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Classroom observations in theory and practice

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Abstract

This essay explores the dialectic between theorizing teachers’ decision-making and producing a workable, theoretically grounded scheme for classroom observations. One would think that a comprehensive theory of decision-making would provide the bases for a classroom observation scheme. It turns out, however, that, although the theoretical and practical enterprise are in many ways overlapping, the theoretical underpinnings for the observation scheme are sufficiently different (narrower in some ways and broader in others) and the constraints of almost real-time implementation so strong that the resulting analytic scheme is in many ways radically different from the theoretical framing that gave rise to it. This essay characterizes and reflects on the evolution of the observational scheme. It provides details of some of the failed attempts along the way, in order to document the complexities of constructing such schemes. It is hoped that the final scheme provided will be of some value, both on theoretical and pragmatic grounds. Finally, the author reflects on the relationships between theoretical and applied research on teacher behavior, and the relevant research methods.

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Notes

  1. A large study funded by the Gates Foundation, the Measures of effective Teaching (MET) project (2012), did examine correlations between student learning and performance on some of the measures above.

  2. This is not the place to provide an extensive critique of the extant schemes, or a comparison of them. Such a critique will be provided in (Algebra Teaching Study, 2013, in preparation).

  3. It is impossible to separate the categories completely – a strategy is part of one’s knowledge base, for example, and some metacognitive acts are strategic. However, there are better and worse decompositions. The idea is to aim for a “nearly decomposable system,” a decomposition in which the parts cohere internally and have minimal overlap. One might, for example, divide the human body into a series of parts: arms, legs, torso, head – but that makes no sense physiologically, in terms of function. On the other hand, a decomposition into respiratory system, circulatory system, muscular system, skeletal system, and so on, does make sense. The systems themselves cohere, and, although there is overlap and interaction, e.g., between the circulatory and respiratory systems, it makes sense to talk of them (almost) independently.

  4. Episodes are between 45 s and 5 min. Our scoring guide provides rules for carving longer periods of activity (say, 15 min of whole class discussion) into episodes that are no longer than 5 min. Currently we are exploring a number of different ways of aggregating data across episodes.

  5. In most cases, the rubrics for different episodes are different, taking into account the specifics of that kind of episode. In a small number of cases, the rubrics for a particular dimension are identical.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (The Algebra Teaching Study, Grant DRL-0909815), to Alan Schoenfeld and Robert Floden, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (The Mathematics Assessment Project, Grant OPP53342). The work here truly represents a community effort, with significant contributions from Evra Baldinger, Danielle Champney, Aldo Dalla Piazza, Vinci Daro, Fadi El Chidiac, Christian Fischer, Denny Gillingham, Duanghathai Katwibun, Hee-jeong Kim, Mariana Levin, Nicole Louie, Sarah Nix, Dan Reinholz, Kim Seashore, Niral Shah, and Likun Sun from the University of California at Berkeley, and Rachel Ayieko, Adrienne Hu, Jerilynn Lepak, and Jamie Wernet from Michigan State University.

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Correspondence to Alan H. Schoenfeld.

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Schoenfeld, A.H. Classroom observations in theory and practice. ZDM Mathematics Education 45, 607–621 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-012-0483-1

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