Limited Access and Bottlenecks: The Role of Teacher Movement and Classrooms Spaces in Equitable Instruction (Poster 1)

• In Event: Mapping the Field: The Role of Space in Educational Equity

Abstract

Purpose
Studies of equitable instruction often focus on discourse without attention to spatial arrangements and how they shape access to important classroom resources. In this study, we ask: how do teachers’ movement and classroom spatial arrangements shape students’ access to teachers’ attention, looking at two cases that highlight consequences for equity.

Theoretical Framework
Our work bridges situative perspectives on teaching, perspectives on mobility as an embodied resource for learning, and emerging research on affective and sensory dimensions of classroom interactions. We extend prior work that, using interaction geography, generated language for spatial aspects of pedagogy (Shapiro et al., 2024). Here, we focus on examining teachers’ movements as they facilitate student collaboration.

Methods
Participants are secondary mathematics teachers in a professional development organization (PDO); data come from a research-practice partnership designed to support PDO teachers’ development of ambitious and equitable math instruction. Together, we developed a co-inquiry process for teachers to investigate their instruction, movement, and use of classroom space. After recording lessons, teachers watched videos of their instruction and visualizations of their movement in the Interaction Geography Slicer (IGS; Figure 1). These discussions provided opportunities to analyze aspects of instruction that they cared about. Through the debrief recordings, we examined teachers’ sensemaking about practice.

Results
We focus on two teachers — Vince and Emmanuel (pseudonyms) — where the IGS surfaced spatial dimensions of teachers’ groupwork facilitation that potentially impeded students’ equitable access to their attention.

Case 1: Limited Access Zone
Vince noticed how his movement patterns evolved across his lesson. While looking at his movement in the IGS, Vince shared, “I’m trying to stop at every single student,” then, pointing to the students at the back wall, he noted that they got less of his attention (Figure 1). As Vince considered the “Limited Access Zone,” he and his colleagues discussed activity structures and routines that might ensure the students there got what they needed, ultimately leading Vince to rearrange the desks.

Case 2: Bottleneck
Looking at the IGS transcript, Emmanuel noticed that he frequently encountered a “Bottleneck” near the Pink Group. The Bottleneck was a result of the Pink Group’s position between the whiteboard and Emmanuel’s path to the rest of the classroom, as well as the group’s enthusiastic bids for Emmanuel’s attention. This kept Emmanuel in the upper-left corner of the room for much of the lesson, preventing him from attending to other groups’ needs. As they discussed this Bottleneck, Emmanuel and his colleagues considered ways to shift groups’ tables to allow more movement around the room.

Significance
While existing research demonstrates that teaching is a socially situated and material practice, our work underscores how conceptions of equitable teaching would benefit from spatial and mobile perspectives. In particular, we illustrate how a visual representation of teachers’ movement and classroom space surfaced – and even challenged – their perceptions of how they use their movement and space to support student learning by bringing to light movement patterns like Limited Access Zones and Bottlenecks. In doing so, we further characterize spatial dimensions of teaching.

Authors

• Ilana S. Horn, Vanderbilt University

• Brette Garner, University of Denver

• Ben Rydal Shapiro, Georgia State University

• Elizabeth Metts, Vanderbilt University