Supporting the development of future mathematics teachers’ professional noticing competence: Practice and research

Abstract

Professional noticing competence is seen as a component of the mathematics teacher professional practice and, therefore, it has been identified as an important teaching competence to be developed in teacher training programs. The GIDIMAT group of the University of Alicante (Spain) has focused on investigating the development of this competence in pre-service pre-school and primary school teachers and prospective secondary school mathematics teachers. For the development of this competence, specific learning environments are designed within the teacher training programs. In this paper, an example of a learning environment and the main results obtained related to the competence development are presented. The article is divided into five sections. In the first, studies focused on the competence of noticing students’ mathematical thinking and its relationship with the domains of knowledge have been reviewed. In the second, a review of studies focused on the competence development is shown. In the third section, the methodology used by the GIDIMAT group through research cycles in the design of learning environments is presented. Moreover, the characteristics of these learning environments and vignettes used are discussed. The fourth section contains the results obtained related to the characterization of degrees of the competence development. Finally, some implications and further research are discussed.