From ritual to explorative participation in discourse-rich instructional practices: a case study of teacher learning through professional development

We employ Sfard’s (Thinking as communicating, 2008) “ritual towards exploration” idea to theorize the learning trajectory of two middle school teachers attending a professional development (PD) program designed around the 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Discussions and Accountable Talk. Data included four cycles of lesson recordings, including pre- and post-lesson interviews as well as recordings of all PD sessions. We operationalize ritual engagement in the teaching practices as rigid imitation of practices observed in the PD session and incoherence between teaching actions and underlying goals, whereas explorative engagement was characterized by flexibility and finer attunement of the practices to the context and to students’ needs. The development from ritual to explorative participation could be seen both in the practice of task selection and in the practice of orchestrating mathematical discussions. The change is exemplified on two lessons, recorded two months apart from each other.