Teacher's noticing and noticing strategies about student's thinking in the context of mathematical modeling activities

Abstract

This study aims to examine teacher's noticing and noticing strategies towards student's mathematical thinking process. The case study was conducted in the lessons of a mathematics teacher teaching at the seventh grade level of a middle school in Ankara. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with the teacher, in-class video recordings, student observations, and documents obtained from student studies. Four modeling activities relating statistical subjects were used to observe student's thinking process. The collected data were analyzed by content analysis and descriptive analysis method. There were figured out 3 categories of teacher's noticing about student thinking: (a) conceptual understanding (b) procedural understanding (c) mathematical language use. It has been found that the teacher's noticing about student's thinking is mostly focused on conceptual understandings. Regarding the teacher's noticing strategies, the following categories were reached: a) Identification and description, (b) evaluation and interpretation, and (c) justification. The teacher defined the situations that she noticed in her students during the appropriate model development process as repetition, overhearing, and biased hearing. She interpreted the process or result of the situations she noticed and made various assessments. In justifying her comments, she presented evidence from students' rhetoric/behavior or offered predictions/assumptions based on her knowledge and expectations about their students.