Shifting the ways prospective teachers frame and notice student mathematical thinking: from deficits to strengths

Abstract

Noticing the strengths in students’ mathematical thinking is a critical skill that teachers need to develop, but it can be challenging due to the prevalence of deficit-based thinking in mathematics education. To address this challenge, a teacher education course was designed to encourage prospective teachers to engage in critical reflection on their own and others’ framings of students’ thinking and shift their focus towards noticing students’ strengths. The study analyzed written responses from the prospective teachers, collected at the beginning and end of the course, to investigate their framing and noticing of students’ mathematical thinking. The analysis focused on the aspects of students’ thinking that the prospective teachers paid attention to, the stances they took when interpreting students’ thinking, and the instructional moves they proposed in response to their thinking. Furthermore, the study established a spectrum of deficit-based and strength-based framings on students’ mathematical thinking. This spectrum allowed for the identification of each participant’s written noticing responses within a range of possibilities, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the changes in teachers’ framing and noticing of students’ thinking over time.