Orienting to Antideficit Perspectives for Equitable Noticing

• In Event: Expanding/Rupturing Ideologies in Mathematics Teacher Noticing

Abstract

Purposes:
The literature on teacher noticing frequently highlights three aspects of noticing: attending, interpreting, and responding (to students’ mathematical thinking, participation, etc.). Here we propose orienting as another critical part of noticing, particularly in working with students of color. We focus on how teachers orient to students—as sense-makers, as knowledgeable, as deficient, as capable—and how this shapes what they subsequently attend to, how they interpret it, and how they decide to respond.

Theoretical Frameworks:
Drawing on sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives, we argue that how educators orient to students is not solely a matter of individual beliefs or skills; it is also fundamentally social and cultural (as are other aspects of noticing). Educators often take deficit perspectives for granted, orienting to and deploying them without recognizing it, because such perspectives are the norm in American society—particularly where students of color are concerned. Shifting teachers’ orienting processes, therefore, entails re-culturing, immersing teachers in a community that interrogates deficit perspectives and provides consistent support for constructing alternative perspectives and practices.

Method of Inquiry:
We illustrate orienting processes and their relation to other aspects of noticing using data from an undergraduate calculus summer workshop primarily serving students of color. Prior to the workshop, graduate student instructors who later taught workshop classes participated in a professional learning community focused on teaching mathematics through inquiry and asset-based, anti-deficit perspectives.

Findings:
We focus here on the case of Oscar (a pseudonym), an instructor who described finding support in the workshop for orienting to students in completely different ways. He realized that the categories “strong” and “weak,” which he had previously put students into, were “not real,” because “everybody brings something to the table.” Based on interviews with Oscar, we describe the effects of this shift on how he attended to each of his students and their mathematical strengths, how he interpreted their thinking, and how he responded, as well as how the workshop supported him.

Significance:
This poster will advance (1) understandings of noticing as social and cultural, (2) orienting as a key component of teacher noticing, and (3) an example of how mathematics instructors can be supported to notice more equitably.

Authors

• Nicole Louie, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Naomi Jessup, Georgia State University

• Aditya P. Adiredja, The University of Arizona