"What Do You Notice?": Understanding the Nature And Development of Pre-Service Teachers' Professional Vision For Reform Teaching

Investigator: Elizabeth van Es

Purpose of the Study

This project, funded by a fellowship from the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation, examines the impact that a video-based pre-service teacher education course for secondary mathematics teachers has on their ability to "notice" classroom interactions. An important part of teacher education programs involves observing real classroom teachers and learning about teaching from these observations. Yet, few pre-service teachers have well developed observation skills. They do not know what to attend to, nor do they know how to make sense of what they observe. This study, grounded in research from the last two decades on effective mathematics instruction, seeks to develop pre-service teachers' professional vision of reform pedagogy. That is, I am interested in using innovative tools, such as video, to help pre-service teachers learn to attend to and reason about aspects of mathematics reform teaching and learning.

Video has the potential to help pre-service teachers develop their professional vision of mathematics teaching because it can represent the kind of teaching envisioned by reform, highlighting the development of student understanding of specific mathematical content and particular teaching practices that are productive for effective mathematics teaching. Furthermore, it can be reviewed several times from multiple perspectives, allowing teachers to gain deeper insight into important teaching and learning issues.

Research Questions

1. What is the nature of pre-service teacher noticing and how does it develop over time?
2. When pre-service teachers are provided with a model for learning to notice, how does this help them learn to observe and analyze mathematics teaching and student learning?

Study Design and Methods

This study takes place in the context of the teacher credential program at the University of California, Irvine, with approximately 30 students seeking secondary mathematics certification. I am conducting a qualitative study, using a variety of data sources, such as videotapes and transcripts of course meetings, written analyses of teaching conducted at several points over the course of the study, interviews, and state credential assessments (PACT-Teaching Event) to identify, at a fine-grained level, the developmental trajectories of pre-service teachers' learning to notice mathematics teaching and learning.

Potential Benefits

• Understanding of what pre-service teachers attend to when they analyze classrooms and how they make sense of what they observe
• A developmental trajectory of learning to notice teaching over time
• Framework for designing video-based instruction for pre-service teachers that will inform the design of teacher education programs that prepare teachers for teaching mathematics for understanding