Examining the Potential of an Online Professional Learning Community to Support Teachers' Learning to Enact Responsive Mathematics Teaching

• In Event: Designing Online Experiences to Support Teacher Learning and Professional Development Across Content Areas

Abstract

Research suggests that pull-out professional development has limited impact on teaching practice and student achievement (Gerstein et al., 2014; Jacob et al., 2017). Professional development is more effective when it is provided in combination with instructional coaching (Campbell & Malkus, 2011; Gibbons et al., 2017) and opportunities for teachers to do sustained work with colleagues (Coburn & Russell, 2008; Kennedy, 2016). This study examines elementary teachers’ learning from an online, video-feedback community to understand the possibility of such an environment to extend the reach of face-to-face professional development.

There is increasing evidence that in order to achieve deep and lasting learning, students must have opportunities to make sense of mathematics concepts and procedures and generate and wrestle with ideas (Hiebert & Grouws, 2007; NRC, 2012). Teaching practices that support such opportunities are often referred to as dialogic (or responsive), because discourse, deliberation, and social construction of ideas are central (Munter, Stein & Smith, 2015). Learning to facilitate classroom discussions and share intellectual authority with students is complex, takes time and support, and requires sustained practice. Teaching occurs largely in isolation, which limits opportunities for teachers to interact with colleagues, receive formative feedback, or consider alternate images of teaching (Lortie, 1975).

The online community was comprised of early-career elementary teachers who had been introduced to the dialogic routine called Number Talk through face-to-face PD or teacher education. Teachers were placed in inquiry groups, by grade bands with variation in school type and location. Interactions took place through an online platform designed to support asynchronous feedback on video. Following a structured schedule, teachers uploaded videos of their Number Talks (10-15 min), posed reflective questions, and gave and received feedback to/from others.

We analyzed the interactions among teachers in each inquiry group in relation to subsequent changes in their use of dialogic practices, using frameworks for dialogic teaching (Munter et al., 2015), pedagogical reasoning (Kavanagh, Conrad, & Dagogo-Jack, 2020), and video-based feedback (Borko et al., 2008). Findings suggest several ways that participation in the inquiry group led to different types of learning: Receiving feedback from others led teachers to take up new practices; commenting on others’ videos helped novices reason about practices before trying them out; giving feedback to others provided opportunities to engage in pedagogical reasoning and solidify their own expertise. These developments became evident when examining the online interactions in relation to subsequent videos over several cycles of inquiry.

We hypothesize that repeated cycles of practice, posting videos, and giving and receiving feedback provided novice and experienced teachers opportunities to translate pedagogical approaches introduced in face-to-face professional development to their own classroom practice. Online formats can provide opportunities for repeated, supported practice of a pedagogically complex routine. The video-based feedback environment allows teachers to: observe other teachers and make their own practice public; slow down instructional practice to allow for pedagogical reasoning; receive constructive feedback from others to make incremental refinements; develop expertise by giving feedback to others on components of complex practices; and foster cross-school professional learning communities.

Authors

• Janine Remillard, University of Pennsylvania

• Caroline Brayer Ebby, University of Pennsylvania

• Lindsay Goldsmith-Markey, University of Pennsylvania