Exploring what stabilizes teachers' attention and responsiveness to the substance of students' scientific thinking in the classroom

Title of dissertation: EXPLORING WHAT STABILIZES TEACHERS’ ATTENTION AND RESPONSIVENESS TO THE SUBSTANCE OF STUDENTS’ SCIENTIFIC THINKING IN THE CLASSROOM Jennifer Richards, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013 Dissertation directed by: Associate Professor Andrew Elby Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership University of Maryland, College Park Professor David Hammer Departments of Education and Physics & Astronomy Tufts University Teachers’ attention and responsiveness to the substance of students’ disciplinary thinking is critical for promoting students’ disciplinary engagement and learning, yet such attention is rare and fleeting in American classrooms. In this dissertation, I aim to learn more from teachers who do attend and respond to students’ scientific ideas while teaching. I explore the classroom practices of three focal teachers in a professional development program who consistently place students’ ideas at the core of their instruction with an eye toward the following research question: What might stabilize teachers’ attention and responsiveness to the substance of students’ scientific thinking during sustained classroom episodes? Examining three episodes from each teacher, I identify aspects within these episodes that are salient to the teachers and plausibly interrelated with their attention and responsiveness to student thinking. My primary data chapters include analyses of specific pairs of episodes that speak to my broader research question as well as other relevant topics in the literature on attending and responding to student thinking. The first data chapter makes the case that professional development efforts aimed at supporting responsiveness to student thinking primarily help teachers within planned discussions or progressions, but struggle to help teachers adapt their ongoing instruction in response to unexpected directions from students. I examine two episodes in which the discussions that emerged were not preplanned but rather emergent from students’ contributions, with an eye toward what initiated and sustained teachers’ responsiveness. The second data chapter contributes to discussions on what constitutes favorable change in attending and responding to the substance of student thinking, emphasizing the importance of disciplinary-specific considerations. Finally, I draw on the entire data set in noting specific commonalities within and across teachers, suggesting two complementary professional development approaches: 1) remaining open to and aware of what hooks and sustains individual teachers and their classroom practice, and 2) emphasizing aspects that cut across teachers, which might serve as meaningful foci for professional development efforts aimed at promoting an instructional focus on students’ ideas. EXPLORING WHAT STABILIZES TEACHERS’ ATTENTION AND RESPONSIVENESS TO THE SUBSTANCE OF STUDENTS’ SCIENTIFIC THINKING IN THE CLASSROOM by Jennifer Richards Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Advisory Committee: Professor Andrew Elby, Co-Chair Professor David Hammer, Co-Chair Professor Todd Cooke Professor Ann Edwards Dr. Ayush Gupta ©Copyright by Jennifer Richards 2013