Teacher-Researcher Collaborative Inquiry in Mathematics Teaching Practices: Learning to Promote Student Discourse

Previous studies have provided images of what mathematics classrooms look like when students engage in productive student-to-student discourse, but few studies, have empirically investigated teacher learning related to the facilitation of student-to-student discourse or the relationships between teacher learning and observable shifts in teachers’ practices over time. Following researchers who study with teachers as co-researchers and co-designers, this poster describes how one teacher and a researcher collaboratively engaged an inquiry-cycle process for reflecting on the teacher’s instructional practices related to a mutually defined goal of promoting student-to-student discourse. We illustrate how the teacher’s reflections on her own practices through the iterations of the inquiry cycle resulted in her increased capacity to improve student-to-student discourse. In doing so, we describe key changes to her conceptions of three foundational constructs for math teaching and learning: 1) What it means to learn the discipline of mathematics; 2) Teacher and student roles in the classroom; and 3) Student capacity for taking up agency and ownership of their learning and knowledge building