Portraits of teacher noticing during orchestration of learning experiences in the mathematics classrooms

Abstract

The call for teachers to engage students to learn mathematics through learning experiences (Tyler, 1949) is not through a change in content coverage; but instead, on the way Mathematics is taught and learnt (Ministry of Education-Singapore, 2012). Learning experiences were thus included as part of the current mathematics syllabus to provide opportunities for students to engage in mathematical processes, and to “influence the ways teachers teach and students learn”, so that the key objectives of mathematics education in Singapore could be achieved (Ministry of Education-Singapore, 2012, p. 20). They are stated in the form “students should have opportunities…” to signal the type of activities expected for each topic. However, as Tyler (1949) had highlighted, different students may experience these tasks differently even though the tasks are set up in the same way. This, according to Tyler (1949), presents the challenge of setting up the learning experiences to orchestrate learning. <br>Although the intentions and even the descriptions of learning experiences are given, teachers have the autonomy to design, select, and adapt tasks to provide these experiences for students. To realise the learning experiences as intended by the tasks, teachers would also need to orchestrate the implementation of the tasks in their mathematics classrooms (Tyler, 1949). This is deliberate work, and while most of the current support given to teachers is to help them make sense of the learning experiences, how teachers can orchestrate learning experiences to teach mathematics remains largely unexplored. Furthermore, given that what teachers notice—attend to, and how they interpret and respond to students’ reasoning (Sherin, Jacobs, & Philipp, 2011)—during the implementation of tasks is critical if we were to develop students’ competencies in the mathematical processes, it is therefore crucial for mathematics educators to investigate what teachers notice when orchestrating these learning experiences.