Abstract
Equity-focused coaching—coaching that centers racism, patriarchy, and other oppressive systems—is a promising approach to supporting teachers in expanding learning opportunities for minoritized students. However, despite its known challenges, details of equity-focused coaching remain underexamined. This article presents an analysis of 27 equity-focused coaching sessions with ten secondary physics teachers, which incorporated classroom videos and EQUIP analytics. The analysis applied theoretical constructs from conversation analysis: attribution of responsibility and attribution of knowledge in interaction. Findings show that whereas coaches tended to explain inequitable patterns in terms of broader social patterns, teachers tended to base their interpretations on the perceived deficits of minoritized students. The turn-by-turn analysis illustrates fine-grained details of discursive moves coaches leveraged to successfully facilitate shifts in teachers’ interpretative orientations. These findings highlight that steering coaching conversations toward equity-focused interpretations is an essential element of equity-focused coaching, and such work comprises subtle and skillful discursive moves.
Introduction
Challenges with facilitating equity-focused professional learning (PL)—including the pervasiveness of teachers’ deficit-based views of minoritized students and resistance to considering systemic forces—have been widely documented (Byun, 2023; Milner, 2017; Segall & Garrett, 2013). By equity-focused PL, we mean teacher learning that reckons with racism, patriarchy, and other oppressive systems to expand learning opportunities for minoritized students. To overcome these challenges, equity-focused coaching has been proposed as a promising approach for teacher learning. Like other forms of coaching, equity-focused coaching can better situate PL in the context of teaching, and in teacher-coach dyad settings, coaches can be more responsive to what teachers say or do than in other larger group PL settings (Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021; Wetzel et al., 2021). Nonetheless, even in these teacher-coach dyad settings, drawing attention to broader oppressive systems remains difficult for coaches (Land, 2018).
Despite the promises and known challenges of equity-focused coaching, there is limited literature on how coaches discursively navigate equity-focused coaching conversations to support teachers in both taking asset-based views and attempting to shift views prone to justify inequity (Land, 2018; Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021). Understanding the discursive work of equity-focused coaching is crucial because coaching is highly relational, filled with negotiating emotions and positions, while striving for teachers’ uptake of suggested approaches and perspectives (Heineke, 2013; Hunt, 2016; Robertson et al., 2020).
This article examines equity-focused coaching conversations in a teacher-coach dyad setting after a video-recorded classroom observation. Although coaching, in general, can take multiple other forms (e.g., co-teaching, modeling), video-based coaching can offer rich opportunities to ground coaching conversations in evidence from the classroom (Land, 2018; Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021; Wetzel et al., 2021). In our coaching sessions, we also incorporated the EQUIP app (https://www.equip.ninja) to draw the teacher and coach’s attention to racialized and gendered participation patterns (Reinholz & Shah, 2018). Our earlier study suggests that much work is needed to support teachers in interpreting racialized and gendered patterns in a manner that would lead to action against inequitable patterns instead of placing the blame on minoritized students (Byun et al., 2023). Thus, in this article, we focus on coaches’ discursive practices to steer the interpretative orientation away from the perceived deficits of students and move the coaching conversation toward their assets. From a critical standpoint, this focus is particularly needed because deficit-based interpretations can reify teachers’ existing deficit-based beliefs into inequitable teaching practices and learning outcomes (Bertrand & Marsh, 2015). Asset-based views, on the other hand, can open the door to bringing in minoritized students’ cultural knowledge and practices as learning opportunities rather than barriers (Gay, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 1995). The current study situates asset- and deficit-based views in coaches’ discursive work of negotiating teachers’ interpretations, especially when the teacher and coach are examining participation patterns with an explicit focus on race and gender.
As an analytic approach, we applied attribution of responsibility (Edwards & Potter, 1992; Pomerantz, 1978) and attribution of knowledge (Drew, 1991; Heritage, 2012) to examine coaching conversations for multiple reasons. First, to whom and to what factors teachers attribute responsibility for participation disparities is consequential for viewing minoritized students in asset- or deficit-based ways. Shifting deficit-based views is an important aspect of equity-focused PL (Ladson-Billings, 2007; Louie et al., 2021). Second, how coaches and teachers position themselves and others with respect to epistemic authority (e.g., knowledge about students, knowledge about equity, etc.) affects the negotiations inherent to coaching conversations (Byun, 2023; Hunt, 2016; Kochmanski & Cobb, 2023). We further elaborate on these constructs in the later section. The following research questions guided the current study:
RQ1: How did teachers and coaches attribute responsibilities while interpreting inequitable participation patterns?
RQ2: What discursive moves did coaches employ to shift toward equity-focused interpretations?
Before presenting our study, we offer a brief overview of the literature on equity-focused coaching and coaching discourse.
Literature Review
Since the 1980s (e.g., Joyce & Showers, 1980), coaches have been seen as change agents for supporting improvements in classroom teaching (Galluci et al., 2010). There are multiple forms of coaching activities, including, but not limited to, engaging in one-on-one reflective conversations in teacher-coach dyad settings (Hopkins et al., 2017), co-teaching a lesson with a teacher (Ellington et al., 2017), and modeling a teaching strategy in a teacher’s classroom with students (Hopkins et al., 2017; Huguet et al., 2014). A meta-analysis of multiple studies on coaching showed promising positive effects on teachers’ practice and students’ academic performance (Kraft et al., 2018).
In particular, multiple studies reported that video-based coaching, in which the teacher and coach watch and discuss video recordings of teaching, supported positive changes in teachers’ knowledge and classroom practices (van der Linden, 2022). Often with a disciplinary focus (e.g., mathematics and literacy), coaching has become a key element in schools to support teachers in implementing new curricula, reshaping instructional practices, and promoting more equitable learning outcomes (Gallucci et al., 2010).
Coaching as a Vehicle for Equity-Focused Teacher Learning
Although prior research on coaching mainly focused on teachers’ knowledge development and adoption of new instructional practices, a growing number of scholars are approaching coaching as a way to respond to widespread inequities in education. In this article, we broadly refer to these new coaching approaches as equity-focused coaching, coaching that centers racism, patriarchy, and other oppressive systems, to expand learning opportunities for minoritized students. For instance, coaches have engaged teachers with issues of racism in their specific school and classroom contexts and supported them in developing more equitable teaching practices for minoritized students (Aguilar, 2020; Powell et al., 2016; Wetzel et al., 2021). These coaching sessions included discussions on racism—which often do not get discussed in other teacher learning settings (Milner, 2017)—and related power relations (e.g., Whiteness, White supremacy) informed by critical theories. Video-based coaching can also provide a rich opportunity to examine how power and oppressive systems may play out in the learning environment (Land, 2018).
Equity-focused coaching presents a promising pathway to situate equity-focused efforts in the specific school and classroom context (Land, 2018). However, there are known challenges: supporting coaches in conducting conversations on critical topics (Land, 2018); facing avoidance from teachers, particularly White teachers, when race is discussed (Blaisdell, 2018); and navigating teachers’ negative emotions, such as shame and guilt, in a constructive manner (Aguilar, 2020; Hunt, 2016). A common thread across these challenges is a lack of understanding in the field regarding how coaches can facilitate conversations in such a way that they pursue equity-focused conversations while maintaining supportive teacher-coach relationships (Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021).
Note that challenges around race and equity-focused conversations are not limited to coaching. When conversations regarding race are elevated in teacher education settings, White teachers often choose to remain silent (Mazzei, 2008) or avoid discussing race in a variety of ways: being race-evasive (or choosing not to “see” race), deflecting conversations about race toward other marginalized identities, and drawing upon references to choices an individual made (Segall & Garrett, 2013). That is, one of the challenges in teacher education involves moving the direction of teacher learning toward equity despite teachers not explicitly talking about racism, sexism, or other forms of -isms (Shah, 2021). Coaching discourse may offer a unique opportunity to better navigate these challenges since teacher-coach dyad interaction can be more responsive to what the teachers say or do than other larger group PL settings (Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021).
Complexity of Equity-Focused Coaching Discourse
Although the discursive work of coaching largely remains underexamined (Heineke, 2013; Munson & Dyer, 2023; Saclarides & Lubienski, 2021), there have been some careful examinations of coaching discourse, such as negotiations of emotion and positioning during coaching conversations (Hunt, 2016), types of coaching discourse for better teacher uptake of instructional suggestions (Robertson et al., 2020), and a broader taxonomy of a range of coaching moves (Boguslav, 2024). These studies unveil the intricate work of how coaches interact with teachers to develop positive relationships and move conversations toward desired teacher learning. They bring necessary insights regarding the skillful verbal moves coaches may need to facilitate desirable coaching (Heineke, 2013).
In the equity-focused coaching setting, however, much work is needed to understand the discursive work of coaches. This work is critical given the difficulty of shifting teachers’ talk and actions toward equity. While limited, there is research that proposes how coaches might shift teachers’ thinking and actions. Wetzel et al. (2021), for instance, applied the notions of deconstructing and reconstructing in critical discourse analysis to a video-based coaching model for literacy teachers. Coaches’ deconstructing and reconstructing moves can highlight power relations that are often left obscured. Still, Land (2018) showed the persistent challenge of supporting teachers in taking up critical orientations (e.g., explicit discussion on racism) during video-based coaching. Despite the coaches’ efforts to draw teachers’ attention to the teachers’ and coaches’ Whiteness, the teachers resisted and avoided such interpretive approaches when making sense of classroom events.
In sum, video-based coaching offers a promising approach to situating equity-focused PL in the teacher’s context (Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021; Wetzel et al., 2021). However, limited work has been done to examine how coaches discursively navigate equity-focused coaching conversations to both support teachers in taking asset-based views and attempt to shift views prone to justify inequity (Land, 2018; Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021). In addition, when coaches encounter resistance from teachers, they tend to withdraw from critical stances out of fear of harming the teacher-coach relationship (Land, 2018). These findings, in turn, show the need for understanding how coaches attempt to shift teachers’ views toward a critical orientation while managing potential risks to the positive teacher-coach relationship.
Based on the promise of equity-focused coaching, we purposefully incorporated equity-focused coaching sessions as a critical component of the broader PL series. The primary goal of coaching was to promote participatory equity (i.e., distribution of participation opportunities across differential social groups, Shah & Lewis, 2019) as secondary science teachers learned to implement computation-integrated lessons in their classrooms. Our focus on participatory equity and use of EQUIP analytics, which we detail in the Methods section, allowed coaches to draw teachers’ attention to racialized and gendered patterns in their classrooms. However, as the literature suggests, the coaches faced the challenge of negotiating the multiple meanings derived from observed patterns in teacher-coach dyad interactions. This study is an effort toward better understanding coaches’ discursive negotiation processes and contributing to the existing literature. To be clear, this study’s goal is not to evaluate or critique coaches’ actions; we focus our analysis on detailing interactional mechanisms to explain promising moments evident in the data. In the following section, we present two primary theoretical lenses for this analysis.
Discursive View on Attribution of Responsibility and Attribution of Knowledge
As our primary theoretical approaches to examine teacher-coach dyad interactions, we apply a discursive view on the attribution of responsibility (Edwards & Potter, 1992; Pomerantz, 1978) and attribution of knowledge (Drew, 1991; Heritage, 2012) based on conversation analysis (CA) and discursive psychology (DP). These two lenses, respectively, allow us to detail the intricate relational work of coaches as they a) negotiate responsibility and blame with teachers and b) position teachers as more or less knowledgeable.
Attribution of Responsibility in Interaction
Influenced by Wittgenstein (1953), discursive views—as opposed to cognitive views—examine attribution as a situated, pragmatic action rather than a mental process happening in the speaker’s mind (Edwards & Potter, 1992). Discursive views focus on the constitutive role of language; that is, speakers construct versions of social reality in and for interaction using the varying nature of language. Analysts thus examine what specific uses of language do in interaction rather than accepting the language as a reflection of the speaker’s mind. Drew (2018) puts discursive views as focusing on the “public nature” of language instead of the “private, cognitive state of individuals” (p. 164, quoting Goodwin, personal communication). In other words, the analysis focuses on the functions of language in interaction (Edwards & Potter, 1992).
Pomerantz (1978), in particular, examined the function of attributing responsibility. By juxtaposing two descriptions of the same event, “My face hurts,” and “He really hurt me.” Pomerantz highlighted the common construction of actor-agent + action (p. 116) and how it is consequential in assigning responsibility. The former version obscures the actor, whereas the latter version designates “He” as an agent, thereby attributing the responsibility of the speaker being hurt. Pomerantz argued that identifying the responsible agent is an important matter for speakers. This normative pattern is evidenced by the fact that speakers often elicit further descriptions of the action/event/state when no responsible party has been designated. Similarly, Edwards and Potter (1992) argued that this varying nature of language should not be seen as a neutral reflection of the state of affairs but rather as a situated activity of negotiating responsibility and blame.
The current study attends to these situated processes of how the teacher and coach negotiate responsibility and blame when they observe inequitable participation patterns and how these varying versions of reality lead to different courses of action. That is, the attribution of responsibility offers a way to situate deficit- and asset-based views in the moment-by-moment interactional context of PL. By doing so, the analysis can highlight the interactional functions of deficit- and asset-based views and associated interactional practices. For instance, Byun (2023) found that teachers in a PL setting can deflect from their own professional responsibility by highlighting the perceived deficits of minoritized students.
Although the interpretation of an observed inequitable pattern is in flux and up for negotiation in the teacher-coach interaction, the teacher and coach are not on an equal footing for negotiation. Byun (2023) discussed how teachers’ pervasive use of deficit talk is, in part, rooted in teachers’ relative status as knowers of their own students. CA scholars have theorized the role of such asymmetries of knowledge when speakers assess and describe a state of affairs (Drew, 1991; Heritage, 2012), and the current study considers these asymmetries in the teacher-coach interaction.
Attribution of Knowledge in Interaction
Initiated by Goodwin (1979) and Heritage (1984), CA scholars attended to epistemic dimensions as the “dimensions of knowledge that interactants treat as salient in and for conversation, particularly with respect to asymmetries” (Stivers et al., 2011, p. 9). In other words, the discussion on epistemics focuses on participants’ “attributions of knowledge, to self and others” (Drew, 2018, p. 165, emphasis in original). To be clear, epistemics is not about what participants know as a private, cognitive matter but rather “what they display to one another as knowing or not knowing, and sometimes how they come to know what they claim to know” (Drew, 2018, p. 165, emphasis original). Studies have shown asymmetries of knowledge that are inherent to institutional interactions (e.g., doctor-patient, teacher-student interaction, Drew, 1991; Koole, 2012). The current study attends to these asymmetries through a fine-grained analysis of epistemic authority (an epistemic dimension that concerns the right to knowledge) as manifested in teacher-coach interactions.
Attending to epistemic dimensions is particularly important for examining the teacher-coach interaction since coaches need to ensure the teacher’s agency in the sense-making process and maintain rapport with the teacher (i.e., attribution of knowledge to the teacher). At the same time, coaches need to shift potentially problematic sense-making orientations displayed by the teacher (i.e., attribution of knowledge to self, the coach). Prior studies detailed discursive practices of negotiating epistemic asymmetry. For example, speakers may use tag questions to mark their ceding of epistemic authority (Heritage & Raymond, 2005) or utter an uninvited confirmation to assert epistemic authority (Stivers, 2005). Examining these asymmetries of knowledge, when the teacher and coach are negotiating sense-making of inequitable patterns, can help us disentangle the complexity of coaches’ relational work as they manage the epistemic asymmetry between themselves and the teacher.
Method
Researcher Positionality
Project team members with a range of academic statuses played the role of coaches in this study (three faculty members, two postdoctoral researchers, three doctoral researchers, and one undergraduate researcher). These coaches included Byun, Caballero, Christensen, Ortiz, Shah, and Stroupe among the authors of this article. Four coaches identified as persons of Color, and five coaches identified as White.
The analysis was conducted by the first two authors. Informed by the theoretical underpinning of CA and DP, our analysis required us to take an agonistic position and bracket our assumptions while carefully grounding claims based on the publicly visible and hearable sequences of actions (Potter & Edwards, 2013). The first author played the role of coach in some of the data (i.e., an “insider”), whereas the second author did not (i.e., an “outsider”), which allowed the second author to offer a distant view throughout the analytic process (Gee, 2014, p. 25). This combination of close and distant views allowed the first two authors to consider necessary contextual information while also mitigating potential biases coming from the first author’s participation in coaching. The analysis was then reviewed by the other authors, who indicated the findings were consistent with their recollections of the coaching interactions.
Participants
Ten high school physics teachers participated in equity-focused coaching sessions, and they were included in this study. Each of these ten teachers had a bachelor’s degree in physics, was certified to teach high school physics, and was a full-time secondary science teacher in the Midwest region of the USA during the study. All of the participants identified as White. Half of the teachers identified as women, and half identified as men. Seven of the participants participated in equity-focused coaching from Year 1 (beginning in the summer of 2018), and three participants joined in Year 2 (beginning in the summer of 2019). In Year 3 (2020-2021), the equity-focused coaching sessions were conducted in one-on-one online meeting settings due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Context of the Study: Equity-Focused Coaching Sessions With EQUIP Analytics
The equity-focused coaching sessions were situated within a larger three-year PL program focused on participatory equity in physics classrooms during computation-integrated tasks. Each year of the PL series began with a one-week summer workshop and continued with day-long meetings every two months throughout the school year. The summer workshop primarily supported teachers in developing activities that would embed computation in their physics lessons. In addition to developing essential computation skills, teachers began to discuss equitable participation through the use of Equity QUantified In Participation (EQUIP; Reinholz & Shah, 2018). The use of EQUIP can help teachers examine inequitable patterns in their classrooms (Byun et al., 2023; Shah et al., 2021). As part of the summer workshop, teachers reviewed these EQUIP analytics and discussed how they might mitigate inequities observed in the data.
During the day-long meetings throughout the school year, teachers spent the majority of the time reflecting on what was happening in their classrooms and designing additional computation-integrated activities. Equity-focused coaching sessions were part of these day-long meetings. During the first meeting, teachers learned how to set up EQUIP, code classroom video recordings, and interpret visualizations generated with EQUIP. To set up EQUIP, teachers input their class roster into the EQUIP app, including social markers of interest that may impact inequitable participation patterns (e.g., race, socioeconomic status, and gender of students). Teachers then input discourse dimensions, a set of categories of student contributions for observing more specific participation patterns (e.g., content of talk, length of talk). For example, Figure 1 shows that the teacher created a discourse dimension named “Interaction Type” with three categories: Question, Explanation/Answer, and Other. Teachers then created a contribution log as they watched the classroom recording by inputting which student contributed and which category of contribution. Based on the contribution log, the EQUIP app then generated data visualizations (EQUIP analytics) that are disaggregated by student social markers and contribution categories. Figure 1 shows the visualization used during the coaching sessions, which shows the distribution of each contribution category across the selected social marker, Race/Ethnicity (see Shah et al., 2021, for a more detailed description of EQUIP).
Example of EQUIP Analytics.
After the initial meeting, teachers participated in equity-focused coaching sessions as part of day-long meetings. We incorporated these one-on-one coaching sessions to be more responsive to the specific contexts each teacher faced as they made sense of what equitable teaching is and can be (Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021; van der Linden, 2022). Before equity-focused coaching sessions, teachers reviewed a video recording of a small group of students during their lessons (recorded by themselves or a coach). While watching video recordings, teachers independently used EQUIP to code student talk from the video. During equity-focused coaching sessions, the teacher and coach reviewed the EQUIP analytics generated using a semi-structured protocol. The protocol began with general check-in questions and discussions about the class, before moving into explicit discussion of the EQUIP analytics. The use of EQUIP allowed the teacher and coach to have explicit conversations about race, gender, and other selected social markers (see also Byun et al., 2023), and navigating these moments was the focus of the current study. Each equity-focused coaching session typically ended with the teacher and coach planning for concrete actions the teacher would take to address inequitable participation patterns.
Data and Analysis
Video recordings of equity-focused coaching sessions were collected and analyzed in this study, totaling 27 coaching sessions (40-60 minutes each) across the ten teachers. The number of coaching sessions each teacher participated in varied based on their attendance at day-long meetings. The video recordings for each coaching session captured the teacher and coach sitting side-by-side (or online meetings in Year 3) with the EQUIP analytics visible to both participants on the computer screen.
To answer the first research question about how teachers and coaches attributed responsibilities while interpreting inequitable participation patterns, we developed a coding scheme to capture the variety of attributions of responsibilities that appeared in the data. Our unit of analysis for this part of the study was an interpretation episode, which we define as a topical chunk of interaction when the teacher and coach explicitly discussed reasons for racialized or gendered participation patterns. Each episode started when a teacher or coach initiated an interpretation of an observed pattern in the EQUIP analytic, and the episode ended when a topical shift occurred in the conversation. Interpretation episodes varied both in length and in the number of attributions proposed during the interaction. From 27 coaching sessions, we identified 67 interpretation episodes. We chose race and gender because these were the social markers most often selected by participating teachers. Informed by Pomerantz (1978), we examined how either the teacher or coach designed the actor-agent + action format to attribute responsibility for observed inequitable patterns. To categorize the variety of attribution of responsibility signaled by actor-agents in these interpretation episodes, the two researchers (the first and second authors) independently developed in vivo codes, and then grouped them into more refined codes while addressing areas of disagreement as needed. After multiple iterations, the two researchers independently coded and reached 91% agreement with the final coding scheme. This final scheme includes four categories of attribution of responsibility: a) individual students, b) teacher decisions, c) social patterns, and d) cannot interpret (see Table 1 for elaborated definitions of each category and examples).
Codes for Attribution of Responsibility.
To answer the second research question about discursive moves with which coaches shifted interpretations toward equity-focused interpretations, we first reviewed all 67 interpretation episodes to see if there was any shift in interpretation. We defined a shift in interpretation as a change in a teacher’s interpretation from one attribution of responsibility to another within a single interpretation episode. This definition reflects the current study’s analytic focus on functions of fine-grained details of speech in negotiation processes in the moment-by-moment interaction. We found two interpretation episodes (Episodes A and B) with shifts in interpretation. We then applied a conversation analytic approach to examine fine-grained details of interaction and identify discursive moves employed by coaches during the shifting process. We began by transcribing the selected episodes using the Jefferson System (Jefferson, 2004). This transcript system allowed us to capture a range of speech features (e.g., delays in response, elongated pronunciation, intonation changes), with which participants formulate and ascribe social actions and manage affiliations (see Appendix). We then conducted a turn-by-turn analysis focusing on how the participants managed the attribution of responsibility and attribution of knowledge. This analysis allowed us to identify discursive moves based on the observed sequence of social actions during the shifting process. Note that our analytic focus is on detailing interactional features that can explain the observed shifts in interpretation rather than evaluating coaches’ moves. Thus, we include detailed turn-by-turn analyses of excerpts as part of the findings in the following section.
Findings
We first present a variety of ways in which teachers and coaches interpret inequitable participation patterns during coaching sessions (RQ1). Through the lens of attribution of responsibility, we examine which types of interpretations are more or less uttered by the teachers and coaches to identify any deviations in orientations between the teachers and coaches. With Excerpts 1-3, we then argue for the necessity of shifting interpretation by presenting how attributions of responsibility embedded in interpretation are consequential to future courses of action against observed inequity. We then examine discursive moves that facilitated shifts in interpretation (RQ2). The small number of observed shifts in interpretation (two out of 67 episodes) indicates that teachers tend to maintain their interpretive orientation during coaching interaction. By focusing on these two episodes with shifts in interpretation, we highlight the intricate relationship between epistemic and relational aspects of coaching conversations to initiate the shifts toward equity-focused interpretations. Two discursive moves that are evident in the data are: a) selectively eliciting and aligning with equity-focused interpretations, and b) giving a source of knowledge while managing the relationship.
Types of Interpretation and Attribution of Responsibility
The final codes in Table 1 present an overview of how teachers and coaches interpreted the observed inequitable participation patterns. Notably, we found a tendency for teachers to attribute responsibility for inequitable patterns to individual students (54.8% of teachers’ interpretations). In contrast, coaches showed a tendency to attribute responsibility to social patterns (45.5% of coaches’ interpretations). This discrepancy signals that negotiating disparate interpretations is an important part of the social processes inherent to equity-focused coaching. By examining three excerpts, we further illustrate how interpretations are negotiated by the teacher and coach, and the negotiated interpretation is consequential for what (if any) actions the teacher should take moving forward.
Here, we examine Excerpts 1-3 from Episode A. In this episode, the coach was a male teacher educator of Color whose scholarship focuses on racial equity. The teacher was a White man with 6 years of teaching experience, teaching in a parochial school setting with a predominantly White student body (~88%). The teacher reported no equity-focused PL since starting his teaching career. Prior to Excerpt 1, the coach probed for how the teacher thought about the EQUIP analytics in Figure 2. The pink bar represents the proportional participation by one female 1 student (Natalie 2 ), and the green bar represents the proportional participation by two male students (both named Josh). The graphs show very little participation by Natalie and substantially more participation by the two Josh’s. Following a discussion regarding the teacher’s concern about not being able to assess Natalie’s understanding (due to her lack of participation), the teacher employs an interpretation based on Natalie’s personality (i.e., coded as individual students) in Excerpt 1. We present how such an interpretation undermines the goal of equity-focused PL.
EQUIP Analytics by Gender. 3
Excerpt 1: Episode A (two Josh’s and Natalie)
Excerpt 1 begins with the teacher downgrading his concern about Natalie’s lack of participation. The teacher does so by displaying his knowledge of Natalie, where Natalie has shown an adequate understanding of physics in written assessments (lines 84-88). The teacher then returns to interpreting the EQUIP analytics by saying, “it’s concerning, but at the same time, is that who Natalie is.” Note that in this description, the actor-agent is Natalie, which implies that the teacher is attributing responsibility for the inequitable participation to “who Natalie is” (Pomerantz, 1978). In the subsequent turn (lines 92-93), the teacher upgrades this attribution of responsibility by further describing “who Natalie is,” referring to her perceived introverted personality. The teacher’s use of “always” (line 92) also adds an enduring nuance to Natalie’s introverted-ness, which may carry beyond this particular learning context (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Again, this attribution of responsibility is coupled with the teacher’s display of detailed knowledge of Natalie during “test time” (line 84). Here, the teacher adds more information than necessary regarding Natalie’s ability (e.g., her drawing a free-body diagram and understanding of friction). This vivid description not only supports the facticity of his account but also attributes knowledge of Natalie to the teacher himself (Edwards & Potter, 1992). These discursive features can pose a challenge to the coach’s effort to offer alternative views (see Byun, 2023). As such, the overlapping “right?” and elongated “yea:h.” (noted with a colon, line 91) show that the coach is reluctantly marking the progression of the teacher’s reasoning (Gardner, 2007).
What follows the initial interpretation (based on Natalie’s perceived introverted-ness) shows how such an interpretation can be consequential to formulating future courses of action in teacher-coach interactions. The reasoning for Natalie’s lack of participation due to her introverted-ness leads to the idea that the teacher needs to “push her (Natalie) out of that (her introverted-ness)” to disrupt the inequitable participation. This notion of pushing someone out of their own individuality conflicts with the common morality of respecting each person’s individuality, as the teacher stated, “letting her be who she is” (line 98). In other words, this interpretation offers a reason for not acting against the observed inequitable participation pattern, despite the fact that the participation pattern is “concerning.”
To contrast this interpretation with another type, we present Excerpt 2 below, which occurred a few minutes after Excerpt 1. Here, we focus on how the coach is widening the scope of responsibility beyond Natalie’s introverted-ness.
Excerpt 2: Episode A (two Josh’s and Natalie)
With “the other part” (line 125), the coach signals a deviation from the earlier interpretation focusing on Natalie’s perceived introverted-ness. First, the coach makes the gender category explicit by naming Natalie’s gender category, “a girl” (line 130); this contrasts with the earlier interpretation where the teacher did not refer to Natalie as a female student despite the EQUIP analytics representing the participation data by gender (see Figure 1). Moreover, the coach draws attention to two male students (two Josh’s), which highlights the relative nature of inequitable participation and associated social dynamics among multiple gender groups. This alternative interpretation (coded as social patterns) moves the locus of the responsibility for inequitable patterns away from Natalie and draws the teacher’s attention to the broader gender dynamics in the small group.
The absence of the teacher as an actor-agent in this interpretation may appear not to implicate the teacher in inequitable patterns. However, the subtle nuance based on the coach’s use of “opportunities” (lines 129 & 138) attributes potential responsibility to the teacher. That is, the issue is not necessarily that male students are not seeing Natalie as brilliant and competent; the issue is the lack of opportunities available for the male students to do so. The lack of such opportunities is not necessarily the fault of the two male students. It is, in part, a professional responsibility of the teacher who ought to facilitate such opportunities. Thus, although the coach does not explicitly attribute the responsibility to the teacher, the coach opens the door for the teacher to consider his role as a teacher and the associated responsibility. In addition, the coach completes the turn with “that’s something else that’s come up in other work.” This illustrates another subtle move made by the coach to manage the attribution of knowledge. By marking that his knowledge comes from somewhere beyond the current coaching context, the coach does not insert the alternative interpretation in a declarative manner, but rather creates an opportunity for the teacher to choose to take up this alternative interpretation. The following excerpt shows how the teacher has taken up this alternative interpretation.
Excerpt 3: Episode A (two Josh’s and Natalie)
Note the actor-agent “I” when the teacher says “I failed with this group . . .” (lines 163-164). This use of “I” is a clear shift from his earlier interpretation focusing on Natalie’s introverted-ness. In the following account, the teacher’s use of “I” continues, thereby attributing responsibility to the teacher and his actions (coded as teacher decisions). However, a couple of additional shifts follow. When the coach probes “why do you think it went down like that,” the teacher highlights that the two Josh’s were the ones who asked him questions, attributing responsibility to the two Josh’s and, possibly, Natalie for the absence of her question. This interpretation again diminishes the teacher’s role as an actor-agent. Immediately after acknowledging the teacher’s reasoning, the coach marks another shift with an elongated “bu:t” (lines 187-189). The teacher then takes up the shift with his reciprocating “but” (line 190) and continues the turn. The teacher marks his professional identity with “as a teacher” and points to his professional responsibility to disrupt the “natural” interactional patterns to promote equitable participation.
The above excerpt also illustrates the coach’s delicate work to manage potential relational risks while maneuvering across multiple interpretations. During the teacher’s prolonged turn about what the teacher should (or did not) do (lines 190-201), the coach maintains a passive recipient stance with repeated acknowledgement tokens, “yeah” and “right” (Gardner, 2007; Jefferson, 1984). These actions by the coach accomplish two things. First, the repeated tokens signal the intersubjectivity of what the teacher is saying, thereby encouraging the teacher to continue the current orientation of talk, as often used in an interview setting. Second, the coach’s passive recipient stance allows the teacher to self-correct his pedagogical decisions. In other words, had the coach participated beyond being a passive recipient in the talk of what the teacher should or should not do, the coach’s participation may have appeared evaluative and face-threatening to the teacher (Lerner, 1996). These subtle discursive features, in turn, show the complexity of teacher-coach interactions and how navigating this complexity is crucial to steering the interaction toward desirable future actions. The teacher’s last statement, “I know that I can see growth or improvement” (lines 200-201), is a drastic contrast to the earlier statement in Excerpt 1, “so the question is how much as a teacher do I try to push her out of that?”
These three excerpts together show that different types of interpretations add more or less responsibility to the teacher for responding to the inequitable patterns of participation. Attributing responsibility for inequity to minoritized students unjustly blames minoritized students for the inequity they experience (Byun, 2023). In contrast, as shown in Excerpt 3, an equity-focused interpretation draws the responsibility away from the student and places responsibility on the teacher to act against the inequity. Therefore, when possibly problematic, deficit-oriented interpretations emerge, it is important for the coach to shift the ongoing interpretative orientation. In the following, we further illustrate the delicate relational work involved in the negotiation of interpretations.
Shifting Interpretation and Negotiating Potential Relational Issues
As we examined the two episodes with substantial shifts in the interpretation, we found that those shifts were accompanied by certain discursive moves by the coaches. Here, we highlight two such practices that are evident in the data: a) selectively eliciting and aligning with equity-focused interpretations, and b) giving a source of knowledge while managing the relationship. Given the limited number of episodes, our finding is not meant to be exhaustive in identifying these practices. The goal is rather to highlight the intricate relationship between epistemic and relational aspects of coaching interactions when a coach initiates a shift in interpretations of observed inequity. We begin by returning to Episode A, in which the teacher expresses the challenge of assessing Natalie due to her lack of participation. Then, we add excerpts from the second episode to further detail the identified moves.
Excerpt 4: Episode A (two Josh’s and Natalie)
Note how the coach’s response to the teacher’s talk varies within this excerpt. On the one hand, when the teacher continues with the interpretation based on Natalie’s perceived introverted-ness, there is an observable absence of alignment by the coach. The tag question, “Right?” (line 71), explicitly solicits the coach’s uptake; however, there’s an absence of uptake by the coach, as observed by the lack of any acknowledgement token (e.g., mmhm, yeah, right). This absence of the coach’s participation sharply contrasts with the moment when the teacher utters the word “cha:nce” (line 73). As soon as the coach hears the first syllable of the word, he responds with “Yeah.” with an emphasis and falling intonation (noted with underline and period respectively). This contrasts with elongated “yea:h.” (noted with a colon) in Excerpt 1, which reluctantly marked the progression of the teacher’s reasoning (Gardner, 2007). The subsequent coach’s anticipatory completion of the turn-in-progress, “to show” (line 74), indicates his strong agreement (Lerner, 1996). The coach’s anticipatory completion is also confirmed by the teacher with a synonym, “to demonstrate.” The teacher’s talk with a high pitch (noted with upper arrows) also shows that this upgraded agreement was reciprocated by the teacher. In sum, the upgraded agreement by the coach propelled the progression of the line of reasoning associated with the word “chance.”
This comparison—between the earlier absence of a response by the coach and the later participation of the coach in co-producing the turn—illustrates how the coach selectively elicits and aligns with equity-focused interpretations. This selective elicitation and alignment allow the coach to steer toward equity-focused interpretations while avoiding an explicit disagreement with the teacher. For instance, recall in Excerpt 2 that the coach used the word “opportunities” to shift the interpretation and implicate the teacher’s responsibility to the observed inequity. The current excerpt shows how the notion of “chance to show” was elicited from the teacher prior to its use by the coach. The fact that the word “chance” originated from the teacher is notable here. Similar to the preference for the teacher’s self-correction in Excerpt 3 (Lerner, 1996), using an idea elicited from the teacher to shift the interpretation can allow the coach to attribute knowledge to the teacher and reduce relational risks.
Although coaches normatively attributed knowledge to teachers when they elicited more equity-focused interpretations and allowed teachers to self-correct (i.e., ceding their epistemic authority), they sometimes asserted their epistemic authority to initiate a substantial shift in interpretation. As we discussed earlier, such moves may implicate the teachers’ responsibility for the observed inequity, and in turn, could undermine teachers’ agency and put the coaching relationship at risk. In the following, we attend to how coaches navigate these potential interactional issues with the practice, giving a source of knowledge while managing the relationship. The following excerpt continues from the moment in Excerpt 1 when the teacher posed the question, “How much as a teacher do I try to push her (Natalie) out of that (introverted-ness)?”
Excerpt 5: Episode A (two Josh’s and Natalie)
This excerpt illustrates how the coach initiates shifting the interpretative orientation away from Natalie’s perceived introverted-ness. First, the coach gives a source of knowledge by stating, “this dilemma has come up in my work with other teachers” (line 105). Giving a source of knowledge like this occurs when the speaker performs sensitive actions (Pomerantz, 1984). In this case, by giving a source of knowledge based on the coach’s direct experience with other teachers, the coach is asserting his epistemic authority and offers an unsolicited confirmation of the teacher’s utterance, “I don’t think there’s an easy answer.” Note that this assertion of authority is coupled with offering a compliment. In lines 109-110, the coach interrupts the progression of his turn and inserts, “I like how you’re sort of articulating that and framing that tension.” This insertion indicates the interactional need to manage an affiliative relationship with the teacher, especially when the coach asserts his own authority. We argue that this moment is critical for shifting the interpretation within this episode. Framing the observed inequity as a dilemma without an easy answer opens up an opportunity to consider interpretations other than Natalie’s introverted-ness. As we illustrated in Excerpt 2, later, the coach uses this framing as a stepping stone toward an alternative focus on opportunities for students to see the strengths of female students.
Although the current excerpt illustrates the coach’s assertion of epistemic authority, the assertion is still aligned with what the teacher said earlier. That is, the coach treats the idea of a dilemma without an easy answer as originating from the teacher while avoiding an explicit disagreement with the teacher. This move, in turn, poses less of a relational risk. However, we found that in another episode with another teacher-coach dyad, the coach offers an interpretation that runs opposite to the earlier interpretation by the teacher. In the following, we add two excerpts from Episode B to illustrate how the discursive move of giving a source of knowledge while managing the relationship becomes even more salient since such direct countering may pose a higher relational risk.
In Episode B, the coach was another male teacher educator of Color. The teacher was a White woman with 11 years of teaching experience, teaching in an all-girls parochial school setting with a predominantly White student body (~88%). The teacher reported attending conference sessions on equity issues since starting her teaching career. During the episode, the teacher and coach discussed the EQUIP analytics shown in Figure 3, in which substantially more participation by Maya and Parker (two White students) is represented than the participation of Sophia (represented as a student of Color in Figure 3). Before the below excerpt, the teacher described Sophia as “a quiet person by nature” and stated that Sophia’s involvement was “very much not about what the purpose of that group was for.” The excerpt begins with the teacher’s interpretation based on these perceived characteristics of Sophia.
EQUIP Analytics by Race/Ethnicity
Excerpt 6: Episode B (Parker, Maya, and Sophia)
In line 63, the coach initiates an alternative interpretation by stating, “It was interesting . . .” We note here that the subsequent description of Sophia runs against the earlier description by the teacher in a couple of ways. First, the coach cites a specific moment that he observed (i.e., giving a source of knowledge) when Sophia was talking about index variables used in the task (i, j, and k). This description serves as a counterexample to the teacher’s earlier portrayal of Sophia as someone who was not involved in task-related discussions. Second, consider the coach’s description, “she was trying to get in there at those times” (lines 68-69). This portrayal of Sophia as a student who was trying to socialize with the other two students, again, contradicts being “a quiet person by nature.” That is, in the current episode, there are two competing versions of Sophia in negotiation. In the teacher’s version, Sophia is a quiet student who does not engage in on-task behaviors. However, in the coach’s version, Sophia tries to get into the social space occupied by the two White students by bringing up task-related concepts. As a result, the coach’s move of giving a source of knowledge accomplishes the shifting of the interpretation, which is evidenced by the teacher’s confirmation by repeating the coach’s interpretation (lines 71-83). We found that this shift was quite substantial, as we saw the teacher continue to apply the coach’s version of Sophia later in the coaching session.
To shift the interpretative orientation, this sort of countering move can be necessary, but it can also be disaffiliating to teachers and may lead to a heightened disagreement without meaningful negotiation (see Byun, 2023). Notably, the current excerpt illustrates how the coach manages these potential relational issues. Initially, the coach asserts epistemic authority on the matter by citing his direct observation of the lesson. However, by the end of his turn, the coach moderates his authority by adding, “but that’s good. That’s good” (line 69). In other words, the excerpt illustrates how the coach is managing epistemic authority with the sequenced moves of asserting and then moderating epistemic authority before concluding his turn.
At the end of the current excerpt, the teacher initiates a topical change by scrolling down to another EQUIP analytics (line 84). By examining the subsequent excerpt, we add how the coach brings the focus back to the current topic and associated future courses of action while managing an affiliating relationship with the teacher.
Excerpt 7: Episode B (Parker, Maya, and Sophia)
This excerpt further illustrates how the coach continues to manage the relationship with the teacher, as the coach draws the teacher’s attention to potential action against the observed pattern. First, the coach highlights the shift in interpretation, stating “it’s not necessarily she doesn’t want to but . . .” (line 87), then he draws the teacher’s attention to future actions based on the alternative interpretation (lines 87-89). The subtle moves that the coach makes here, again, illustrate the discursive move of managing the relationship with the teacher. Note “we” in line 88; the coach includes himself as part of the effort to take action against the inequitable pattern. This is followed by offering a compliment to the teacher. The faster speech (noted with “> <”) and emphasis on the word “excellent” (noted with underlining) highlight the coach’s affirming stance (line 91). Moreover, the animated “↑o::h that- ↑look at that” with high pitch and elongated oh upgrades the coach’s stance to a display of amazement. This excerpt thus exemplifies how the coach maintains the focus of interaction on the observed inequity and advances into a future course of action against the inequity while managing an affiliate relationship with the teacher.
In this section, we illustrated how coaches danced between asserting and ceding their epistemic authority to shift the interpretative orientation, using the two discursive moves: a) selectively eliciting and aligning with equity-focused interpretations, and b) giving a source of knowledge while managing the relationship. These episodes with shifting interpretations were rare in the data; thus, these two moves are not meant to be exhaustive. Nonetheless, the analysis showed that the complexity of equity-focused coaching discourse lies in the risk of undermining the coaching relationship. This complexity was salient in the data when the coaches moved the locus of responsibility while negotiating reasons why inequitable patterns emerged. The two discursive moves we present capture how the coaches minimized relational risks by marking the source of equity-focused interpretations in teacher talk and inserting compliments for teacher actions that could benefit minoritized students.
Discussion
Our application of two theoretical constructs—the attribution of responsibility and attribution of knowledge—revealed detailed features of equity-focused coaching conversations. We also found that these discursive features play an important role in shifting teachers’ interpretative orientations and thus responses to the observed inequity. This section presents how our findings contribute to ongoing discussions about coaching conversations, particularly in the context of equity-focused PL. First, we highlight how this study explored equity-focused coaching conversations as a negotiation space. This theoretical approach allowed us to add a more nuanced understanding of the social process inherent to making sense of inequitable patterns, as well as the coaches’ crucial role in that process. Second, based on the interpretation patterns and discursive moves that we identified, we discuss a few areas of needed support for coaches and suggest further studies in this domain of research.
Negotiation between the teacher and coach is a salient feature of coaching, which allows coaches to individualize PL based on the teacher’s needs and context (e.g., negotiating goals, Kochmanski & Cobb, 2023). This study highlighted negotiating interpretative orientations of observed inequity as a key dimension of negotiation in equity-focused coaching. Our analysis showed that competing interpretations assign the responsibility for inequity to different agent-actors, thereby shaping the possible responses to the inequity. For instance, the competing versions of the same event in the video recording—portraying a student of Color as a quiet student who does not engage in on-task behaviors versus as a student who tries to get into the social space occupied by the two White students—set different contexts for future course of actions (see Excerpt 6). In other words, the findings substantiate the important role of coaches in orienting the coaching conversation toward the assets of minoritized students and steering away from deficit-based views, which is often discussed in critically oriented scholarship (Louie et al., 2021).
Our argument for coaches’ participation in negotiation during the sense-making process may appear to conflict with other widely accepted recommendations for coaching that prioritize teachers’ agency. For instance, cognitive coaching suggests coaches focus on probing and rephrasing teachers’ thinking while refraining from offering alternatives (Costa & Garmston, 2016). Indeed, at first glance, Episodes A and B appeared to agree with those recommendations. Our fine-grained analysis, however, showed that negotiation can happen in very subtle forms without explicit signs of disagreement. In particular, the discursive move of selectively eliciting and aligning with equity-focused interpretations captures such subtle forms of negotiation. The coach’s selective use of acknowledgement tokens (e.g., yeah, right) steered the orientation of the coaching conversation toward an equity-focused interpretation. Also, coaches offered an alternative interpretation while marking the teacher as the source of knowledge (i.e., attributing knowledge to the teacher, see Excerpt 4). These findings, therefore, suggest that existing recommendations about coaching conversations (e.g., refraining from offering suggestions) may oversimplify important nuances in coaching discourse. Those recommendations, in turn, could limit opportunities for coaches to facilitate necessary shifts in teachers’ orientation.
The nuanced patterns we illustrated above also reflect the analytic affordances of applying a conversation analytic approach. The presence and intonation of acknowledgement tokens (e.g., yeah, right) and pauses would have been left unnoticed in thematic analyses that are more common in the field; however, the current study’s fine-grained analysis revealed that these subtle discursive moves can function as skillful negotiation tools for coaches. Our findings on these subtle moves may provide an empirical basis for other recommended strategies that are present in various coaching models. For instance, the attribution of responsibility highlighted in the current article could offer explanations for the strategic use of “we” as a move to cultivate collective responsibility by content-focused coaches (West & Cameron, 2013).
These nuanced efforts by the coaches to steer the interpretative orientation suggest that, in practice, addressing deficit-based views is not as straightforward as directly countering teachers’ utterances (see also Byun, 2023). Coaching conversations are also layered with the coaches’ efforts to build and maintain an affiliative teacher-coach relationship that can support the teacher’s continuous development. In other words, our findings substantiate that the tension between shifting the teacher’s interpretative orientation and maintaining a positive relationship with the teacher is a significant interactional concern for coaches. These subtle discursive moves against deficit-based utterances exemplify emergent coaching practices designed to manage such a tension. For instance, the discursive move of giving a source of knowledge while managing the relationship illustrates that, in practice, coaches’ efforts to attend to evidence that counters teachers’ preexisting deficit-based beliefs (Bertrand & Marsh, 2015) are coupled with managing associated relational risk. However, important questions remain: In what conditions and contexts do coaches take an explicit stance against the teacher’s deficit-based utterances? How do coaches still manage associated relational risks in such moments? Byun’s (2023) study showed that teacher educators’ explicit disagreement against teachers’ deficit-based views can lead to amplifying the teacher’s deficit-based view without an opportunity for meaningful negotiation in an equity-focused PL setting. These empirical outcomes collectively suggest the need for more nuanced views on facing teachers’ deficit-based views during equity-focused coaching, as well as interactional practices that may help manage associated tensions.
The interpretation patterns we identified point to a few important areas of consideration to support equity-focused coaching. In particular, the tendency of teachers to attribute responsibility to student characteristics shows that coaches ought to consider preparing pre-formulated strategies to address the tendency toward deficit-based interpretation. With anticipation and preparation, coaches may better take advantage of opportunities to steer the coaching conversation toward equity-focused interpretations that consider systemic forces. We also note how rare it was for us to observe shifts in teachers’ interpretation within a single episode (i.e., Episodes A and B). We offer two conjectures to explain this rarity. First, at the time of preparing these coaching sessions, the coaches did not anticipate these discourse patterns, given the limited available knowledge and literature on this topic (Land, 2018; Marshall & Buenrostro, 2021). As a result, negotiating teachers’ interpretation was not communicated as an expectation nor foregrounded in the resources developed for the coaches (e.g., coaching protocol). The patterns and types of interpretation identified in this study can now be utilized as a frame of reference when coaches design equity-focused coaching. Second, we also note that the two coaches who facilitated shifts in interpretation were teacher educators of Color with scholarly expertise in equity issues in STEM education. These coaches brought extensive experience in facilitating equity-focused conversations in PL settings, especially when compared to other coaches in the group. Similar to what Land (2018) observed, other coaches might have shied away from negotiating the ongoing interpretative orientation because of the risk of harming the teacher-coach relationship. A lack of discursive moves that coaches could confidently employ during the negotiation process might have exacerbated such a hindrance.
Building on the findings in this study, further studies could investigate if these identified discursive moves can be learned by a broader group of coaches and, therefore, lead to more equity-focused interpretations as the teacher and coach make sense of observed inequity. The current study focused on illustrating the importance and complexity of negotiating interpretative orientations, and further studies could identify a more comprehensive set of moves and assess the efficacy of those moves. The nuances identified in this study can offer an empirical footing for further studies. Particularly, managing epistemic authority (ceding and asserting epistemic authority) was a salient feature in the two episodes with shifting interpretations. First, when coaches suggested equity-focused interpretation, ceding epistemic authority functioned as a move to manage relational risk by marking teachers’ prior utterances as the source of the suggested interpretation. Second, the discursive move of giving a source of knowledge while managing the relationship showed the affordance of video-based coaching for equity-focused PL. Excerpts 6 and 7 illustrate how video recording can function as a source of knowledge for the coach, an important resource for negotiating the teacher’s interpretation. Based on the moments recorded in the video, the coach not only highlighted moments when the minoritized student demonstrated her strengths but also grounded the compliment toward the teacher, which led to the exchange of gratitude and affiliation between the teacher and coach. Video recording is thus an epistemic resource coaches can use to draw the teacher’s attention to the strengths of minoritized students and the potential for positive changes in teaching. This study’s participants were limited to high school physics teachers; therefore, future studies could expand this understanding of coaches’ management of epistemic authority in other coaching contexts, such as different subject areas and grade bands (e.g., elementary and middle grades).
In conclusion, coaching—especially equity-focused coaching—is subtle, skilled, and challenging work. Interpretation patterns identified in this article suggest that navigating teachers’ interpretative orientations, which tend to be based on students’ perceived deficits, is an important aspect of equity-focused coaching. The discursive moves illustrated in this article also demonstrate how carefully coaches steer the orientation of coaching conversations toward equity-focused interpretations while managing potential risks to the teacher-coach relationship. These fine-grained textures within equity-focused coaching conversations offer the field an important footing to continue building on with respect to the subtle forms of negotiation between the teacher and coach, which can generate defining moments of equity-focused coaching.
Footnotes
Appendix
Authors’ Note
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. 1741575 and 2247128.
