Study of Graduate Student instructors’ Attempts to incorporate and Reflect on Using Discourse Practices in Undergraduate Mathematics Courses

Authors

Katie Johnson Sprague, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

First Advisor

Lorraine Males

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

Teaching, Curriculum, & Learning

Date of this Version

12-11-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Citation

A dissertation presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Major: Educational Studies (Educational Leadership and Higher Education)

Under the supervision of Professor Deryl K. Hatch-Tocaimaza

Lincoln, Nebraska, February 2020

Comments

Copyright 2024, the author. Used by permission

Abstract

Within the last decade, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) has made a call to action, asking educators to engage in effective teaching of mathematics which includes having classrooms rich in mathematical discourse (NCTM, 2014). In this nine-week dissertation study, three mathematics graduate student instructors (GSIs) teaching undergraduate students at a large midwestern university enacted discourse practices to promote mathematical discussions as part of a participatory action research study. The participants were video tapped teaching six times and attended four whole group meetings. The whole group meetings were used to discuss the practices, planning, and enactment of the discourse practices. GSIs were also introduced to the five equity-based mathematics teaching practices (Aguirre et al., 2013). The GSIs connected their enactment of the discourse practice of talk moves (Chapin et al., 2003) to five equity-based mathematics teaching practices (Aguirre et al., 2013) by categorizing video clips of enacted teaching with the equity-based mathematics teaching practices. Overall, the participants were able to make twenty-one out of twenty-five connections between the talk moves (revoicing, repeating, reasoning, building on, and wait time) and the five equity-based mathematics teaching practices (going deep with mathematics, leveraging multiple mathematical competencies, affirming mathematics learners’ identities, challenging spaces of marginality, and drawing on multiple resources of knowledge). Five themes emerged from thematic analysis to answer the two research questions. Future implications and limitations were discussed.

Recommended Citation

Sprague, Katie Johnson, "Study of Graduate Student instructors’ Attempts to incorporate and Reflect on Using Discourse Practices in Undergraduate Mathematics Courses" (2024). Dissertations and Doctoral Documents from University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–. 241.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissunl/241