Lenses on Learning Supervision: Focusing on Mathematical Thinking

By Catherine Miles Grant, Barbara Scott Nelson, Ellen Davidson, Annette Sassi, Amy Shulman Weinberg, Jessica Bleiman

This 30-hour course uses classroom videotapes as a basis for considering issues in classroom observation and pre- and post-observation conferences with teachers. It seeks to make possible better alignment between supervisory practices and the changes that are taking place in mathematics classrooms guided by the NCTM’s Principles and Standards of School Mathematics. It provides administrators with the opportunity to learn to attend to the mathematical essence of a lesson and to think about what one might productively talk with teachers about in pre-and post-observation conferences.

The course has two central areas of focus:

Developing an Eye for Mathematics Classrooms. The course is designed to provide administrators with experience in observing elementary mathematics classrooms, both on videotape and in their own schools. Participants use the Lenses on Learning Observation Guide developed for the course to focus their viewing of videotaped episodes in elementary and middle school mathematics classrooms.
Rethinking the nature of interactions with teachers. The course provides opportunities for participants to consider how their discussions with teachers in pre- and post-observation conferences might be reoriented to support teachers’ continued construction of knowledge and the development of an orientation of curiosity about children’s mathematical thinking.

A third important idea that is introduced, but not considered as extensively as the other two, is the idea of distributing supervisory practice across roles in the school. Administrators consider how a distributed version of supervision, where people in a variety of roles in the school engage in the practice of classroom observation and discussion of what they see with teachers, might make it possible both to increase the capacity to provide this important resource to classroom teachers and expand the opportunities for learning that such observations make possible.

In each module participants read and discuss articles focusing on various aspects of mathematics, learning, and teaching. They do mathematics together; engage in small-and whole-group discussions; watch and discuss videotapes that reveal children’s mathematical thinking and the nature of standards-based classrooms; examine samples of children’s mathematical work and excerpts from teachers’ professional journals; discuss the challenges of their own administrative practice; and write in their journals. They also carry out guided assignments in their schools related to the ideas explored in the course. Participants form an intellectual community among themselves as they reflect on a range of new ideas and consider the implications of these new ideas for their practice as administrators and instructional leaders.

The development of this course was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts. The course has been pilot tested in the Boston area and was field tested nationally in the ‘00-’01 academic year. It is currently available from Pearson Learning.

Lenses on Learning Supervision: Focusing on Mathematical Thinking can be purchased here.