Understanding teacher noticing of students' prior knowledge: Challenges and possibilities

Abstract

I propose a new construct, teacher noticing of students' prior knowledge, and provide examples of a professional development intervention with the goal of supporting teacher learning. The examples demonstrate that combining discussions of animations of classroom instruction, video clubs, and lesson study can help teachers to attend to students' prior knowledge and anticipate actions that use that knowledge for promoting mathematical understanding. I discuss challenges and new questions for mathematics education researchers brought about by the new construct. I suggest that the construct is valuable for developing teachers' professional knowledge.