Abstract
This article introduces the construct of teacher noticing, situates it in research on second language teacher cognition, and considers its implications for research on second language teacher training, acknowledging socio-cognitive perspectives on language learning and teaching. We then present a mixed-methods observational study that utilized quantitative and qualitative approaches to study novice teacher noticing in the context of teaching demonstrations carried out as part of eight participants’ undergraduate course requirements. Teacher noticing was defined as awareness of features of second language classroom interaction that may influence student learning. The goals of the study were to: (1) assess our approach to studying teacher noticing, (2) examine the interactional contexts in which teacher noticing occurs, and (3) identify themes in novice teacher noticing. The results indicated that the stimulated recall methodology used was, not surprisingly, sensitive to the time delay between teaching demonstrations and recall interviews. Nonetheless, all participants reported noticing. Teacher noticing occurred primarily when the participants were teaching to the whole class and tended to involve the difference between plans vs. reality, noticing as a trigger for action, and individual learner contributions. The discussion weighs the strengths and limitations of this study and explains how a focus on the significance that teachers place on classroom interactions they become aware of during lessons may benefit research on language teacher education.
I Introduction
Most often the flow of classroom life is actually under the surface. What is observable is the rim of a socio-cognitive coral reef! (Breen, 1985, p. 149)
From the perspective of 30 years of research into second language (L2) teaching and learning, Breen’s words take on new meaning. ‘Flow’ evokes motivational dynamics, ‘socio-cognitive’ implies an alternative approach to second language acquisition, and what researchers might consider to be ‘observable’ has undergone expansion. Yet, the core message conveyed in this seminal article remains essential. Drawing inspiration from Malinoski’s ethnographic research, Breen had argued that the culture of language classrooms needs to be understood not in terms of what is outwardly observable but rather by what is invested in them, namely as a context for ‘subjective and intersubjective realities which are worked out, changed, and maintained’ (p. 142). He called on researchers to examine the significance that teachers and learners place on moments of classroom interaction, and to not merely describe, but also try to explain them. In this regard, what is significant may include teachers’ in-situ thoughts, rationales, and actions as they unfold during teaching practice.
In this article, we present teacher noticing as one approach to investigating Breen’s coral reef, access to which can inform research on L2 teacher education. In the field of math and science education, researchers have recently employed various methods to investigate what individuals notice while teaching, in order to provide insight into professional development (e.g. Sherin, Jacobs, & Philipp, 2011). Our interest lies with L2 teacher noticing, here defined as teachers’ awareness of features of second language classroom interaction that may influence student learning. This preliminary study of L2 teacher noticing aims to illustrate its value as a socio-cognitive construct relevant to several key issues within contemporary approaches to second language pedagogy. Despite certain limitations of this study, and although we must ultimately concede that a focus on teacher noticing may leave some aspects of L2 classroom life hidden from view, we believe that teacher noticing could complement other approaches to research on L2 teaching.
II Literature review
1 Second language teacher cognition
Conceptualizations of second language teacher cognition (Borg, 2006) offer a broad starting point for mapping various factors that may influence language teachers’ thoughts and actions during teaching. Borg’s framework identifies: (1) experiences during schooling, (2) professional coursework, and (3) contextual factors, within which classroom practice (including practice teaching) is nested, as potential influences on a teacher’s thinking. Among these components, of particular interest is how contextual factors shape novice teacher cognition (in the form of noticing) during practice teaching (e.g. teaching demonstrations performed as part of an undergraduate or graduate course). Because the teaching practicum has become a standard part of language teacher education (Gebhard, 2009), it is arguably important to understand how various forms of teacher cognition develop within such spaces. Of course, it should be recognized that other elements suggested by Borg’s framework like professional teaching experience might affect teacher noticing and these are considered later.
The framework Borg set forth partly ascribes the influence of classroom practice on teacher cognition to conscious reflection (2006, p. 283). In general, reflective teaching is associated with many different techniques which may serve the purpose of fostering teacher development. For example, keeping class journals, participating in peer observations, or engaging with the professional literature constitute methods of reflecting on teaching. Reflection may occur at various levels and its scope may also vary, from issues concerning classroom techniques to those involving the social milieu in which teaching takes place (Crookes, 2003). Furthermore, recent attention has been drawn in the field of second language teaching to Schön’s (1983) distinction between professionals’ ‘reflection-in-action’ and ‘reflection-on-action’ (see, for example, Bailey, 2012; Burton, 2009). The former occurs during practice, as when teachers use knowledge to deal with problems as they arise on the spot, while the latter happens some time after a class is taught and may involve consideration of a teacher’s rationales for his or her actions (Farrell, 2015). Given their distinctive nature, it seems likely that these two types of reflection might mediate the impact of contextual factors on teacher cognition in rather different ways. Thus, it is important that empirical studies investigate both.
2 Teacher noticing in math and science education
The teacher noticing framework introduced by Van Es and Sherin (2002, 2008; see also Sherin & Van Es, 2003) involves three components. First, teachers identify important classroom events. Through practice, teachers become skilled at attending to specific details of classroom interaction that may have significant consequences for learning. Second, they reason about events using their knowledge of context. Here, context refers to subject matter or local knowledge crucial to how teachers interpret events. Third, they connect events with pedagogic principles. One difference between novice and expert teachers is that the latter are adept at categorizing events in ways that help them apply teaching principles to specific cases.
This framework has been used in a number of studies on math and science teachers (for an overview, see Sherin, Jacobs, & Philipp, 2011). Here, we briefly review three such reports, to give readers a sense of what this research investigated and how. Van Es and Sherin (2002) designed an experimental study with 12 pre-service math and science teachers who were asked to write reflections on pre-recorded lessons teaching with or without a video analysis support tool intended to facilitate noticing. Levels of teacher noticing increased only for the group using the tool, thus showing that effective treatments can be developed to enhance noticing in the form of written reflections. Later, Van Es and Sherin (2008) reported on an observational study with 7 elementary school teachers who participated in multiple sessions to discuss classroom video-recordings. The purpose of these sessions, again, was to foster teacher noticing. The results revealed distinct patterns in teacher noticing, which was described as broad or narrow, depending on the range of topics teachers commented on during the joint sessions. Russ and Luna (2013) adopted a somewhat different approach in a recent case study of one experienced high school biology teacher. In that study, the teacher used a wearable camera to selectively record moments of classroom activity during student presentations and labs. These recordings were then used in stimulated recall interviews. The researchers linked teacher noticing to teacher framings, or understandings of what is happening in the classroom, illustrating the two-way relationship between noticing and framing.
Though each of these studies focused on teacher noticing at different levels of expertise and deployed different methods of capturing teacher noticing, they are similar in that they attempted to lend insight into teacher cognition based on actual classroom processes. It is worth pointing out that Van Es and Sherin’s teacher noticing framework (2002) was motivated by educational reforms in the USA that encouraged teachers to engage students and spontaneously adapt instruction to student thinking. Thus, it makes sense in their context that how teachers subjectively experience moments of classroom interaction should be a key focus of research. In the field of L2 instruction, as well, the learner’s contribution to classroom instruction has long been considered important in research on individual differences (Naiman, Fröhlich, Stern, & Todesco, 1978) and communicative language teaching (Breen, 1987). Nonetheless, the question of how L2 teachers perceive and act on this contribution remains somewhat underaddressed.
3 Extending noticing to second language teachers
It should be clear by now that the psychological processes and outcomes associated with teacher noticing differ from those of noticing by L2 learners (Schmidt, 1990, 1995, 2012, see also Bergsleithner, Frota, & Yoshioka, 2013; Robinson, 2003). Considering the substantial impact of research on noticing in the sense of second language acquisition (SLA), we feel that teacher noticing may also be a potentially fruitful construct for investigation in L2 contexts. In addition, as Ortega (2011) has pointed out, perspectives on cognition in L2 studies have shifted lately, as the field has grown. Focusing on SLA research, she described shifts: (1) from psychological to social explanations, (2) from abstract to situated views of knowledge, and (3) from a focus on entities/objects to one on actions/processes (p. 168). Our characterization of L2 teacher noticing seeks to directly address these perspectives, in particular by considering its sociocognitive nature (Atkinson, 2002; Batstone, 2010). Teacher cognition cannot be understood without careful consideration of how mental processes are mediated by social interaction. Consequently, in this article, L2 teacher noticing refers to teachers’ awareness of features of second language classroom interaction that may influence student learning. Note that our definition, like those of noticing in SLA, assumes that the process of teacher noticing involves conscious awareness (hence leaving aside momentarily any discussion of implicit teacher cognition). We furthermore restrict teacher noticing to cognitive processes taking place concurrently to actual teaching.
The construct we describe is therefore markedly distinct from the aforementioned reflection-on-action in that we aim to situate teacher noticing within educational practice by studying its spontaneous occurrence in teaching (as described below). Teacher noticing is instead a form of reflection-in-action entailing processes of identifying significant events, reasoning about them, and linking them to pedagogic principles. It has been pointed out in L2 teacher education that expert teachers are better than novices at recognizing patterns, attending selectively to events, improvising quickly, and justifying actions in the classroom (Tsui, 2009). Unfortunately, however, studies within L2 settings have rarely addressed teachers’ capacities to engage in such processes. Indeed, although they may yield insight into other key issues, the approaches typically employed, which include action research and teacher narratives, among others, often do not seem ideally suited to the investigation of on-line thinking processes. And although introspective methods have been adopted at times, these may be used in ways that do not actually focus on concurrent thoughts, such as when teachers are asked to provide reasons for their actions rather than eliciting only thoughts that occurred during teaching (for commentary, see Borg, 2006, p. 219).
Investigating teacher noticing in second language teacher education is important for several reasons. Practically speaking, in a postmethod era of language teaching which places a premium on context-sensitivity, practitioner theories, and student identities (Kumaravadivelu, 2006), it is crucial that novice teachers learn to notice, and to think flexibly and prepare themselves to engage with spontaneous classroom processes that lead to effective teaching and teacher development, as well as learner and teacher autonomy (Smith & Erdoğan, 2008). It is possible, too, that some novices possess stronger abilities than others in this regard, and a focus on teacher noticing may help to identify and develop talented new teachers. Related to this, administrators may find information on teacher noticing useful when making decisions concerning hiring and promotion, in addition to standard measures of effectiveness. Of course, students appreciate having teachers who respect their individual differences and value their contributions to the classroom, and instructors who can notice these factors should benefit them. Also, the construct of teacher noticing could assist teacher researchers in addressing some of the critiques voiced in the L2 teacher training literature (Borg, 2013, pp. 18–22). Some concerns include poor research quality, lack of teacher engagement, and the isolated nature of research. Although a shift in emphasis toward teachers’ interactive thinking will not in and of itself ameliorate these problems, it can offer a new perspective. As a final, theoretical concern, studying teacher noticing may eventually shed light on the fundamental issue of how different types of reflection foster the growth of teacher cognition. There is at present insufficient evidence on different forms of reflection-in-action vs. reflection-on-action to be able to state clearly the relative contribution of these processes to L2 teacher development, or how they may influence each other.
III Research objectives
Because no study, to our knowledge, has considered the construct of teacher noticing in L2 education, the present investigation aimed to occupy this gap. More specifically, we had three objectives in mind:
Based on research into teacher cognition, including reflection and noticing, described above, the present study aimed to begin developing an approach to investigating L2 teacher noticing.
Considering its sociocognitive nature, and to understand how it is situated in teaching practice, we aimed to describe the interactional contexts in which L2 teacher noticing may occur.
In order to evaluate the relevance of teacher noticing to L2 teaching and research, we aimed to identify related themes emerging from our analyses.
In particular, we were interested in the extent to which novice language teachers, who were enrolled in coursework on L2 teaching, would engage in noticing. This population is important, because, as implied already, it may be possible during professional training to assist in the development of teacher noticing (Van Es & Sherin, 2002). Given the nature of the construct we investigate, this exploratory, descriptive study combined introspective methods and classroom observation, adopting a mixed-methods research design with both quantitative and qualitative strands (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011).
IV Method
1 Participants
Eight L2 teachers-in-training participated in the study. They were undergraduate students majoring in second language studies at a state university in the USA, and were enrolled in a course on second language teaching (taught by the second author) as part of the requirements for their degree. One of the course projects was to create a lesson plan and implement part of the lesson in class through team teaching, to practice and demonstrate their in-class teaching skills. Completion of the teaching demonstration was followed by reflection of their performance, provided with two options: (1) to write a reflection paper after watching a video which recorded their performance, and (2) to recall and verbalize their behaviors while watching their teaching demonstration, as a form of stimulated recall (for details, see below). Participants were those who chose the (2) option and agreed to participate in the study.
2 Context: The teaching demonstrations
Prior to their teaching demonstrations, students individually created a 50-minute lesson plan on receptive language skills, i.e. listening and speaking. After receiving preliminary feedback on their lesson plan from the instructor, two students formed a group and used one of their lesson plans to team-teach a language of their choice together for 20 minutes to their instructor and classmates. During this in-class teaching demonstration, class members were divided into two groups. One group played the role of students by joining the lesson, and the other group observed and evaluated the two teachers’ performance. 1 The in-class teaching demonstrations were video-recorded from two different angles; one camera filmed the teachers’ performance from the perspective of students facing the front of the classroom while the other camera recorded the students’ performance from the perspective of a teacher facing the back of the classroom. Some examples of classroom tasks adopted in participants’ lessons included ‘listening to a popular song and deciding its meaning’, ‘listening to a presentation and solving a schoolyard mystery’, and ‘listening to Chinese words and choosing pictures showing their meaning’. Furthermore, while the most common target L2 in the lesson plan and demonstration was English, other languages such as Chinese and Spanish were also chosen as a target L2.
3 Stimulated recall methodology
Stimulated recall methodology was adopted to tap participants’ thoughts and awareness as they unfolded during the teaching demonstration. This introspective method is intended to facilitate participants’ recalling of thoughts, through the provision of a tangible reminder of the event such as visual and aural stimuli (Gass & Mackey, 2000), and this method has previously been employed by many studies as a tool for teacher training and evaluating teaching effectiveness (Peterson & Clark, 1978, cited in Gass & Mackey, 2000).
In this study, stimulated recalls were conducted individually with each participant, in sessions ranging from 2 to 7 days after their teaching demonstrations. The first author met participants in the second author’s office. There, participants were informed of the purpose and procedures of the study. Upon consenting to participate, participants were trained to conduct stimulated recalls. Participants read a set of instructions on stimulated recalls and watched a sample video demonstrating how to recall their thoughts, before watching the video of their teaching demonstration. These instructions provided prompt questions to guide participants while they watched their 20-minute demonstrations, including ‘what did you notice?’, ‘what did you see, hear, or think?’, and ‘what were you aware of?’ Temporally situated noticing recall was emphasized so that participants were asked to only recall thoughts that they had ‘at the time of the teaching demonstrations’, rather than retrospective reflections on their teaching. In other words, participants were asked to avoid comments on (1) impressions of the demo lesson after it was over, (2) reactions to hearing or seeing themselves in the video, and (3) actions they had done without thinking.
As a visual aid to facilitate recall, a split-screen video was created and played on a computer screen. Based on two videos recording classroom teaching, two video files were synchronized (with the audio track from one file suppressed). The left-hand side video-screen displayed the performance of two team teachers from a student perspective, while the right-side screen displayed students’ behaviors and performance, as seen by the two teachers. Simultaneous viewing of students’ behaviors along with their own has benefits in that it may serve as a stronger stimuli for the reminder of events and subsequently prompt participants’ recall through the provision of situational and contextual support. Also, participants could recall any students’ behaviors or interactions that they noticed but did not follow up on or act upon, which otherwise might not be recalled, if solely viewing their own behaviors. Furthermore, participants could easily associate their behaviors with dynamics observed in student–student interactions and student–teacher interactions, which provides more context or explanatory power for understanding their noticing.
During the stimulated recall session, participants wore a headset and watched a split-screen video, which they could pause or rewind at any time, and verbalized their thoughts and awareness as subjectively experienced during their demonstrations. The recall data was audio-recorded and transcribed for analysis.
4 Operationalization of teacher noticing
Based on our aforementioned definition of L2 teacher noticing as ‘awareness of features of second language classroom interaction that may influence student learning’, we developed the following operational definition for use in this study. Recall that comments which were directed to any verbal and nonverbal phenomenon that happened during the in-class teaching demonstration were considered as instances of noticing, depending on their timing, and whether they met two criteria: (1) the contingency criterion and (2) the learning criterion.
The contingency criterion: A teacher’s observation must depend on some feature of the classroom interaction, either verbal or nonverbal actions undertaken in response to the students or the team teacher during the lesson.
The learning criterion: A teacher’s awareness or noticing should plausibly have a potential influence on student learning, in terms of cognitive, motivational, or affective (e.g. emotion, anxiety) dimensions of learning.
5 Procedures
The transcribed participants’ recall data were analysed. First, all recall comments, defined as any cohesive comments or thoughts on a particular event, were classified into either noticing or non-noticing recall. Eight participants made a total of 332 recall comments, and among these, 109 comments were identified as noticing instances (33%). Regarding noticing, the two raters (i.e. both authors) reached 92% agreement and any disagreements were resolved by discussion. To understand the interactional contexts where the noticing occurred, five interactional contexts were identified by the researchers, which included situations where a teacher (i.e. participant) interacted with: (1) the entire class, (2) an individual student, (3) a pair/a group of students, (4) oneself (e.g. noticing of their own behaviors), and (5) a team teacher. All noticing comments were further categorized for their interactional contexts by the two researchers, using contextual clues and the video-recorded stimuli for verification. The two researchers reached 76% agreement, and disagreements were resolved by further discussion.
V Results
In this section, we first report the quantitative results before moving on to reporting qualitative results.
1 Quantitative results
Here we present preliminary and main findings, i.e. those related to the study objectives.
a Preliminary findings
To situate our findings, three important variables – first language, teaching background, and target language – are examined in detail. Table 1 provides an overview of these data for each participant.
Participant characteristics.
As Table 1 shows, most participants were native English speakers. Six out of eight were English native speakers or English-speaking bilinguals. Participants 5 and 8 had Korean and Japanese as their first language, respectively, and they reported English as their second language. In terms of their previous teaching experiences, most participants had at least some level of teaching experience, except for two participants (2 and 6) who had no prior experience. Three participants (1, 4, and 8) had less than one year of teaching experience, and the remaining three (3, 5, and 7) had more than one year of teaching experience. The majority of participants opted for English as the target language of their lesson. Besides English, one lesson focused on Chinese (taught by Participant 8) and another on Spanish (taught by Participant 2). In these two lessons, English was used alongside the target language to facilitate classroom management. Furthermore, the class members assigned to the student role in these lessons could be considered authentic L2 learners of these languages, unlike those in the demonstrations in which English was the target language.
Regarding the amount of teacher noticing, Table 2 summarizes the number of recall comments and noticing instances per participant. As the table shows, another variable which is important to the interpretation of participants’ reporting of noticing is the length of time between the teaching demonstration and recall session.
Stimulated recall results.
Note. The presentation is ordered by the number of days between the teaching demonstration and the stimulated recall session.
As indicated in Table 2, descriptively, the duration of delay between the teaching demonstration and stimulated recall varied between 2 and 7 days with an average lag of 3.75 days. The average number of comments across all participants was 41.50 (SD = 20.37), and the average number of noticing instances was 13.63 (SD = 7.23). It appeared that a shorter period of delay tended to be associated with a greater number of recall comments. Participants whose reports were collected within 2 days (1, 2, 3, and 8) reported substantially more information than those with 5 or 7 days of delay, indicated by the number of recall comments. All four participants with 2 days of delay had above average recall (M = 41.50), while the rest, with over 5 days of delay, all had below the average.
These descriptive results seem to support the idea that a shorter time lag is favorable to maximal recall. However, Participant 5, who had 7 days of delay, recalled more than those with 5 days of delay (Participants 4, 6, and 7), suggesting that after a certain brief period (e.g. within 2 days), the influence of the delay may not be as crucial.
As for the frequency of noticing instances, Table 2 shows that the raw number, again, seemed to be affected by the time lag between the teaching demonstration and recall session. This is in line with the above descriptive finding that the time lag may be crucial to the number of recall comments made in the recall session. Based on the means for noticing in the groups with the shorter (2-day) vs. longer (5–7 day) delay, a two-sample t-test was used to examine whether the observed differences in the duration of delayed days was a significant factor in determining the number of noticing instances. A significant difference was found between these groups in terms of the number of noticing instances (Table 3).
Result of t-test comparing noticing instances in two groups.
Note. *p = .03.
Simply put, more noticing was reported under a shorter delay between teaching and recall. It should be kept in mind that less reporting does not necessarily mean that less noticing occurred. Instead, it seems likely that the later group may have reported less information due to forgetting.
In spite of this, when it comes to the ratio of noticing in relation to the total number of recall comments, time lag seemed to have no effect. For example, Participant 1 had the greatest number of recall comments (71 comments), yet the ratio of noticing (15.5%) was below average, while Participant 6 had below average recall (23 comments), yet about half of those were found to be noticing instances (52.2%). Additionally, the findings showed that whereas Participants 2, 3, 4, and 6 had the highest proportion of noticing, their teaching experiences varied from none to over one year. Thus, it appears that many factors beyond the scope of this study’s design may impact the total number of recall comments, noticing instances, and proportion of comments that constitute noticing.
We can also note, however, that the target language of the demonstration showed no clear effect on the amount of noticing. As mentioned, Participants 2 and 8 taught lessons on Spanish and Chinese, respectively, and both carried out their recall 2 days later. Despite the fact that students in these lessons had less familiarity with the target languages, the percentage of noticing instances in the data for Participant 2 (48.8%) and Participant 8 (29.5%) was not consistently higher or lower than the average across all participants (35.0%). Therefore, target language seemed to have no influence on the study’s main focus.
b Main findings
The second research objective in this study emphasized the interactional contexts in which L2 teaching noticing occurs. In order to better understand the sociocognitive nature of teacher noticing, it is important to understand the contexts that give rise to it. Interactional contexts for noticing are reported in Table 4.
Interactional contexts for noticing.
Among the 5 categories of interactional contexts identified, the category of ‘self’ showed only two instances of noticing, so it was excluded from this analysis (both instances pertained to noticing qualities of the teachers’ own language use while interacting in class, which were subsequently acted upon). Of the remaining four contexts (whole class, individual, pair or group, and team teacher), on average, approximately 38% of the noticing arose when a teacher interacted with the whole class, followed by roughly 24% in the cases where the teacher interacted with a pair or group of students. Interactions with an individual student and those with a team teacher each accounted for about 19% of the noticing.
However, Table 4 also indicates variation in the distribution of noticing contexts, suggesting that noticing may be influenced by a range of factors which differed across the demo lessons, including lesson structure, pedagogic materials, or teaching experience. To illustrate this briefly, half of all instances based on one-to-one teacher–student interaction were from Participant 3, who had more than a year of teaching experience. For this participant, most of the noticing occurred when they led the whole class or interacted with an individual student. In contrast, for Participant 2, who had no teaching experience, noticing occurred most while the team teacher was leading the class. In this case, the participant paid close attention to the team teacher’s teaching and interaction with students in class, perhaps due to a perceived difference in teaching ability.
2 Qualitative results
The third research objective attempts to identify emerging themes in teacher noticing as they relate to L2 education. Three themes emerged from our data, which include: (1) plans vs. reality, (2) noticing leading to action, and (3) learner contributions. The results below relate to these themes.
a Theme 1: Plans vs. reality
As the teaching demonstrations were based on lesson plans that they created, participants’ noticing included reflections on how the actual lesson was going with respect to what they had planned in advance. The following examples illustrate teachers’ noticing of this dimension of classroom practice.
(1) I was thinking this lesson was going better than I really planned because they are talking a lot and discussing. (Participant 5 / Comment 216)
Example 1 expresses Participant 5’s excitement or relief about the progress of the lesson owing to students’ active participation in it. On the other hand, some instances, such as Example 2, show teachers’ uncertainty in progressing through or leading a lesson, in relation to what they had planned and how the students responded to the lesson.
(2) Here, I wasn’t sure if I was playing the song too much, but nobody completed the activity, so I just kept playing it. (Participant 4 / Comment 178)
This example reveals Participant 4’s uncertainty about the unplanned decision to continue playing a recording after noticing the students’ slow progress toward completing the task of putting strips of paper with the song’s lyrics in the correct order.
b Theme 2: Noticing leading to action
The second theme pertains to teacher noticing of student behaviors or other in-class dynamics leading a teacher to make impromptu decisions or to take actions in class, as shown by Example 3.
(3) I was getting kinda nervous ‘cause they were all having a little trouble … so yeah … yeah … so since I noticed they’re having a hard time, I just decide for all of them to go through it. (Participant 8 / Comment 294)
In Example 3, the teacher’s noticing or observation that students are having a hard time doing an in-class task not only influences the teacher’s affect (nervousness) but also triggers a follow-up action in the form of a brief pedagogic intervention. In this case, the teacher decided to introduce a spontaneous whole class activity to practice the form in focus (which was Chinese tones). Next, in Example 4, the teacher’s noticing of non-verbal cues related to a student’s competence with a task led the teacher to avoid calling on that student, but chose another instead.
(4) I saw Student 3 looked really uneasy being able to pronounce Spanish, I decided to go with Student 4 because he seemed a little bit more confident. (Participant 2 / Comment 103)
Although students had not directly expressed difficulty in these cases, both teachers appear to have initiated a specific, unplanned course of action that was contingent on their noticing of various verbal or non-verbal cues from the students, based on their classroom performance or emotional states, either collectively or individually.
c Theme 3: Learner contributions
The analysis also showed that teachers noticed an individual student’s question or difficulties and expanded on these learner contributions to facilitate learning for other students. The examples below demonstrate how such learner contributions are noticed and interpreted by teachers.
(5) I was kind of happy Student 5’s getting super into this, and I was gonna use Student 5 as um a way to get the rest of the class excited and into it. (Participant 8 / Comment 295)
In Example 5, a teacher’s recognition of one student’s enthusiasm led the teacher to an intention to use this student’s reactions to motivate other students. During this phase of the lesson, the teacher was attending to the whole class, while leading pronunciation practice, and momentarily aligned with Student 5 through the use of eye contact, verbal encouragement (‘good job’) and pointing. In this case, an individual learner’s affective response (enjoyment), once noticed, was transformed to serve as a resource for enhancing the whole class learning atmosphere.
Furthermore, individual students’ linguistic concerns were also used to facilitate whole class understanding of form–meaning connections. In the next example, one student brought up the line ‘Every moment red letter’, while interpreting the lyrics to a song from the film ‘Aladdin’, which they had listened to during this demonstration. The following excerpt, based on the demonstration video used in this recall session, provides the context for this instance of teacher noticing.
Excerpt. Transcript of video used during Participant 3’s stimulated recall session
During the stimulated recall session, approximately coinciding with line 14 in the transcript, the teacher commented: (6) … one of the students pointed out the red letter the red letter phrase and so I asked the students if anyone knew I assumed no one knew and they didn’t so I explained to them what it was so that they kinda understood. (Participant 3 / Comment 158)
Here, the teacher, rather than simply explaining, drew other students’ attention to the line by asking the whole class if they understood it. This was accomplished through a series of interactional moves including prompts (line 07) and questions (lines 10–12). Then, noticing that no one volunteered the meaning, the teacher explained to the whole class. During the recall session, this teacher also offered an evaluation of this exchange, by noting that, in the end, the class had understood. This example shows how noticing can help instructors to strategically build on an individual learner’s attention to form for the benefit of the whole class. Broadly speaking, Examples 5 and 6 illustrate the importance of teacher noticing of spontaneous and unplanned learner contributions, which is especially important in task-based language teaching and other forms of communicative language teaching.
VI Discussion and conclusions
This preliminary study of second language teacher noticing has demonstrated just one of many possible approaches to investigating novice teacher cognition in real time. The findings showed that, in our context, while reporting of noticing, unsurprisingly, declined as the time span between teaching and recall increased, all trainees did report noticing, most of which occurred while they were interacting with the whole class, or with pairs/groups. Moreover, a qualitative analysis of the trainees’ noticing suggested several themes that have broad implications for language teaching research. These themes were: planning vs. spontaneity, noticing leading to action, and learner contributions.
In extending teacher noticing to L2 classrooms for the purpose of this study, we have modified the concept as originally formulated, where it includes: (1) noticing classroom events, (2) reasoning based on context, and (3) linking events to teaching principles (Van Es and Sherin, 2002, 2008; see also Sherin, Jacobs, & Philipp, 2011). Particularly, in our study, we have focused on novice teachers’ awareness of features of second language classroom interaction that may influence student learning. It should be noted that because our study was based on teaching demonstrations in a methods course, the use of contextual knowledge may differ greatly from actual school settings (see note 1). Also, although we did not explicitly ask participants whether or not they connected events they noticed to pedagogic principles, our data reveal that novice teacher cognition does indeed reflect pedagogic rationales, which may be of use to teacher educators. For example, in Example 3, the trainee offered a justification for conducting a spontaneous review and, in Example 6, another trainee illustrated the chain of reasoning that lead to a reactive focus on form episode based on the expression ‘a red letter day’.
Our focus in this article was influenced by views of second language learning as sociocognitive in nature (Atkinson, 2002; Batstone, 2010). Partly for this reason, we operationalized teacher noticing as thoughts that are dependent on classroom interaction. In addition to addressing how this specific context influenced trainees’ thinking, we have tried to offer a situated perspective on classroom learning by linking teacher noticing to several types of interactional patterns we observed in the demonstration lessons, and emphasized how teacher noticing can lead to action. Thus, we believe that the view of teacher noticing presented here is broadly consistent with the notion of reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983; see Bailey, 2012; for discussion, see Farrell, 2015). It also fits within models of teacher cognition such as Borg’s (2006), which includes professional coursework and classroom practice. Although our study was grounded in professional coursework (i.e. the methods course), we feel that the results may have implications for classroom practice outside of this setting, where, arguably, most teacher noticing happens.
In terms of our research objectives, we can interpret the key findings as follows. First, using the stimulated recall method we adopted, it was shown that novice teachers displayed the capacity to selectively notice and quickly respond to interactional events (Tsui, 2009). This was true for all participants, whose language and teaching backgrounds varied. While the timing of the recall interview was found to impact the quantity of noticing reported, the quality of noticing was similar across the two groups, as all instances of noticing met our two criteria for inclusion in the study. Second, in considering how it is situated in teaching practice, we found that several classroom participation structures gave rise to teacher noticing, but that it was especially evident during segments of the lesson in which the teacher was interacting with the whole class. Based on this result, it could be that this context for interaction provides opportunities for more intersubjectivity or shared cognition, which in turn drives teacher noticing. Nonetheless, more research, controlling for the length of time teachers spend in these different formats, is needed to confirm this possibility. Third, looking back on the themes that emerged from our qualitative analysis, we found that novice teachers’ noticing reflected familiar concerns in teacher training contexts and in day-to-day L2 classroom instruction. Among these were teachers’ noticing of the juxtaposition between plans and their enactment during the lesson. Here, plans may go better than expected (Example 1), or it may turn out that they do not, resulting in uncertainty (Example 2). We also found that teacher noticing can lead to certain specific pedagogic actions that pertain to spontaneous management of learning opportunities aimed at the whole class, as when teachers conduct impromptu whole class reviews (Example 3) or nominate certain students and not others (Example 4). Finally, the trainee reports indicated that, more specifically, the noticing of individual contributions may also have clear benefits for the group when teachers act upon student contributions in ways that may support whole-class learning, for example though alignment (Example 5) or focus on form (Example 6) stemming from interactions with specific individuals; these are cases where acting on the learner’s contribution seems to hold great potential.
Regarding this study’s strengths and limitations, it is clear that the timing of introspective methods of data collection such as stimulated recall methodology (Gass & Mackey, 2000) is crucial. We would stress that careful reporting of the delay between teaching and recall is necessary to interpret the results of studies such as ours. However, even though we found significantly more noticing in reports carried out shortly after the teaching demonstration, the effect of forgetting appeared to be a general one because the proportion of noticing instances to recall comments was roughly similar in both groups. This suggests that, although sooner is better, in practical terms, it should still be possible to elicit reports containing traces of teacher noticing up to a week after it occurs, assuming that the methodology used supports this recall. For instance, one strength of our approach was using split-screen videos to provide a richer visual stimulus for prompting recall. A more serious caveat is that if research focuses solely on what teachers notice, other key dimensions of classroom interaction may go unobserved. For this reason, we have also relied on our own observations of the video-recorded demonstrations.
It is important to remember that this study took place in a teacher-training environment; thus, it would be reasonable to expect different results in actual L2 classrooms. In such contexts, practical approaches to using video technology, such as using smartphone cameras (Knight, 2014), may be preferred. Furthermore, this study has examined what teachers noticed specifically within demonstration lessons based on receptive skills. Our results suggest that there are valuable opportunities to examine the nature of noticing in lessons based on productive skills, as well as those that target specific language point (e.g. grammar or vocabulary). Key insights could also be gained from studying the relationship between teacher noticing and focus on form during various stages in task-based instruction (Ellis, 2016).
In conclusion, by examining the significance that teachers place on interactional features that they themselves become aware of while engaged in teaching, we gain an insider’s perspective on classroom practice. We would suggest that the methods and findings of such studies could be used to facilitate the discursive construction of novice teachers’ professional identities as noticers. In addition, these findings have relevance for promoting pedagogic innovations that rely on teachers’ ability to attend to student needs as they unfold during classroom interaction. As a practical suggestion designed to foster this ability, we encourage language teachers to say aloud in class what they notice about their students’ thinking during receptive or productive tasks. It is from these vantage points that research on L2 teacher development may be enhanced, particularly if a focus on teacher noticing is adopted alongside other complementary approaches, such as classroom observation and practitioner research.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We thank our participants for their insights, Dick Schmidt for encouragement, and Rue Burch, Josephine Lee, and Angela Haeusler for support during the American Association for Applied Linguistics conference (2015, Toronto), where we initially presented this study. We are also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding to present versions of this paper at the Task-Based Language Teaching conference (2015, Leuven) and the Japan Association for Language Teaching conference (2015, Shizuoka) was provided by Kanda University of International Studies.