Student Teachers\u2019 and Experienced Teachers\u2019 Professional Vision of Students\u2019 Understanding of the Rational Number Concept

Maikki Pouta,Tuire Palonen,Erno Lehtinen

doi:10.1007/s10648-020-09536-y

Maikki Pouta, Tuire Palonen + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09536-y

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate differences in student teachers’ and experienced teachers’ professional vision in natural settings and to elicit clues of the relation of in-the-moment noticing and instruction quality of students’ understanding of rational number concept. Rational number concept challenges both students and teachers because of natural number bias that learning of rational numbers is vulnerable to. Accurate professional vision and adequate instructions are needed to enhance students’ understanding of rational number concept. Mobile eye-tracking technique enables video recording of natural teaching situations from a teacher’s perspective with more specific information of teacher’s in-the-moment noticing. Combined with cued retrospective reporting, this approach can gather more explicit evidence of teachers’ professional vision and instructions. Results indicated that both student teachers and experienced teachers attended to mathematical and fraction-related aspect similarly but differed in interpreting and instructing students’ fraction understanding. Student teachers made more advanced interpretations but their instructions were less adequate, whereas among experienced teachers, it was just the opposite. Furthermore, student teachers made more attempts to shared attention when using fraction understanding non-supporting instructions, whereas experienced teachers’ attempts to shared attention were related to fraction understanding supporting instructions. Results indicate student teachers’ difficulty to transfer pedagogical content knowledge from noticing to actions and experienced teachers to have more enhanced in-the-moment professional vision and its application to teaching. Practical implications for teacher training as well as methodological decisions of in-the-moment professional vision studies in natural settings are discussed.

Highlights

Teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge, mediated by individual instructing, is known to have a positive effect on students’ learning (Baumert et al 2010)
This study aims to combine the methods of first-person perspective recording, eye tracking and cued retrospective reporting (CRR) in order to investigate differences in student teachers’ and experienced teachers’ professional vision in authentic settings
Results indicate that student teachers are already quite advanced in noticing and interpreting students’ learning processes, but experienced teachers can better apply their knowledge in supporting students’ learning of this demanding mathematical content

Summary

Introduction

Teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge, mediated by individual instructing, is known to have a positive effect on students’ learning (Baumert et al 2010). Accurate noticing and knowledgebased reasoning, that is, professional vision (van Es and Sherin 2002), and its application are needed in order to transfer a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge into accurate instructions. These professional skills are important when teaching demanding content knowledge that requires conceptual changes and novel ways of thinking. Such research is needed to capture the diverse and complex process of teacher’s professional vision in teaching situations when bare observations are not possible, but one needs to take action at the same time. Though the importance of professional vision for optimal instructing is reasoned in research, more empirical research is needed about how the quality of teachers’ professional vision and the quality of instructing are related

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