Abstract
This study aimed to investigate secondary mathematics teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking in the context of a professional development (PD) program utilizing modeling-based teacher investigations. The PD program was conducted with two groups of mathematics teachers from two public high schools. It included seven 1-month-long cycles, each consisting of an introductory meeting, the teachers’ classroom implementations of a model-eliciting activity (MEA), and a follow-up meeting focusing on the teachers’ collaborative investigation and discussion of students’ written work, including their strategies to solve the MEA. Findings suggested that participating in the PD program promoted the teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking, albeit differently, over time. We elaborated on the components of the PD program that might have influenced the teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking. Implications of the findings on teachers’ noticing for researchers, PD leaders, and teacher educators are discussed in terms of potential directions for future research and practice.
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Notes
In these implementations, students worked on the activity in groups of three or four, while the teacher circulated around the classroom. At least two researchers videotaped and took field notes with minimum interaction with students.
In Turkey, a teacher who first studied mathematics and then received teacher certification attends a higher number of mathematics courses than a teacher who studied mathematics education at the university. Thus, we assumed that a teacher with an undergraduate degree in mathematics might have more robust mathematical content knowledge.
“TRY” is an acronym for currency in Turkey.
Teacher 1 and Teacher 2 were the participants of the larger project but not involved in the current study.
We should note that students’ written work that Rana and Ayfer examined included more mathematically rich solutions than those examined by Kutay and Selda.
Kutay was absent from this meeting. Ayfer did not make any comment in the meeting as she expressed that (for some reason) she did not want to join the discussions. Thus, the meeting data for these two teachers were missing in the 5th MBTI.
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Acknowledgements
The research reported here is based on the first author’s PhD Dissertation completed at the Middle East Technical University under the supervision of the second and the third authors. We thank Dr. Engin Ader for his support and valuable comments on an earlier version of this article.
Funding
This research was partly supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) under grant number 110K250. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the TÜBİTAK.
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Bas-Ader, S., Erbas, A.K., Cetinkaya, B. et al. Secondary mathematics teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking through modeling-based teacher investigations. Math Ed Res J 35 (Suppl 1), 81–106 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-021-00389-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13394-021-00389-4