Search

Often, mathematics teachers do not incorporate whole-class discourse of students' various ideas and solution methods into their teaching practice. Particularly complex is the in-the-moment decision-making that is necessary to build on students' thinking and develop their collective construction of mathematics. This study explores the decision-making patterns of five experienced Dutch mathematics teachers during their novice attempts at orchestrating whole-class discourse concerning students' various solution methods. Our goal has been to unpack the complexity of their in-the-moment decision-making during whole-class discourse through lesson observations and stimulated recall interviews. We investigated teacher decision-making adopting a model that combines two perspectives, namely (1) we explored student-teacher interaction with regard to building on student thinking and (2) we explored how the teachers based decisions during such interaction upon their own personal conceptions and interpretation of student thinking. During these novice attempts at orchestrating whole-class discourse, the teachers created many situations for students to articulate their thinking. We found that at certain instances, teachers' in-the-moment decision-making resulted in opportunities to build on student thinking that were not completely seized. During such instances, the teachers' decision-making was shaped by the teachers' own conceptions of the relevant mathematics and by teacher conceptions that centered around student understanding and mathematical goals. Our findings suggest that teachers might be supported in their novice attempts at whole-class discourse by explicit discussion of the mathematics and of their conceptions with regard to student understanding and mathematical goals.

In mathematical whole-class discussions, teachers can build on various student ideas and develop these ideas toward mathematical goals. This requires teachers to make sense of their students' mathematical thinking, which evidently involves mathematical thinking on the teacher's part. Teacher sense-making of student mathematical thinking has been studied and conceptualized as an aspect of teacher noticing and has also been conceptualized as a mathematical activity. We combine these perspectives to explore the role of teacher mathematical thinking in making sense of student mathematical thinking. In this study, we investigated that role using video-based teacher discussions in a teacher researcher collaboration in which five Dutch high school mathematics teachers and one researcher developed discourse based lessons in cycles of design, enactment, and evaluation. In video-based discussions, they collaboratively reflected on whole-class discussions from the teachers' own lessons. We analyzed these discussions to explore the mathematical thinking that teachers articulated during sense-making of students' mathematical thinking and how teachers' mathematical thinking affected their sense-making. We found five categories concerning the role of teacher mathematical thinking in their sense-making: flexibility, preoccupation, incomprehension, exemplification, and projection. These categories show how both the content and the process of teacher mathematical thinking can support or impede their sense-making. In addition, we found that the teachers often did not articulate explicit mathematical thinking. Our findings suggest that sense-making of students' mathematical thinking requires teachers to (re-)engage in reflective thinking with regard to the mathematical content as well as the process of their own mathematical thinking.