The collective use of the discipline of noticing to inform pedagogic actions

Abstract Professional development depends on enriching and expanding the range of professional actions that become available to be enacted either during preparation, or in-the-moment in a session. The Discipline of Noticing was articulated to support this process. Noticing involves both attention and awareness. The Discipline of Noticing provides a method for exploring, researching, or exploiting not only what one is currently sensitised to attend to, but also the nature and form of that attention, together with associated awarenesses which provide access to actions. In this paper, we provide examples of how professionals, in this case mathematics education researchers who are also mathematics teacher educators, located changes in what they were sensitised to notice, and how that became part of their professional repertoire by the process that Gattegno called “educating awareness”. These changes arose and were noticed through joint reciprocal reflections, and the subsequent planning and teaching of future professional development sessions. Among the aspects that contributed to the researchers’ / teacher educators’ development and engagement in the Discipline of Noticing, we emphasise communication with oneself and with others in group discussions.