In mathematics teaching, high-leverage practices include eliciting, analyzing, and responding to students' ideas and reasoning (Kazemi, Franke, & Lampert, 2009). While a focus on student thinking in professional development can be a powerful mechanism for linking pedagogy, mathematics, and student thinking, it is less clear how to support teacher candidates (TCs) to leverage student thinking in their mathematics teaching. Findings suggest developing an understanding of self as mathematics teacher relates to TCs' capacity for leveraging student thinking as a pedagogical practice and for making sense of their relations to the complex dynamics in schools. The tensions TCs experienced when leveraging student thinking in the actual socio-political contexts and constraints of schooling and the influence of their identity on their representations of practice lead to implications for mathematics teacher education. [For the complete proceedings, see ED584829.]