Teachers’ Noticing Skills during Geography Instruction: An Expert-Novice Comparison

Abstract

In supporting their students’ learning in the classroom, noticing is an important professional skill for teachers, encompassing perceiving and interpreting relevant incidents, as well as ad hoc decision-making. While noticing is an established research topic in other domains, it remains largely neglected in relation to the geography teacher. The paper compares the noticing skills of geography teachers at three different stages of their professional development. Qualitative content analysis of teachers’ think-aloud responses to video vignettes of geography teaching revealed that the three groups differed in terms of number of incidents perceived, interpretive stance, and decision-making.