Teacher Noticing and Reasoning about Student Thinking in Classrooms as a Result of Participating in a Combined Professional Development Intervention

We examine the teacher learning that results from participating in a two-year professional development intervention that combined lesson study, video clubs, and animation discussions. We investigate whether and how five teachers’ attention to student thinking changed when implementing problem-based lessons that they collaboratively designed. Using Sherin and van Es’ (2009) framework, we analyzed 14 lessons taught over two consecutive years. In the second year, there was a statistically significant difference in the teachers’ use of students’ ideas for generalizing and synthesizing, showing that teachers used higher levels of reasoning. In three pairs of lessons, the teachers increased their attention to students’ ideas during the second year. The intervention supported growth in the teachers’ abilities to reason using students’ ideas and to make the lesson’s goal explicit. This study has implications for increasing the viability of lesson study and designing professional development that promotes instructional improvement in an authentic context.

Gonzalez, G. & Vargas, G. E. (2020). Teacher noticing and reasoning about student thinking in classrooms as a result of participating in a combined professional development intervention. Mathematics Teacher Education and Development, 22(1).