Using Monitoring Traces to Support Teacher Sense-Making About Group Work Monitoring Routines (Poster 5)

• In Event: Expanding Coaching and Representations to Support Teacher Sense-Making Toward Disrupting Inequitable Mathematics Teaching Practices

Abstract

Purpose
In this paper, we explore the affordances of “monitoring traces” for supporting teachers’ sensemaking about their groupwork facilitation practices. Monitoring traces are visual representations of five dimensions (Figure 4) of teachers’ groupwork monitoring routines (Authors, 2020). We argue that monitoring traces are simple enough to be read, understood, and interpreted by teachers, yet provide enough information to capture the complexity of key pedagogical judgments.

Theoretical Perspectives
We define groupwork monitoring routines as the situated interactional routines that emerge when teachers monitor groupwork (Authors, 2020). Relatedly, our theoretical approach for teacher learning focuses on teacher sensemaking and the honing of participants’ pedagogical judgment (Author & colleague, 2022).

Data & Methods
In a previous study we used video from eight secondary mathematics classrooms, where teachers’ interacted with small groups of students. For each interaction, we examined five dimensions of teachers’ practice: how they initiate conversations with students, their entry into the conversation, the focus of their interactions, how they exit the interaction, as well as the conversations’ overall participation pattern (Figure 4). Here, we conceptually explore the usage of visual representations of these dimensions to support teacher sensemaking.

Results
We illustrate the monitoring traces using the first dimension, initiation. Figure 5 contrasts initiation patterns for two teachers, Veronica and Lizette. Each rectangle represents one teacher-group interaction or a period of teachers’ quiet circulation (QC). Color and pattern indicate whether the interaction was teacher-initiated or student-initiated; length indicates the duration of interactions.

This representation shows that Veronica’s initiation routine was mostly teacher-initiated, while Lizette had a mix of student- and teacher-initiated interactions. Looking more closely, we note that Veronica moved from group to group in a fixed pattern, while Lizette spent significant time quietly circulating and irregularly visiting groups. In the next section we build on this example to briefly describe how different monitoring traces can highlight different instructional dilemmas, and in turn can be used for teacher learning.

Significance
Monitoring traces can support teachers’ learning by illustrating aspects of their own or others’ practice (see examples of such PD handouts here). Our theoretical perspective on teacher learning as the development of pedagogical judgment guides us to build on these visual representations as an intuitive starting point to provoke the emergence of instructional dilemmas (Author & colleague, 2019), rather than evaluating the represented routines as good or bad in an absolute sense. For example, in the case of Veronica and Lizette, while the affordances of a fixed teacher circulation route and teacher-initiated conversations (e.g. relatively equal time allocation among the groups) might be more appropriate in some situations, others might call for an initiation routine more similar to Lizette’s, allowing greater responsiveness and flexibility. By highlighting these dilemmas and their nuances, rather than providing fixed solutions, these representations of teachers’ monitoring during group work support our primary purpose in extending participants’ groupwork monitoring repertoires and honing their pedagogical judgment (Author & colleague, 2022).

Authors

• Nadav Ehrenfeld, Weizmann Institute of Science
  Presenting Author

• Ilana S. Horn, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lara Jasien, CPM Educational Program
  Non-Presenting Author