Middle school mathematics students' motivations for participating in whole -class discussions: Their beliefs, goals, and involvement

Whole-class discussions in mathematics classrooms are considered to foster active sense-making and intellectual autonomy among students. Through participating in these discussions, students have the opportunity to develop skills of mathematical communication, reasoning, and justification. However, middle school students may resist participating in whole-class discussions if they perceive social consequences resulting from this activity.;Research on mathematics classroom discourse typically focuses on the role of the teacher in discourse, examining student variables as outcomes to measure the effectiveness of the teachers' strategies. Alternatively, in this study, students' beliefs and goals are examined for how they influence students' participation in classroom discourse rather than as outcomes.;I assessed beliefs and goals of 15 target students from two seventh grade mathematics classrooms through one-on-one interviews and a Likert-scale survey instrument. Students' talk in interviews was analyzed through the use of a framework that included imperative verbs to capture idealized states, repetition to capture emphasis, and connections to affect to capture relative importance to the student. This framework allowed for a more rigorous analysis of students' beliefs in contrast to reporting any and all of their responses to interview questions.;Students' involvement in classroom discourse was described based on an analyses of videotaped classroom discussions about four investigation problems from the Connected Mathematics Project Standards-based mathematics curriculum.;Results from this study indicate that students' involvement in classroom discussions is influenced by their social goals and epistemological beliefs. Students who believed they learned mathematics through a process of negotiation and associated a low level of risk with participating in discussion were more likely to extend their participation during an interaction, critique the thinking of their classmates, and talk about mathematics at a high level of explicit meaning. There were also differences in students' involvement between the target students based on their classrooms.;This study illustrates how adolescence intersects with the mathematics reform movement by taking into account students' perspectives. Future research investigating how beliefs and goals relate to students' involvement in discussions may explain how a classroom of students together supports the development of effective classroom discussions.