Supporting Instructional Coaching in Mathematics

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Supporting Instructional Coaching in Mathematics

• Investigations Online Seminars
• Stephanie Feger, Kristine Woleck

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Session Presenters

• Stephanie Feger - Program Planning
  Specialist/Educational Technology, The Education
  Alliance at Brown UniversityE-mail
  Stephanie_Feger_at_Brown.edu
• Kristine Woleck - K-5 Mathematics Coordinator for
  the New Canaan (CT) Public Schools
• E-mail krwoleck_at_sbcglobal.net

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Session Agenda

• Overview
• Introductions
• Design of online seminars
• Working with a coaching artifact
• Seminar examples interaction facilitation
• Discussion
• Where is online PD moving?

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Investigations Online

• Developed an online community for educators
  implementing the Investigations mathematics
  curriculum (CESAME Support Site for
  Investigations 1998-2006)
• Build knowledge of coaching and mathematics
  through online seminars that allow groups of
  participants to extend their learning over time.

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Collective ParticipationComputer Supported
Collaborative Learning

• Pre-requisite for knowledge building(Sorensen,
  2003)
• Shapes an open, fluid, and distributed learning
  environment(Brown, 2002)
• Useful when multiple perspectives needed for
  problem solving(Cuthbert, 1999)
• Elicits high levels of inquiry
• (Palloff Pratt, 1999)

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Seminar Development

• In the footsteps of design experiments
• Testing and refining an educational design
  through progressive cycles
• Using principles and theories from prior research
  (e.g. high-quality PD and CSCL)(Collins, Joseph,
  Bielaczyc)

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How Does Community Interaction Develop?

• Communities of practice
• Shared practice brings coherence based on forming
  relationships with each other and their work.
  (Lave Wenger, 1991)
• Supporting interaction
• Interaction between instructors and learners
• Interactions between learners and other learners
• Interaction between content and
  learners (Belanger Jordan, 2000)

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Online SeminarsKey Design Features
Three-legged stool metaphor

• Learning Materials

• Expert Facilitation

• Peer-to-Peer Interaction

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Online Seminar Moodle Installation
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Cycles of Development
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Types of Seminars

• Coaching seminar
• Math specialists, coaches, teacher leaders
• 8 weeks
• Case studies based on Investigations units
• Focus questions for analyzing cases
• Final case writing project

• Student work seminar
• Grade level teachers, math specialists
• 8 weeks
• Doing the math problem solving
• Offline journal
• Analyzing student work samples
• Teacher research project

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Design Research

• Problems Identified
• Participant drop-off
• Limited tools to assess quality of interaction
• Knowledge needed about facilitation

• Changes/Development
• Rotating discussions
• Framework for assessing quality of P2P
  interaction
• Study key facilitation strategies

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Interactions Study

• Framework assessing quality of peer-to-peer
  interaction based on three factors
• interaction patterns (P2P, or F2P)
• word quantity (avg. words per message)
• discussion levels (lower to higher levels)

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Steering Toward Others

• However, even in instances of explicit requests
  for
• information or need for clarification, I often
  steer
• participants toward others in the group who may
• be good resources or hold knowledge specific to a
  
• topic What resources have others found valuable
  
• in this work? Perhaps ____ has some further
• insights into this . . .
• (Woleck, 2004)

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Facilitation Study

• Facilitator plays key role in knowledge building
  navigating mathematical content, curriculum,
  local context, and practice
• Steering toward others - a facilitative strategy
  to balance individual needs and build a learning
  community

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Seminars Provided

• Unique access for participants to interact with
  peers
• Opportunity to engage in reflective analysis of
  practice
• Authentic task-analyzing case studies, student
  work
• Fostered development of distributed competence,
  examining local practice compared with other
  settings