Case 2: An Embedded Clinical Experience Focused on Noticing Children’s Thinking

For this case, I share a semester-long clinical experience embedded into elementary preservice teacher coursework that focused on teacher candidates (TC) analysis of student work. The clinical experience, referred to as the Pen Pal Project (PPP), involves in-person meetings, written exchanges and culminates in a mock parent conference.

In their 2020 literature review studying K–8 math content courses, Appova and Taylor (2020) discuss the rise in popularity of PPPs and the development of TC knowledge that occurs throughout such experiences. Even early mentions of PPPs between TCs and elementary students note their clinical usefulness; Crespo (2003a,b) explained that her PPP “provided an authentic experience in that it paralleled and simulated three important aspects of mathematics teaching practice: posing tasks, analyzing pupils’ work, and responding to pupils’ ideas” (p. 246). This process of making sense of students’ work and deciding on an appropriate next step is in line with Jacob and colleagues’ (2010) framework of teacher noticing of children’s mathematical thinking. I have found that integrating the noticing framework into a PPP provides a scaffold for their clinical practice as TCs engage with eliciting and using evidence to respond to student thinking.