Investigating the Professional Lexicon of French Middle School Mathematics Teachers

• In Event: The Lexicon Project: Examining the Content, Structure, and Implications of Pedagogical Naming Systems From Different Cultures

Abstract

Aim
The goal of the French research team is to identify the professional lexicon reasonably shared by middle school mathematics teachers in France to describe classroom practices and discuss these, and, through comparison with other countries, to better understand the potential and limitation of the French lexicon, and how it might be developed.

Perspective
In line with the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic and the praxeological model it offers of human practices, we consider that teacher practices have both a praxis and a logos dimension, but that the current state of this logos contributes to make the teaching profession still a semi-profession, having difficulties at expressing and disseminating its professional knowledge and expertise and making it socially acknowledged (Chevallard, 1985).

Methods and techniques
A team of French researchers and experienced teachers prepared a first version of the lexicon, using both a list of terms a priori agreed and those emerging in the coding of videos from nine different countries developed for the international project. A process of evaluation and revision was then enacted through questionnaires (local and national), and the final version translated into English.

Data
The French Lexicon currently consists of 115 terms, organized in six categories: General terms (9 terms); Nature of tasks/activities (17 terms); Phases of a session (13 terms); Forms of pedagogical organization (10 terms); Mathematical activities (16 terms); Pedagogic and didactic management of the classroom (50 terms). Specific codes have been introduced for academic terms, and to clarify the agency (teacher, students or both) where pertinent.

Results/Conclusions
The results of the evaluation process indicate that 95 of the 115 terms meet the threshold of familiarity and shared understanding fixed for inclusion in national lexicons, the 20 other terms being all academic terms (among 40 of the 115), which shows the slow progression of technical terms in the profession. Agency is particularly visible in two categories: Mathematical activities (all shared agency) and Pedagogic and didactic management of the classroom (34 teacher, 2 student, 14 shared). Despite project-wide agreement that lexicons would not enter into math domains, for French teachers it was not acceptable to create a lexicon without including very familiar terms such as ‘proving’, ‘defining’ and ‘mathematizing’ in the category Mathematical activities. This importance attached to mathematics and its specific epistemology is in line with the French educational culture. Another characteristic of the French lexicon is the predominance of terms whose description incorporates a function (that is, action, phase or task purpose).

Significance
This research investigates the professional discourse of mathematics teachers through the words available to them to notice classroom processes and phenomena, and to express their noticing. The results obtained help us better understand the current potential and limitation of this professional discourse. They also make clear that lexicons are cultural objects shaped by the educational contexts and cultures where they develop. The comparisons make their characteristics more visible and questionable, and help envisage evolution towards a more effective professional discourse.

Authors

• Michèle Artigue, Université Paris Diderot

• Brigitte Grugeon-Allys, Université Paris-Est Créteil

• julie Horoks, université Paris Est Créteil