Facilitating Productive One-on-One Debriefing Conversations (Poster 8)

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

Abstract

Objectives: One-on-one coaching is a common means of supporting mathematics teachers’ development of ambitious and equitable instructional practices. Often, one-on-one coaching involves engaging teachers in cycles that consist of three phases: a lesson planning phase, a lesson enactment phase, and a lesson debrief phase. We investigate how mathematics coaches can facilitate one-on-one debriefs productively and in ways that can lead to more equitable forms of teaching.

Theoretical perspectives: Debrief conversations often have both a retrospective and prospective focus (Saclarides, 2022). The purpose of the retrospective focus is to reflect on a prior lesson to determine whether a teacher has made progress in improving instruction and students’ learning (Saclarides, 2022). The purpose of the prospective focus is to specify the instructional changes a teacher might make in future lessons (Russell et al., 2017). When these changes are feasible and likely to enhance all students’ learning, they constitute productive instructional improvement goals (Author, under review). We define productive debriefs as those that accomplish both purposes outlined above and result in the identification of a productive instructional improvement goal. While the importance of debriefing is generally agreed upon (West & Staub, 2003; Knight, 2008), less is known about how coaches can facilitate productive debriefs consistently.

Methods and Data Sources: We analyzed audio recordings of 14 coaching cycles in which the coach identified a productive instructional improvement goal for their partner teacher prior to debriefing. We focused on these debriefs because it is likely a prerequisite for a coach to identify a productive goal prior to debriefing if the coach is to then support the teacher in agreeing to a productive goal as part of the prospective focus of the debrief. To determine how coaches can facilitate productive debriefs, we first classified each of the 14 debriefs as either productive or unproductive based on our definition above. We then used the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 2017) to identify differences in the structure of the debriefs.

Results: Our analysis indicates that productive debriefs involve five steps, three of which relate to the retrospective focus and two of which to the prospective focus. The three retrospective steps are: (1) explaining what students learned during the lesson; (2) analyzing instruction in order to explain why students learned what they learned; and (3) identifying instructional strengths and weaknesses that the coach and teacher can use to determine whether the teacher has made progress in improving instruction. The two prospective steps are: (1) framing instructional strengths and weaknesses as the basis for instructional improvement goals and (2) negotiating instructional improvement goals so that the coach and the teacher come to see a productive goal as worthwhile.

Significance and Implications: Our findings extend prior work related to debrief conversations (Saclarides, 2022) by clarifying a process for facilitating productive debriefs consistently and in ways that center all students’ learning. Future research might investigate how coaches can be supported to learn to facilitate such conversations with the five steps we identified serving as goals for supporting such learning.

Authors

• Nicholas M. Kochmanski, University of North Carolina - Greensboro
  Presenting Author

• Sevim Sevgi, Erciyes University
  Presenting Author

• Paul A. Cobb, Vanderbilt University
  Non-Presenting Author