Teacher attention leading to student inquiry: A case study of an emergent 5 th grade magnetism unit Colleen Gillespie University of Maryland NARST 2011 Research supported by NSF DUE

Attending to what end? 2 Professional vision (Goodwin, 1994) has been used in the mathematics noticing literature to characterize what teachers attend to. Jacobs et al. (2010) describe “Professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking” which includes: (1) attending to specific ideas (2) interpreting those ideas (3) deciding how to respond Where’s the broader vision of mathematics and its disciplinary practices?

Attending to what end? 3 Sherin & van Es (2009) describe two components of professional vision: Selective attention (1) Actor? (teacher, student, or other) (2) Topic? (management, climate, pedagogy, or math thinking) Knowledge-based reasoning (1)Stance (describe, evaluate, or interpret) (2)Strategy used (restate student idea, investigate meaning of student idea, or synthesize across student ideas) How can we tell when teachers are attending to a broader mathematical vision?

Mathematical Horizon Ball (1993) describes the importance of attending to student thinking in conjunction with the “mathematical horizon” and how it can encourage sophisticated disciplinary practices. 4 Can attending to the scientific horizon encourage scientific practices and inquiry?

5 Example 1: Do magnets work underwater? Kayla’s prediction on Day 1: “Magnets probably won't work in the water because I think water's kind of stronger than air”

6 Kayla: We put the magnets close in the water, and they still didn't attract DAY 1

7 Kayla: We put the magnets close in the water, and they still didn't attract DAY 1DAY 3

8 Kayla: We put the magnets close in the water, and they still didn't attract Kayla: My thoughts have sort of changed. When we first started learning about magnets, I said magnets don’t attract underwater. But then we put the marks in the bucket, and now I’m thinking water probably doesn’t affect magnets. DAY 1DAY 3DAY 4 Kayla coordinates theory and evidence (e.g. Kuhn, 1989; NRC, 1996, 2000, 2007)

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Ms. J attends to and explicitly highlights Kayla’s coordination of theory and evidence. 10

11 Example 2: The Nail and the Paperclip

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16 Kyle’s reasoning becomes more mechanistic (e.g. Russ, Scherr, Hammer, and Mikeska, 2008)

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18 Ms. J presses Kyle for mechanism and attends to and subtly highlights his mechanistic reasoning

Ms. J attends to student thinking AND the scientific horizon Highlights certain epistemic practices (e.g. mechanistic reasoning and coordination of theory and evidence Supports and encourages these practices 19

Conclusions and Implications Teachers attend to student thinking based in part on their vision of what science is. Ms. J encouraged important epistemic practices by highlighting them for the class. Researchers should continue to think about teachers’ attention to student thinking in context of a broader vision of the discipline. 20