Incorporating Disciplinary Practices Into Characterizations of Progress in Responsive Teaching

TL;DR

This paper argues that progress in responsive teaching should include the disciplinary relevance of practices teachers focus on, illustrated through a case study of a science teacher shifting from causal factors to causal explanations.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for characterizing progress in responsive teaching based on disciplinary practices, supported by a detailed case study.

Findings

Teacher shifted focus from causal factors to explanations

Participation in professional development influenced responsiveness

Institutional and epistemological factors contributed to change

Abstract

Responsive teaching, in which teachers adapt instruction based on close attention to the substance of students' ideas, is typically characterized along two dimensions: the level of detail at which teachers attend and respond to students' ideas, and the stance teachers take toward what they hear - evaluating for correctness vs. interpreting meaning. We propose that characterizations of progress in responsive teaching should also consider the disciplinary centrality of the practices teachers notice and respond to within student thinking. To illustrate what this kind of progress can look like, we present a case study of a middle school science teacher who implemented the "same" lesson on the motion of freely falling objects in two subsequent years. We argue that his primary shift in responsiveness stemmed from a shift in which disciplinary practices he preferentially noticed and foregrounded. He moved from a focus on causal factors or variables to a more scientifically productive focus on causal stories or explanations. We explore how participation in a professional development community, institutional constraints, and a shift in personal epistemology may have contributed to the nature and stability of this shift in responsiveness.