Building Community Through Collaborative Observation: Structures and Moves to Intervene on Biases and Support More Equitable Instruction

• In Event: Fostering Curiosity and Disrupting Power: Teacher Professional Development for Transformative Classrooms

Abstract

Objectives & Theoretical Framework
We will share a case of cross-country community building in professional development (PD) that supports teachers to bring their authentic selves to community discussions and problem solving around conceptions of what counts as mathematical knowledge and skill; noticing, naming, and disrupting patterns of oppression in classrooms; and building collective knowledge of both teaching practice and mathematical knowledge for teaching. When we think of community, we are not referring either to groups with geographic similarities or groups that are only a part of the same social system, but rather groups that develop relationships that “produce a strong sense of shared identity” (O’Donnell, 1997) in our case around issues of mathematics teaching and equity. We aim to identify the facilitation moves that enable the building of such a community.

Methods & Data Sources
Our PD is situated inside of live instruction (Author et al., XXXX; Authors, XXXX). We use a summer elementary mathematics program as a “common text,” where participants watch, discuss, and engage in developing and learning practice. In the program, the students work on mathematics for 2½ hours each day for five consecutive days. The class is co-taught by two teachers who are experienced with discussion-based mathematics teaching and are comfortable making their practice visible and open to others.

This common text creates opportunities for participants to 1) examine lesson plans and student tasks, 2) discuss the plans and tasks with the teachers, making adjustments together, 3) observe the enactment of the discussed lesson, 4) collaboratively review students’ daily work in response to the teaching, and 5) debrief the teaching of the lesson, unpacking together adjustments and deviations from the plan, the mathematics that unfolded during the lesson, moves the teachers made to engage students in mathematics discussion, and how the teachers were making choices to build a more equitable mathematics classroom.

As part of a larger research project, we are studying shifts in teachers’ knowledge and practice related to this PD cycle. The analysis reported here drew on video records of the professional development. Our analytic methods are described in our full paper.

Results
Key components in building such a community include (1) session design that ensures critical issues are raised and (2) facilitation that allows participants to come to the community with their current beliefs, skills, and guides them toward a common goal and vision. Such facilitation requires clear foci and flexible moves that intervene just-in-time on participants’ biases. Our foci include 1) holding equitable mathematics teaching and learning at the center, supported by 2) building mathematical knowledge for teaching (Author & colleague, xxxx), 3) building common understanding of teaching practices (Author & colleague, xxxx; Author & colleague, xxxx), and 4) framing children as sense-makers (Carpenter et al., 2015; Kazemi & Hintz, 2014).

Discussion
Structure, routine, and clear learning foci matter for building community and providing space for teachers’ learning. Further, our persona when engaging with participants matters both for building community and for supporting participants to consider difficult topics and challenges of teaching.

Authors

• Meghan Shaughnessy, Boston University

• Nicole Garcia, University of Michigan

• Deborah Loewenberg Ball, University of Michigan

• Darrius D. Robinson, University of Michigan