Negotiating Multiple Mathematical Goals: Broadening Competence and Engaging With Each Other's Mathematical Ideas

• In Event: 18.061 - Discourse, Identity, and Mathematics Learning

Abstract

Recent research draws attention to varied ways of knowing and participating in mathematics. This paper explores how one third-grade teacher negotiated a common tension in reform classrooms—centering children’s ideas while engaging them in focused, substantive mathematics. Qualitative video analyses of classroom interactions revealed that the teacher created varied and multiple ways for students to participate by both supporting them to engage with the details of each other’s ideas and by broadening what was recognized as competence. These findings argue that efforts to understand opportunities to learn must attend not only to teachers’ questions and supporting moves, but also to the ways that students are positioned to engage as competent contributors to the specific mathematics under discussion.

Authors

• Nicholas Charles Johnson, University of California - Los Angeles

• Megan L. Franke, University of California - Los Angeles

• Marsha M. Ing, University of California - Riverside

• Angela Chan Turrou, University of California - Los Angeles

• Noreen M. Webb, University of California - Los Angeles

• Joy Zimmerman, University of California - Los Angeles