Coaching With Digital Clinical Simulations: Designing and Analyzing Preservice Teachers' Practice of Equitable Mathematical Discussions (Poster 7)

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

Abstract

Objectives: Mathematics educators’ ideological perspectives that position students’ understanding within a binary of right or wrong (Christensen et al., 2008) can be disrupted by examining the laden social and cultural practices and expectations embedded within mathematics and mathematics learning (Gutiérrez, 2013). By positioning equitable pedagogies within this examination, pre-service teacher (PST) educators can create practice spaces to highlight how classroom practices can either perpetuate or disrupt inequitable experiences for students. This paper shows how digital clinical simulations (DCS) allow educators of methods classes to not only design such practice spaces but also examine the responses of PSTs to better support shaping their teaching methodology.

Theoretical perspectives: Maintaining cognitive demand (Stein & Lane, 1996; Kazemi & Stipek, 2001) within small group discussions is critical to support equitable mathematics learning (Berlin & Berry, 2018; Martin, 2010; Gutierrez & Calabrese Barton, 2015). Research on PST learning has been consequential in codifying teacher moves and teacher dispositions towards supporting equitable mathematical learning experiences, but needs to supplement that content with low-stakes rehearsal to practice those moves. DCS (Cohen et al., 2020) present an opportunity for instructional coaches to design DCS that surface the nuances of teacher decisions within small groups, and analyze responses to responsive shape future methods instruction.

Methods and Data Sources: Instructional coaches designed a DCS where three small groups functioned as a different inequitable group dynamic. Each simulated small group asked simulation players to either select a response from a set of responses or record an auditory response. Here, we focus on the small group that was designed for a PST to maintain cognitive demand. Students of the methods course played through the given scenario, and researchers had access to their selected responses and recorded audio responses. We looked for themes across the auditory recordings and created codes for PSTs’ verbal responses to understand how they attempted to maintain cognitive demand. Additionally, we paired this analysis with the quantitative measures of selected responses by each student player.

Results: Within the digital simulation play, PSTs responded to student discussion by providing a “quick fix” (e.g. referring them to ask a classmate, giving a procedural hint) but not explicitly attending to the embedded inequitable situation. Additionally, PSTs who initially tried to address the inequitable situation in original responses “caved” after a period of time. These aspects of PST responses within the digital simulation were analyzed and used for instructional coaches to shape future instruction within a mathematics method course.

Significance and Implications: Our findings suggest that, in addition to shaping future instruction within methods courses, the use of digital simulations with PSTs will support their understanding of the relationship between teacher decisions and students’ equitable mathematical learning experiences, and that their practice in digital spaces can be leveraged and connected to their practicum experiences in the future. This study shows how PST responses within a digital simulation can not only supplement the need for additional PST practice, but also complicate literature on teaching equitable pedagogies by surfacing the nuances of instructional moves.

Author

• Erin Barno, Boston University
  Presenting Author