Preservice Teachers’ Competencies to Select and Sequence Students’ Solution Strategies for Productive Whole-Class Discussions

It can be difficult for teachers to make in-the-moment decisions about which solution strategies to cognitively challenging tasks should be included in the whole-class discussion (Stein, Engle, Smith, & Hughes, 2008). Teachers can purposefully select and sequence the solution strategies to help create a whole-class discussion that promotes the mathematical learning goal. An intervention was implemented in a middle school methods course that aimed to understand preservice teachers’ (PSTs’) competencies in formulating rationales for their selecting and sequencing choices. Results from the intervention suggest that PSTs’ sequencing rationales can be grouped into three categories.