The development of noticing in primary school mathematics teachers

Abstract

The need to grow mathematics teacher practices and improve learning in classrooms is an important avenue for research. The aim of this article is to present results of a Lesson Study-based professional development programme that endeavoured to capture and understand the concept of teacher-noticing in two South African primary school mathematics teachers. Since teacher-noticing is a precursor to teacher decision-making, the question of how mathematics teacher-noticing develops was the focus of this study. A professional development programme set within teachers’ own classrooms (where they played the role of noticers) was designed and implemented. Two Grade 6 mathematics teachers volunteered to take part in the study. The researcher and participant teachers collaboratively planned lessons that were taught by the researcher. Teachers took notes of their noticing during each of the four researcher-taught lessons to discuss during the reflective sessions after the lessons. These sessions were recorded and transcribed. The transcriptions were coded for emerging and developing themes in teacher-noticing using a teacher-noticing framework. It was found that teacher-noticing remained at lower levels during traditional direct instruction lessons while teachers developed extended noticing from lessons that were structured and planned along a problem-centred or modelling approach and that involved extensive pair work.