Collaborative Research: Advancing Mentor Teachers' Practices through Collaborative Pedagogical Reasoning

支持教师参与响应式数学教学的势头日益增强，这对实现更公平的教学至关重要。在这种方法中，教师认识并关注所有学生思想的多样性和实质，并在教学中利用这些思想。然而，学习参与响应式数学教学是具有挑战性的，因为这项工作需要解释当下的课堂活动，并做出合理和有意的决定。这种决策过程被称为教学推理，通常是观察者看不见的，这使得新手很难学习。教师教育项目通常为新教师提供在课堂上与经验丰富的专业人士（导师教师）一起工作的机会，然而，教学推理的活动很少是这种指导的重点。鉴于导师对新手教师教学实践发展的重要性，以及新手在导师课堂上花费的时间，项目研究人员将导师-新手教师关系视为干预的关键场所。该项目利用导师教师的角色来支持新手教学推理的发展，并增加他们准备参与响应式数学教学的可能性。在三种不同结构的教师教育项目中，导师教师将接受专业发展，旨在使他们的教学推理可见，并支持他们与这种类型的教师思维的新手合作。研究人员将这种类型的指导称为协作教学推理（Co-PR）。他们将研究指导教师合作公关的发展及其与响应式教学的关系。他们还将考虑不同的项目结构和特点如何影响合作公关的发展。研究结果将为在不同的教师教育项目中制定教师指导策略提供可用的实践，这将随后支持导师和新手教师学习响应式数学教学。本计划旨在透过支援导师教师，让新一代的初学教师更有能力从事响应式数学教学，以提升小学数学教学品质。这项以设计为基础的干预研究基于几个假设，即指导教师如何在支持新手在K-8课堂上发展这些实践方面发挥更大的作用。具体而言，研究人员假设，如果导师教师通过参与合作教学推理（Co-PR）使其教学推理对新手可见，那么新手教师将了解熟练教师在进行响应式数学教学时所从事的无形决策。此外，他们假设可以通过设计学习机会来支持导师教师参与Co-PR，这些学习机会提供与他人的联合调查，并通过共享工具进行调解，旨在指导响应式教学的纪律和公平方面。研究人员在三个战略站点使用一个探究小组专业发展结构，旨在建立指导工具和结构化的机会，以支持导师教师使他们的决策层次可见，并促进在教学之前、期间和之后与新手的共同公关。项目团队将研究导师和新手教师共同公关的发展，探索他们教学推理的发展以及促进这种发展的因素。他们还将调查不同教师教育类型和项目的共同公共关系的制定是如何不同的。研究结果将有助于对导师和新手教师发展的学术见解，并将产生一套对数学教育和教师教育领域有用的指导工具。探索研究preK-12项目（DRK-12）旨在通过研究和开发创新资源、模型和工具，显著提高preK-12学生和教师对科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究和先前的研究和开发工作的基础上，为拟议的项目提供了理论和实证依据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

There is growing momentum to support teachers to engage in responsive mathematics teaching, which is critical to realizing more equitable instruction. In this approach, teachers recognize and attend to the diversity and substance of all students’ ideas and leverage those ideas in instruction. Yet, learning to engage in responsive mathematics teaching is challenging as this work requires interpreting classroom activity in-the-moment and making decisions that are well reasoned and intentional. This decision-making process, known as pedagogical reasoning, is often invisible to observers, making it hard for novices to learn. Teacher education programs typically provide novice teachers with opportunities to work in classrooms, alongside seasoned professionals (mentor teachers), however, the activity of pedagogical reasoning is rarely a focus of such mentoring. Given the importance of mentor teachers for novice teachers’ development of instructional practices and the amount of time novices spend in mentored classroom placements, the project researchers view the mentor-novice teacher relationship as a critical site for intervention. This project leverages the role of mentor teachers to support novices’ development of pedagogical reasoning and increase the likelihood that they will be prepared to engage in responsive mathematics teaching. Mentor teachers in three differently structured teacher education programs will receive professional development aimed at making their pedagogical reasoning visible and supporting them in engaging collaboratively with novices in this type of teacher thinking. The researchers refer to this type of mentoring as collaborative pedagogical reasoning (Co-PR). They will study mentor teachers’ development of Co-PR and its relationship to responsive teaching. They will also consider how different program structures and characteristics influence the development of Co-PR. Findings will produce usable practices for developing teachers’ mentoring strategies across different teacher education programs, which will subsequently support mentor and novice teachers’ learning of responsive mathematics teaching.This project aims to enhance the quality of elementary mathematics teaching by supporting mentor teachers to better prepare the next generation of novice teachers to engage in responsive mathematics teaching. This design-based intervention study is based on several hypotheses about how mentor teachers might play a stronger role in supporting novices to develop these practices in K-8 classrooms. Specifically, the researchers hypothesize that if mentor teachers make their pedagogical reasoning visible to novices through engagement in collaborative pedagogical reasoning (Co-PR), then novice teachers will learn about the invisible decision-making that skilled teachers engage in as they carry out responsive mathematics teaching. Further, they hypothesize that mentor teachers can be supported to engage in Co-PR through the design of learning opportunities that afford joint inquiry with others and are mediated with shared tools, designed to guide both disciplinary and equitable aspects of responsive teaching. Using an inquiry group professional development structure at three strategic sites, the researchers aim to build mentoring tools and structured opportunities that support mentor teachers to make visible the layers of their decision making and to facilitate Co-PR with novices before, during, and after teaching. The project team will study the development of mentor and novice teachers’ Co-PR, exploring growth in their pedagogical reasoning and factors that contribute to this development. They will also investigate how the enactment of Co-PR differs across teacher education types and programs. Findings will contribute to scholarly insights about mentor and novice teacher development and will generate a set of mentoring tools useful to the fields of mathematics education and teacher education. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.