Revealing and refining teachers’ instructional vision: noticing strengths in video records of practice

Mathematics teachers’ instructional vision, or the image they hold of valued mathematics teaching and learning, is a cornerstone of instructional improvement. Prior studies of instructional vision have focused on accessing teachers’ visions through interviews in which teachers imagine a hypothetical classroom that illustrates their aspirations. How they notice such a hypothetical classroom is connected to their professional vision, or how teachers notice specific artifacts and events. In this study, we examine how teachers’ instructional vision can be accessed and developed in professional development by asking teachers to notice and name strengths in video records from one another’s classrooms. We analyzed the strengths that 23 teachers noticed in 126 video discussions across a 2-year professional development program for early career secondary mathematics teachers. We grouped the 1186 strengths described by participants into 14 strengths categories, which we argue paint a rich portrait of participants’ collective instructional vision. Further, we identified three discursive mechanisms through which teachers developed—defined and refined—their instructional vision: leveraging engagement, leveraging growth, and leveraging agreement. These findings indicate that video-based professional development can both reveal and create opportunities for teachers to refine their instructional vision by discussing strengths. Methodological implications for accessing teachers’ instructional vision are discussed.