Coaching the 5 Practices: Supporting Mathematics Teachers in Orchestrating Productive Discussions

Ambitious teaching requires ambitious coaching

Over a decade ago, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and Corwin co-published the modern classic, 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions, aimed at guiding teachers to improve the quality of mathematics discussions in their classrooms and create an equitable learning environment for students. The bestselling series, The 5 Practices in Practice series, followed to further explore the five practices within grade bands, empowering teachers to overcome challenges in orchestrating mathematics discussions. And now, esteemed mathematics expert Peg Smith and her author team, take the 5 practices to the next level with Coaching the 5 Practices.

Written for coaches, instructional leaders, professional developers, and teacher educators, Coaching the 5 Practices: Supporting Mathematics Teachers in Orchestrating Productive Discussions will be the lynchpin to supporting teachers who are committed to engaging students in productive discussions in mathematics classrooms. The book introduces a coaching model that creates opportunities for teacher learning through one-on-one interactions with a coach. This model focuses on the specific challenges teachers face and opportunities they can lean into as they are learning to support productive mathematics discussions around the 5 practices of anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting (as well as Practice 0 of setting goals and selecting tasks).

Through three phases of a coaching cycle—before a lesson, during a lesson, and after a lesson, this coaching model

• Focuses on ambitious teaching in mathematics, aiming to ensure that every student succeeds in high-quality academic work
• Follows iterative cycles of various touchpoints between the coach and a teacher
• Emphasizes what a coach needs to do to support teacher learning throughout the cycle

With narrative examples and vignettes, lesson plans, pre-lesson and post-lesson conference plans, and other artifacts collected from real coaching sessions and classrooms, Coaching the 5 Practices is a valuable resource for education professionals who work with teachers to improve the quality of mathematics instruction. Through the efforts of Coaching the 5 Practices, teachers will continue to refine their craft and become increasingly more skilled at implementing the 5 practices in ways that support the learning of each and every student.

Margaret (Peg) Smith is a Professor Emerita at University of Pittsburgh. Over the past three decades she has been developing research-based materials for use in the professional development of mathematics teachers. She has coauthored several books including Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Discussions (with Mary Kay Stein), the middle and high school versions of the Taking Action series (with Melissa Boston, Fredrick Dillon, Stephen Miller, and Lynn Raith), and The 5 Practices in Practice: Successfully Orchestrating Mathematics Discussion in Your Classroom series (with Victoria Bill, Miriam Gameron Sherin, and Michael Steele). In 2006 she received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award given annually to honor outstanding faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2009 she received the award for Excellence in Teaching in Mathematics Teacher Education from AMTE. In April 2019 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from NCTM.

Bilge Yurekli is a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center. She holds a PhD in mathematics education. Her research focuses on mathematics teacher education, at both pre-service and in-service levels, with a specific interest in teacher development of beliefs and practices that is required for high-quality instruction. She has worked with Mary Kay Stein and her multidisciplinary team of researchers on various projects supported by NSF, IES, Spencer and McDonnell Foundations. Her research has been published in NCTM’s Journal for Research in Mathematics Education and presented at both national and international research conferences, including NCTM and AERA. Currently, she is working on a project that aims to promote productive struggle in mathematics classrooms.

Mary Kay Stein is Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh where she held a joint appointment as Professor in the School of Education and Senior Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center. Her research focuses on the teaching and learning of mathematics in elementary and middle schools with a particular focus on the identification and implementation of high-cognitive-demand instructional tasks. She also examines school- and district-level factors that shape teachers’ capacities to maintain high levels of cognitive demand once tasks are launched in the classroom. Her research has been supported by IES (the Institute of Education Sciences) as well as by several private foundations including the MacArthur, Spencer and McDonnell Foundations. In addition to co-authoring the Five Practices book (with Peg Smith), she has co-authored a book and several articles about district-wide reform. She has given invited addresses to both national and international audiences including in Beijing, Seoul, Goteborg, Hamburg, Istanbul, Haifa, and Lisbon. She also served as a Visiting Scholar at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in 2012. In 2014, she was named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association.