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theses

The purpose of the qualitative study is to describe patterns of relationships between teacher questioning and student responses, especially student reasoning. This study is positioned in the longitudinal/cross sectional research study of the development of students’ mathematical thinking and reasoning conducted at Rutgers University that spanned over twenty-five years. Data were analyzed from sessions that were conducted in urban, working class, and suburban settings, from a range of age levels conducted by different researchers and from different content domains. The discourse from classroom settings as well as informal learning environments are examined. Little research has been conducted on the association between teacher questioning and the production of varied forms of reasoning by students. Hence, the objective was to identify how differing styles of questioning demonstrated by the researchers were associated with the production of students’ reasoning. Representative sessions facilitated by four researchers were examined to investigate researcher questioning and discourse moves and student responses in building proof-like justifications. Results indicated that certain types of questioning techniques employed by researchers were associated with ways the students formulated their solutions, extended their reasoning, made connections, or otherwise enhanced or refined their solutions. Accompanying the qualitative analysis of the data, are video narratives (VMCAnalytics) that demonstrate the different categories of teacher questioning that were associated with students’ reasoning and their productions of justifications. By analyzing questioning in various settings, at different age levels, and by multiple researchers, one gains insight into the relationships of teacher questioning and patterns of student reasoning. This study indicates that the extensive use of probing and eliciting questions, as well as questions posed to encourage engagement, engenders a learning environment that is conducive to argumentation, justification, and reasoning. Such targeted questioning can prompt students to articulate their strategies and logic, use evidence to support their conclusions, and justify and give detailed explanation of their thought processes, and serves as a catalyst for students to challenge or support each other’s arguments. Findings, accompanied by the video narratives, are offered to show patterns of effective questioning techniques that may lead students to clarify and formulate their own mathematical thinking and to independently discover mathematical facts and realities.

ETD_8405

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Miriam Gerstein

doi:10.7282/T36Q21C9

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.