Responsiveness to Students’ Mathematical Thinking in Middle-Grades Classrooms

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Jessica Pierson Bishop Texas State University, San Marcos, TX

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Hamilton L. Hardison Texas State University, San Marcos, TX

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Julia Przybyla-Kuchek University of Georgia, Athens, GA

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Responsiveness to students’ mathematical thinking is a characteristic of classroom discourse that reflects the extent to which students’ mathematical ideas are present, attended to, and taken up as the basis for instruction. Using the Mathematically Responsive Interaction (MRI) Framework and data from 11 middle-grades classrooms, we illustrate varied enactments of responsiveness and describe fluctuations in and relationships among different components of responsiveness. We found positive associations between different components of responsiveness, but they were not entirely predictive of one another. Individual classrooms appeared more or less responsive depending on which component was foregrounded. Our findings offer a more comprehensive characterization of responsiveness that documents the intertwined nature of teacher moves and student contributions during all whole-class instruction.

Footnotes

This manuscript is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. DRL-1649979. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

Contributor Notes

Jessica Pierson Bishop, Department of Mathematics, Texas State University, 601 University Dr., San Marcos, TX 78666; jbishop01@txstate.edu

Hamilton L. Hardison, Department of Mathematics, Texas State University, 601 University Dr., San Marcos, TX 78666; HHardison@txstate.edu

Julia Przybyla-Kuchek, Department of Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies Education; University of Georgia, 110 Carlton St., Athens, GA 30602; juliapk@uga.edu

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