Prospective Teachers' Attentions in Their Enacted Number Talks in the Field Placement Classroom: What Do They Potentially Tell Us about Number Talks As Core Practice?

Teachers are expected to enact ambitious instruction which is complex and challenging. Core practices can support teachers to engage in ambitious instruction. Building on prior core practices research, we focus on the core practice of leading a discussion. Number talks can be thought of as an instructional routine that offer one way to begin to learn the core practice of leading a discussion. In this study, we explore how novice teachers perceive teaching in their number talks drawing on teacher noticing to understand (1) what prospective teachers (PSTs) attend to in their enacted number talks in mathematics classrooms and (2) how their attentions are related to the core practice of leading a discussion. We collected 19 PSTs' written reflections on their enacted number talks in the field placement classroom. We analyzed the written reflection using codes from studies on core practices. We found seven aspects (e.g., valuing mathematical mistakes, debugging students' mistakes, having difficulty in understanding students' explanations, pressing for clarification, revoicing, validating students' ideas, and representing students' strategies on the board) to which the PSTs attended as they led a discussion in their enacted number talks. These aspects were centered around three themes. We also found that many PSTs focused more attention on two aspects (valuing mathematical mistakes and pressing for clarification).