Exploring Focused Responsiveness as an Approach to Facilitation in Professional Learning

Abstract

Meaningful professional learning (PL) for teachers needs to center their assets, aims, and needs while also bringing them into conversation with research-based instructional approaches that support student learning. In service of facilitating meaningful PL, this study introduces and aims to develop characterizations of focused responsiveness in PL. I draw on multiple literature bases and interviews with science teacher leaders who facilitated professional learning communities to build understandings of what focused responsiveness to teachers may entail and look like in PL, and associated tensions. Deeper understanding of this approach has the potential to contribute to the design and enactment of PL environments that value teachers as highly knowledgeable professionals and experienced co-generators of their own learning.