Teacher noticing: A systematic literature review of conceptualizations, research designs, and findings on learning to notice

Abstract

Teacher noticing has become a prominent construct in research on teacher education and professional development; however, the current state of research is quite diverse, with different theoretical foundations and a variety of research designs. The study described in this paper provides a systematic review of the literature on teacher noticing published over the past two decades. Based on a full-text analysis of 182 articles published in renowned databases and peer-reviewed Englishscholarly journals, the study reveals the dominance of a cognitive-psychological perspective of teacher noticing, especially in combination with qualitative studies. Although teacher noticing has been described as a holistic concept in many earlier articles, more recent studies from the last decade tend to differentiate teacher noticing into different facets. Overall, qualitative studies with small sample sizes are prevalent, which allows for fine-grained analysis but limits the generalizability of findings. This study highlights the limitations of the current discussion, such as the prevalence of teacher noticing mainly in the field of mathematics education and the low representation of work from parts of the world other than North America and Europe. In addition, the studies under consideration in this literature review are examined in depth in terms of their findings on improving teachers’ noticing through interventions and on comparisons between experts and novices, which allows for a discussion of the implications of learning to notice for teacher education and professional development.