Working with Mathematics Teachers to Develop Whole-Class Talk

Centre for Research in Mathematics Education

Developing Talk in Mathematics Classrooms 

Presented by Dr Jenni Ingram and Nick Andrews, Oxford University Department of Education

Talk plays an important role in broadening a student’s mathematical vocabulary, bringing increased lucidity to their explanations, and more generally developing and communicating their mathematical understanding. However this raises the question of how teachers can provide opportunities for students to develop what we succinctly label talk in mathematics (TiM). In this seminar we report on the first year of a two-year collaboration between two teams of teachers from local secondary schools and three researchers, who together have sought to address this question.

Previous research has identified the way teachers initiate sequences of interactions, the emphasis on technical vocabulary and the use of pauses as classroom-level factors that might influence the quality of TiM. In each cycle of the project we have explored together one of these factors, blending teaching experiences, previous research findings and classroom data from other studies using each to interrogate the other. This has allowed us to exemplify different ways of realising effective strategies that support the development of TiM. An emergent question is what counts as a mathematical explanation, and we will discuss the progress we have made so far in addressing this question.