Inclusiveness for linguistically diverse students: prospective elementary teachers’ multidisciplinary asset-based noticing skills

With the growing population of emergent bi/multilingual learners (EMLs) in U.S. schools and the central role of language in mathematical sense-making, there is an urgent need to prepare elementary teachers to effectively teach mathematics to EMLs (Fernandes 2012; Roberts and Olarte, 2025). Providing equitable mathematics learning opportunities in linguistically diverse settings requires pre-service teachers to strengthen their skills to notice students’ mathematical strengths, linguistic assets, and resources. However, helping elementary pre-service teachers develop noticing skills is not an easy task for mathematics teacher educators. Our study examined three noticing tasks (i.e. video, interview, and written-artefact tasks) and the skills of elementary pre-service teachers to notice the mathematical thinking of EMLs using these tasks. To operationalise PSTs’ multidisciplinary noticing skills, we share a new noticing rubric that draws on the conceptualisation of an asset-based perspective. Our findings indicated that each noticing task served a distinct purpose in the progression of pre-service teachers towards multidisciplinary, asset-based noticing. While PSTs may recognise EMLs’ linguistic assets through field placements, analyzing written student work can more intentionally support their ability to interpret and respond to EMLs’ mathematical thinking across cognitively demanding tasks. We share implications for mathematics teacher educators and provide recommendations for future research.