Marta T. Magiera

Learning to Notice Student Thinking About the Equal Sign: K-8 Preservice Teachers’ Experiences in a Teacher Preparation Program

In this chapter, we present our work and research related to preservice teacher (PST) noticing, describing how we provide PSTs with opportunities to notice student thinking about the equal sign and equality. We designed an instructional intervention in an integrated mathematics content and pedagogy course (with a field experience) to support PSTs in (1) learning about key mathematical ideas related to the equal sign and equality, and (2) rehearsing teacher noticing skills. Our PSTs rehearsed and reflected on their noticing skills by conducting two one-on-one clinical interviews with elementary students and participating in debriefing interviews with course instructors. Using this context, we examined (1) the extent to which PSTs attended to and further explored student understanding of the equal sign and equality, and (2) what PSTs perceived they learned about aspects of their teacher professional noticing skills and student thinking about the equal sign and equality. Our results indicate that the PSTs predominantly noticed the strategies students used to solve a task without focusing on student thinking about the equal sign and equality. In addition, our PSTs perceived that they strengthened either their own knowledge or student knowledge of the equal sign and equality while conducting their diagnostic clinical interviews.