Do cultural norms influence how teacher noticing is studied in different cultural contexts? A focus on expert norms of responding to students\u2019 mathematical thinking

Anika Dreher,Anke Lindmeier,Paul Feltes,Ting-Ying Wang,Feng-Jui Hsieh

doi:10.1007/s11858-020-01197-z

Abstract

As an important component of teaching expertise, teacher noticing is gaining growing attention in our intercultural mathematics education community. However, it is likely that in many cases the researchers’ perspectives on what characterizes high instructional quality in mathematics classrooms shape what they expect teachers to notice. In particular, it is an open question how potentially different norms of instructional quality influence how teacher noticing is operationalized in East Asian and Western cultures. Consequently, in a first step, this bicultural research project on teacher noticing in Taiwan and Germany focuses on exploring the researchers’ frames of reference for investigating teacher noticing. In this paper, we thus propose a concurrent process for developing vignettes and eliciting corresponding expert norms as a prerequisite to investigating teacher noticing in a way that is sensitive to different cultural contexts. In this process, the research teams in both countries developed in parallel, text vignettes in which, from their perspective, a breach of a norm regarding a specific aspect of instructional quality was integrated. In an online expert survey, these vignettes were then presented to German and Taiwanese researchers in mathematics education (19 from each country) to investigate whether these experts recognize the integrated breach of a norm. This approach allows researchers to identify potentially different norms of instructional quality in mathematics classrooms. In particular, by means of a specific representation of practice, it became visible how expert norms of responding to students’ mathematical thinking can be different from a Taiwanese compared to a German perspective.

Highlights

Students’ mathematical thinking has often been chosen as a focus for investigating and developing professional noticing—especially in the US context (e.g., Colestock and Sherin 2015; Jacobs, Lamb, and Philipp 2010)
The findings of this study showed different patterns of strengths and weaknesses of German and Chinese teachers and provide empirical evidence that teacher noticing is influenced by different cultural contexts (Yang et al 2019)
To investigate teacher noticing in a way that is sensitive to different cultural contexts, and to explore the role of cultural norms for teacher noticing, require researchers to take into account the views of participants at the level of experts in mathematics education as a frame of reference

Summary

Introduction

Students’ mathematical thinking has often been chosen as a focus for investigating and developing professional noticing—especially in the US context (e.g., Colestock and Sherin 2015; Jacobs, Lamb, and Philipp 2010). Corresponding studies on teacher noticing usually use—at least implicitly—a frame of reference for what the it is essential in our intercultural research community to make culture-specific norms on the level of experts (scholars in mathematics education) explicit, which may influence how teacher noticing is assessed, and to consider these norms in the interpretation of corresponding findings. In this contribution, we want to raise awareness of possible influences of different cultural norms of instructional quality on how we assess teacher noticing and propose a way in which such cultural norms can be made explicit. In line with the conceptualization by Sherin (2007, 2017) and the underlying theoretical approach by Goodwin (1994), we understand teacher noticing as including the following components:

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