Studying Coach-teacher Interactions during Co-taught Mathematics Lessons

ABSTRACT

Although co-teaching has been identified as a potentially productive coaching activity, research has yet to explore the kinds of coach-teacher interactions that are achieved during episodes of co-teaching. This exploratory study examined the foci and depth of coach-teacher interactions (n = 243) across 10 co-taught mathematics lessons between three coach-teacher dyads in one elementary school. Building upon findings from a previous study that explored coach-teacher interactions amid modeled mathematics lessons, the current study identified seven types of coach-teacher co-teaching interactions. Specifically, five types of co-teaching coach-teacher interactions were similar to those identified in the previous modeling study: Building Relationships, Discussing Content and Pedagogy, Joint Teaching, Logistics, Performative Praise and Discipline. Furthermore, two unique coach-teacher interactions were identified specific to co-teaching: Negotiating Coach-teacher Roles, Noticing and Responding to Student Thinking. Additionally, the current study utilizes the conceptualization of depth of coach-teacher interactions that was developed in the previous modeling study and extends it to a new context involving co-teaching, and illustrates that coaches and teachers can have brief interactions in which their reasoning is made public during mathematics instruction. Implications for coaches and administrators, as well as researchers who wish to further this line of inquiry are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Coaching
• co-teaching
• professional development
• elementary schools
• mathematics instruction

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ All participant and location names are pseudonyms.

² In each cell, the first percentage indicates the percentage of coach-teacher talk at a particular depth level for the focus codes of discussing content and pedagogy and noticing student thinking. The second italicized percentage in parentheses indicates the percentage of all coach-teacher talk at that particular depth level. For example, for Coach Claire and Teacher Cecilia, 27% of the coach-teacher talk that was coded as discussing content and pedagogy was of low-depth, while 73% of that talk was of high-depth. Still, the low-depth talk represented 3% of the total talk for that dyad, while the high-depth talk represented 8% of their total talk.