A Tool for Becoming Aware of Attending to Students’ Thinking: A Precursor to Developing Teacher Noticing

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the development and application of an analytical tool for use with teachers to help them become aware of how they attend to students’ thinking during discussions. Through understanding the ways in which one explicitly attends to student thinking, corrective measures for advancement with how to facilitate effective classroom discussions can occur. The tool is designed as a decision tree drawing on literature from both science and mathematics education. The application of the tool in this paper uses video from elementary pre-service teachers' instruction in an early field experience. Utilizing science teaching video from three teaching teams (Grades K, 2, and 5), we demonstrate how the decision tree tool moves beyond an initial teacher question and student response to bring attention to how pre-service teachers follow-up on students’ responses. Four main branches are identified (focusing, funneling, acknowledging, and no response) with 3-4 smaller branches for each. The smaller branches describe ways in which pre-service teachers attend to student thinking when focusing or funneling a discussion, versus examples of why they are not attending to students’ thinking when acknowledging or providing no response. To show the potential of the tool, data is also provided on the frequencies of these decision branches from our analysis of the three teaching teams used to develop the tool. Limitations of the tool but also implications for future use are discussed.