New study explores the influence of cultural framing on teacher noticing

Teachers’ noticing of students’ mathematical thinking plays a crucial role in teaching, which implies the skills of attending, interpreting, and responding to classroom events. From an intercultural perspective, teacher noticing is influenced by various cultural and societal factors, such as differing teacher education traditions or entrenched mathematics curriculum practices. Some studies have emphasized the importance of the cultural framing of mathematics teacher noticing.

For further intercultural noticing research, a study published online on May 21, 2025, in ECNU Review of Education examined potential cultural framing phenomena in pre-service teacher noticing based on samples from two universities within different educational systems— Alicante in Spain and Ludwigsburg in Germany.

The study used a cartoon-based vignette as the research tool, presenting a teaching–learning situation in which a student made mistakes while performing fraction operations known as Enzo’s vignette. A total of 37 pre-service teachers from Spain and 56 from Germany were invited to read the vignette and describe what aspects of the student’s thinking they noticed and how they interpreted the student’s understanding. The research team coded and analyzed their responses to compare the teacher noticing exhibited by participants from the two countries.

The study reveals similarities and differences in the interpretations and decisions advanced by the different pre-service teacher groups. “Generally, most pre-service teachers from both groups identified the characteristics of Enzo’s group understanding,” explains Dr. Pedro Ivars et al.

As for the differences, German primary school teachers (PTs) gave a larger variety of interpretations and tended to focus more on classroom management, whereas Spanish PTs mostly focused on the conceptual idea and aspects of the tasks. Researchers stated that the differences found in the way of interpreting and deciding can be partly related to the different foci of the teacher education program and seminar contexts of the universities.

The study has shown both similarities and slight differences within the groups of pre-service teachers from different cultural contexts when noticing the same teaching–learning situation. It also provided evidence of the interpretations and decision-making they made while engaging with the vignette, showing that noticing is a knowledge-based reasoning competence. “This result seems to emphasize the role of the vignette as a tool to assess and develop noticing, regardless of the cultural context,” Ivars et al. add.

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Reference
DOI: 10.1177/20965311251340736