0:00 Hello and thank you for listening to the mathematics teacher educator journal podcast. The mathematics teacher educator journal is co sponsored by the Association of mathematics teacher educators and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. We will be discussing Rachel Erickson brown and Kimberly mez loskis article using narrative writing to learn what beginning teachers notice published in the September 2018 issue of the mathematics teacher educator journal. We will begin by summarizing the main points of the article and discuss in more depth the lessons date shared in the article, their successes and challenges and how these lessons relate to their other work. My name is Ava Sennheiser. Hi, Rachel and Kimberly, welcome to the show. Could you get started by just introducing yourselves quickly. 0:47 My name is Rachel Erickson Brown. I'm at Penn State Abington. 0:53 Hi, my name is Kim and I am a program officer for teacher development for the Knowles teacher initiative. 0:59 Let's start with a brief summary of the article including your results 1:04 we shared in this article, a professional development tool that Kim and I created, inspired by horns 2010 piece about teaching replays and teaching rehearsals. And this tool was designed to get us access to our PD teachers noticing like, what are they noticing in the field, in their practice, also about our professional development community are teachers willing to share dilemmas from their practice or just successes from their practices, it's probably important to know our teachers are beginning secondary math teachers. So it's kind of a unique, narrow population. And our results showed that this tool is successful and getting at what teachers are noticing the teachers were willing to write them and share them with us and each other. And there were some surprises in the results we anticipated, because they were beginners, that they would focus a lot on management, or pedagogy. But surprisingly, pedagogy was up there. But they also shared a lot about the climate of their classroom and the content they were teaching. And so I don't know if that's unique to our population, right? It gives us lots of questions and wonderings for future work. Okay, Kim, do you have to say anything yet? 2:25 Okay. So who are you envisioning should be reading this article, 2:30 anybody that works with math educators, teachers, and actually I think even some teachers themselves could find value in the article, I think, primarily, we see it as people who provide professional development as a way to think about how they can talk with teachers in genuine ways and allow them to authentically share about their classroom. I think for us, the big thing that we really wanted to focus on was allowing the teachers to be authentic and not just providing us with something that they thought we wanted, 3:03 what was the important problem that you tackled with this article, or with your research, 3:10 our particular teachers are located all over the country, and we only get to see, we only got to see this group in person about five days and school year, calendar year from summer to summer. And so it was impossible unless we had a lot a lot of money and flexibility of scheduled to go to their classrooms and see them practice, see them teaching and to see if anything from her professional development sessions were showing up in their work as teachers. And so this tool was our attempt, allowing us and the other teachers in this cohort to get a glimpse of what each other's classrooms looked like. And we thought also gave us some insight into our community. So our teachers willing to share successes or dilemmas What about their practice? Are they willing to share with others the risk was really controlled by the writer, so I could share all the glory, all the great stuff that happened in my classroom that particular week or month, or I could share the nitty gritty, but you know, the scary things that were happening that I'm not sure anyone should know about. And so we were curious to see what, what they would share what they were willing to share in this piece. 4:28 I'm gonna jump a little bit because I would like to get a really good sense of what is this innovation that we're talking about? Could you explain a little bit what it is the teachers did, and what you did with that, 4:42 we invited the teachers to write a teaching replay, which would be something that we could share in the community and read about each other's and give each other feedback about each other's classrooms, and the way that we presented it or the way that we had Encouraged it is to imagine that they were talking to a colleague in between classes. So we know as teachers, like, you know, we have that three, four minutes in between classes that we, you know, that might be the only time that we get to talk to another adult sometimes. And oftentimes, we, we use those three or four minutes to like, describe a dilemma to a colleague of something that just happened in that class, something that we really would like some kind of feedback about. But because our teachers that were involved in this cohort are not in the same building, they're not even in the same time zones, we wanted to have a way for them to be able to share those kinds of conversations are those pieces of their practice that they were really curious about and wanted feedback around. So we envisioned the teaching replay as a tool that would enable them to be able to do that, 5:50 teaching replays different than a reflection, which we've seen a lot in the literature, this was more inspired by, we did a lot of work with this, this group of teachers on the five practices. And so there's a lot of vignettes in those materials describing the five practices. And so we were curious, how do teachers process of and yet like, do they envision the classroom live like a movie? do you envision themselves as the teacher like, how did they position themselves? So we were curious if we ask them to kind of write up in yet with some, some teacher thoughts and questions kind of sprinkled throughout, what they would produce? So the teaching replays, literally, like three to eight paragraphs, recasting, sometimes a few minutes, or sometimes a sketch of a whole lesson? Yeah, just sharing what happened. Sometimes there was commentary or questioning, like, I wonder if this was a good idea or not. But what I did in the moment was, so it wasn't just reflecting what two particular prompts It was really just what's something that sticks out in your mind about your practice the last couple of weeks that you feel comfortable sharing with the group and, you know, sketch it up, write it up, 7:06 give us an idea of what's going on. And the article has like the assignment in an appendix, right? 7:11 Yes, it does. And we experimented with this particular assignment. over a course of a year Originally, the first teaching replay, they wrote, it was just for the PD providers. The second PD, they wrote it was to share with someone else in the cohort and get some feedback. And so we varied that. But we have yet to kind of analyze what the feedback how the feedback influenced someone or what it meant to teachers to write the feedback. But there are hints of, you know, some descriptions on that we'd be happy to share more of our directions, if anyone was interested. 7:44 Yeah, we'll get to how you want to communicate with readers. The important problem that you're addressing is what 7:54 providing teachers within a community a way to share their classroom that like Rachel said, that puts them in the position to decide what it is that they want to share. And we were also honestly looking for workarounds of the fact that we can't get into each other's classrooms and then video like then we have to get permissions from all the people involved. So we were really looking for some workarounds to some of those dilemmas as well. And so then we thought that them writing about their classroom in a way that was supposed to make the reader feel like they were there watching the class was our best bet. So 8:31 let me see if I understood this. So these narratives that they write, they provide a window into their classroom, but they have the leverage to choose what they want to share or what they want feedback on. And you get a sense of what they want to talk about. So situating, this in the larger field in their literature, how does your work build on what's already out there? 8:57 I think there are two places this fits. One is in the teacher noticing literature, I think what this supports is it is possible to see beginning teachers just focus on themselves like the teacher development literature shows us but that they can shift their focus more on students, or non behavior management kind of issues in a classroom. I think there's potential in this tool, if we could, over time and maybe potentially gave more pointed posts, I'd like try a high cognitive demand task in your classroom and write a replay about it. If we had done those kinds of more directed things. It could potentially give some insight into how they're, they're processing those materials, but I think it kind of contributes to the notice nurture or and it's focused on these beginning teachers, service teams. there there's practicing teacher noticing out there and this is like the sweet spot that transition and in between that I kept asking 9:58 myself throughout the year This paper, why not video? Why not video? Why not video? And I think you've already addressed some of the issues of getting permission. But I think it's more than that. Right? It's more than a convenience piece. It's also the like, how does the teacher see what's happening? 10:18 I agree, because the I think the beauty of the teaching replay is that it does, it does give us insight into how that particular teacher is both viewing their classroom and themselves within the classroom that makes it more deeply personal, then a video does one of the 10:38 questions I kept asking myself throughout the paper is, how do we know how accurate is not a good word, but vital, we would see the same thing that teachers describing when they're in their classroom? And I don't know if you have an answer to that, but that kept coming up in my head, like, how do we know how authentic these narratives are? 11:02 I think it's really interesting to think about, and I think that, you know, we struggled with that as PD providers. But I think that teachers also, you know, struggled with that what we were interested in is, how the teachers are learning and how the teachers are changing their practice, their perception of their growth is actually really what we were interested in. And I think that when we use the teaching replay within the community that we were building, they had opportunities to get other perspectives. And so those other perspectives, those teachers could ask them questions and push their thinking about what other things could have been happening. So I guess that's why I felt comfortable that the teaching replay was authentic for the teachers learning. 11:49 I also think it's important to note, part of the professional development meetings and online work that we did with these teachers involved the teachers engaging in inquiry. And so it was very common to bring samples of student work or some other data from your classroom and work in small groups and share it. And so this writing a teaching replay really supported the other work that was happening in the professional development. And so there, there was never an instance where we, like have seen someone's data, some kids work, and then read the replay. And we're like, this isn't the same person speaking, you know, like, there was never a time where we were really thrown by what we were reading. But I do think you're wondering hits, something we would love to see used in the future, I could see a student teacher writing a replay, the University supervisor writing a replay and the mentor teacher writing a replay from the same math lesson, and then just exchanging them like see what are people tuning into and noticing? And what does that tell us? And then when we put the, those perspectives together, what happens are really in any kind of coach situation, where you have someone coming in and observing not not to evaluate, but to help you grow, I think there's Yeah, some interesting things could happen there. 13:11 It's kind of like a communication tool. We've done like a similar thing, not with narratives. But with justification, we looked at how teachers define justification. And, you know, we needed to understand how they're thinking about it before moving on, it was really helpful to like put our understanding aside and look at what his teachers are bringing. So I feel like your narratives are similar in a way that they're bringing what the teachers thinks is important. Right, 13:42 right. And I think it's similar to what we are asked teachers to do with their students, like, just what will students do with it? Let's not get let's not try to project let's that, let's just give them an open ended problem or something to work on. Let's see what they do. So it's very similar, I think to that, yeah, just cast them. It's also 14:00 kind of nice, because the teachers can then get help with exactly what they want to get help with, right? Because that's what they write up. 14:09 Right. So. 14:10 So let's talk a little bit more about how this innovation addresses the problem of practice that you highlight it. So you talked a little bit earlier on about how you thought it would just be about management. Right? Was that the problem of practice you were at attending to or what exactly were you addressing and how did it address it 14:35 more the problem of practice was within our our community we were we wanted to see what the teachers perceived as areas in which they needed to grow. 14:48 Okay, and we use a slightly modified version of the learning to notice framework from vanasse and Sharon's video club professional development work and focused in the topic. The you know, the what the what of what they're writing about. And so we analyzed their teaching replays, looking for did the paragraphs, we analyzed at the paragraph level focus on pedagogy, the teacher and the teacher moves, did it focus on the mathematics of the task or the lesson or the conversation in the classroom, that would be content, did it focus on climate, we called it which was, which was the idea of the feelings in the classroom, really the feelings about learning and teaching mathematics, the social dynamics of the room. And then there was also the management piece, which was more getting students to behave in particular ways. And so we anticipated because these are beginning teachers that they would be mostly concerned about pedagogy, and they were about 30% of the paragraphs focused on that. But we also anticipated management being a bigger, you know, big concern of theirs. Because they're beginning teachers and beginning teachers often focus on themselves and just like making sure kids are doing what they're supposed to be doing. And that actually only showed up in about 12% of the paragraphs. Instead, climate was around 30%, same as pedagogy and content was up there at 25%. So it gave us some really interesting insight, as we've been saying about what teachers were wanting to work on, and what value they saw in our community, like what dilemmas or pieces of their practice, they think the other teachers and the professional development and Kim and I in our PD provider colleagues could offer them. And it wasn't about management, it was more about climate, 16:50 pedagogy and content. And so you asked them to do this three times over the course of a year, right? They wrote three of these narratives. And then you they were you said, between three and eight paragraphs each. Yeah. And you analyzed at the paragraph level, right? That's kind of what you were talking about. So the 17:08 Yeah, cuz fanous and Sharon, they I forget how they describe they kind of chunked by idea. And we felt like in writing, typically, a paragraph, you know, the start of a new paragraph is the indication that there's kind of a new idea or focus. And so we thought the paragraph level was most consistent with that. 17:27 I think what you summarized is that across all the paragraphs, if you throw them into a pot, and you analyze them, there were about equal shares of three of the four categories. And the one that you thought was going to be the bulk of it, which is management actually showed up least, right? Yes. So I'm curious, did you also look like by person or by narrative, like did people often switch did paragraphs? Like Did somebody talk three paragraphs about the same topic? Or was it typically several topics? 17:59 That is a good question, I think often, there were one or two topics within a teaching replay that make sense across the paragraphs. So it could be that they honed in on like teaching a high demand task, and then they were sharing the classroom conversation, the discussion about it. And so sometimes the paragraphs would be about themselves and kind of the question they posed, or how they monitored or, you know, that kind of thing. And then sometimes it would be literally the content, like the mathematics that was being discussed or things like that. Yeah. And we were hoping, I mean, ideally, we were thinking, Oh, this will be great across the year, we could potentially see shifts and what an individual or this group of individuals focus on. But we were not, we were very open with our direction. So just pick anything that you're, that is important, too, right now to share with the group and writing. And so we didn't see a ton of variation. And then of course, because they're all beginning teachers, we had everyone participate in the first teaching replay, and then last and less people writing because now they're, you know, it's October, and they're all freaking out. And we're asking them to write or it's, you know, January, February, we kind of, you know, just the reality of, they're new to this profession, and we're asking them to find 30 minutes to do this thing, when in reality, they should probably cook themselves a meal and eat it in those 30 minutes. So we weren't surprised to see that tinkering. But I think when we first started, we were like, this is gonna be great. And we're like, oh, yeah, right. is actually gonna be hard. But the cool part is one of our teachers actually wrote a teaching replay and brought it to his inquiry group as evidence from his practice to help unpack the question he was investigating that year. So for sure at least one teacher saw the potential of this tool to give them support or feedback to make sense of their work, which is really cool. This actually leads nicely into the challenges. You already mentioned time as a challenge for writing narratives. Did you encounter other challenges? I think there's always the technology piece potentially. So we have a password protected online space. But there's like one teaching replay, a teacher shared with us, but didn't share it with the right permissions. So we've never read it. Okay, just both kind of like, logistic II things. Okay. What else can would you say, 20:41 for the teacher themselves, it was they sometimes felt intimidated by the writing process. And I think they found difficulty in deciding what to write about. And so we don't really have a clear understanding of what, what went into their choice making. So there's like pieces that we're still curious about, and how teachers made the decision about what they wrote. But we, we can only go with what they wrote about. So we don't know what other things they're thinking about, 21:10 let's kind of come to conclusion slowly by talking about how other people could be using that narrative writing. So I think one of the things you already mentioned was that it could be more focused. If you're doing a professional development on like a high cognitive task and implementing it. You could have done write it on that I think you said earlier, what other things do you see? And how do you see somebody who is not part of your group and wants to try this? What would you suggest 21:45 we used it in community, but I can envision it as a personal use as well, where the beauty of it is that it is different than reflection, like Rachel was saying earlier. So I can imagine a particular teacher just wanting to periodically sit down and write a replay for themselves, about something that happened in class that they just had some sort of emotional reaction to. And over time, like being able, I can imagine in the summer, going back and looking at those teaching replays, and being able to find places where you start to notice patterns in what it is that you are reacting to in your classroom. So I can imagine using it also on a personal level for your own personal growth. 22:29 I think too, if you're the only math teacher in your school building, but your district or you're connected to like a county or state level community, this could be a way to get some support and make some connections, but doesn't require people to be synchronously available. You know, like you don't have to all find a time to meet and talk. But you can capture something in the moment and give it to someone and get feedback when they have some time to give you feedback. And so it kind of opens up some possibilities in that regard that you don't that it although time is an issue. It also kind of alleviates the time problem of getting multiple people together on the same instance. So 23:12 let's imagine there's some math teacher educators out there who read your article and really want to use this, what advice would you give? And what would you like to hear back from them 23:23 advice wise, is to resist the fight? Well, I don't know, maybe not resist. But I think some teachers like kemah, saying we're hesitant or kind of intimidated to write. But I think if you provide any sort of model, then you limit what you could be producing and making it feel more like an exercise of making the PD provider whoever the teacher educator happy. Although our teachers did read each other's so got a sense of you know what other people were writing about. But I think I would recommend trying to just allow the teacher to keep it personal. And if they're intimidated by the writing to at least get, you know, three or four paragraphs down to get a sense. They're Welcome to use our directions that are in the appendix, which were given to our teachers, every time we assign the teaching replay, you know, they got that same set of directions as kind of their touchstone. I think it's also important to recognize all of the dynamics at play. So for sure, some of our teachers I'm, we're probably writing, trying to guess what we wanted to see in their teaching practice. Yeah, but others that unconfident to just shared something that was really bothering them because it's a bunch of thoughtful people who were working together for a year. And so they knew people would give them thoughtful ideas back so yeah, you you might run the gamut of things, but we found it to be really insightful and productive. Yes. 24:57 Okay, so 24:58 last question. How does this work that we just talked about for the last 30 minutes fit into your larger body of work? 25:07 For me, it fits in as a tool of inquiry. And it is an empowering tool for the teachers. So I think a lot of times in, in professional development of teachers, we, we forget the professional piece to them. And we sometimes want to treat them like students again, that we're teaching them something that they're going to recreate for us. And the teaching replay gives them the chance to take what they are learning from us and think about it in their own context and actually make it their own. So let's go back to 25:43 how does the work you described in this article fit in your work in general, 25:47 currently, I'm working with pre service teachers, undergraduate pre service teachers, and so I've had them do some narrative writing as part of assignments when they go into the field or teach the class opener at a school. I think, this idea of noticing and really allowing the teachers I work with, to I identify what's most pressing to them has kind of influence the teacher noticing work that I that I'm doing. Now, with my undergraduate pre service, pre service teachers, I also I'm always intrigued by community development, and how what does a community of mathematics teachers look like? How do they behave and act and question each other and encourage development and growth? And I like that the teaching replay gives the risk to the writer and then gives indication to everybody reading it kind of where the community is that and what they're willing to share and how they're willing to respond to each other. And that's always of interest in the work that I do. It's just how people interact with each other to learn about math and teaching math and learning math. 27:01 For further information on this topic, you can find the article on the mathematics teacher educator website. This has been your host, Ava Sennheiser. Thanks for listening and goodbye.