Exploring prospective teachers’ stances in making sense of students’ mathematical ideas

In this paper, we explore the critical practice of making sense of students’ mathematical ideas. We extend previous research by studying stances prospective teachers adopt, the extent or depth to which they do so, and the types of prospective teachers making sense of students’ mathematical ideas. Analyzing the responses of 123 prospective teachers to students’ different ideas on an ambiguous mathematical task, our study identifies various stances—descriptive, evaluative, comparative, interpretive, inquiry-based, connective, and projective—and explores the complexity of attributing value, meaning, and significance to student ideas. Our findings offer insights into various types of making sense of students’ ideas and suggest that different kinds of attributions are at play for the purposes of observation, assessment, understanding and projection/prediction.

© The Author(s) 2024

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Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. This work was funded by Project PID2021-122180OB-I00, financed by the Government of Spain, and Project ProyExcel_00297, supported by the Andalusian Government. We are also grateful for the support from the COIDESO research centre at the University of Huelva and DESYM (HUM-168). Additionally, this research benefited from the contributions of the MTSK network, sponsored by AUIP.