Transferability of teacher noticing

Abstract

Numerous studies have reported positive outcomes of noticing interventions on the development of prospective mathematics teachers’ (PMTs) noticing of a range of important aspects of classroom instruction. Less is known, however, about whether noticing skills that are developed during an intervention transfer to support PMTs’ in-the-moment noticing during their own teaching practice. This study compared PMTs’ noticing while teaching a lesson during their student teaching internship of PMTs who participated in a noticing intervention to those who did not participate in the intervention to determine whether the two groups of PMTs noticed different aspects of instruction. The study documented very different noticing foci of the two groups of PMTs, suggesting that the noticing intervention did, in fact, support the PMTs’ in-the-moment noticing of aspects of instruction that aligned with the goals of the noticing intervention. The findings of the study suggest that noticing skills developed during a university-based noticing intervention can transfer to support novice teachers’ in-the-moment noticing during their classroom practice.