Supporting, Investigating, and Theorizing Teacher Candidates and Mentor Teachers Co-Learning Equity-Oriented Mathematics Teaching (Poster 5)

• In Event: Research on STEM Professional Learning Communities: Attending to Teacher Learning, Agency, and Equity

Abstract

Purpose: Advancing equity in mathematics teaching entails continual learning for novice and experienced teachers (Feiman-Nemser, 2012). This poster features an NSF-funded project that explores the potential for Teacher Candidates (TCs) and Mentor Teachers (MTs) to simultaneously deepen equity-oriented commitments and practice.

Perspectives: Equity-oriented mathematics teaching requires expanding the lenses through which educators notice and interpret students’ ideas and participation as lessons unfold, and responding in ways that honor and build upon students’ ideas (Louie et al., 2021). To support TCs and MTs to do so, over four years, our team designed, studied, and iterated a “co-learning structure (CLS),” which consists of three parts:
plan: ahead of teaching a lesson, the dyad identifies an equity focus for their co-noticing (e.g., recognize and disrupt inequitable participation patterns)
huddle: at least once during the lesson, the dyad confers about what they are noticing, and decides how to proceed
debrief: the dyad reflects on what they learned in relation to their equity focus and sets goals for future co-learning

Data Sources and Methods: Table 1 provides a summary of CLS use in study sites. Dyads video- or audio-recorded their planning sessions, huddles, and debriefs. Researchers conducted two semi-structured interviews (pre and post) with participants, and observed CLS use in at least one lesson for most dyads. In Sites B and D, classroom lessons were video-recorded. To date, researchers engaged in qualitative analysis of subsets of data along four lines of inquiry (LOI); see Results.

Results: LOI #1 focuses on the potential of “in the moment” huddles to recognize and leverage “discretionary spaces in teaching” (Ball, 2018). Based on qualitative analysis of the content and decision-making of huddles in Sites B and D, we offer a typology of huddles, and conjecture about the conditions in which huddling appears to be generative for co-learning equity-oriented instruction.

LOI #2 draws on positioning theory (van Langenhove & Harré, 1999) to theorize how dyads’ negotiation of power and authority shapes opportunities to co-learn equity-oriented instruction. Interactional analysis focuses on CLS use and video-stimulated recall interviews with 2 MTs and 2 TCs from Site A who swapped partners mid-year.

LOI #3 draws on literature on asset-based framing of students (Louie et al., 2021) to explore how dyads learn to shift from a deficit-oriented to a strengths-based perspective when noticing students’ participation and ideas. Qualitative analysis of dyads’ CLS use in Site C supports characterization of “collaborative” co-noticing.

LOI #4 focuses on dyads’ opportunities to learn to use the CLS, which varied across sites from minimal support, to scaffolding for TCs (but not MTs) in methods courses, to “labs” where dyads practiced using the CLS in job-embedded PD. We theorize the affordances and constraints of “lighter” and “high” touch support.

Significance: Taken together, the results of the LOIs contribute “humble theory” (Cobb et al., 2003) regarding how field experiences can be leveraged to simultaneously enable novice and experienced mathematics teachers to hone their equity-oriented noticing and responding, and the challenges therein.

Authors

• Kara J. Jackson, University of Washington

• Ruth M. Heaton, Teachers Development Group

• Mary A. Carlson, Montana State University

• Heather Fink, Portland State University

• Melinda Knapp, Oregon State University - Cascades

• Torrey Kulow, Portland State University

• Taylor Stafford, University of Washington

• Manqing Gao, Portland State University