Prospective Teachers’ Transfer of Moves for Eliciting Student Thinking from Literacy to Mathematics

Teacher education programs can benefit from curricular coherence by integrating high leverage teaching practices across courses. This study examined (a) moves prospective teachers who participated in an eliciting student thinking module in a literacy course used more often than those who participated in a literacy course without the module, (b) moves all prospective teachers needed support for in mathematics, (c) moves were used less often by those who had participated in the module, and (d) how these moves were implemented differently. Findings indicated that prospective teachers who had learned to elicit student thinking in literacy were more likely to elicit the student’s entire problem-solving process and were less likely to direct the student to a different process. All prospective teachers needed support learning how to pose an additional mathematics task and to ask the student to write. Lastly, prospective teachers who had participated in an eliciting student thinking module in a literacy methods course were more likely to make evaluative comments to the student. How prospective teachers implemented these moves also varied based on their prior exposure to eliciting student thinking in literacy. These findings can inform how elementary teacher education faculty develop high leverage practices across their programs.