How to Foster Diagnostic Competence with Text-Image Vignettes?

Designing a Learning Opportunity for Pre-service Mathematics Teachers in Primary School

Abstract

Every day, teachers are faced with the challenging task of providing their students with learning opportunities that match their learning requirements. An essential condition for successful adaptive instruction is the teacher’s diagnostic competence, the development of which is, therefore, a central objective in teacher training. Diagnostic competence can be described as the ability to make accurate judgments in complex, real teaching situations based on specific professional knowledge, to inform subsequent teaching decisions. Diagnostic competence can be developed through deliberate practice, focusing on learning opportunities that authentically reflect diagnostic situations in the classroom and require the teacher’s diagnostic competence. The text-picture vignette presented here provides such a learning opportunity for pre-service mathematics teachers by engaging them in a diagnostic classroom situation during early arithmetic instruction. In this way, a practical use of professional knowledge is stimulated without pre-service teachers having to encounter the entire complexity and immediacy of a real teaching situation.
In this article a concrete example is used to show how text-picture vignettes can be designed and used as learning opportunities in teacher training.