- Title: Practice-Based Teacher Education Pedagogies Improve Responsiveness: Evidence from a Lab Experiment
- Authors: Mancenido, et al
- Access the original paper here
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Paper summary
This paper presents the findings of a lab experiment comparing the relative effectiveness of conceptually-focused and practice-based teacher education pedagogies on pre-service teachers’ ability to elicit and respond to student thinking in mathematics instruction. The researchers randomly assigned 185 college students to one of three conditions: reading and reflecting on research, decomposing a video of expert teaching and approximating practice with peers, or a mix of reading and video analysis. The results showed significant and large positive effects of practice-based pedagogies on participants’ skills in eliciting and responding to student thinking, even on tasks not directly focused on during the intervention. This suggests that practice-based approaches, particularly those involving approximations of practice, may be more effective than traditional conceptually-focused pedagogies for developing complex teaching skills.
What are the key implications for teachers in the classroom?
Here are some key implications for teachers in the classroom based on the sources you provided:
- Practice-based teacher education pedagogies, specifically decompositions and approximations, can improve teaching performance compared to traditional, conceptually-focused approaches. Decompositions involve observing and analyzing expert teaching, while approximations provide opportunities for practice in simulated environments.
- Practice-based pedagogies may be more efficient and effective in developing complex teaching practices, such as eliciting and responding to student thinking. The study found that participants who experienced the practice-based condition outperformed those in the conceptually-focused condition on a distal teaching task (responding to students’ incorrect answers). This suggests that practice-based training can equip teachers to handle a wider range of classroom situations.
- Teacher educators may want to consider incorporating more practice-based approaches into their programs. While conceptually-focused pedagogies remain common, the study’s findings indicate that practice-based pedagogies can enhance pre-service teacher preparedness.
- Future research could investigate the transferability of skills learned through practice-based training to other related teaching practices. Understanding the extent to which training on specific tasks translates to other skills could optimize teacher preparation curricula.
Quote
This study provides the first causal evidence showing that two forms of practice-based approaches to teacher education – decompositions and approximations – enhance teaching performance as compared to more traditional, conceptually-focused approaches.
