"I Do Hear What You're Saying": Teacher Educators' Responsiveness in Moments of Resistance and Vexation

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

Abstract

Purpose: This paper describes how a team of teacher educators (TEs) sought to support preservice teachers (PSTs) understand and implement Responsive Teaching (RT), which centers student thinking as the springboard for instruction (Robertson et al., 2016). We are interested in characterizing Responsive Teacher Education, a framework for teacher education that is itself responsive as it supports teachers in embracing RT. We ask: What do responsive TEs do in interaction with PSTs, particularly in moments of resistance or vexation as PSTs question the value – and values – of RT?

Perspectives: Literature shows that PSTs often demonstrate resistance to RT (Author, 2021; Robertson & Atkins Elliott, 2018). Such research has uncovered areas of vexation that PSTs encounter but has not fully unpacked how TEs support PSTs’ learning. Accordingly, we focus on TEs’ moves and interactional dynamics as they respond to PSTs’ vexation and resistance regarding RT.

Methods: We draw on data from an introductory teacher education course supporting secondary science and mathematics PSTs to develop responsive visions of instruction. Here, we focus on one session when PSTs discussed a video from a responsive mathematics classroom around one third grader, Sean, who posited that six is both odd and even (Ball, 1993). The video raised highly charged vexations and tensions for PSTs. Using discourse analysis, we examine how TEs responded to PSTs’ vexations. We also draw on stimulated-recall interviews where TEs reflected on this episode.

Findings: The analysis revealed that TEs experienced ongoing tensions in their responsive commitments, especially as some PSTs became more entrenched in their opposition. TEs enacted a variety of moves to support PSTs’ progress while remaining consistent with their values. These moves comprised TEs’ responsiveness to conceptual, epistemological, affective, and social dynamics—and combinations of these— that aimed to make room for and validate PSTs’ concerns and sensemaking. For example, TEs invited multiple lines of reasoning, calling for divergent perspectives (“ Does anybody else have a different interpretation?”) and expressing excitement about friction (“ I’m super excited by the controversy”). TEs named and validated PSTs’ emotional responses (“I’m sorry that you’re feeling frustrated”), including in noting tension buildup (“we should all just take a quick stretch?”). TEs validated PSTs’ discomfort around “incorrectness” (“I know that for some of you, this is feeling frustrating and hard, and I do understand”) while making strategic moves to shift the focus back to interpreting rather than evaluating students’ thinking (“try to withhold judgment for a moment…and let’s think about: What is Sean’s idea?”). Overall, we found TEs’ moves involved listening more than talking, asking more than telling, and trusting learners individually and collectively, a stance we came to refer to as “epistemic patience.”

Significance: While many moves identified here mirror those cited in literature on RT for K-12 students, research in teacher education has not explicitly articulated what responsiveness looks like for teacher educators. By characterizing and operationalizing this work under the umbrella of epistemic patience, we hope to contribute language and an evolving framework that uncovers the black box that is “responsive teacher education.”

Authors

• Carla Finkelstein, Towson University
  Presenting Author

• Lama Ziad Jaber, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shannon G. Davidson, University of Alabama
  Non-Presenting Author

• Allison T. Metcalf, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Author