THE ROLE OF EXPERTS’ NORMS OF INSTRUCTIONAL QUALITY FOR ASSESSING TEACHER NOTICING: Revealing culture-specific and interculturally shared norms of mathematics education in Germany and Taiwan

Teacher noticing is gaining greater attention in the international research community. However, the researchers’ perspectives on instructional quality often shape what they expect teachers to notice. This may impact the validity of the results when comparing teacher noticing across cultures, as norms regarding instruction held by the researchers may differ between cultures. The TaiGer Noticing project systematically investigates the role of potentially culture-specific norms when assessing teacher noticing, using the example of mathematics instruction in Germany as a Western country and Taiwan as an East Asian country. In a concurrent process, the research team members from each country developed noticing vignettes integrating a breach of a norm regarding an aspect of instructional quality from their perspective. A validation study with a total of 43 experts from both countries allows for investigating whether there are indications for interculturally shared or culture-specific norms regarding instructional quality. The results of this validation process yielded different cases, which are illustrated and summarized in this chapter: Interculturally shared norms of instructional quality that were validated in both countries (5 of 18 cases), but also culture-specific norms that were validated in only one country (8 of 18 cases). The authors discuss the implications for cross-cultural research on teacher noticing.