Responding to Current Field Experience Challenges with the Virtualization of Number Talks

As mathematics teacher educators, we describe here the virtualization of a traditionally face-to-face, commonly used classroom practice as a response to the current COVID-19 health crisis and the accompanying shift to online field experiences. We report aspects of our “virtualization” of Number Talks, describing “Virtual Number Talks” and a Teacher Learning Cycle specific to taking up this practice in the context of mathematics teacher education courses. We deliberately chose Number Talks because of the potential to focus on student discourse and mathematical thinking (e.g., Parrish, 2011) and widespread use in PreK-12 schools (Matney, Lustgarten, & Nicholson, 2020).