Teacher Noticing of Student Thinking: An Analysis of a Teacher’s Interpretation of Mathematics Problem Solving

Abstract

One area of particular difficulty in mathematics learning is the transition from arithmetic to algebra. In this paper, we report on results from a project whose goal was to produce mathematical tasks and strategies to support the development of holistic relational thinking in problem-solving among middle school students. Based on a teacher’s written journals, we focus on her noticing student work while solving problems provided in our project. Our results show that the teacher would benefit from paying closer attention to students who generally succeed in mathematical problem solving, and from strengthening her ability to interpret a wider range of possible representations, especially those that do not conform to the representation usually used.