How context specific is teachers' analysis of how representations are dealt with in classroom situations? Approaching a context-aware measure for teacher noticing

Although raised in the early days of research on teacher noticing, the question of context specificity has remained largely unanswered to this day. In this study, we build on our prior research on a specific aspect of noticing, namely teachers' analysis of how representations are dealt with in mathematics classroom situations. For the purpose of such analysis, we examined the role of context on the levels of mathematical content area and classroom situation. Using a vignette-based test instrument with 12 classroom situations from the content areas of fractions and functions, we investigated how teachers' analyses regarding the use of representations are related concerning these two mathematical content areas. Beyond content areas, we were interested in the question of whether an overarching unidimensional competence construct can be inferred from the participants' analyses of the different individual classroom situations. The 12 vignettes were analysed by N = 175 secondary mathematics teachers with different degrees of teaching experience and their written answers provided the data for this study. Our findings show that the data fit the Rasch model and that all classroom situations contributed in a meaningful way to the competence under investigation. There was no significant effect of the mathematical content area on the participants' analyses regarding the use of multiple representations. The results of the study indicate that explicitly considering questions of context can strengthen research into teacher noticing.