Noticing Student Struggle in the Middle-School Mathematics Classroom

Michael Jarry-Shore

Productive struggle occurs when students must exert notable effort in solving challenging mathematics problems. Opportunities to struggle productively are essential to developing rich understandings of foundational mathematics concepts. While teachers are increasingly offering students the kind of problems necessary to elicit such struggle, research suggests that it is challenging to then respond to students in ways that maintain struggle when it is already productive or make it productive when it happens not to be. To respond in such ways, teachers must first ``notice`` struggle, attending to evidence of struggle then making sense of this evidence in determining whether or not the struggle is productive. Little work, however, has examined the nature of teachers' noticing of student struggle, and tools for supporting this complex practice are presently lacking. In this multi-phase qualitative research study, I am examining what and how teachers notice when watching videos of groups of students struggling to varying degrees in solving cognitively-demanding mathematics problems. I am also developing a framework to guide the process of identifying and interpreting evidence of struggle, then sharing this framework with teachers to assess its usefulness in supporting their noticing. This study will contribute to efforts to support teachers in meeting the demands of ambitious and equitable visions of mathematics instruction, according to which all students should have opportunities to struggle productively in their learning.

About Michael Jarry-Shore

Michael Jarry-Shore is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. In his research, Michael is interested in what teachers need to know and be able to do to implement current visions of ambitious and equitable mathematics instruction. For his dissertation, Michael is studying productive struggle, which is present when students must exert notable effort in solving challenging mathematics problems. He is developing a framework describing different levels of struggle to help teachers identify and interpret evidence of struggle in assessing the struggle's magnitude. He is also studying the nature of in-service teachers' noticing of struggle and seeing if his struggle framework proves helpful in supporting this noticing. Michael previously taught mathematics to students in the 7th-, 8th-, and 9th-grades. This experience gave rise to his desire to understand how teachers can best be supported in meeting the many demands of teaching reform-oriented mathematics. He presently works as a research assistant on two projects, one that is co-designing and examining a district-wide initiative to prepare teacher leaders to lead site-based professional learning, and another that is developing and examining the use of surveys that offer mathematics teachers immediate and actionable feedback on their students' learning experiences. Michael also works with elementary pre-service teacher candidates in the Stanford Teacher Education Program. He holds a bachelor's of education from the University of Calgary, and a bachelor's of science and master's of arts from McGill University.