Abstract
Researchers have used a variety of different representations of practice to support prospective teacher (PT) noticing of student’s mathematical thinking. Different representations (e.g., video, student work samples, simulations) have different affordances for supporting teacher noticing of student’s thinking. We bring together research on models of students’ thinking with work on teacher noticing to illustrate ways in which simulations enable PTs to develop and refine their models of student’s thinking through iterative cycles of attending and interpreting. Drawing on data from a mathematics content course for PTs, we illustrate the ways in which the simulations afforded opportunities for PTs (n = 18) to develop models of students’ thinking. Our results illustrate the different ways in which PTs developed models of students’ thinking, varying in the extent to which PTs considered students’ thinking generalizable. We discuss the implications of our work for the use of simulations to support PT noticing.