Responding to students during whole-class discussions: Using written performance tasks to assess teacher candidate practice

Abstract

Responding to student reasoning in whole-class discussions and making those contributions central to the mathematical work of the class is especially challenging when students contribute ideas that are incomplete, imprecise, or not yet correct—what we call “errors.” We highlight our work supporting and assessing teacher candidates’ (TCs’) development of skill with the work of responding to student errors. We discuss our use of written performance tasks that call for TCs to play out discussions in response to a classroom scenario. We consider what these written responses reveal about TCs’ practice and present findings and examples that have emerged. Keywords: