Administrators and teacher educators should enable relational agency through consultation structures and honor teachers' emotions in responsive teaching¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 qualitative), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article recommends that those fostering responsive instruction shift from transforming individual teachers toward building supportive systems. Administrators "should enable relational agency through activities that support consultation and ensure expertise can be respectfully shared to better imagine new forms of practice." Teacher educators should acknowledge that frustration, hurt, and anger accompany responsive teaching, emphasize that responsiveness is an interactional accomplishment, and encourage models that honor teachers' emotions, encourage consultation, and support tinkering and revision. Normalizing the tension between teachers' internal experiences and the emotional rules of responsive practice could reduce frustration.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Deep trust, since the honesty and vulnerability of collegial conversations about alternative explanations require it

Constraints¶

• The authors caution that focusing only on individual teachers tacitly enacts a theory of action that recenters the problem on actors with limited influence and reinforces unsustainable savior narratives

Target Learners¶

• secondary mathematics teachers
• school administrators
• instructional coaches
• teacher educators

Target Learning Goals¶

• sustaining responsive instruction over time while managing emotional labor

Affordances¶

• Emotional Rules Responsive Teaching Surface Deep Acting

Claims¶

• Contextual resources shape teachers' agentic responses in challenging situations, which in turn shape their interpretations of student behavior and possibilities for responsiveness [+W]
• Consultation with trusted colleagues offered new interpretations of a student's behavior, lessening a teacher's emotional labor and shifting her from surface acting to deep acting (Linda case) [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• System-level strategies to build enabling conditions for Powerful Learning

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Ilana Seidel Horn, Yeliz Günal Aggül, Shuqin Li, Christine E. Hood. (2025). Teachers’ subjectivities in responsive instruction: when ambitious practice encounters challenging teaching situations. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-025-09742-7