An investigation on a prospective teacher's professional noticing skills in the process of narrative construction and discussion

Abstract

This qualitative study aims to investigate the ability of a prospective middle school mathematics teacher to notice student thinking through narratives and online discussions. Data were collected from the prospective teacher as part of the Teaching Practice course. The data for the study comprised three narratives written by the prospective teacher, along with the corresponding discussions held in online forums. Content analysis was employed to analyze the data. The findings revealed that the prospective teacher demonstrated a robust level of noticing student thinking in the attending component, a combination of robust and partial levels in the interpreting component, and a partial level in the responding component. These results are consistent with previous studies in the literature that highlight teachers’ challenges in responding to student thinking. Conversely, it was noted that the prospective teacher exhibited some improvement in the responding component of noticing skills during online discussions. In a collaborative environment where ideas were exchanged, there were instances indicating that the prospective teacher enhanced her responding skills to a higher level. The findings were discussed in the light of the related literature, and suggestions were presented.