Case 5: The “Hook Method”: Exploring a Teacher Candidate’s Journey to Use Purposeful Questions in an Early Field Experience

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’s [NCTM] document Principles to Actions (2014) identified posing purposeful questions as an effective teaching practice. Posing purposeful questions (PPQ) is defined as “using questions to assess and advance students’ reasoning and sense making about important mathematical ideas and relationships” (NCTM, 2014, p. 10). This practice is challenging because it requires teachers to not only know “what questions to ask the student in the moment” (Grossman et al., 2009, p. 280) but also how to interpret and respond to student thinking (Shaughnessy & Boerst, 2018a). To support teacher candidates (TCs) in PPQ, mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) have long used a variety of clinical practices such as simulations, interviews, and field placements (Brendefur & Frykholm, 2000; Moyer & Milewicz, 2002; Shaughnessy et al., 2019; Weiland et al., 2014). This case dives into one TC’s journey in developing their way to engage in purposeful questioning in a mediated clinical experience in a university foundational mathematics course.