Designing a Substrate for Teacher Noticing of Science Discussions

• In Event: Practical and Conceptual Tools for Teacher Learning About Equitable Classroom Discussion

Abstract

Objective
In this paper we report two iterations of a design-based research project (Barab & Squire, 2004) focused on supporting teacher growth in noticing features of their facilitation of science discussions, and student ideation in those discussions. Central to our designs are developing tools to represent practice as a means to scaffold teachers’ meaningful engagement in reflection of lessons that they orchestrated (Goodwin, 1994). We sought to develop tools to help direct teachers’ attention to the micro-analytic features of moment-to-moment ideation, but also the gestalt of these moment at the lesson level and across lessons. Using data to inform design-iterations, we identified tensions in where teachers’ attention and the grounded and practical theories they developed through reflection that were scaffolded by our designs to direct attention and sensemaking about how talk nurtures student thinking.

Conceptual Framework
Following Clarke & Hollingsworth (2002), we argue that teacher professional growth is a dialectic interaction between professional development (i.e., external domain), experimentation in the classroom (i.e., the domain of practice), salient outcomes (i.e., domain of consequence), and teachers’ knowledge, beliefs and attitudes (personal domain). Thus, in our iterative design work, we have sought to intentionally design a sociotechnical system that could serve to scaffold the dialectal relationship between reflection and action to support teachers’ growth around their own professional practice of facilitating science discussions.

Methods
We co-designed a web app for teacher reflection on discussion with secondary science teacher participants (N=24). Each academic year, we identified target lessons, observed and audio recorded lessons, then transformed recordings into transcripts and analytics that served as representations of discussion (Authors). We engaged teachers in and one-on-one coaching to reflect (make meaning of the analytics) and develop goals for future discussion lessons. Reflective sessions were audio recorded and transcribed for analysis. We used a suite of discourse analysis methods to examine what teachers noticed, how they made meaning from what they noticed and goals they set about future lessons. Analyses from Design Cycle 1 informed the iteration of design for Design Cycle 2.

Findings
First, while our research design included a logic that moved from classroom experimentation to observing the outcome in practice (i.e., analytics), the app did not include a design feature that would allow teachers to reflect on the discussion goals had from one reflection cycle to the next. Second, teachers’ beliefs about science discussion and students’ capacity to engage in it were explicated in reflection sessions and constrained noticing. Thus, in Design Cycle 2, we developed a representation to leverage memory/history and schemas as a substrate for reflection and growth of equity-centered schemas.

Significance
The question of how teachers learn to engage students in deliberative sensemaking about science requires an understanding of what sense teachers make of student thinking and why, their pedagogical toolkit, and how that pedagogical toolkit could be leveraged to advance instructional goals. We argue that uncovering teachers’ interpretative logics and leveraging them as a substrate for reflection, can help to support teachers’ continued professional learning through grounded sensemaking of practice.

Authors

• Sherice Clarke, University of California - San Diego

• Sushil Shintre, University of California - San Diego

• Ung-Sang Albert Lee, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Tarang Tripathi, University of California - San Diego

• Zaynab Amelia Gates, University of California - San Diego