Student Teachers' and Experienced Teachers' Professional Vision of Students' Understanding of the Rational Number Concept

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate differences in student teachers' and experienced teachers' professional vision in natural settings and to elicit clues of the relation of in-the-moment noticing and instruction quality of students' understanding of rational number concept. Rational number concept challenges both students and teachers because of natural number bias that learning of rational numbers is vulnerable to. Accurate professional vision and adequate instructions are needed to enhance students' understanding of rational number concept. Mobile eye-tracking technique enables video recording of natural teaching situations from a teacher's perspective with more specific information of teacher's in-the-moment noticing. Combined with cued retrospective reporting, this approach can gather more explicit evidence of teachers' professional vision and instructions. Results indicated that both student teachers and experienced teachers attended to mathematical and fraction-related aspect similarly but differed in interpreting and instructing students' fraction understanding. Student teachers made more advanced interpretations but their instructions were less adequate, whereas among experienced teachers, it was just the opposite. Furthermore, student teachers made more attempts to shared attention when using fraction understanding non-supporting instructions, whereas experienced teachers' attempts to shared attention were related to fraction understanding supporting instructions. Results indicate student teachers' difficulty to transfer pedagogical content knowledge from noticing to actions and experienced teachers to have more enhanced in-the-moment professional vision and its application to teaching. Practical implications for teacher training as well as methodological decisions of in-the-moment professional vision studies in natural settings are discussed.