The relationship between prospective teachers’ mathematics knowledge for teaching and their ability to notice student thinking

In this paper, we investigate the links between prospective elementary teachers’ (PTs’) ability to notice student mathematical thinking, their mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) and their ability to decompose learning goals into component conceptual parts (Morris et al., 2009 ). Previously, researchers have proposed theoretical connections between MKT and teachers’ professional noticing, but empirical support for these relationships has been limited. Results of this mixed-methods study indicate that PTs who scored higher on an MKT assessment outperformed their peers in terms of attending to student thinking but had similar performance in terms of interpreting that thinking. However, PTs who were able to conceptually unpack a learning goal into subconstructs performed higher-quality interpretations of student thinking. We hypothesize that the skill of decomposing learning goals may allow PTs to apply their mathematics knowledge to successfully interpret student work. These results have implications for understanding how noticing and MKT may develop in relation with each other.