The Power of Developmental Thinking: Social-Cognitive Complexity of Urban Secondary Teachers’ Pedagogical Narratives Predicts the Quality of Their Classroom Practices

Adolescents undergo critical neuropsychological development, but this rarely meaningfully informs secondary pedagogy. Yet, many argue that a “whole-person,” developmental approach is needed to durably address adolescents’ achievement, equity and mental health issues. This begs a question: Do teachers with developmentally informed perspectives enact higher quality practices? Forty public secondary teachers from schools serving low-SES urban communities were nominated for excellence by their administrators. We interviewed these teachers about their approaches. An independent team rated their classroom teaching. Qualitative analysis of the interviews yielded four characteristic “pedagogical narratives.” We ordered these according to the social-cognitive complexity with which teachers integrated considerations of students’ personal/intellectual development into justifications for their practices. In descending order of social-cognitive complexity, we named these narratives: transformative, responsive, transactional, and gatekeeping. We found that quantitized narrative social-cognitive complexity scores, representing developmental orientation, statistically predicted the quality of teachers’ practices, irrespective of years of teaching experience. We also found that “gatekeeping” narratives often described teachers’ sense of being overwhelmed, rushed, and worried for youth. Our findings renew appreciation for teachers’ professional knowledge and relational capacities. The findings suggest that understanding the coordination of adolescents’ personal and intellectual development and academic learning improves teachers’ practice and lessens their stress—important information for reforming teacher preparation and supporting teachers.