PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Abstract algebra instructors’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking
Page: 428
Examining teaching practices in advanced mathematics is a relatively new field of scholarship despite a long history in K-12 settings. One important research area in this setting is documenting teacher noticing of students’ mathematical thinking. In this report, we extend this line of work to explore how undergraduate mathematics instructors attend to, interpret, and respond to student thinking (Jacob, Lamb, & Philipp, 2010) in abstract algebra. We surveyed 25 abstract algebra instructors with a range of experience. Overall, we found that our participants focused on student thinking to a greater degree than the elementary teachers in earlier studies. Further, their interpretations spanned two distinct foci: understanding of concepts and the formal representation system. Their proposed responses then reflected a wide span of teaching actions. This exploratory analysis unveiled a number of previously undocumented characteristics of instructor noticing at the undergraduate level which can serve to inform future research on teaching practices.