"She Responded in Ways I Might Not Have Imagined": Developing Preservice Teachers' Responsiveness Using In-Service Teacher Accounts

• In Event: Responsiveness in Teacher Education: Insights and Directions for Facilitation

Abstract

Purpose: Responsive teaching involves interpretive practices that are embedded in context (Kang, 2021; Sawyer, 2011). This requires professional development to provide participants with opportunities to develop those practices for themselves (Kennedy, 2016). Preservice teachers (PSTs) tend to lack the frame of reference that experienced teachers rely on to notice, interpret, and respond to classroom activity, making it difficult for them to recognize and develop responsive practices (Darling-Hammond & Hammerness, 2002; Thiel et al., 2020). We used video from a professional development program with experienced teachers to design web-based modules for PST education, conjecturing that providing PSTs with firsthand accounts of teacher reasoning would position them to develop their own interpretive abilities. In this study, we ask: how do PSTs respond to in-service teachers’ accounts of in-the-moment noticing and decision making? How can artifacts from in-service professional development support PSTs in developing responsive teaching practices?

Perspective: Teacher education programs use representations, approximations, and decompositions of teaching practice to provide PSTs with a window into the context of teaching and help them learn to navigate it (Grossman et al, 2009). While videos and artifacts of classroom instruction can address some aspects of teaching, a significant proportion of teaching happens internally, even unconsciously, as teachers frame events, attend to certain details over others, interpret what they notice, and make decisions about how to respond (Louie et al, 2021; Schack et al., 2017). By basing these modules on teachers’ accounts of their internal reasoning, we aimed to create representations, approximations, and decompositions of the in-the-moment noticing and reasoning that forms the foundation of responsive teaching.

Methods: This study was situated in a fellowship program for PSTs (n=9). Data consisted of participants’ written responses to prompts embedded throughout the modules. These prompts were organized into sequences in which users respond to a classroom observation video, update their responses based on videos of the featured teacher unpacking their reasoning about the event in question, and reflect on the implications for their own teaching. These sequences allowed us to trace the development of the PSTs’ insights by coding for contrasts between their initial interpretations and those based on experienced teachers’ accounts (Gherardi, 2009; Langley, 1999).

Results: Analysis indicates that PSTs appreciated the authenticity of firsthand teacher accounts; participants alluded to the benefits of seeing a “real” classroom, in contrast to engaging in theoretical or abstract discussions, and they voiced that “real” teachers are able to see and interpret details that are not apparent to outside viewers. Participants’ responses to reflection prompts were often grounded in the specifics of the example at hand, and participants frequently asked questions about how to transfer insights to other situations or contexts. These tendencies indicate that participants had difficulty using their observations about a particular case to form broader insights about responsive teaching.

Significance: This study elaborates a design approach to give PSTs access to experienced teachers’ expertise. Bridging across in service and preservice professional development has the potential to better prepare new teachers for the nuanced demands of responsive teaching.

Author

• Ethan Rubin, University of California - Irvine
  Presenting Author