skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


This content will become publicly available on November 1, 2025

Title: Studio as a Catalyst for Incremental and Ambitious Teacher Learning
This article explores how the practice-focused Studio professional learning (PL) model can provide incremental and ambitious teacher learning opportunities. We argue that when the model’s structures and practices are grounded in ambitious and equitable teaching, they catalyze incremental teacher learning. Studio, like lesson study, supports teachers in considering the entailments of lessons, focusing on the live shared enactment to strengthen teaching and learning through collaborative analysis and reflection. To build our argument, we drew from two Studio projects that had shared structures of cycles of learning and routines, as well as shared practices of using rich representations and collective interpretations of teaching. While both projects’ structures and practices take up ambitious and equitable teaching, they use different routines and attend to different features of equitable teaching. Building on a history of PL models, such as lesson study, which use similar structures and practices as powerful catalysts of teacher learning, we argue that Studio’s structures and practices can catalyze teachers’ incremental learning of ambitious and equitable teaching. We discuss the implications for future research based on this argument and for those leading PL.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2144027
PAR ID:
10579614
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Publisher / Repository:
Education Sciences
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Education Sciences
Volume:
14
Issue:
11
ISSN:
2227-7102
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1160
Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
mathematics education professional learning studio multilingual learners data literacy pedagogical reasoning
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Kosko, K W; Caniglia, J; Courtney, S A; Zolfaghari, M; Morris, G A (Ed.)
    We examined teachers’ development of adaptive expertise of mathematics language routines (MLRs) as they engaged in Studio Day professional learning focused on the MLR Compare and Connect. We collected video data from pre- and post-Studio Day meetings, as well as debriefs and their lesson enactments. We analyzed the data using three dimensions of adaptive expertise: flexibility, deeper level of understanding, and deliberate practice. We share a case study of a teacher exhibiting dimensions of adaptive expertise during the Studio Day Cycle through the use of a gallery walk. The teacher’s enactment of the MLR Compare and Connect provides an image of a teacher’s adaptive expertise of this MLR and helps us understand these MLRs and how teachers use and make sense of them in their instruction. 
    more » « less
  2. Hoadley, C; Wang, X C (Ed.)
    Supporting children to make, explain, and reason through decisions about how to investigate scientific phenomena allows them to make sense of science content and practices in meaningful ways, positions children as agentic, and enables more equitable and just teaching. Novice teachers may use certain strategies and face unique challenges when engaging in this work. Drawing on written lesson plans, videorecords of lesson enactments, and interviews, this study explores five preservice teachers’ ideas and practices that positioned children as epistemic agents and identifies common tensions they negotiated. Each teacher demonstrated beliefs in children’s brilliance that were related to their practices, such as re-centering children’s ideas, working toward collective understanding, and engaging children in science practices. This study highlights early strengths of these five teachers and raises questions about teacher learning. 
    more » « less
  3. This paper highlights two teachers that participated in two different professional development (PD) experiences who sustained new teaching practices and learning five years after participating. Both PD projects focused on visual representations (VRs) and encouraged and modeled ambitious teaching practices. Teachers provided video clips and participated in interviews to illustrate and describe changes that took place in their learning and practice. Our qualitative analysis showed that (1) the teachers’ use of VRs appears to be strongly connected to teachers' own active learning of VRs in PD, (2) VRs appears to be a key factor that supported the teachers’ use of other ambitious teaching practices in their classroom and (3) that the two teachers remembered and continued to use ambitious practices and VRs in their classrooms in ways that not only aligned to the goals and intention of the PD, but also adapted and extended representations to different mathematical domains and settings. Implications for mathematics education leaders suggest that a focus on VRs may be one tool to anchor learning to deepen teachers’ abilities to engage in ambitious teaching practices. 
    more » « less
  4. Kosko, K W; Caniglia, J; Courtney, S A; Zolfaghari, M; Morris, G A (Ed.)
    Engaging teachers in reflective practices is recognized as a crucial component of their adaptive expertise development. Drawing on this perspective of adaptive expertise development, we qualitatively examined how the design and structure of a Studio Day professional learning cycle afforded opportunities for reflective practice for secondary in-service mathematics teachers. We found that small group reflections, immediate reflections-on-action, and the use of videos afforded notable instances of reflective practices throughout the Studio Day Cycle that supported teachers’ development of adaptive expertise of equity-based, language-responsive teaching. We suggest that Studio Day Cycles are one avenue to better support in-service teachers’ development of adaptive expertise of mathematics language routines and multilingual learner core practices. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract This paper examines a professional learning (PL) context to understand what one teacher took up and learned and how this impacted her classroom instruction five years after participating in a specified professional learning (PL) program. Understanding teachers’ perceptions about specific design features of a program that they believe impacted their learning brings an important new voice to PL literature. Findings show that the teacher’s learning of targeted content and pedagogical strategies was consonant with the PL program’s goals and intentions. We highlight five assertions that connect PL design features to teacher learning in four categories - content, pedagogy, resources, and collaboration. Our study provides more granular evidence about the design elements of high-quality PL and contributes new understandings about the connections between PL design features and teacher uptake related to the following: aligned beliefs about teaching and learning, a knowledgeable facilitator, bounded routines, representations, and a community of learners to anchor learning from PL. This study shines light on the necessity of studying teacher learning from PL over time in an intentional and in-depth manner, as it takes time for teachers to incorporate new ideas into their teaching practice and make observable changes. More research is needed to continue the study of how and why PL design elements impact teachers’ experiences for corroboration and extending of assertions and theories about teacher professional learning. 
    more » « less