Lesson Plays: Planning Teaching versus Teaching Planning.

Abstract

Planning for instruction is an important and integral part of the complex activity of teaching. Learning how plan for instruction continues challenge teacher educators, who seek effective ways of supporting prospective teachers in this endeavor. Among different options available, creating continues be a popular one. In fact, almost everyone who has undergone a formal teacher education program has had devise a plan according some prescribed format. We conjecture that almost no one, having become a teacher (even a very good one), plans lessons according this same format. If so, why is there such discordance between what successful teachers do and what prospective teachers learn do? How can teacher educators support and foster preparation for the practice of a lesson, without turning that preparation into an activity of filling tables of rubrics? [1] We examine the roots of the traditional and address several studies of teachers' planning. We then consider an example of a traditional plan and analyse its characteristic features and potential for success. With these features in mind, and somewhat as a counterpoint them, we introduce the notion of play, in which part of a is presented in dialogue format between a teacher and students. The is offered as a means support the preparation for a lesson, which involves, as Lampert (2001) argues, both the work involved in being able to teach a lesson, but also learn from whatever happens in the lesson (p. 119). However, in contrast with the plan, our model of preparation is one that speaks the possible, the contingent, and the imaginative. We provide an example of a play and discuss the implementation of this strategy with a dual agenda as a professional development tool for teachers and as a window for researchers investigate mathematical knowledge for teaching (Ball & Bass, 2003; Davis & Simmt, 2006; Hill et al, 2007) and its various components.