Using Practice-Based Pedagogies to Support Instructional Coaching in Historical Inquiry

• In Event: Core Practices in Social Studies Teacher Education: Promises and Pitfalls

Abstract

Purpose
Inquiry instruction demands that teachers invite students into the process of knowledge construction in ways that invert traditional instruction (Cohen, 2011). Although policy documents reflect a broad consensus that such instruction is desirable (e.g., National Council for Social Studies, 2013), the history classroom has been subject to a long history of foundered reform, in part because social studies teachers receive little content-specific professional development (Cuban, 2016). This study examines how a practice-based approach to the preparation of instructional coaches shaped coaches’ pedagogy with history teachers. I examine how coaches offer feedback in the context of rehearsals and whether teachers take up coach feedback in their instruction.

“Practice-based” efforts aim to reconfigure the complex work of teaching and teacher education into bounded instructional practices that teachers might observe, study, and rehearse (Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009). Recent studies highlight the promise of practice-based teacher education pedagogies, such as creating opportunities for teachers to rehearse and receive feedback on their instruction (e.g., Kazemi, Ghousseini, Cunard, & Turrou, 2016). Kavanagh et al. (2020) identified pedagogies of reasoning that teacher educators might use: posing pedagogical dilemmas, highlighting instructional purposes, engaging relevant knowledge, considering multiple instructional decisions, and making instructional decision-making explicit.

Project Context
This comparative case study draws data from the second and third year of a design-based implementation study with a cohort of instructional coaches (N=8) in a well-resourced district that wished to develop a sustainable model of instructional coaching. The two focal coaches were classroom teachers selected for their proficiency in document-based history instruction. Together, the coaches and author co-designed the coaching model and specified the three focal core practices of document-based inquiry: Establishing Background Knowledge (EBK), Supporting Historical Reading (SHR), and Facilitating Historical Discussion (FHD). Participating teachers co-planned with coaches and then videotaped themselves enacting each practice in their classroom. The author held a series of 4-5 hour PD sessions with coaches during this time (37 hours total).

Data Sources and Analysis
Video of PD sessions were segmented into “episodes of practice,” initiated and bounded by coaches’ collective analysis of a representation of practice. These were coded for pedagogical content knowledge and pedagogies of reasoning (Kavanagh et al, 2020). Coach rehearsals with teachers at the start of years 2 and 3 were cross-walked with the same codes. Teachers’ enacted EBK’s were coded for alignment with coaches’ suggestions.

Findings
Coaches grew in certain pedagogies of reasoning over the course of year 2 (e.g., highlighting instructional purposes and making instructional decision-making explicit), and this growth appeared correlated with teachers’ uptake of their suggestions. But they did not pose dilemmas to teachers and prompt them to consider multiple decisions. That is, their feedback remained didactic. These areas of growth directly mapped onto the pedagogy of the practice-based PD sessions.

Significance
This study is the first to examine the preparation of social studies, instructional coaches, using practice-based pedagogies. Findings shed light on how coaches might be prepared to guide teachers in developing transferable practices that support historical inquiry.

Author

• Abby Reisman, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author