Series: What Works? Research into Practice
Authors: Catherine D. Bruce
Collection: Research Materials
This document is part of a research-into-practice series produced by a partnership between The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat of the Ministry of Education of Ontario and the Ontario Association of Deans of Education.
This research paper asks the question: How can teachers support meaningful, high-quality student interaction in the math classroom? In the math reform literature, learning math is viewed as a social endeavour. In this model, the math classroom functions as a community where thinking, talking, agreeing, and disagreeing are encouraged. The teacher provides students with powerful math problems to solve together and students are expected to justify and explain their solutions. The primary goal is to extend one’s own thinking as well as that of others.
The Monograph also looks at what the research tells us; the value of student interaction; and also some challenges that teachers face in engaging students. As well, the author gives five strategies for encouraging high-quality student interaction, such as students questioning one another and the use of rich math tasks.
Copyright for this resource is held by the Queen’s Printer for Ontario.
http://library.copian.ca/item/12690
