Reciprocal Noticing: Learning From Student Noticing to Inform Teacher Noticing

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

Abstract

Objectives
The ways teachers notice can either provide or limit opportunities for students to engage and participate as learners (Sherin, Jacobs & Philipp, 2011). Research on mathematics teacher noticing for equity illustrates differences in the ways that mathematics teachers attend to these opportunities (Author, 2017). Differences in teachers’ noticing within classrooms affects students’ learning experiences, but also how students notice. Less is known about students’ perceptions of their teachers’ noticing, or their own participation as mediated by their teachers’ ability to notice (Dominguez, 2019). Following Dominguez (2019), this paper aims to broaden and expand theory on teacher noticing as it relates to and influences student noticing within classrooms. Additionally, we build on the conceptualization of teacher and student noticing as co-constructed.
Theoretical Framework
Students from less-dominant backgrounds often are not offered the same opportunities in mathematics as their peers (Darling-Hammond, 2015; Téllez, Moschkovich & Civil, 2011). Noticing, or the moment-to-moment decisions that teachers make in their classrooms, greatly impact teachers’ choices regarding students from more and less-dominant backgrounds. For example, mathematics teachers can attend to students’ strengths (Jilk, 2016) and students’ cultural practices (Author, 2017), while also reinforcing dominant ideologies (Louie, 2018). Teachers may notice towards rehumanizing (Gutierrez, 2018) --seeing students as whole people --or they may notice for equity by acknowledging privilege and engaging in antiracist work. Research indicates that through their noticing, teachers have the ability to shape students’ experiences. Dominguez (2019) argues, importantly, that teachers’ noticing also shapes students’ opportunities to notice, and that it is a reciprocal process.
Methods
Primary data sources for this paper include: 1) survey responses collected from high school mathematics students about their teachers’ noticing, and 2) mathematics teacher noticing interviews illustrating similarities and differences between what teachers and students noticed in classrooms.
Findings
By examining the ways that teachers and students report their own noticing in mathematics classrooms, I aim to highlight a possible disconnect between teachers’ intended purposes for noticing and the impact of their noticings of students.
1) I document the potential disconnect between teacher noticing and student perceptions of teacher noticing. For example, during early-phase teacher noticing interviews, teachers often tied their noticing to their desire to deliver content and build relationships. In student surveys, students reported teachers as more focused on their behavior.
2) I demonstrate that by paying attention to student noticing, there is a need for future studies exploring students' history of noticing. For example, students pointed to teacher noticing behaviors associated with compliance. In a school district that is comprised predominantly of Brown and Black student bodies, it is important to recognize the legacy and embeddedness of policing of student bodies (Annamma et al., 2013).
Significance
Teacher noticing as tied to historical systems is increasingly being cited as necessary for rehumanizing classrooms. I argue that it is important to recognize student noticing as also tied to historical systems as well, especially in helping rupture content based noticing practices and foster relational noticing practices.

Authors

• Michelle Frierson, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Elizabeth Mendoza, University of California - Irvine

• Victoria M. Hand, University of Colorado - Boulder