"A Framework for Learning to Notice Student Thinking"

van Es, E. A. (2010). A Framework for Learning to Notice Student Thinking. In M.G. Sherin, V. Jacobs, & R. Philipp (Eds.) Mathematics teacher noticing: Seeing through teachers' eyes. Routledge: New York. 

Abstract

Classrooms are complex settings, with a variety of interactions taking place at one time. Teachers need to decide where to pay attention and they need to reason about what they see in order to make decisions about how to proceed with the lesson. But learning what events and interactions to pay attention to is a complicated skill. I propose that teachers need to learn to notice; that is, they need to attend to aspects of classroom interactions that influence student learning and reason about them in the midst of instruction. The goal of this paper is to examine the development of a group of teachers’ ability to notice student thinking as they participated in a video club. A video club consists of a group of teachers who get together on a regular basis to view and discuss videos segments from one another’s teaching (Sherin, 2000). In this paper, I draw on transcript data from video club meetings and propose a framework that describes the development of one video club group’s noticing over time. I then use examples from the video club sessions to illustrate the levels of the framework. This framework reveals important features for noticing that, when coordinated, can support teachers in engaging in productive reflection and analysis of teaching and student learning.