Listening to learn: investigating how teacher leaders elicit and attend to students’ mathematical thinking in clinical interviews

Eliciting and attending to students’ thinking is an important component of teaching mathematics for understanding. Clinical interview protocols have shown the potential to support teachers in developing these skills. However, less is known about how to support teacher leaders’ knowledge and development of these skills. Given that teacher leaders provide opportunities to foster teachers’ knowledge of these ideas, more needs to be known about teacher leaders’ abilities and knowledge in this area, and how clinical interviews might support teacher leaders’ pedagogical knowledge. This study explored the nuances in understanding the ways in which teacher leaders elicited and attended to student thinking when conducting clinical interviews. Findings show that while the majority of teacher leaders who engaged in conducting clinical interviews asked probing questions and engaged in observational thinking, they also faced challenges in moving toward responsive listening, particularly when students struggled with providing justification for a task.