Characterizing student discourse in a sixth-grade mathematics classroom

he directive by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to teach for mathematical understanding by engaging students in purposeful tasks and classroom discourse brings the issues of teacher pedagogical content knowledge, instructional decision making, and questioning skills to the forefront (Ball, 1993; Shulman, 1987). However, teachers' ability to develop meaningful tasks, pose problems, and facilitate discourse in mathematics classes has been limited (Gonzales, 1994; Russell & Corwin, 1993). This descriptive study used a micro-ethnographic and sociolinguistic approach to examine the influence of three types of task environments on the involvement and discussions of sixth grade students. The case study consisted of a 2-week fall pilot study and a 6-week winter formal study. The teacher-researcher used quantitative research methods to compare and contrast target students' participating behaviors and qualitative research methods to determine the quality of the classroom discourse as students engaged in three differentiated mathematics tasks. The teacher-researcher found one statistically significant difference among five categories of participating behaviors when the task settings were analyzed using the paired t test. The amount of agreement and disagreement differed when the abstract setting was paired with the applied setting...