Teaching Mathematics with a New Curriculum: Changes to Classroom Organization and Interactions

Abstract

This report describes a high school mathematics teacher's decisions about classroom organization and interactions during his first two years using a new curriculum intended to support teachers' development of student-centered, contributive classroom discourse. In year one, the teacher conducted class and interacted with students primarily in small groups. In year two, he conducted more whole-class instruction. In both years, teacher-student interactions contained univocal and contributive discourse, but in year two the teacher sustained contributive discourse with students for longer periods. The teacher facilitated the most significant changes to classroom discourse in the instructional format with which he had the greatest experience (whole-class instruction). Over the period of this study, two key factors appeared to affect the teacher's decisions about classroom organization and interactions: his perception of students' expectations about mathematics classroom roles and activity, and his own discomfort associated with using a new curriculum. These areas are important candidates for future research about teachers' use of innovative mathematics curricula.

The work reported in this article was funded in part by the National Science Foundation under Award Number 9255257. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Notes

¹This name is a pseudonym, as are the names of all students in this report.

²Hereafter, the 1994–1995 school year is called year one and 1995–1996 is called year two.