While much extant work on teacher noticing documents what teachers notice individually or in groups, teacher educators and researchers would benefit from understanding how teachers’ independent noticings may inform collaborative conversations to extend their noticing skills. In this paper, we describe an episode of teachers’ professional learning in which grade-level teams of elementary teachers engaged in a noticing task and were given opportunities to write independently about their noticings while watching a video of a mathematics lesson, then discuss their noticings collaboratively with colleagues. We first examined their independent written responses and then considered how the topic of their noticings and stances toward what they noticed in the video broadened through subsequent collaborative discussions. Findings indicate that when teachers engage in collaborative noticing, they take on more application-based stances than when they notice independently in writing. Additionally, findings suggest that collaborative noticing offers rich opportunities for engaging in pedagogical conversations with colleagues, which are likely to support teachers' professional development.

This study investigates the factors influencing an elementary teacher's pedagogical actions as she facilitated whole-class discussions across mathematics and an integrated English language arts (ELA)/science lesson. Facilitating these discussions is a complex task requiring numerous pedagogical decisions. Using a comparative case-study design, we analyzed the pedagogical judgment of one first-grade teacher using video-stimulated reflection. Our findings reveal that Veronica's actions were primarily shaped by her instructional goals and a pedagogical responsibility related to positioning students as contributors in dialogic talk. Although she consistently employed talk moves to elicit viewpoints and orient students to peers' ideas across both discussions, the enactment of questioning varied due to different instructional goals: process-oriented in ELA/science versus knowledge-oriented in mathematics. Findings reveal how a teacher navigated competing pedagogical responsibilities and social goals, with implications for teacher education programs focused on developing pedagogical judgment that balances content demands with social goals in classroom discussions.

This article explores how elementary teachers understand the purpose and practice of classroom discussion across English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. Research suggests that classroom discussions have a positive impact on student engagement, critical thinking, and conceptual understanding. Furthermore, studies have illuminated the interconnectedness between how teachers think about discussions and how they lead them. Using epistemic network analysis, this article investigates variations between how elementary teachers conceptualize classroom discussion in different content areas. Findings suggest that teachers' conceptualizations of high-quality discussion differ across ELA and mathematics. Understanding these variations may help both researchers and professional development providers.

Few studies have considered the relationship between what families recognize as mathematical and their mathematical identities despite attention to forms of informal mathematical learning. The trends in what goes unrecognized as mathematical for families reflect larger societal expectations about who and what can count as mathematics, rendering mathematical practices at home invisible. Limited views of mathematics as centered in school and tied to algorithms lead many rich and informal practices to go unrecognized by families, contributing to negative images of their mathematical selves. This study looks at the practices and activities mothers engage in with their young children that involve mathematics, specifically focusing on how they frame mathematics and their activity within it.

In the United States, teachers are often expected to use student assessment data to inform their instructional decisions. This study explores how teachers’ collective reflections on students’ mathematical thinking are influenced by the specific contexts of their classroom, school, and current events like the COVID-19 pandemic. The study uses audio recordings of a group of elementary teachers’ reflections on student thinking through Cognitive Interview Reports. The results highlight how teachers’ reflections on student data are heavily influenced by the shifting contexts of what is important in the world of teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This ultimately shaped what the teachers were able to pay attention to in student data and what they identified as possible in their future practice.

While observation research strives to capture the diverse experiences of participants, a researcher’s interpretation is often foregrounded in the work. As a result, those observed and how they interpret the meaning of their actions can fade into the background. I argue for a shift in traditional models of observation to include an observation debrief to unite the purpose of interview and observation while centering the participant’s perspective through a more immediate reflection of a participant’s observed experience. I describe the benefit of an observation debrief through a narrative account of one participant in a study about parents’ mathematical interactions with young children.

Engaging students in mathematical argumentation supports language development and conceptual understanding because students use verbal and written language in coordination with mathematical representations to notice patterns, make claims, and create and revise explanations. This study adds to the limited research base on how teachers learn to facilitate discussions specifically aimed to develop students' capacities to engage in argumentation. We analyze teachers' sensemaking about supporting argumentation in the classroom through their participation in an adaptive professional development (PD) design. The PD was embedded in two elementary schools with upper grade teachers which enabled them to engage in iterative cycles of investigation and enactment within their own classrooms. Through collaborative lesson design and inquiry into students' experiences, teachers attended to the language students produced as they tried to formulate conjectures and produce explanations and the classroom participation structures that supported them. Our results suggest shifts in how teachers understood their role. Both cases speak to the complexities teachers face as they try to realize the recommendations for enhancing language learning and provide insight into what "rich" discourse means.

How past research considers the influence of parents on their children’s mathematical understanding does not often focus on the experience and intent of the parents themselves. In a crosscase analysis, I address how two mothers’ experience shapes their mathematical positioning and the resulting interactions with their children in the subject. The attention on parents in mathematics takes on particular gendered roles, which is not often considered in research. There are more complex factors that shape how parents see and interact with mathematics. This study begins to show what alternative possibilities exist for engagement by U.S. parents in the content that still positively support children’s early learning.