Teacher Noticing to Scaffold Knowledge‑Building Inquiry in Two Grade 5 Classrooms

Authors

Jianwei Zhang, University at Albany, State University of New YorkFollow
Hyejin Park, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information

Author ORCID Identifier

Hyejin Park:https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9695-8456

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

In classrooms that implement student-driven, collaborative knowledge building, there is a lot for teachers to attend to in student work, alongside numerous ways of interpreting and responding to what is noticed, giving rise to countless possibilities of furthering students’ inquiry and discourse. The current study aims to make sense of these possibilities by identifying patterns in a veteran teacher’s reflective noticing of student inquiry in two Grade 5 classrooms. Using a Knowledge Building approach, the fifth graders studied the human body systems supported by a collaborative online environment (Knowledge Forum) over an eight-month period. The teacher kept weekly journals to record her reflective noticing of student inquiry and envisioning (planning) of possible ways to facilitate deeper knowledge building work. Using a grounded theory approach, we analyzed the teacher’s reflective journal entries to identify critical themes characterizing the teacher’s attention, interpretation, and planning of responsive moves. Visual network analysis further traced multiple pathways of teacher noticing and envisioning, each involving attending to specific changes in student inquiry and discourse, interpreting these changes within a temporal context, and envisioning responsive actions that could be taken up with her students. The teacher’s responsive moves focused on leveraging student-generated ideas to unfold new possibilities of deepening, expanding, or better co-regulating their inquiry and discourse. The findings shed light on how teachers may work with emergent processes of student-driven inquiry to scaffold ever-deeper knowledge building in a collaborative community.

Comments

This is the Author's Accepted Manuscript. The Version of Record can be found here: Park., H., & Zhang, J. (2025). Teacher Noticing to Scaffold Knowledge-Building Inquiry in Two Grade 5 Classrooms. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-024-09703-6

Recommended Citation

Zhang, Jianwei and Park, Hyejin, "Teacher Noticing to Scaffold Knowledge‑Building Inquiry in Two Grade 5 Classrooms" (2025). Educational Theory and Practice Faculty Scholarship. 44.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etap_fac_scholar/44