Instructional Improvement and Teachers’ Collaborative Conversations: The Role of Focus and Facilitation

Abstract

Background/Context School districts are increasingly expected to support students in meeting ambitious mathematical learning goals. Many schools and districts are investing significant resources in the provision of time for teacher collaboration in the hope that this will help teachers improve their instruction in ways that support students in meeting ambitious learning goals. While existing research points to the potential of this collaboration time to support teacher learning, findings from previous work suggest that use of this time varies in ways that are likely to be consequential for teachers’ learning. Research Question In this analysis, we investigate the question: In what ways do focus and facilitation shape teachers’ opportunities to learn during collaborative conversations? Research Design The data for this analysis comes from a 4-year study of 4 large urban school districts that examines what it takes to improve the quality of middle school math instruction at scale. Our analysis draws on the broader data set by first using teacher-level data (observed instructional quality) from 30 schools to identify schools that exhibited the most growth in instructional quality. We then analyze audio recordings of teacher collaborative meetings at those schools to better understand how the conversations that take place in these meetings might function to support teachers’ professional learning. In particular, we examine differences in facilitator questioning and subsequent facilitator press on teachers to elaborate their pedagogical reasoning. Findings/Results We observed two foci in identified sessions: writing learning targets and lesson co-planning. As enacted, the lesson co-planning sessions held greater potential for supporting teachers’ professional learning. Use of an activity-structuring tool was related to higher quality facilitator questions in these sessions but was not related to improved facilitator press on teachers to elaborate on their responses to these questions. These facilitator moves are marked by (1) solicitation of detailed representations of teachers’ classrooms and practice, (2) orientation toward students as sense-makers, and (3) press for teachers to articulate rationales for instructional decisions that are tied to goals for student learning. We provide examples of facilitator questioning and press that are generative for teacher learning. Conclusions/Recommendations This work contributes to the research on the ways collaborative time can support teacher learning. It identifies specific practices that facilitators can draw on to support teachers’ professional learning—which has the potential to inform both teacher learning and the training of facilitators. This work can additionally inform the design and use of tools (protocols) that can help productively structure teacher collaborative time and also reveal the limitations of such tools. Importantly, we offer a coding scheme for analyzing the quality of facilitation through questioning and press that can subsequently be challenged, problematized, and built upon in the field.