Supporting Teachers' Collective Sensemaking Across a School: Examining Coach-Led Professional Learning Formats

• In Event: Innovations in Coaching and Mentoring: Investigating the Practices of Instructional Coaches and Teacher Mentors

Abstract

Objectives

An enduring dilemma in our field is how to improve teaching and learning across many classrooms. In recent decades, there have been attempts to organize ongoing opportunities for teachers to learn alongside their colleagues; 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 by a coach to reorganize their mathematics instruction and provide richer opportunities for student learning, this paper explores how three coach-led professional learning formats supported teachers’ 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 (Cohen, 1995; 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 Sources

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 the coach led or attended, including: leadership meetings; faculty meetings; grade-level full-day professional development sessions; coach-led weekly grade-level team meetings; and in-classroom coaching support. After every observation, the author interviewed the coach to further discuss the observed event. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with the principal and assistant principal. We used qualitative methods of analysis to look for patterns pertaining to 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, job-embedded professional learning formats were identified. The bi-monthly professional learning events provided opportunities for same grade-level teachers to engage in collective experimentation with new instructional practices and deepen their understanding of how to teach a particular disciplinary idea. 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 ideas, collectively design exit tickets and instructional activities, and replay events from the classroom and collectively interpret them. One-on-one coaching in classrooms provided individualized support as a teacher took up new ideas and practices in the context of their own classroom. The paper further describes how the formats weaved together coherent opportunities for continued experimentation with teaching and reflection on students’ learning.

Significance

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 format provided continuous and coherent opportunities for collective inquiry into teaching — infusing new thinking through continuously examining and renewing instructional practices.

Author

• Lynsey K. Gibbons, University of Delaware