Additive and Multiplicative Learning Progressions: Impacts on Eliciting, Interpreting, and Responding to Student Thinking in the First Years of Teaching

In this study, the researchers will examine how teacher preparation programs that incorporate an explicit focus on learning progressions can nurture novice teachers' capacity to elicit, interpret, and respond to students' mathematical thinking and how this practice continues to take shape through teachers' earliest years in the profession. Research-based learning trajectories/progressions (LT/Ps) describe probable learning pathways within mathematical content strands, giving teachers access to how student thinking might proceed. There is growing evidence from experimental studies that using LT/Ps increases in-service teacher knowledge and leads to improved student outcomes. This exploratory project extends this inquiry to preservice teachers and has three aims. For Aim 1, the researchers will characterize how LT/Ps contribute to prospective teacher capacity to elicit, interpret, and respond to student thinking. For Aim 2, they will investigate how this practice emerges and evolves through classroom instruction. For Aim 3, they will connect novice teacher knowledge of student thinking to growth in the mathematics competence of their students. Through this multi-year, multi-method study, the researchers aim to clarify what kind of preparation experiences can nurture this practice and to capture how integrating pedagogical tools-specifically LT/Ps-help teachers learn to anchor their decision making to evidence of student thinking in their earliest years in the profession.