Drawing meaning from student-generated drawings: Characterising chemistry teachers' noticing

This study illuminates how chemistry teachers may draw meaning from student-generated drawings. Student-generated drawings can offer a unique window into students’ developing thinking, but teacher noticing regarding drawings was not yet examined. This study explored noticing from two dimensions: recognition of drawing features, and adoption of analytic stances. We gathered and analysed data on experienced teachers’ in-the-moment active classroom) and delayed noticing (with time to review student drawings) within teachers’ own classroom contexts. Findings show that teacher noticing involved recognising drawing features in four categories. These were visual forms (incl. icons and chemical symbols), quantities (depictions of amounts and distances/sizes), scale (incl. depictions of entities at mesoscopic, molecular-atomic and electronic length scales), and properties and behaviours (incl. composition, structure and electrical aspects). We furthermore found teachers to use all three stances (i.e. descriptive, evaluative, sense making) but in different frequencies. The study’s results point to drawing-specific characteristics of teacher noticing,
and yield suggestions for (novice) teachers and teacher educators to help broaden teachers’ scope of what can be meaningful to look for in student drawings. The study furthermore adds to the relatively small body of literature examining science teachers’ noticing in real school contexts.