How Can Curriculum Materials Support Teachers in Pursuing Student Thinking During Whole-Group Discussions?

With the availability of new curriculum materials that emphasize and build upon students’ reasoning, greater demands have been placed on teachers to facilitate work around this reasoning. Studies have cited the challenges teachers face to engage effectively with students about their reasoning, particularly during wholegroup discussions (e.g., Cobb, Wood, Yackel, & McNeal, 1992; Grant & Kline, 2002, 2004). This may be due in part to the fact that instruction based on student thinking will necessarily leave some aspects of any lesson undetermined. While one may have a sense of how a discussion might unfold by anticipating certain strategies and lines of reasoning, a teacher still has to consider in the moment which ideas would be most productive for that group of students to discuss, and how to consolidate their thinking. Some researchers have suggested that in order for teachers to navigate this terrain, the curriculum materials themselves must contain information specifically designed to help them learn as they use the materials (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Davis & Krajcik, 2005).