Paper presented at NARST 2015, Chicago 1 Using Learning Progressions to Support Pre-Service Physics Teachers’ Noticing Claudia von Aufschnaiter 1 , Alicia Alonzo 2 , & Daniel Kost 1 1 Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Germany 2 Michigan State University, USA Contact: Claudia.von-Aufschnaiter@didaktik.physik.uni-giessen.de; alonzo@msu.edu “Noticing” enables teachers to recognize and interpret key features of classroom events and to respond flexibly to students’ thinking during instruction. This study explores the premise that learning progressions can serve as a framework for supporting teachers’ noticing and interpreting of student ideas. In pairs, pre-service physics teachers (PSPTs) discussed short video clips highlighting a feature of common student thinking about force and motion. PSPTs’ discussions were video-recorded before and after 150 minutes of instruction on learning progressions. Using a category-based coding scheme, we investigated whether the PSPTs focused their noticing on student thinking and, if so, whether they utilized criteria derived from learning progressions (or other frameworks) for their interpretations. We expected that, as a result of instruction, the PSPTs would pay more nuanced attention to differences in the sophistication of students’ understanding. Results from the analysis of two pairs of PSPTs indicate that both groups spent the entire time on discussion of the videos (no off-task activities) and at both pre- and post-test were engaged with student thinking (rather than the other aspects of the videos). However, whereas one group demonstrated similar approaches to and expressed similar ideas about student thinking before and after learning progression instruction, the other group engaged more deeply with student thinking prior to the instruction. After instruction, these PSPTs used the learning progression to assign student ideas to levels, without paying as much attention to the nuances of student thinking as they had prior to instruction. Thus, contrary to our expectations, use of the learning progression did not appear to improve the four PSPTs’ ability to notice student thinking. Implications for further research on teacher noticing with learning progressions are discussed.