Research Outputs
Teacher support for argumentation and the incorporation of contingencies in mathematics classrooms
Mathematics classrooms in which students engage in argumentation constitute a favourable context to analyse how teachers recognize and incorporate student contingencies. Through exploratory case studies, we examined three mathematics lessons in which teachers support argumentation in contingent situations triggered by student errors. Teachers’ argumentation support was defined as comprising three elements: mathematical tasks open to discussion, communicative strategies, and strategies to recognize students’ thinking. This three-strategy set is termed argumentative orchestration in contingent situations. Results show that all three strategies encourage argumentation in the mathematics classroom during contingent situations; more specifically, taking measures to recognize students’ thinking significantly fosters the incorporation of contingent situations in the mathematics classroom.
Argumentative orchestration in the mathematical modelling cycle in the classroom
Given the importance of modelling in mathematics classrooms, and despite the extensive body of research on teacher support for promoting the mathematical modelling cycle in the classroom, authors have overlooked how teacher support for argumentation can contribute to this cycle. This study is aimed at characterizing teacher support for argumentation in the mathematical modelling cycle in the classroom. We analyzed 10 class episodes taken from the cases of two teachers, Soledad and Ángeles. The episodes were analyzed considering teacher support for argumentative orchestration (communicative strategies and pattern recognition). In the two cases studied, we found that argumentative orchestration exhibited different types of overall presence and recurrence throughout the stages of the mathematical modelling cycle, with communicative strategies being more present across the board and more recurrent in the mathematical modelling cycle than pattern recognition strategies.