Crafting Representations of Teacher Noticing Through a Participatory Design Process

• In Event: Conceptualizing Teacher Noticing in Research on Teaching and Teacher Learning

Abstract

Objectives
Teachers’ noticing has become recognized as an important construct for advancing equity in mathematics classrooms (Hand, 2012; Louie, 2018). To provide equitable, empathetic instruction to minoritized students, teachers must grapple with the influence of their identities on the noticing they enact in the classroom. We aim to support teachers in becoming aware of how noticing is rooted in their personal histories and positionality, as well as expanding their noticing to develop more socially just classrooms. To accomplish this goal, we partner with teachers from prior participatory action research to facilitate reflective experiences by which teacher learners can examine their noticing.
Theoretical Framework
We base our approach in the commitment that teachers must be included in the design of professional development programs to reflect the realities of teaching practice (Zeichner, 2009). Particularly for programs that rely on personal reflection to advance noticing (Mason, 2009), teachers must be positioned as active agents of their own learning (Kennedy, 2016). Collaborative and community-based approaches empower participants to articulate and share a broader range of expertise and insight. Consequently, we apply a participatory design research framework that centers teachers in the analysis and design process (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016).
Methods
This project employs multiple sources of data. Noticing interviews and team meetings from prior PAR work form the foundation for describing the teachers’ systems of noticing. We use qualitative methods to analyze teachers’ explanations of their noticing in context, and elaborate on those understandings through further interviews (Author, 2014).
To translate our research into modules that are accessible for pre-service teachers and express the complexities of teaching practice, we turn to the field of User Experience (UX) Design. UX Design emphasizes selecting and organizing content for product development, with an orientation towards the user’s needs and their experience interacting with the product (Allabarton, 2019). As such, UX Design provides a heuristic for the aspects that determine, influence, or guide the user’s experience. Through activities that document progress as the modules are refined through iterative design cycles, the UX process acts as both a method and a source of data (Cao & Bank, 2015). The artifacts produced in these cycles, along with video of the design meetings, provide additional data for qualitative analysis.
Findings
Our findings describe the systems of noticing these teachers employ, represented through case study modules, and the process by which the modules are crafted. First, we identify the combination of artifacts and experiences that creates pathways for developing noticing for equity. Second, we document how this approach reveals the ways teachers conceptualize their noticing, linking personal history and positionality to in-the-moment noticing and interpretation. Last, we describe how examining noticing through these modules can facilitate reflection for pre-service teachers.
Significance
Crafting case studies from the many possibilities for representing teaching practice requires extensive and intentional curation. This project establishes a design process by which teacher participants inform the selection and coordination of artifacts and experiences to empower teacher learners to develop their noticing.

Authors

• Ethan Rubin, University of California - Irvine

• Elizabeth A. van Es, University of California - Irvine

• Elizabeth Mendoza, University of California - Irvine