able to iterate each week (Rees Lewis et al., 2018). We analyzed the videos of coaching sessions to see which strategies the coaches employed. Finally, we also analyzed the videos of lessons to see if the teachers met the goals that they had co-developed with their students (increased math talk).

Data sources. We drew upon video recorded weekly coaching sessions (video call) with a team of teachers over 2 semesters, and artifacts (planning documents, lesson plans/materials). Finally, we drew upon videos of teachers’ lessons at the end of each semester.

Findings. We found that for the first semester-and-a-half, teachers rarely engaged in iterative practices. In this period, teachers worked on scoping teaching strategies, and rarely employed or empirically assessed their strategies. In the first semester, this meant that teachers waited to the end of the semester to test strategies. Furthermore, most coaching strategies employed in this first semester-and-a-half focused upon encouraging teachers to choose a concrete set of teaching practices.

Half-way through the second semester, the coach employed the strategy of increasing cadence—shortening the deadlines by asking the teachers to teach multiple practice lessons over the semester. After increasing the cadence, the coach used more strategies to build upon concrete ideas of how to design teaching practices. Furthermore, teachers engaged in more iteration, attempting more teaching strategies, talked to students about their experiences more, and drew more empirical inferences about teaching strategies. The lesson at the end of the second semester involved dramatically more student math talk.

Contributions. This work suggests that to help teachers iterate more, we might increase cadence by creating shorter deadlines, so teachers try new teaching practices sooner. Such design thinking professional development might help teachers engage in improved teaching practices sooner, decrease wasted work, and lead to more teacher learning.

Authors

• Daniel George Rees Lewis, Northwestern University

• Matthew W. Easterday, Northwestern University

• Christopher Riesbeck, Northwestern University

• Brent Jackson, WestEd