Exploring the differences between what teachers notice individually and collaboratively

While much extant work on teacher noticing documents what teachers notice individually or in groups, teacher educators and researchers would benefit from understanding how teachers’ independent noticings may inform collaborative conversations to extend their noticing skills. In this paper, we describe an episode of teachers’ professional learning in which grade-level teams of elementary teachers engaged in a noticing task and were given opportunities to write independently about their noticings while watching a video of a mathematics lesson, then discuss their noticings collaboratively with colleagues. We first examined their independent written responses and then considered how the topic of their noticings and stances toward what they noticed in the video broadened through subsequent collaborative discussions. Findings indicate that when teachers engage in collaborative noticing, they take on more application-based stances than when they notice independently in writing. Additionally, findings suggest that collaborative noticing offers rich opportunities for engaging in pedagogical conversations with colleagues, which are likely to support teachers' professional development.