Quality Talk in a Professional Development School: Preparing Teacher Educators to Support Preservice Teachers' Facilitation of Argumentation

• In Event: Facilitating Professional Growth for Teacher Candidates in Professional Development Schools

Abstract

We report research concerning ways teacher educators learn to support preservice teachers’ (PSTs’) discourse pedagogy for elementary mathematics. We first summarize how TEs in a professional development school (PDS) use Quality Talk–– a small-group, teacher-facilitated discussion approach that has been shown to foster K-12 students’ reasoning and content-area learning (Authors, 2017a) ––to support PSTs’ development of pedagogies for elementary students’ argumentation in mathematics. We employ a case from one PSTs’ small group mathematics discussion to illustrate the ways in which the PDS supported TEs in the approach. Our findings illustrate how TEs’ explicit instruction and praxis of small group discussion strategies through professional development within a PDS can support PSTs in applying their learning in elementary classrooms.

Authors

• Rachel Wolkenhauer, The Pennsylvania State University

• Amy Voss Farris, The Pennsylvania State University

• Gwendolyn Lloyd, The Pennsylvania State University

• P. Karen Murphy, The Pennsylvania State University