Administrative and Organizational Support for Substantive Teacher Talk: Lessons from Early-Career Teachers in Two Midwestern Districts

ABSTRACT

External accountability pressures force school leaders to examine how they support effective teacher practice. Providing collaborative work time to evaluate student performance and plan for future teaching has been a common strategy to support teacher practice. We assess how teachers from two districts with differently-structured curricular policies talked about mathematics lesson planning. This analysis reveals three concrete steps that school leaders can take to support teachers in ways that encourage more substantive collaborative planning: provide guidance related to curricular materials and sequencing of topics; define expectations governing content of meetings; and specify how teachers should prepare for formal meetings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The names of the districts and all participating individuals are pseudonyms. Identifying information about the districts have been altered slightly to protect their anonymity.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant 1420532) and the William T. Grant Foundation (grant 182764).