Project Overview

How do teacher candidates and mentor teachers co-learn equity-oriented instruction?

In what ways do "co-learning" tools and their specific design characteristic(s), support and/or inhibit teacher candidates and mentor teachers in co-learning?

Learn more about our CLS Development and Theory of Co-Learning Equity-Oriented Mathematics Instruction below.

Our project focuses on designing and understanding tools which support mentor teachers and teacher candidates to engage in co-learning equity-oriented mathematics instruction in the clinical experience through opportunities to engage in asset-focused noticing during instruction.

Over the course of five years our team has designed and studied two co-learning tools. Our process included piloting our co-learning tools in six teacher education programs across the United States and revising the tools to better support teachers in co-learning equity-oriented mathematics instruction. The resulting tools create different opportunities for teachers to engage in co-learning together and can be characterized by the following key features: asset-focused, responsive and collaborative.

Key Features of Our Tools

Asset-Focused

Asset-Focused: Our tools are designed to activate and develop teachers’ attention towards the assets of students who are often marginalized in their mathematics classrooms. The tools invite teachers to notice, draw on and highlight their students’ mathematical competence, strengths, and experiences, as well as question their own biases and assumptions.

Responsive

Responsive: Our tools are designed to prompt teacher candidates and mentor teachers to engage with one another not only before and after teaching but also during instruction. These interactions create new opportunities for teachers to practice and reflect on the complex work of responding in the moment as they notice, elicit, and center students’ assets.

Collaborative

Collaborative: Our tools are designed to generate shared inquiry and create opportunities for teacher candidate and mentor teacher learning. The tools offer structures intended to shift the dynamic from cycles of observation and critique of teacher candidate teaching towards mutual exploration into equity-oriented instruction wherein each teacher has valuable perspectives to offer and the work of learning and refining teaching practice is shared.

Our Project Team Members

Click on each person below to learn more about their work in math education and on this project.

Mary Alice Carlson

Montana State University

Heather Fink

Portland State University

Maddi Gao

Portland State University

Imani Goffney

University of Maryland

Ruth Heaton, PI

Teachers Development Group

Kara Jackson

University of Washington

Melinda Knapp

Oregon State University-Cascades

Torrey-Kulow, Co-PI

Portland State University

Taylor Stafford

University of Washington
Teachers Development Group

Nana Mensah

Montana State University

Collaborative Learning Structure Development

Central Design Characteristics of Collaborative Learning Structures

1. Make visible and investigate "enduring questions" (Cochran-Smith et al., 2008) and practical dilemmas (Lampert, 1985) of equity-oriented instruction (e.g., teachers' vision and values, equitable participation patterns and opportunities for rich learning; leveraging students' mathematical and cultural assets; and facilitating meaningful conversation between students).
2. Center students' experiences and perspectives, especially students' perspectives about access, achievement, power and identity (Gutiérrez, 2009) in the classroom.
3. Reflect a humanizing and assets-based perspective (Gutiérrez, 2018) toward all learners by eliciting, drawing on, valuing, and validating teacher candidates' and mentor teachers' perspectives, strengths, knowledge and skills.
4. Enable teachers to interrogate problematic aspects of their own understanding and enactment of equity-oriented instruction and support them in formulating solutions to those problems with guidance and input from others, including students, colleagues, parents, and community members (Zeichner et al., 2015).
5. Support teachers in being humble and vulnerable as they make their own instruction open to collective inquiry (Gibbons et al., 2017; Little & Horn, 2007; Little, 2002), and consider how they are perpetuating and can potentially disrupt inequities in their classroom.

Collaborative Learning Structure Development

Our Design Cycle

Theory of Co-Learning Equity-Oriented Mathematics Instruction

Please email Torrey Kulow at kulow@pdx.edu for more information about our project.

Please explore our site to learn about our protocols and think about how you might use them in your own work as a teacher candidate, mentor teacher, or teacher educator!