The use of a scriptwriting task as a window into how prospective teachers envision teacher moves for supporting student reasoning

The development of mathematical reasoning skills has increasingly been of focus for the teaching and learning of mathematics. This research utilizes a teaching simulation using the methodology of scriptwriting, in which prospective teachers are asked to complete a script of a dialogue from a classroom simulation involving fraction multiplication and division with justification, assisting fictional students to work through their difficulties and helping them to justify their reasoning. Such tasks allow for the examination of the prospective teacher moves to support student reasoning through their imagined action and choice of words. Scripts from forty-one prospective primary teachers were examined for the study, and five clusters based on the type of teacher move for supporting student reasoning were found. Overall, the prospective teachers emphasized the elicitation and facilitation of students’ ideas. The cluster analysis, however, provided a nuanced examination of the cohort’s teacher moves. While cluster one saw the highest incident of eliciting teacher moves, albeit only in the low potential category, clusters two and three mostly used facilitating teacher moves, but varied in their use of high and low potential moves. Cluster four concentrated moves on facilitating, eliciting, and responding to student reasoning. Cluster five employed teacher moves from all main categories, with some instances of high potential moves in all categories except extending student reasoning, which can better support reasoning. The prospective mathematics teachers’ scripts and the five clusters that were found during analysis are discussed with implications for future teacher education and the support of building mathematical reasoning.Peer Reviewe

Utilizing a scriptwriting task as a tool to examine facilitator practices in response to teacher orientations for at-risk students

International audienceTeacher orientations influence instructional prioritizations and how teachers attend to students, particularly those at risk of being left behind. In PD programs, facilitators' practices to recognize and respond to such teacher orientations for supporting at-risk students are thus an important aspect of content-related facilitator expertise. Extending the use of scriptwriting tasks to the PD facilitator level, we present two contrasting cases of how facilitators employ practices to respond to teachers' orientations in a PD simulation. One facilitator avoids direct opposition with conflicting teacher orientations, while the second facilitator challenges the teachers' orientations that do not contribute to supporting at-risk students' learning. By discussing the contrasting practices in the facilitators' written scripts, we demonstrate how the scriptwriting task can be used to investigate content-related facilitator expertise in terms of practices in response to teachers' orientations