Understanding Teacher Noticing of Students' Prior Knowledge: Challenges and Possibilities

• In Event: 30.067 - New Perspectives on Teacher Noticing in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Studies on learning concur that connecting prior knowledge and new knowledge is critical (Dochy, Segers, & Buehl, 1999; National Research Council [NRC], 2000, p. 410). In mathematics instruction, when problems are centered around a context, students’ experiences with that context can shape the way in which they approach the solution (e.g., Lubienski, 2000). For these reasons, teachers’ ability to trigger students’ prior knowledge and to establish connections with the new knowledge that is the target of a lesson is key to promote learning.
The paper articulates the construct of teacher noticing of students’ prior knowledge in relation to teacher noticing. Teacher noticing of students’ prior knowledge broadens perspectives that investigate teacher noticing by incorporating the specific attention to what students bring to the classroom in terms of their mathematical experiences in school and out of school. Similar to current work that considers how students’ out of school experiences shape their mathematical (e.g., Turner et al., 2012), the notion of teacher noticing of students’ prior knowledge considers how teachers can promote students’ mathematical understanding by capitalizing on those experiences. In addition, the construct considers how students’ knowledge of contextual information framing mathematical problems affects their insights about mathematical solutions.
I provide examples from an intervention with geometry teachers who participated in a 2-year professional development program for increasing their attention to students’ prior knowledge illustrate how this construct is content-specific and, also, context-specific. The teachers engaged in a Lesson Study cycle to plan and teach a lesson that increased opportunities for using students’ prior knowledge in relation to specific mathematical content in the Common Core Standards. The paper examines the implications of this construct in relation to methodologies that support teacher education initiatives. Specifically, using Borko’s (2004) description of phase 1 of research on teacher professional development, the paper investigates the relationship of teachers as learners and the professional development program to identify critical components that promoted teacher learning and possibilities for scaling up.
 

Author

• Gloriana Gonzalez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign