Participating in Mathematics Classroom Discourse:
The Voices of Students
Amanda Jansen, University of Delaware
Consider students’ participation in whole class discussions in mathematics classrooms.
What are some of your conjectures about their experiences?
Willingness: Why might students be willing to participate out loud in classroom
discussions about mathematics, from their points of view? (What do they hope to
get out of participating aloud?)
Avoidance: Why might students choose not to participate out loud in classroom
discussions about mathematics, from their points of view? (What do they hope to
get out of not participating aloud?)
Lenses to support interpreting students’ voices
Motivation: What drives us? (motives)
Engagement: What do we do? (actions)
Motivation: What drives us
Social determination theory
(Deci & Ryan, 2012)
Engagement: What we do
Forms of Talk
(Barnes, 1992)
Motivational Needs:
Autonomy
Competence
Relatedness
Rough draft (exploratory) talk
Final draft talk
Motivation can be a drive to meet our needs for…
Autonomy: People need to feel in control of their own behaviors and goals.
Having an influence on one’s own life – agency, choice.
Competence: People need to gain mastery of tasks and learn different skills.
Feeling confidence in one’s own capabilities.
Relatedness: People need to experience a sense of belonging and attachment
to other people. Interacting with, connecting with, and caring for others.
Engagement in…
Rough draft (exploratory) talk: At early stages of new ideas. Involves trying
out ideas and modifying them while speaking. It is to be expected that delivery
will be hesitant, broken, and full of dead-ends and changes of direction.
Speaker is concerned with sorting out her or his thoughts.
Final draft (presentational) talk: At end stages of new ideas. Involves
presenting thinking as clearly as possible.
Speaker’s attention: Focused on performing for audience.
Did any of your conjectures about students’ participation align with these lenses?
Your turn – interpret students’ voices! What do you interpret about their
motivational needs (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) and the forms of talk
(rough draft or final draft) that they interpret that they’re expected to exhibit?
Student
Motivational needs
Forms of talk
Allen: Like, if I really know this answer
and nobody else does, I’d like to try and
get the right answer. And that’s pretty
much, it makes you want to raise your
hand if you know the answer to a
problem. That’s what happens to me. But
going up in front of everybody, that just
makes me nervous . . . like if they had
one way, and they got the right answer,
I’d just show them my other way, just to
help out other people, and compare
them.
Marissa: I like, just, watching people
more than I like jumping right in, arguing,
getting in the fight, all that good stuff. I
think I’d rather just look and pay
attention and just, yeah. . . . I think I like
to look at the big picture and both views
before I decide my decision. I like to hear
both points, because then it brings, well,
is she? What ways are they wrong? What
ways are they right? Stuff like that.
Responding to these students
Reframe: Alternative ways to
Student interpret participation
Allen
Marissa
Encourage: Alternative ways to
engage in participation
Challenge: Listening and responding to your OWN students’ voices
One useful prompt:
What if you shared your thinking out loud during mathematics class and your
thinking was incorrect? How would you feel (or how have you felt when this
happened)?
a) Bad. I felt very embarrassed.
b) Neutral. Sometimes this happens. No big deal.
c) Good. I learned from sharing my thoughts.
Explain your response:
Use prompt as a classroom journal entry, online survey, etc.
Interpret students’ explanations using motivation (needs for autonomy, competence,
and relatedness) and engagement lenses (rough draft and final draft talk).