During the last couple months I have been reading and learning about responsiveness. Even though I was not familiarized with this literature, the content of it really aligns with my research perspective.
Ball (1993) talks about the meaning of being a responsive teacher and the impact it can have in the students' learning. She presents a reflection on her own practice while trying to create an intellectually honest learning environment. I think it is important to understand the implications being responsive implies. In order to listen to the student thinking the teacher need to be sensitive to the students ideas.
I consider the promotion of responsiveness in the classroom responds to a constructivist learning model. By identifying the conceptual models the students articulates during the instruction can allow the teacher to promote further exploration in these to develop a better understanding. While writing this I can not relate this with the extensive studies developed on misconceptions, not referring at them as an obstacle but as an starting point (Smith, DiSessa & Roschelle, 1993). I think responsive teaching is a good reflect on how the identification of the students' cognitive models on the scientific phenomena can be addressed in real time to improve their learning process. For example, Ball while working with elementary students in a responsive learning environment got to understand how their students understand negative numbers operations. The students felt free to give further information on their reasoning and question each other. The identification of the students' thinking allow the teacher to modify the activity to address emerging concerns.
This in-the-moment response takes me to the concern: How can a teacher become a responsive teacher? How can you develop that sensibility that can help you notice the students' ideas? Reading vanEs (2011) helped me to address some of those concerns. I consider learning how to be a responsive teacher can be more difficult than implement a structured activity. VanEs shows that teachers can develop the sensibility to identify or listen carefully to students' ideas. The study shows elementary teachers having regular meetings to examine students' mathematical thinking. All of the teachers involved bring video clips from their own classroom and were asked to find remarkable issues to discuss in the group and to analyze students' thinking. At the beginning the teachers' analysis was more centered in their own practices, focusing their reflection in a general behavior of the class. While they move from a general observation to focus on particular discussions they started to notice more the students' thinking and also relating it to the teacher behavior. This research shows teachers can develop the skills to identify students' thinking, even when it does not address how to react to it in the moment-to-moment interaction. It also reveals the relevance of having a group support during the teachers development in responsiveness. The collaborative discussions allow teachers to learn from each other perspectives.
I would like to finish this blog entry with some reflections on what means to create an responsive classroom. According to Maskiewicz and Winters (2011) a responsive environment requires every participant to be responsive to others' ideas and contribution, it needs to engage the entire classroom community in considering the value in the ideas presented. I had the opportunity to read in a responsiveness conference the following phrase "It is not a diet, it is a lifestyle". I consider being responsive shouldn't be consider the goal for the teacher, but a way to better understand the students' current cognitive state to react to their necessities in real time interventions.
- A.C. Maskiewicz and V. a. Winters, Journal of Research in Science Teaching 49, 429 (2012).
- E. van Es, "A framework for learning to notice student thinking," in Mathematics teacher noticing: Seeing through teachers' eyes, edited by M. G. Sherin, V. R. Jacobs, and R. A. Philipp (Routledge, New York, 2011), pp. 134-151.
- D. L. Ball, "With an eye on the mathematical horizon: Dilemmas of teaching elementary school mathematics," The Elementary School Journal 93 (4), 373-397 (1993).
- J.P. Smith, A.A. DiSessa, and J. Roschelle, The Journal of the Learning Sciences 3, 115 (1993).
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