Teacher education and the development of teacher noticing

Abstract

Teacher noticing relates to specific teacher abilities and cognitive skills that support teachers to professionally master information processing in their daily work: paying attention to relevant classroom processes and events of social interaction, selecting important information, drawing appropriate conclusions, or deciding quickly on how to proceed with their instruction. This article first provides insight into how teacher noticing has been conceptualized by researchers over the last decades. Different perspectives on teacher noticing research are described (cognitive-psychological, socio-cultural, and experiste-related). It then uses two examples from teacher noticing research illustrating how empirical research has proliferated our understanding of teacher noticing, also with regards to teacher professional competence. While the first example is subject-specific and related to teacher noticing in mathematics, the second example focuses on teacher noticing for effective classroom management. An overview is given on how teacher education may support pre-service teacher learning to notice. Particular focus is given on intervention studies during initial teacher education and expert-novice differences in teacher noticing. We conclude with a discussion on perspectives for future research and needs for teacher education. Although teacher noticing research has remarkably increased over the last decades, there are clear limitations of current research, making it necessary to proliferate our understanding in teacher noticing both theoretically and empirically in the near future.