Negotiating mathematical goals in coaching conversations

Abstract

Content-focused coaching aims to focus the coach-teacher conversations on the quality of mathematical goals and associated activities while co-planning a lesson. The coach’s role is to support the teacher to articulate a mathematical goal that represents an important mathematical idea, to plan activities in support of that goal, and to anticipate how students will respond to the mathematical activities. We use a framework that emphasizes the dialogic and mediated nature of the coach-teacher conversations. We found that coaching conversations focused primarily on instrumental aspects of lesson planning and only less so on deeper articulations of content, and we found differences across coaches’ practices. The findings provide nuance to empirical findings of coach-teacher conversations.