Learning to professionally notice students’ mathematical thinking through rehearsal activities
Keywords:
prospective teachers, practice-based teacher education, methods coursework, primary teaching, teacher educationAbstract
Inrecent years there have been calls for ambitious mathematics teaching whichplaces student thinking and reasoning at the centre of instruction. This studyfocuses on how mathematics teacher educators (MTE) cansupport prospective teachers (PT) to learn the work of ambitious teachingthrough rehearsal activities. We analyse a series of rehearsals during amathematics methods course to illustrate how the rehearsal process can affordopportunities for PTs to learn to professionally notice students’ mathematicalthinking. The findings highlight three areas of importance related toprofessional noticing: making students’ thinking visible; eliciting andresponding to student thinking; and encountering dilemmas. Our analysis links the PTs development ofprofessional noticing to the role of community, the challenging of priorexperiences and the trajectory of learning, and our role as coach.References
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