Teacher noticing from a sociopolitical perspective: Reflections from the sixth reading group meeting

Posted byPete WrightPosted inReading groupTags:, , , , , , ,

Contributors: Colin Jackson, Cristina Mio, Azadeh Neman, Katie O’Brien, Hilary Povey, Pete Wright

The reading group is for those wishing to engage with research literature on TMSJ and discuss its relevance to practice. The sixth online reading group meeting took place on 11th January 2024.  We chose to discuss the 2021 paper: Teacher noticing from a sociopolitical perspective: the FAIR framework for anti-deficit noticing by Nicole Louie, Aditya Adiredja and Naomi Jessup:

We began by breaking into smaller groups to discuss the following questions:

  1. Have you experienced these frames in your own context and are you aware of any other frames that might influence teachers’ noticing? 
  2. How do the findings of the paper relate to your own experiences and classroom practice? 
  3. Would you do anything different in future having read this article? 

We were joined for the second half of the meeting by two of the three co-authors, Nicole Louie (below) and Aditya Adiredja, who helped facilitate a thought-provoking discussion of the issues raised in the paper, prompted by questions and comments from the groups.

Nicole Louie’s bio: Nicole Louie’s research is centrally concerned with issues of inclusion, exclusion, and belonging in schools. She is especially interested in how people’s experiences of these phenomena are shaped by systemic racism and intersecting systems of oppression. Her current project seeks to explore participatory design research as a tool for advancing racial justice in middle school mathematics, centering youth of color and their families as co-researchers and co-designers. Her previous (and still ongoing) work has focused on how teachers of mathematics both reproduce and challenge narrow, exclusionary views of mathematical intelligence, as they intersect with racial hierarchies.

Here are some reflections on the paper and the meeting from those who attended …

Cristina Mio (Chair; Teacher Educator – University of Glasgow)

I came across this article while teaching in one of the Initial Teacher Education programmes at my university.  I really enjoyed reading it and discussing it with the ITE students. I remember that a few students noticed a parallel between ‘closing the racial achievement gap’ in the US, mentioned on page 97 of the article, and ‘closing the attainment gap’ in Scotland.  The student teachers wondered if, with the best of intentions, they might unconsciously be adopting a frame that leads to deficit noticing when interacting with children impacted by poverty.  Similarly, this paper reminded me that, in my own practice as a teacher educator, I am certainly working within frames I am not even aware of, and it takes a conscious effort to reflect and to grow awareness on what I notice in my student teachers and on how I respond to it. 

It was a pleasure listening to Nicole Louie and Aditya Adiredja, two of the three authors of the paper, explain how this article took shape, and make links to other projects and ideas they are pursuing.  During the meeting, we touched both on the practical implications this article might have for teachers’ practice and on the theoretical aspects of the paper.  We heard different ways the participants and the authors made sense of separating the ‘A – Attending’ (identifying what is important) and ‘I – Interpreting’ (assigning meaning) steps of the AIR framework for noticing (where R stands for ‘Responding’).  I found this particular discussion very interesting and cognitively challenging, and, as always, I left the reading meeting with lots of things I want to mull over.  

Colin Jackson

This paper which focussed on the context of racism in the US reminded me very strongly of the experience of working-class children in England and more particularly of that of black working-class children.  All too often many teachers focus on the behaviour of working-class children rather than what they can do (see Rachel Marks, for example, for the differential treatment of working-class and middle-class children by the same teacher).  My own doctoral research highlighted the hard work done by some teachers to counteract the prevailing pressures in the education system to treat working-class children as being deficient in many aspects of learning.  I believe treating working-class children as deficient is not some aberrant function of the education system but a necessary one to ensure the continuing success of the those deemed worthy of success, i.e. the middle classes.  A truly just education system would rejoice in the success of all children not just that of the favoured middle classes.

Azadeh Neman

I found the paper quite thought provoking, as although I have not witnessed deficit noticing in achievement, minorities are our highest achievers usually, when it comes to my school, I have certainly seen it, or may have been guilty of it, in judging behaviour. It is also true that we try and force a certain way of expression in classroom, this may be more due to time pressure, exam structure that leaves no room for creativity, and also something I am meeting in another book, our own university and secondary school experience. I have started reading the book “Advanced Mathematical Thinking” and it also argues that throughout schooling we never introduce students to mathematical thinking process, but just processes. We also ban intuition for good and bad reasons.

Having said all of this, a lot of what the teacher does in those courses is just good practice which will be beneficial to all students. However, as we discussed, sometimes we need to point out the error in a work, though in a manner that encourages discussion. One problem I found with the paper is that the way methods are phrased may allow for some to construe it very differently from the essence of them. 

Katie O-Brien

At this reading group meeting, I enjoyed talking to colleagues about our struggles to challenge deficit mindsets in ourselves and our students. We discussed how difficult it is to pursue anti-deficit noticing within systems that severely restrict teacher autonomy and we also got into the nitty-gritty of “noticing” – asking questions about how to distinguish between “attending” and “interpreting” in our experiences of teaching and learning.

In the later discussion with Nicole and Adi, I really valued the authors’ emphasis on working against perfectionism, giving teachers space to (re)discover the joys of teaching, and developing strong communities of practice (among teachers and students). I felt that both Nicole and Adi embodied these strategies and practices within our conversation, supporting a conversation that was warm, inclusive, and exceptionally hopeful.

Hilary Povey

One of the themes that emerged in our discussions was the extent to which the anti-deficit noticing understandings and practices shown by Oscar and explored in the article were sustainable in much larger classes.  Various practices to help support anti-deficit noticing were shared.  One which I particularly liked was the mantra: mistakes are expected, inspected and respected in this mathematics classroom. As part of this conversation, discussion about mixed attainment teaching was contrasted with the very wide-spread use of grouping by prior attainment, with the latter heavily implicated in deficit discourse.  Mention was made of Rachel Mark’s work (see, for example, Marks, 2013) to illustrate this. I have found Nancy Barclay’s description of what lower attainers can bring to mixed attainment learning contexts inspiring (Barclay, 2021).

We also discussed what ‘noticing’ might mean.  On this, I have been really struck by the work of John Mason (and others in the Open University mathematics education team years ago).  The invitation is always to “say what you see”.  It is surprisingly difficult for us as teachers to stick with this and not to add in simultaneously our interpretation of what is going on.  Of course, any ‘seeing’ is always personally situated and can never be otherwise but (initially) sticking with just a description seems to open up a space for more reflective subsequent interpretation.  Another benefit which was pointed out by one of the contributors to the discussion was that, by consciously articulating simply what one has seen, it makes later reflecting anew about what was going on and communicating and sharing this with others more possible.

References:

Pete Wright, Teacher Educator, University of Dundee

This was a really thought-provoking paper that highlighted the importance of teachers critically reflecting on how they interpret students’ responses, particularly errors that they make, in the classroom. Having the authors join the second half of the meeting provided an excellent opportunity to discuss similarities and differences between the contexts in the US, the UK, and other parts of the word, in which equity-minded educators work alongside teachers to promote anti-deficit noticing. I was particularly interested in the discussions around the need to attend to what you see or hear in the classroom before moving on to interpreting these events and ultimately towards responding appropriately. It strikes me that delaying the interpretation phase can allow the teacher to become more conscious of the evidence on which interpretations are made. This has the potential to promote critical reflection as it provides the opportunity, after the event, to consider alternative interpretations that might have been possible (based on the evidence that was available at the time) and to share and discuss these with others.

Published by Pete Wright

Senior Lecturer in Education University of Dundee