CSET's pondering excellence in teaching series: The role of telling in defining and supporting excellence in mathematics teaching

“Telling” is often set in opposition to forms of mathematics instruction that support collective sense making in the classroom. However, recent research supports a more nuanced account of telling that considers what, when, and how to tell with the goal of engaging all students in ambitious disciplinary learning. In this talk, we will ponder the role of telling in mathematics instruction. First, I will share findings from a study of three middle and high school mathematics classrooms in which teachers made mathematical practices explicit in classroom discourse in ways that are different from common interpretations of explicit instruction. We will examine a framework of instructional moves that teachers used to make complex practices visible without turning these practices into prescriptions or reducing students’ opportunities to engage in them. I will also discuss the teachers’ intentions and goals for enacting these moves as they related to issues of power and access in the classroom. This will offer opportunities to consider what a teacher might choose to tell, when to tell, and for what purposes. As teachers work to shift away from telling as a dominant form of instruction, they often come to think that they should never tell anything. In the second part of the talk, we will investigate the challenges of supporting teachers in reasoning about and enacting instruction that builds on more nuanced accounts of telling. We will consider how coached rehearsals of class discussions could offer opportunities for pre-service teachers to learn about telling. In particular, we will examine how rehearsals might afford opportunities for (1) unlearning a reliance on telling, (2) reasoning about the role of telling in more nuanced ways, and (3) learning alternative strategies for telling.

Sarah Kate Selling is a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics education at the University of Michigan, School of Education. She received a PhD in mathematics education from Stanford University. Her work is informed by her experiences as a classroom teacher and as a mathematics teacher educator in the Stanford Teacher Education Program and at the University of San Francisco. At the University of Michigan, she is a researcher and designer with TeachingWorks, where she works on multiple projects focused on the study and improvement of teacher education. Sarah Kate’s research focuses on ways to improve access to high quality mathematics learning opportunities through two interconnected lines of inquiry. First, she studies how deliberate moves and designs in teaching can support students to engage in and learn about mathematical practices, especially those who are members of historically marginalized groups. Her recent work in this area focuses on the instructional work of making mathematical practices explicit in classroom discourse. Second, she studies how specific practice-based pedagogies in teacher education (e.g., rehearsals) can support preservice teachers in learning to enact interactional instructional practices (e.g., leading whole class discussions, eliciting and interpreting student thinking).