What Are Critical Events to Notice in the Context of Coaching Interactions?

• In Event: What Constitutes Teacher Noticing of Critical Events?

Abstract

Objectives and Perspectives
The purpose of this paper is to provoke consideration about what is important to notice in a mathematics coaching context and illuminate critical events coaches and mentor coaches (those with more expertise) notice. Researchers of teacher noticing have traditionally classified more advanced forms of noticing as those focused on students’ thinking, as compared to teacher pedagogy (e.g., Jacobs et al., 2010; Author, 2011). Building on teacher noticing, the intent is to better understand the critical events that coaches notice and consider coach noticing in coordination with existing frameworks describing teacher noticing. The following question is answered: As mathematics coaches and mentor mathematics coaches read vignettes from coaching interactions between a coach and a teacher, (a) how do the critical events noticed compare between the two participant groups, and (b) how does what is noticed (i.e., Author, 2011) vary with respect to who is noticed (the actor)?
Data Sources and Methods
Participants included ten mathematics coaches and ten mentor mathematics coaches. The twenty participants were asked seven questions about each of three vignettes. Analysis centers on responses to the question, “What did you notice as you read the vignette?” Four researchers engaged in an extensive open coding, reconciliation, and refinement process. Data were then sorted based on participant type (i.e., coaches, mentor coaches) and compared to determine identified critical moments. Themes were then compared to the Author (2011) framework to better understand what the two participant groups noticed.
Results and Significance
Results indicate that the mentor coaches noticed different aspects within the vignettes as compared to the coaches. For vignette one, the mentor coaches commonly noticed coach prompting about the mathematics goal (focus on coach) whereas many coaches noticed the amount of time spent anticipating student misconceptions (focus on coach and teacher). For vignette two, many mentor coaches commented on coach pressing for a mathematical goal (focus on coach) whereas several coaches focused on teacher knowledge of mathematical content (teacher focus). For vignette three, some mentor coaches focused on the quantity of coach talk (focus on coach) whereas the coaches also focused on coach-dominated talk and teacher anticipation of student thinking (focus on coach and teacher). Broadly speaking, the mentor coaches focused more on coach verbalizations while the coaches emphasized teacher verbalizations.
The findings highlight the need for a framework for learning to notice critical events in coaching interactions —similar to that of Author (2011). If the ideas in the Author framework were extrapolated to the coaching context, more advanced coach noticing would focus on teachers’ thinking (parallel to students’ thinking in the framework). However, the results raise the questions: Is it reasonable to think that a modification of the Author (2011) framework could be applicable to a coaching context? Does more advanced noticing at the coaching level mean a focus on the teacher or the coach? Further research should explore the notion of noticing for mathematics coaches and provide a way to characterize and delineate coaches’ noticing on particular levels.

Author

• Julie M. Amador, University of Idaho
  Presenting Author