Preparing preservice mathematics teachers to notice for equity: A focus on design

• In Event: “Noticing for Equity”: What Is It, and How Can It Be Developed?

Abstract

Objective or purpose
Teacher noticing is core to responsive and equitable mathematics instruction (Dindyal et al., 2021; Konig et al., 2022). This construct captures teachers’ in-the-moment attention and interpretation of the nuances of students’ thinking, as well as broader structures of inequitable educational systems and associated narratives that function to minoritize culturally, racially, linguistically, and neuro-diverse learners during instruction (Louie et al., 2021; Shah, 2019). This paper contributes to research that theorizes and develops pedagogies of preservice teacher education to cultivate teacher candidates’ noticing of responsive instruction and the personal, historical, and relational aspects of classroom interactions to frame teachers’ classroom noticing (Authors, 2023, 2024; Patterson-Williams et al., 2019).

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
We draw on design-based research to analyze how material and conceptual tools, participant structures, and discursive practices coordinate to accomplish learning outcomes (Sandoval, 2014) and advance theories of preservice teacher learning (Edelson, 2002). We also use activity theory (Authors, 2019; Engestrom, 1999) to consider how artifacts of teaching can represent different dimensions of responsive and equitable instruction for decomposition and analysis to support teacher candidates’ learning from practice (Authors, 2015, 2017; Grossman et al., 2009; Author & colleague, 2014). We theorize that structured analysis of artifacts of teaching can foster teacher candidates’ developing an inner witness for responsive and equitable teaching that can inform their learning over time (Mason, 2009; Patterson-Williams et al., 2019).

Methods and data sources
Data includes artifacts from the redesign of a teacher education course in Fall 2020 that prepared teacher candidates to learn from teaching by developing their noticing practices and lesson analysis skills. Course artifacts include instructors’ planning notes that document course and weekly goals and conjectures for learning, slide decks for class meetings, and artifacts that structured preservice teachers’ activities and observations (e.g. noticing journal, Jamboard prompts). Informed by Coles (2019) and Ermeling et al (2012), we traced design decisions and built a conjecture map to identify underlying conjectures and their embodiments to support teacher candidates’ accomplishing the course learning goals (see Authors, 2024).

Results
Preliminary analysis identifies four different participant structures that organized preservice teachers’ learning of noticing (see Table 1), each encompassing corresponding tools and materials (e.g., artifacts of teaching and frameworks for analysis) to structure noticing and analysis. The paper will elaborate on how these participants structures collectively supported teacher candidates developing: a) a vision of instruction that is not typically observed in classroom contexts; b) attention to details in the micro-moments of instruction, and c) awareness of their own awareness and how their positionality frames their noticing of mathematics instructional interactions.

Significance
This study reveals how different participant structures coordinate to support preservice teachers developing their inner witness to notice from a responsive and equitable teaching perspective to support ongoing learning from teaching. The findings contribute to calls for research to specify how artifacts of mathematics teaching and learning coordinate with different features of the course activity system to develop and inner witness to advance equitable mathematics instruction (Barnhart, 2021; Author et al., 2021).

Authors

• Elizabeth A. van Es, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Ethan Rubin, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Jody Guarino, University of California - Irvine