Supporting Novice Teacher Enactments in the Field Class

Teacher preparation programs at NLU are developing practice-centered approaches to teacher education that entail a core set of teaching practices and intentionally designed field-learning opportunities. One addition to prior practice with this approach is the inclusion of a video coaching context where candidates receive feedback from field supervisors on their teaching videos. This study investigated candidate and supervisor perceptions of the feedback in the video coaching context affords in addition to the traditional contexts of face to face field visits and competency appraisal surveys. The findings point to a unique self-regulatory benefit to the video coaching context. They also suggest the need to carefully prepare teacher candidates and field supervisors to effectively utilize each coaching context to ensure they complement one another to best support teacher candidate learning. The Problem of Practice in Teacher Preparation Attention to teacher quality has increased nationwide, in particular, to the manner in which new teachers are prepared for the complexities of work in schools. Teachers must respond to a broad range of cultural and linguistic diversity among their students, manage new learning technologies, and effectively implement curricula to ensure students achieve dynamic learning standards. In addition to these issues of complexity, Colleges of Education have also long been challenged by the “problem of enactment” (Kennedy, 1999), which refers to the gap between what novices know about teaching and what they can actually do. This gap is often exacerbated by teacher preparation curriculum that tends to cast a wide net prioritizing exposure to a range of knowledge about teaching rather than a focused, coherent vision of the skills involved in effective teaching and what teacher candidates can realistically learn to do. The problems of complexity and enactment in learning to teach pose a tension in the design of initial teacher preparation that sets up competing demands. Preparation for the complexities of work in schools suggest a dynamic learning environment where novices explore critical issues in educational communities and among diverse learners, while preparation for fluency in executing effective instruction suggests a more stable learning environment where novices can focus on mastering specific skills. Resolving this tension presents a significant challenge that requires thoughtful balancing of exposure to varieties of teaching contexts while holding features of these contexts constant, so novices can gain fluency with the mechanics of specific instructional skills. Learning designs overly focused on one side of this equation do so at the expense of the other side. One concept emerging in the field that may address this challenge is optimal corridor of adaptability (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, & Bransford, 2005). This concept refers to learning designs that achieve a balance between stability/consistency for efficient skill mastery and variation that reflects the complexity of teaching and allows for innovation and problem solving (Bransford, et. al, 2005; Schwartz, Bransford, & Sears, 2005). Initial preparation programs that offer teacher candidates an optimal corridor of adaptability are more likely to foster their adaptive expertise. This would entail a level of proficiency to know how to analyze and adjust instruction to learner needs/circumstances and an appreciation for complexity to ensure a willingness to continuously expand their knowledge and skill base. Indeed, initial teacher preparation needs to foster the skills and habits of mind that enable teacher candidates to learn through their teaching (Hiebert, Morris, Berk, & Jansen, 2007). Supporting Novice Teacher Enactments 2 To this end – teacher preparation at NLU embarked upon a redesign of its teacher preparation programs focusing on a core set of teaching practices and intentionally designed field-learning opportunities that allow candidates to examine and adapt core practices to the demands of diverse teaching/learning settings. The aim of this re-design is to achieve an optimal learning path for novice teachers by integrating pedagogies of enactment, reflection, and investigation (Ball and Forzani 2009) while effectively supporting adaptive mastery of core teaching practices (Ambrose, Bridges, Lovett, DiPietro, & Norman, 2010; Ericsson & Pool, 2016). Drawing from the literature in teacher education and research on learning, we articulated three design principles to guide NLU’s teacher preparation practice-based improvement efforts. 1. Teacher candidates develop a deep knowledge of teaching through a practice-centered curriculum focusing on a limited set of core practices that maintains the complexity of teaching contexts. 2. Teacher candidates grow and learn to improve through teaching opportunities that entail cycles of deliberate practice, reflective analysis of practice, and targeted feedback. 3. NLU teacher candidates acquire an adaptive stance to teaching through situated learning opportunities in prek-12 learning environments. These principles serve as a “local theory” informing ongoing design research on NLU’s practicebased teacher preparation reform efforts. A dual focus on “practice” is central to our local theory. We aim to strengthen the teacher preparation curriculum through a focus on a small number of high leverage teaching practices, ensuring that candidates have opportunities to see multiple representations and to decompose each practice into the essential features that promote learning (Grossman, Compton, Igra, Ronfeldt, Shahan, & Williamson, 2009). In concert with representation and decomposition of practice, we aim for candidates to have multiple opportunities to enact these practices. Ericisson and Pool (2016) show the importance deliberate practice across domains for the development of expertise. Similarly, teacher candidates need repeated opportunities for focused practice of specific instructional skill sets, including feedback and refinement – all essential to the learning process (Hattie & Timbeley, 2007). In this investigation, we focused on teacher candidate and field supervisor perceptions of feedback provided during the field practicum experience. In addition to traditional contexts of field visits and competency appraisal surveys, the program added a video coaching context that focused on one core instructional practice, discussion facilitation. Specifically, we investigated perceptions of the types of feedback the three different coaching contexts seem to afford to understand how best to support teacher candidates’ development of instructional skills. While focusing on the nature of feedback, the overarching aim was to inform the structure and distribution of opportunities for teacher candidates to enact core teaching practices in the preparation program. Context of the Investigation The context in which the field coaching/feedback occurred was the graduate (M.A.T.) program practicum course required prior to student teaching. Candidates enrolled in this course prior to student teaching and were placed in the classrooms where they would complete their final student teaching. The assigned field supervisor typically visited at least twice during the quarter and completed a competency appraisal on the candidates’ teaching. In the fall of 2018-19, field supervisors provided additional coaching/feedback through a newly designed video coaching approach in a cloud-based software, Livetext. While the coaching and feedback provided in the traditional contexts was broader, the focus of the video coaching was on one particular core teaching practice, discussion facilitation, Candidates were asked to submit in Livetext a video of their discussion facilitation with students in their Supporting Novice Teacher Enactments 3 practicum classroom. Field supervisors provided feedback by annotating the video in the Livetext applications. Candidates reflected on their video using the same annotation process. Research Questions How do the practice-based coaching/feedback contexts in NLU graduate teacher preparation support candidates through their enactments of core practices in field classrooms? o How do candidates perceive the feedback they receive from different field coaching contexts (face-to-face, traditional competency appraisal surveys, and video coaching)? o What feedback do supervisors feel they are able to provide through the different field coaching formats (face-to-face, traditional competency appraisal surveys, and video coaching) ? Participants Participants were recruited initially from both the B.A. and M.A.T. teacher preparation courses scheduled to be offered during the fall and winter of the 2018-2019 academic year and in which candidates have opportunities to enact core practices and in which coaching/feedback tools are used. Candidates were recruited to participate through an email during the final week of the fall and winter practicum quarters. Due to low enrollment in the undergraduate program, the focus of this report is on the graduate students’ experience. Thirty-five M.A.T. candidates participated by completing the survey on the quality of the feedback they received in the different coaching contexts in practicum. Thirty-three field supervisors completed the corresponding survey on the feedback they believed they were able to provide in the different contexts. Data Source The research questions were addressed through an electronic survey administered at the end of the practicum 2 experience. The survey contained 14 questions, including both Likert type items and openended questions. The Likert scale items asked candidates and supervisors to rate the degree to which certain types of feedback occurred in each coaching context. These feedback types were derived from Hattie and Timberley’s (2007) framework and included the following: • General encouragement