Research on Responsive Teaching

While at Florida State University, I pursued research opportunities within the School of Teacher Education and pursued a project regarding pre-service teachers' initial understanding of responsive teaching moves before they were formally introduced to the concept. I went into middle school classrooms and recorded the pre-service teachers teaching math or science lesson. The audio and video recordings were analyzed for interactions between the pre-service teacher and a student working through a student’s understanding of a problem. These video and audio clips were used as a stimulus with the pre-service teacher to further explain the concept and what they were thinking during the experience. The study's goal was to assist the teacher prep program in introducing pre-service teachers to responsive teaching.

Reflecting on this project, I realize how much I improved my technical writing skills. This was also the first time I meaningfully engaged in qualitative data analysis. Learning how to sort through large amounts of data to find trends and make well-developed findings with the ability to relate them to the wider field of research has helped me become a more critical analyst. This work also greatly shaped how I approached teaching in my classroom; I focused on my students, what they were experiencing, and how that impacted their thinking. By continuously putting my students first in my lessons and keeping a responsive teaching framework at the front of my mind, I became adept at processing how others were experiencing an event and how their backgrounds impacted that experience.