Enhancing Pre-Service Teachers’ Noticing: A Learning Environment about Fraction Concept

Abstract

Professional noticing allows teachers to recognise important events in a classroom and give effective responses using their knowledge. Hence developing this competence in teacher training programs is an issue in the Mathematics Education field. In this study, we present the design of a learning environment about the part-whole meaning of fraction to develop pre-service primary school teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking. The learning environment is designed around three tasks (vignettes) that pre-service teachers have to analyse using knowledge from research on mathematics education provided as a students’ hypothetical learning trajectory. Eighty-five pre-service primary school teachers participated in this learning environment. Pre-service teachers’ written answers to the three tasks are the data of this study. Results allow us to characterise the enhancement of pre-service teacher noticing through looking at the changes in the discourse generated in the three tasks.