h i g h l i g h t sInvestigation of conditions associated with teachers' in-depth discussions. Focus on teacher communities of inquiry in a professional development initiative. Using unique methodological approach: Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Single purpose was a necessary condition associated with in-depth discussion. Coach questions and connecting theory and practice were also associated conditions. a b s t r a c t This paper examines factors that contributed to critical conversations in teacher communities of inquiry (CI) as part of a statewide professional development initiative in the United States. Based on a three-year mixed method design, we use qualitative comparative analysis to investigate the influence of combinations of conditions on the depth of discussion. Results suggest that there were three conditions associated with the extent to which CI members engaged in discussions with substantive interaction and reflection: a clear purpose, coach questioning, and the connection of theory to practice. The findings contribute to the understanding of effective reform implementation in different contexts.
Formative assessment practices, including eliciting a broad range of student ideas, noticing the nuances in students' ideas, using these ideas to guide instruction, and promoting student self-regulation of learning are key components of expert teaching. Given the inherent dialogical nature of formative assessment in the classroom, video can provide a powerful tool for capturing and analyzing teachers' formative assessment interactions with students. In this study, we provide a framework for examining expertise in formative assessment and use this framework to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the practices of 13 mathematics and science teachers. While we only saw a few instances of true expertise in formative assessment practices in our examination of videos, our findings indicate that teachers with more expertise in formative assessment let students' ideas guide their teaching. This leads to higher correlations among the dimensions of practice that we articulate in our framework for expert teachers. However, because many of the instructional decisions that teachers make are not visible on video, video alone may not provide enough information to judge expertise in formative assessment.
The 'conceptual storyline' of a lesson refers to the flow and sequencing of learning activities such that science concepts align and progress in ways that are instructionally meaningful to student learning of the concepts. Research demonstrates that when teachers apply lesson design strategies to create a coherent science content storyline, student learning is positively impacted (Roth et al., 2011). Because the conceptual storyline is often implicit within a lesson, and teachers often have difficulty articulating this aspect of lesson design (Lo et al., 2014), our professional development program engages elementary teachers in analyzing and developing graphic representations of a lesson's conceptual storyline to make that element explicit. In this exploratory study, we present typologies that represent two primary challenges teachers faced in developing coherent conceptual storylines in their lesson design, and examine the extent to which professional development enhanced their capacity to develop a coherent conceptual storyline.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.