Investigating middle school mathematics teachers' noticing of students' mathematical thinking

This research aims to investigate middle school mathematics teacher's noticing of children's mathematical thinking skills and development of these skills. Firstly the level of teacher's noticing with reflective interviews (before and after lessons interview) and in teaching processes were examined. Secondly, video clubs on clasroom practices and reflective interviews were used to elicit how they affected teachers' noticing skill and how they are reflected in teaching process. The research utilizes action research. Study was carried out with four middle school mathematics was performed in the second semester of 2017-2018 academic year and distributed in total of a 14 week period. During the data collection process, reflective interviews with teachers, observation of the teaching process and video clubs were conducted. In this context, three teachers were observed six times (12 hours), while one of them was observed seven times (14 hours). Reflective interviews were held with teachers before and after each observed lesson. In the process, video club studies were conducted six times in total where teachers' own teaching processes were evaluated. Reflective interviews and observations were analyzed in line with the framework that developed for determining teachers' noticing and children's mathematical thinking skills in literature. The study results indicate that, there is an improvement in teachers' noticing. This development involves a shift from teacher to student, from teacher pedagogy to student's mathematical thinking in dimension of actor and subject in reflective interviews and teaching process. Another result of the research is that teachers' noticing are influenced by their beliefs, knowledge and experiences. However, it has been revealed that teachers' knowledge of content, pedagogy and student thinking have an important role in teachers' noticing. Inline with the findings, in order to interpret and understand students' thinking, it can be said that teachers need to improve their knowledge. As a result, it was observed that teachers' beliefs, views and knowledge can be changed with reflective interviews and video clubswhere they can evaluate their own teaching processes. Due to this change, it was concluded that there was an improvement in teachers' noticing to students' mathematical thinking skills. KEYWORDS: Teacher noticing, Student's mathematical thinking, Middle school mathematics teacher