Mindset Messaging: Teacher Intellectual Humility in Responses to Student Bids in the Mathematics Classroom

• In Event: Fostering Intellectual Humility in Adolescence

Abstract

In mathematics classrooms, teachers play a critical role in apprenticing students in ways of doing and learning mathematics. This includes shaping expectations and beliefs about what it means to be a competent mathematics learner and whether mathematics ability is malleable (e.g., growth mindset; Author, 2018, 2019; Boaler, 2016, 2020; Dweck 2006, 2015).

Our work examines how teachers’ responses to students’ bids can model intellectual humility and shape students’ beliefs about mathematical competence and ability. Bids are implicit or explicit offers of (e.g., sharing a strategy) or requests for (e.g., asking questions) action (e.g., sanctioning an answer as correct or clarifying a concept) that students make when engaging in mathematics learning (Author, 2021). In this presentation we address findings related to the question: how do teachers' responses to student bids model (or not) intellectual humility and subsequently communicate fixed or growth mindset messages related to mathematics ability?

We qualitatively examined adolescents’ bids in four middle school mathematics classrooms. In each classroom we identified bid episodes, which included the bid the student made and the teacher’s response to the bid. Using apriori and inductive codes, we classified student bids into categories such as, offering an alternative idea, asking a clarifying question, and providing an answer. We then classified teacher responses to bids into three categories: (a) sanction: accept the bid as is, (b) deflect: acknowledge and modify the bid, (c) ignore: does not acknowledge bid, and (d) dismiss: acknowledge and explicitly reject the bid.

Examining patterns across student bids and teacher responses, we found that teachers who more frequently modeled intellectual humility by sanctioning student bids, particularly those related to offering an alternative idea, supported broader conceptions of mathematical competence thereby communicating that each student could contribute and learn in the mathematics classroom. The acceptance of such bids thus likely communicated more growth mindset messages to students. In contrast, teachers who more frequently ignored or rejected student bids of all types, supported narrower conceptions of mathematical competence by signaling that there was typically only one way to approach a mathematical task. Such rejection or deflection of bids therefore communicated more fixed mindset messages to students. This study contributes to our understanding of how mathematics teachers’ modeling of intellectual humility might shape adolescents’ mindset beliefs and has important implications for researchers and practitioners.

Authors

• Kathy Liu Sun, Santa Clara University
  Presenting Author

• Jennifer L. Ruef, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author