Making listening visible: listening as an embodied dimension of mathematics teacher noticing

Abstract Research on classroom interactions in mathematics education has shown how discourse, participation, and power shape learning opportunities and the nature of mathematical activity itself. A central strand of this work examines teacher noticing as a key practice of responsive teaching. While research continues to advance embodied and ecological perspectives on teacher noticing, the auditory dimension of how teachers use their bodies, space, and movement to listen remains undertheorized. This paper examines teacher listening as a dimension of embodied teacher noticing through an exploratory case study of a mathematics teacher. We integrate conversation and interaction analysis with embodied and spatial methods to examine how teachers’ embodied movements and spatial positioning reflect listening practices. Our analysis proposes a framework of three different listening modes— observational , concentrated , and conversational —each defined by distinct spatial and attentional patterns that reflect how teachers shift and manage auditory attention within their broader noticing practice. We illustrate how this framework extends embodied and ecological perspectives on teacher noticing, offering new conceptual and methodological tools for understanding responsive teaching and how teachers make themselves available to students’ mathematical thinking.