Decomposing an interaction: Part 5

This is the fifth and final post in my ‘thinking about the 70-minute interaction’ series. (In truth, I think this is more a reflection of what I’ve been thinking about for the past week --- and watching this interaction has been a part of it.)

First, I feel like one of the overarching goals of a number of recent blog posts has been (at least in part) to characterize the ‘instructional styles’ of Leslie, Stamatis, and Costas. Do each of these instructors care more about the process, the concepts (or, perhaps more accurately, reaching consensus with the scientific community), or both? How does each instructor make instructional decisions, including when they decide to join a group and when they decide to speak? What do they most value/most desperately want to see happen in their classrooms (what would a good day look like), both implicitly (or subconsciously) and explicitly? (And how do we figure that out by watching video?)

I’ve also started to wonder what the instructional styles of each of the teachers in E2 is – are they more like Stamatis, more like Leslie, or more like Costas (or something else entirely)? To what extent does what they (the teachers in E2) value interact with and affect their interactions with Leslie, Stamatis, and Costas? (For example, what would happen in an interaction between a teacher who valued ‘getting to the scientifically-accepted answer’ and an instructor who mainly valued process?) Does a mismatch of instructional values lead to frustration or to open-mindedness --- or to more or less learning?

Finally, how would each teacher characterize the instructional styles of Leslie, Stamatis, and Costas --- and would their characterization depend on their own instructional styles? (Do they think one is a ‘good’ teacher if there is a match between their own instructional style and the instructional style of LA, SV, or CC?) And to what extent does this conscious or subconscious characterization (if at all) affect a teacher’s interaction with an instructor? (I’ve flagged a few episodes throughout the last few days where I heard a teacher making statements about a particular instructor’s style. I now want to go back and clip those!)

So I guess my reflections are actually a bunch of open questions. :)