Developing an Interview Module to Support Secondary PST’s Noticing of Student Thinking

Effective mathematics teaching involves eliciting and interpreting student thinking, and then using students’ current understandings as a basis for instruction. Research indicates these skills are not innate but can be acquired through structured experiences. In this article, we describe the development and implementation of an interview module aimed at supporting secondary preservice teachers’ ability to elicit and use evidence of student thinking. Analysis of preservice teachers’ noticing of student thinking across components of the interview module demonstrated positive benefits of the assignment. We share our design considerations and results, and offer potential adaptations to the module for other mathematics methods instructors interested in using the module to develop secondary preservice teachers’ ability to notice student thinking.