Investigating the relationship between pre-service teachers' attention to student thinking during lesson planning and the level of cognitive demand at which tasks are implemented

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between attention to student thinking during lesson planning and the level of cognitive demand at which tasks are implemented for six pre-service teachers enrolled in a teacher education program that focuses on attention to student thinking during planning and instruction. Lesson plans were examined for attention to student thinking using two coding schemes, and samples of student work were examined to assess the level of cognitive demand at which tasks (associated with the enacted lesson plans) were implemented during instruction. Other planning related data sources were qualitatively drawn upon to support the extent to which pre-service teachers focused on student thinking with regard to planning.

One of the lesson planning coding schemes provides numerical scores indicating different degrees of attention to six elements of student thinking. The level of cognitive demand of task implementation for each lesson was able to be coded as high or low. In particular, the quantitative analysis suggested a trend that as overall attention to student thinking during lesson planning increases the odds of high level task implementation become greater compared to the odds of low level task implementation. Given a small sample size the quantitative results need to be considered within their limitations.

Qualitative analysis examining attention to student thinking during planning and task implementation supports the quantitative trend. In particular, the qualitative analysis suggests three findings. The first finding is that the two pre-service teachers who demonstrated the most attention to student thinking with regard to planning were the only pre-service teachers who implemented all of their tasks at a high level of cognitive demand. The second finding is that when receiving specific planning based support for a lesson as part of a university assignment, all the pre-service teachers were able to implement the task at high level of cognitive demand. The third finding is that a large majority of lessons using tasks accompanied by detailed planning support sources were implemented at high levels of cognitive demand.