Abstract
Teachers’ decision-making and pedagogical reasoning often become visible in their lesson planning sessions. This study explores how the professional learning opportunities presented by teacher-facilitator interactions in planning sessions. By tracing shifts in teachers’ discourse in planning sessions, we examine the development of their pedagogical reasoning. The findings of this study illustrate that these interactions create four kinds of professional learning opportunities: (1) reflecting on students’ learning in past lessons; (2) attending to the details of the complexity of teaching; (3) negotiating and adjusting lesson goals and activities by making direct and informed decisions for teaching; and (4) anticipating specific features of instruction. This study also illustrates how refining and elaborating teaching complexity supports teachers in re-conceptualizing and expanding their teaching knowledge.
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Notes
Research indicates that to improve teacher learning, professional learning materials should be connected to practice (Ball & Cohen, 1999). Various types of recordings from real classrooms such as students’ work or videos present salient problems that allow teachers to investigate fundamental issues of teaching complexity (e.g. students’ misunderstandings of a particular topic and knowledge students gain through (un-)intentional teaching).
The Math Studio had an additional 10–15 participants including teachers, principals, district administrators, and math coaches in the school district in a midwestern state.
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This work was supported in part by the generous funding of The Sherwood and Lozier Foundations. All findings and opinions are those of the authors and not necessarily those of The Sherwood and Lozier Foundations.
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Kim, Hj., Metzger, M. & Heaton, R.M. Teacher Planning Sessions as Professional Opportunities to Learn: an Elementary Mathematics Teacher’s Re-conceptualization of Instructional Triangles. Int J of Sci and Math Educ 18, 1207–1227 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-019-10019-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-019-10019-y