Towards Answering, <i>What Do We Know about Elementary Pre-Service Teachers’ Noticing Skills in Science</i>? A Pre-Requisite to Prepare Them to Teach Responsively in Science Classrooms

Abstract

A teachers' ability to notice and analyse the substance of student thinking, is an important feature of effective science teaching. To prepare new science teachers to attend to students' thinking, it is important for teacher educators to first understand what novice teachers notice in science classrooms, what they associate with the idea of noticing and in what ways their noticing skills can progress. To study novice teachers' noticing abilities, our study employs two different assessment tools, an open noticing assignment and a focused noticing task as pre and post assessments during a semester long science methods course. We report on a variety of noticing themes that highlight a wide variation in what the novice teachers perceive as important to notice in science classrooms. Pre-post analysis of these noticing themes suggests a shift in noticing from general classroom aspects towards noticing science specific aspects as science topics or concepts being discussed and students' ideas about those. Using a mixed methods analysis lens for both tools, we present various sophistication levels of teacher noticing. These levels not just serve as an indicator of the PSTs' noticing skills but also as a framework for educators to help PSTs develop responsive teaching strategies in elementary science classrooms.