Teacher Collaboration in the Common Core Era: The Role of Teachers' Networks in the Transition to Ambitious Mathematics Instruction

• In Event: 31.024 - Institutional Efforts to Induce Collaboration and Standardization of Practice

Abstract

The Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSS-M) promote deep-seated instructional change at scale, by articulating a vision of mathematics instruction that promotes students’ conceptual understanding of mathematics. Aligning with the CCSS-M will require significant change in the content and pedagogy employed by the majority of teachers in the United States. While instructional change at scale is often approached as an issue of formal teacher training, there is growing consensus in the research literature that the informal interactions that occur in teachers’ school-based professional communities are critical to teacher learning and development (Bryk, Camburn & Seashore Louis, 1999; Bryk et al., 2010; Seashore Louis, Kruse & Bryk, 1995; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006). Drawing on a network perspective, recent research on teachers’ professional relations has sought to more precisely examine the role of professional interactions in instructional improvement (Frank et al., 2011; Penuel, Riel, Krause & Frank, 2009). For example, Coburn and colleagues (2012) found that teachers with more robust social networks – characterized by frequent interactions, with more expert colleagues, including regular opportunities for more substantive interaction – are more likely to implement and sustain ambitious, dialogic mathematics instruction. In addition to the need for teachers to learn more ambitious teaching practices, the CCSS-M put new demands on teacher collaboration such that they require that teachers coordinate major areas of instruction across grade levels. As a result, we know less about the way social supports should be configured to support high quality implementation of the CCSS.

This paper draws on a range of data sources to qualitatively examine the role of teachers’ egocentric networks in their transition to the instructional practices necessary to align with the CCSS-M. We strategically selected a volunteer sample of 49 teachers in the state of Tennessee representing a range of school contexts (e.g. urbanicity, student demographics), as well as variation in their self-reported instructional practices and access to social supports. We employed a range of methods to examine and triangulate teachers’ social supports including qualitative interviews and observations, a math interaction log and survey measures. We employed egocentric network analysis to investigate three components of social supports critical to instructional improvement: tie strength (operationalized as frequency), access to expertise in mathematics instruction, and depth of network interaction (or the extent to which interactions focused on substantive issues related to math content, pedagogy and student learning). In addition, our log data enabled analysis of the structural features of networks such as density and structural holes. Preliminary findings suggest considerable variation in teachers’ access to social supports for instructional improvement, particularly high depth talk. For example, survey data, triangulated by interviews and observations, suggests that interactions with teaching colleagues deemed to be at high depth (more substantive) ranged from less than 5% of the time to 65% of the time. Our ongoing analysis further unpacks teachers’ access to social supports and relates the nature of social supports to analysis of their instructional practice, based on classroom videos. These analyses have implications for educational leaders at all levels aiming to support teachers’ transition to Common Core aligned instruction.

Authors

• Jennifer L. Russell, University of Pittsburgh

• Stacy Kehoe, University of Pittsburgh

• Mary Kay Stein, University of Pittsburgh