Role of Teacher Professional Development notes

From Kaput Center Wiki

Role of Teacher Professional Development (and teacher preparation)

Participants:

• Walter Stroup
• Roberta Schorr
• Maria Blanton
• Bob McCabe
• Donna Apple
• John Tapper
• Arden Brookstein (scribe)

Walter: You Teach in Texas; Ed schools have been pushed to elementary education. Engagement with domain (include elementary); struggling with do we continue to speak as if there are general pedagogy OR that there are lots of ‘hats’...

Moving away from generic models Corey: history of You Teach Walter: focus on content you teach; how do the questions about math, create activities.

Maria: Simultaneously thinking about content and practice

John: teach a more deconstructed math; not just about learning basic concepts; not lateral—; more research that the more teachers know about the math that they teach

John: teacher does more sophisticated math, students will benefit

Donna: familiar with John’s/ Ken’s project.

Roberta: we often set up dichotomies in our community; this is problematic. What is the math goal?—teachers grapple with this.

Ed Silver—idea of multiple solutions. We give notion that multiple solutions are good (in theory)—what do you do with it, how does it advance your agenda? Which solutions should go first; when to position the solutions (time, order). Issue is how to position solutions so that the experience is valuable; students feel their thoughts/ opinions are valuable.

Bigger issue: (current research is affect and cognition).

Knowledge teachers should have: need to look at how teachers position themselves; experiences that can allow them to make considerations in the moment.

Donna: deeper knowledge about math, content, is important for teachers to have. Also, mult. Solutions are important. Donna sees now that those who have multiple solutions---how do teachers work productively with students and their incomplete ideas.

Roberta: what constitutes an incomplete idea? Part of understanding content---understanding how students might think differently about the topic; identify possible responses.

John: it’s almost each solution represents a possible trajectory. In terms of PD, if we can articulate what those are more accurately, help teachers situate those specific examples. Feel strongly about misconceptions and developing ideas—where they’ll come from, where will they lead.

Corey: work is anonymous—teacher feels free to ask questions. Does a master teacher look at an activity and recognize….always surprised, or student work is more like a shopping list; ‘ I was looking for those 6 things, and I found them, etc. if I haven’t got them then I haven’t done my job’. Not magical.

Roberta: range of things that could come up; other things do come up. Teachers ask “explain your answer” and student response isn’t explored. Moved on to next student. What do you do with these things, with a math goal in mind?

Donna: teachers don’t’ articulate what their teaching goal is for a lesson. Teachers understanding of their own belief systems is important.

Maria: Roberta is thinking about this as a teacher. How do we as a community of researchers, what are the ideas we need to focus on in a research community?

Walter: with a math goal in mind, what do we do with a group? Research world could attend to---what does content look like in a group? What does attending to arguments in a group? What do expectations of students look like in a group? (your group). For designs for activities, what would misconceptions look like in a group? See space that kids feel comfortable in when performing activities (ie. put on the board a number between 1 and 2). Problem: feeling of knowing is individual.

Walter: what do fractions look like in a classroom? In a space? Analyze pathways students’ use. Fundamental thing: we haven’t recognized fund. Experience of teachers---they have a group of kids. Teacher class doesn’t prepare teachers for what it’ll be like in class. We take individual stories of what it means to understand content…should be a group.

What does content look like in a group?

Maria: difficult to handle math class with all different kinds of answers

Bob: what does a group answer look like>?

Walter: goal is to ask a question that would ‘open up the space and not collapse it’.

John: group level represents certain level of complexity that has impact on individual level.

Corey: phenomenon of getting group better is related to….

Roberta: small groups; high poverty districts, ell, etc; working on developing a way to get info from kids about their own engagement, emotion, and group in addition to the change in cognition---who’s idea stuck and who’s didn’t? There are different ways students can interact with each other in a group; each method (let me teach you mode, etc) has different results in terms of cognition but from the surface the groups look the same.

Walter: always add “…in a classroom”. If you can’t bring effective theory to classroom and content for the teacher, then you’re probably not speaking to the unit of analysis you need to be.

Multiple solutions

Bob: the avg elementary teacher will be thrown by multiple solutions in a class. How do you get ready for that?

Walter: really need to focus on what happens in a classroom.

Bob: fluency in on part of math.

Maria: think deeply about the mathematics you’ll be teaching but add additional components (algebra for elementary) You can be learning math appropriate for 1st grade teacher; it’s complicated for them. It’s the kind of math.

Donna: depth of complexity for counting. RFP: all of affective qualities—want teachers to know all of those deep things that we look at (Roberta)

Bob: 2+2=5. Brings up the unit problem. Relates to problem of counting and bringing things together.

Maria: these are the things we want teachers to think about………

John: teachers know they have to deliver investigations (math coach)…

Donna: does teacher PD, do we open up those ideas for them to pause and reflect on what it will look like in the class.

Corey: 2 pieces. 1) In a teacher prep event, thinking about how you want your small groups to work as a way into how you want your conduct of your class to work. Connect dynamics of small groups to dynamics of large groups—haven’t seen this. Awaken teacher that affect is going on. 2) In teaching how to teach, connect affect and content that is consistent and ongoing. These seem like differences from they way things are done today. Technical ideas;

Maria: whole class is different structure.

Corey: excited in domain of PD, when grasp principles that can be replicated without reducing principle. You teach a teacher, they can teach another teacher.

Walter: burden for people who work with teachers.

Bob: how does teacher become agent in classroom (when not mathematically comfortable?)

Roberta: default position.

Maria: deep understanding of concepts

Walter: we have separate course on classroom management.

Roberta: one thing that can be accomplished/ addressed by what Bob was saying is that if teachers have ‘deep experiences with some kind of math’ and they are allowed to experience some levels of frustration (identity, intimacy, and something else); we look at it as an opportunity of success and NOT an indication of failure.

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they experience moments of great delight. Understand that frustration shouldn’t be viewed negatively. We should allow students to struggle; teachers should understand there is benefit to do this.

Walter:

Maria: what is the abstraction here, in terms of researchers

Roberta: what are the moments, when the whole thing breaks down? Who and how? How does it get built up? (in terms of frustration). How do teachers help students when students are frustrated and what are the direct consequences. We know there are pivotal moments…

Analyze videos from multiple perspectives to analyze why teachers intervene and when.

Walter:

Donna: missing in loop—what was impact of your actions on student outcome.

Roberta: yes, they do. Point is: in terms of community, we have lots of stories that are worth sharing. Would love to look at our stories, instances where we think the same things are happening; work together.

What would questions be based on our convo: • What does it mean to be a teacher, what does it take to be a teacher? • Walter has pointed out ways of standard PD and alternative PD o Standard PD: Contextualized, individualized (educational department). • How to think about problem from inside not purely as a deficit of math knowledge but…. • Way of negotiating difference between bob and Maria----how math would be enacted in their classroom. • Deepening teacher’s knowledge using the context of the students’ ideas. If you pose this, and they do this, then what do you do?

• Learning about practice should be deeply connected to content • As researches, reframe our perspective—classroom seen as 1 mind. Helpful to have that mindset; o And individual students as intentional agents in that space? (Donna) o Maria—ideas coming from individuals, but thoughts are connected. At any given point, you can attend to an individual but you keep group engaged. • Corey: Art as tact? How do address students’ trouble? If you do it in a certain way you blow it? Tact has math aspect? o Is it an art or a science? How does a prep teacher do something they saw a master teacher do? o Optimize for first year of teaching or third? Bag of tricks only works for 1st year. o If there were a math or science to how to intervene sensitive to student learning? • Movement away from good back talk (Walter) • Roberta: what happens? What were the consequences? (important idea)

Donna: good bad talk is reductive; when it happens in context of the group. But also when you analyze what teachers are doing, you want to open up the space.

Maria:

Roberta: need to figure out what works for whom, how, and under what circumstances. Lesh talks about multi-tiered---we need to understand teachers thinking about all different kinds of things contextualized within the math.

Persecutes on how to systematize this:

Roberta:

Walter: shift in research, shift the rigor? Need to value close attention to discourse.

Donna: not talking about making kids feel good; we’re talking about actions in class that make students feel successful.

Roberta: powerful affect---composed of positive and negative affect. Pride, satisfaction/ frustration, etc. Performed in safe environment---can be resolved. Domain of mathematics.

Corey:

Roberta: sense of integrity vs. student’s perception of teacher expectations. Always within the domain of math.

Researchers that build community: (Maria) is there a fundamental thing here that we need to rev Content as a form of participation. Teaching theory or learning theory? (Donna).

Walter: what does participation in math community look like? Research attending to discourse might…there are stories about where knowledge lives in relation to a community.

Walter: psychological models have been individually studied. Corey: we need to instantiate argument so that it can’t be ignored.

Donna: you need to honor the knowledge of where teachers need to go (restricted by test, pacing test—that has too little loyalty to the content (Walter)); Walter: what is the consequence of that? Teachers think we’re criticizing them

Donna: Consequence? Then what’s the personal consequence when their students don’t perform well?

Corey: latent proposal for ways to… if you cant’ draw an alternative, there’s no change.

Donna: sustainability and replication………..this is so complex because you’re dealing with so many belief systems.

Main Idea: suggests that there is a practice out there marching thru curriculum guides, closure, etc makes sense (Walter)—there’s a package here. It’s our belief is that this package is subverting what’s possible in mathematics. Package would include assessments, etc.

Here are episodes in the classroom, here’s an analysis of this episode; welcome competing thoughts.

Donna: how do you work productively with incorrect thinking?

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