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Meaningful discourse in the mathematics classroom involves creating a learning community that empowers students to articulate their reasoning and make sense of the contributions of their peers while advancing the learning of mathematics for the entire class. This study assessed the degree to which secondary mathematics (Grades 7–12) teacher candidates incorporated discourse into their lessons and the factors influencing their decisions. An explanatory mixed methods design was used, in which data were collected sequentially. Lesson videos were analyzed, followed by interviews of teacher candidates with high-discourse lessons. This study found that participants showed significant growth in their use of effective teaching practices from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester, including mathematics discourse. The interviews revealed four contributing factors: intentional effort, learning experiences, professional relationships, and pedagogical knowledge. Understanding the experiences of teacher candidates during their own learning of mathematics, their mathematical identities, and beliefs about mathematics could help generate knowledge regarding the implementation of mathematics discourse and other reform-based practices in teacher instruction. 

Consider dimensions of equity to enact more responsive mathematics teaching in the elementary classroom. 

This study examined potential bias with respect to perceived gender and race in pre-service teachers’ professional noticing of children’s mathematical thinking. The goal of the study was to explore emerging connections between professional noticing and equity concerns in mathematics education and discover the extent to which such noticing may be influenced by a student’s race and gender. A sample of 151 preservice teachers participated, and our findings suggest that bias tends to emerge in the interpreting phase of professional noticing; however, such emergence was not statistically significant when compared across the perceived race and gender of the students. 

Teacher noticing and related variants have ascended in prominence among the mathematics education research community. While the component processes of such noticing (e.g., attending, interpreting and deciding) have been cast as interrelated, capturing the relationships amongst the components has been more elusive. We focused on the component processes of teacher noticing with particular attention given to interrelatedness. Specifically, we were interested in how and the extent to which the component processes of professional noticing (attending, interpreting, deciding) are thematically connected when preservice elementary teachers are engaged in an assessment approximating professional noticing. We refer to this thematic linkage in this paper as coherence. Our findings suggest a complex interplay between the creation and continuation of themes when enacting professional noticing, and the quality of such noticing. 

This paper examines how 17 secondary mathematics teacher candidates (TCs) in four university teacher preparation programs implemented technology in their classrooms to teach for conceptual understanding in online, hybrid, and face to face classes during COVID-19. Using the Professional Development: Research, Implementation, and Evaluation (PrimeD) framework, TCs, classroom mentor teachers, field experience supervisors, and university faculty formed a Networked Improvement Community (NIC) to discuss a commonly agreed upon problem of practice and a change idea to implement in the classroom. Through Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles, participants documented their improvement efforts and refinements to the change idea and then reported back to the NIC at the subsequent monthly meeting. The Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework (TPACK) and the TPACK levels rubric were used to examine how teacher candidates implemented technology for Mathematics conceptual understanding. The Mathematics Classroom Observation Protocol for Practices (MCOP2) was used to further examine how effective mathematics teaching practices (e.g., student engagement) were implemented by TCs. MCOP2 results indicated that TCs increased their use of effective mathematics teaching practices. However, growth in TPACK was not significant. A relationship between TPACK and MCOP2 was not evident, indicating a potential need for explicit focus on using technology for mathematics conceptual understanding.