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Prospective teachers’ analysis of a mathematics lesson: examining their claims and supporting evidence

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Christine Marie Phelps-Gregory at Central Michigan University
Christine Marie Phelps-Gregory
Sandy M. Spitzer at Towson University
Sandy M. Spitzer
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This study examined elementary and secondary prospective teachers’ (PTs’) abilities to analyze a classroom lesson in order to make claims about student thinking around specific mathematical learning goals based on relevant and revealing evidence. Previous research suggests PTs have some skills in analyzing evidence but apply them inconsistently. Our goal was to describe in more detail the strengths and weaknesses in PTs’ ability to analyze evidence of student thinking. Results indicate that PTs can make some appropriate claims about student learning in a lesson transcript, but more often make overly broad and general claims. PTs were able to support their claims with specific student work but often used poorly aligned evidence. PTs also often explicitly recognized the shortcomings of evidence from the lesson transcript, but then relied on that evidence to make claims about student thinking. Finally, PTs’ background, such as number of teacher education courses completed, does not appear to strongly influence their ability to make claims and support them with evidence, though secondary PTs were more likely to recognize the limitations of evidence than elementary PTs. These results have implications for teacher educators, pointing to the importance of designing interventions to help PTs look beyond the most visible and salient features of a lesson when analyzing student thinking.
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education (2021) 24:481–505
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-020-09469-x
1 3
Prospective teachers’ analysis ofamathematics lesson:
examining their claims andsupporting evidence
ChristineM.Phelps‑Gregory1 · SandyM.Spitzer2
Published online: 20 June 2020
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
This study examined elementary and secondary prospective teachers’ (PTs’) abilities to
analyze a classroom lesson in order to make claims about student thinking around specific
mathematical learning goals based on relevant and revealing evidence. Previous research
suggests PTs have some skills in analyzing evidence but apply them inconsistently. Our
goal was to describe in more detail the strengths and weaknesses in PTs’ ability to ana‑
lyze evidence of student thinking. Results indicate that PTs can make some appropriate
claims about student learning in a lesson transcript, but more often make overly broad and
general claims. PTs were able to support their claims with specific student work but often
used poorly aligned evidence. PTs also often explicitly recognized the shortcomings of evi‑
dence from the lesson transcript, but then relied on that evidence to make claims about
student thinking. Finally, PTs’ background, such as number of teacher education courses
completed, does not appear to strongly influence their ability to make claims and support
them with evidence, though secondary PTs were more likely to recognize the limitations of
evidence than elementary PTs. These results have implications for teacher educators, point‑
ing to the importance of designing interventions to help PTs look beyond the most visible
and salient features of a lesson when analyzing student thinking.
Keywords Prospective teachers· Teacher education· Analyzing teaching· Lesson
experiments· Analyzing evidence
Introduction
There is an emerging consensus among researchers and mathematics teacher educators that
prospective teachers need to learn to evaluate evidence of students’ mathematical under‑
standing (see, e.g. Hiebert et al. 2007; da Ponte and Chapman 2015). In particular, pro‑
spective teachers (PTs) need to be able to analyze classroom lessons to make claims about
student thinking based on evidence. Previous research has shown that PTs can learn to
evaluate evidence within targeted interventions (see, e.g. Santagata and Angelici 2010;
* Christine M. Phelps‑Gregory
phelp1cm@cmich.edu
1 Central Michigan University, Pearce 214, Mt.Pleasant, MI48858, USA
2 Towson University, 7800 York Road, Towson, MD21252, USA
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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