Educators spend more than 40 hours per year analyzing assessment data. Even though there’s no evidence that doing so changes learning outcomes.

What does change learning outcomes, and learning equity, according to decades of research, is student talk. More specifically, teaching practices that facilitate student engagement in meaningful, equitable, academic conversations.

How can we help teachers foster these kinds of meaningful classroom conversations?

When TNTP endeavored to determine what works to help teachers improve, their study found nearly no clear patterns. Except one…

Teachers who receive objective feedback and regular coaching show the most consistent improvements in teaching practice.

The feedback teachers receive is too often not perceived to be objective.

Affirming the way we work at TeachFX, the TNTP study finds that teachers need feedback that they trust to be accurate, objective, and a realistic picture of their teaching practice.

For mathematics classrooms, the teaching moves, the pedagogical practices, and ways to structure mathematics classrooms to get the most out of student engagement, are different.

In this conversation, we explore that with Amy Kinder, the K-12 Mathematics Administrator for Utah’s Jordan School District and former president of the Utah Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Experimental research (Saunders & Goldenberg, 2009) demonstrates that students who talk more learn more when that talk is focused on higher-order thinking. Here, we explore three talk moves teachers can try to help facilitate instructional conversations that support higher-order thinking.