An Investigation of Relationships between Seventh-Grade Students' Beliefs and Their Participation during Mathematics Discussions in Two Classrooms

Abstract

As mathematics teachers attempt to promote classroom discourse that emphasizes reasoning about mathematical concepts and supports students' development of mathematical autonomy, not all students will participate similarly. For the purposes of this research report, I examined how 15 seventh-grade students participated during whole-class discussions in two mathematics classrooms. Additionally, I interpreted the nature of students' participation in relation to their beliefs about participating in whole-class discussions, extending results reported previously (Jansen, 2006) about a wider range of students' beliefs and goals in discussion-oriented mathematics classrooms. Students who believed mathematics discussions were threatening avoided talking about mathematics conceptually across both classrooms, yet these students participated by talking about mathematics procedurally. In addition, students' beliefs about appropriate behavior during mathematics class appeared to constrain whether they critiqued solutions of their classmates in both classrooms. Results suggest that coordinating analyses of students' beliefs and participation, particularly focusing on students who participate outside of typical interaction patterns in a classroom, can provide insights for engaging more students in mathematics classroom discussions.