Supporting Teachers to Learn the Practice of

Ambitious Mathematics Teaching

Summer Learning InstituteTeacher Education

WorkshopJuly 17, 2011

Megan Franke & Angela Chan, UCLA

Hala Ghousseini, University of Wisconsin

Elham Kazemi, University of Washington

Magdalene Lampert & Heather Beasley, University of Michigan

What do we mean byambitious mathematics teaching?

What do we mean byambitious mathematics teaching?

Mathematics teaching which aims to produce

• competent performance• in complex domains• for all students

Ambitious Mathematics Teaching

Teaching which aims to produce– Competent performance

• Acquire• Understand• And be able to use knowledge

– In complex domains• Communication• Providing evidence for conclusions• Connected structures

– For all students• Attention to differences in what students bring• Teaching is continuously calibrated to learning

What do we mean byambitious mathematics teaching?

What do we mean byambitious mathematics teaching?

Literacy and Mathematics

Teacher K-12 students

The social and institutional context of schools and classrooms

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4

The work of Teaching is in structuring relationships

What do we mean bythe PRACTICE of ambitious mathematics teaching?

What do we mean bythe PRACTICE of ambitious mathematics teaching?

Practice 1– doing, thoughtful doing– not the opposite of theory but the use of theory in action in a particular

contextPractice 2

– “high leverage” practices– things that teachers do regularly to support learning

Practice 3– deliberate repeating of an action with feedback until you get good at it– integration of routines with good judgment about when and how to use them

Practice 4– collective activity expresses shared commitments– using common tools and common language– commitment to common principles

Why might it be important to support teachers on all of these fronts at once?

Why might it be important to support teachers on all of these fronts at once?

TURN AND TALKShare with whole groupPractice 1

– doing, thoughtful doing– not the opposite of theory but the use of theory in action in a particular

contextPractice 2

– “high leverage” practices– things that teachers do regularly to support learning

Practice 3– deliberate repeating of an action with feedback until you get good at it– integration of routines with good judgment about when and how to use them

Practice 4– collective activity expresses shared commitments– using common tools and common language– commitment to common principles

The practice of teaching

Teacher educators Novice teachers

The social and institutional context for learning teachingThe social and institutional context for learning teaching

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The work of Teacher Education is in structuring relationships

How can we design teacher education to structure the relationships among teacher educators, novice teachers, and teaching practice so that novice

teachers are likely to develop competence and identities as

ambitious teachers?

How can we design teacher education to structure the relationships among teacher educators, novice teachers, and teaching practice so that novice

teachers are likely to develop competence and identities as

ambitious teachers?

• Instructional activities can be crafted to• enable children to learn important mathematics• enable novices to learn

• Routine practices• Enactment of principles• Use of knowledge in action

• enable teacher educators to learn “responsive” coaching

Hypothesis #1:

Instructional Activities are designed to be “containers” for knowledge, principles and practices underlying ambitious teaching

PRINCIPLES

KNOWLEDGE

PRACTICES

Practices the IAs enable coach to work on

• Launching/beginning an activity• Managing space• Managing time/pacing• Using body and voice• Managing student engagement• Eliciting and responding to student contributions• Orienting students to one another• Attending to student thinking• Attending to student errors• Assessing student understanding• Closing an activity

Principles the IAs enable the coach to work on

• Children are sensemakers. • Teachers must design instruction for all children

to do rigorous academic work in school and to have equitable access to learning.

• Ambitious instruction requires clear instructional goals.

• Teachers must know their students as individuals and as learners.

• Teachers must be responsive to the requirements of the school environment.

The coach is also engaging teachers in learning mathematics for teaching

• Mathematical processes, e.g.– Making sense of problems– Reasoning quantitatively– Constructing viable arguments– Looking for and expressing regularity– Etc.

• Mathematical content, e.g.– Operations on whole numbers, fractions– Understanding and using place value– Understanding, comparing, and representing fractions– Representing and solving problems with operations– Etc.

Where does coaching fit in relation to enactment?

Cycles of Enactment and

Investigation

Common Instructional

Activities

Coaching through

Rehearsals

Hypothesis #2

• Instructional activities can be used most effectively and efficiently to support teachers in cycles of observations and enactment in designed (“applied”) settings

• Professional education is immediately responsive to actual problems of practice

• Formative assessment can occur throughout the cycle and in repeated cycles and development can be responsive to what teachers need to learn

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NEXT CYCLE

Enact the Activity and

record teaching & learning

Collective analysis of teaching &

learning

CYCLES of

ENACTMENT and

INVESTIGATION

SAME ACTIVITY ACROSS MULTIPLE TEACHERS AND SETTINGS

SAME ACTIVITY ACROSS MULTIPLE TEACHERS AND SETTINGS

Coaching through

Rehearsals

Observing an Instructional

Activity

Collective analysis of math and teaching

Prepare to teach an

Instructional Activity

Where/How/When can all of this happen?

Hypothesis #3Hypothesis #3

• We need to design (new) settings for Teacher Education to happen– Places where the cycle can happen– Places where there are more capable and

articulate colleagues to identify with– Time for teachers to watch each other– Technology for collecting records of

practice and making them available– ?