Theses and Dissertations Collection

This study addresses the questions: (a) How does teacher noticing affect decision making around selecting and implementing classroom tasks?, and (b) How does engaging in video club meetings focused on teacher noticing affect teachers’ ability to identify and utilize pedagogical strategies which promote student thinking? A single-case study design was used to address these questions, as the project represented a bounded case of three teachers comprising the entire secondary mathematics teaching staff of a rural school district. Teacher noticing of student thinking was the primary contextual lens for examining teacher change during the study. Data sources included observations, interviews, videos of video club meetings, classroom artifacts, and researcher field notes. Individual teacher data was coded and patterns were identified which were then used to create categories. These categories were then examined across the three teachers for the entire case of Sometown School District. The pertinent findings of this study were all teachers demonstrated: (a) increased levels of teacher noticing of student thinking using van Es’ Teacher Noticing framework (van Es, 2011, p. 139), (b) recognition of qualities within tasks which lead to increased student thinking, (c) increased ability to develop and adapt tasks for classroom application, (d) improvement in facilitation of discourse during task-based lessons, (e) increased ability to anticipate and sequence student strategies to promote discourse, (f) shifts in teachers’ curricular vision, (g) evolving beliefs regarding classroom culture, (h) transformations in Pedagogical Design Capacity, and (i) changes in perceptions regarding collaboration.