Supporting Teacher Collective Sensemaking Across a School: Examining Professional Learning Formats (Poster 8)

• In Event: Exploring the Influence of Organizational and Leadership Contexts on the Work of Coaching

Abstract

Objectives
How to improve teaching and learning across many classrooms is an enduring dilemma. In recent decades, there have been attempts to organize ongoing opportunities for teachers to learn alongside their colleagues (such as “professional learning communities”); however, many of these attempts have not always resulted in desired changes in teachers’ instructional practices. Using an in-depth case study of one urban elementary school, where all teachers, across grades K-5, were supported to reorganize their mathematics instruction and provide richer opportunities for student learning. This paper explores how three professional learning structures, facilitated by an instructional coach, supported teachers’ ongoing collective inquiry into mathematics teachers.

Perspectives
The prevailing frame of instructional coaching casts it as a largely responsive and individually focused role, where coaches respond to invitations from individual teachers to support their learning (Mangin & Dunsmore, 2015). However, the literature on instructional improvement states that support for change must also attend to the system as a whole and build collective capacity (Kruse & Zimmerman, 2012). For teachers to continue to refine their instructional practices and provide richer opportunities for students to make sense of disciplinary content across multiple classrooms, they need ongoing opportunities to make sense of their teaching and interactions with students alongside other teachers (Little, 2002).

Methods and Data
The data for this analysis comes from a four-year collaboration with an urban elementary school. Data included observations of over 40 events in which a mathematics coach led or attended, including: grade-level full-day professional development sessions; coach-led weekly grade-level team meetings; in-classroom coaching support; instructional leadership meetings; and faculty meetings. After every observation, the author interviewed the coach to discuss the observed event. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the principal and a sample of teachers. Qualitative methods of analysis to identify patterns in how the coach assisted the collective learning of teachers, and to identify organizational contexts and tools that supported the coach’s work.

Results
Three ongoing, school-embedded professional learning structures were identified. The bi-monthly professional learning events provided opportunities for same grade-level teachers to engage in collective experimentation with instructional practices and deepen their understanding of how to teach particular disciplinary ideas. The weekly grade level team meetings supported teachers to collectively make sense of how a unit of study was unfolding, how students were making sense of disciplinary ideas, replay events from classroom and collectively interpret them, and collectively design instruction. One-on-one coaching in classrooms provided individualized support as a teacher took up new practices in the context of their classroom. The paper further describes how the structures weaved together coherent opportunities for continued experimentation with teaching and reflection on students’ learning.

Significance of the Study
Results suggest a model of organizing teachers’ professional learning and coaching as a lever for systemic reform (Mangin & Dunsmore, 2015), supporting reorganization of instruction across all grade levels. Each professional learning structure provided continuous and coherent opportunities for collective inquiry into teaching — infusing new thinking through continuously examining and renewing instructional practices (Collinson & Cook, 2006).

Author

• Lynsey K. Gibbons, University of Delaware