The Elementary Mathematics Teachers’ Values Underlying Teacher Noticing: The Context of Polygons

Abstract

Teachers are expected to make decisions that respond to the needs of students in classroom practices. Teacher noticing emphasizes that teachers should decide how to respond to situations in classroom practices. Moreover, one of the variables that influence teachers’ decision-making skills is teachers’ values. The purpose of this chapter is to examine elementary teacher values in terms of the decision making process underlying noticing in a specific mathematical domain, namely polygons. We have conducted this qualitative study, designed as a case study, with five elementary mathematics teachers working at elementary schools in Turkey. The participants were selected using convenience sampling. The data were collected with video-recordings of classrooms and semi-structured interviews and were coded using content analysis approach. Teachers’ values were presented in the context of teacher noticing, which is a situation-specific skill. The results shed light on the relationship between teachers’ values and teacher noticing, which focused the decision-making perspective.