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Characterizing a highly accomplished teacher’s noticing of third-grade students’ mathematical thinking

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Abstract

This study investigated a highly accomplished third-grade teacher’s noticing of students’ mathematical thinking as she taught multiplication and division. Through an innovative method, which allowed for documenting in-the-moment teacher noticing, the author was able to explore teacher noticing and reflective practices in the context of classroom teaching as opposed to professional development environments. Noticing was conceptualized as both attending to different elements of classroom instruction and making sense of classroom events. The teacher paid most attention to student thinking and was able to offer a variety of rich interpretations of student thinking which were presented in an emergent framework. The results also indicated how the teacher’s noticing might influence her instructional decisions. Implications for both research methods in studying noticing and teacher learning and practices are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is part of a larger study, which is an unpublished dissertation. I wish to thank my dissertation committee, especially my chair Dr. James Tarr, for the insightful feedback and comments on earlier drafts of this work. I would also like to acknowledge my indebtedness to colleagues Somnath Sinha who helped to maintain interrater reliability in the coding process, and Dr. Dung Tran and Dr. Luz Edith Valoyes for their valuable feedback and support. A final thanks goes to Dr. Kathyrn Chval who inspired me to do this work.

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  1. Faculty of Education, MEF University, Ayazağa Cad. No: 4, 34396, Sarıyer, Istanbul, Turkey

    Rukiye Didem Taylan

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  1. Rukiye Didem Taylan
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Correspondence to Rukiye Didem Taylan.

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Taylan, R.D. Characterizing a highly accomplished teacher’s noticing of third-grade students’ mathematical thinking. J Math Teacher Educ 20, 259–280 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-015-9326-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-015-9326-7

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