TEACHING STANDARDS

PROMOTING DISCOURSE

Effective mathematics and science teachers promote discourse that encourages and accepts the use of multiple modes of communication to build understanding.

Classroom discourse is central to the teaching and learning of mathematics and science. It reflects not only what students learn but how they learn it. Discourse is comprised of all the ways of representing, thinking, talking, agreeing and disagreeing that the students and the teacher engage in. Effective mathematics and science teachers focus on issues related to discourse, such as:

• Who talks? About what? In what ways?
• What do people write and record? In what ways?
• What questions are asked and who asks them? Who answers them?
• What makes something true or reasonable?
• How is it determined whether an idea makes sense?

Effective mathematics and science teachers help their students use a variety of forms of discourse, including oral, written, pictorial, symbolic, and graphic. In addition, they:

• provide students the opportunity to gain experience using many different tools that enhance discourse, such as computers and calculators, physical models, manipulatives, and other formal and informal methods of representation,
• recognize that some modes of communication may not be accessible to students and take steps to encourage and nurture students' efforts to develop new means of expression.

The teacher's role is to advance and organize classroom discourse in ways that foster student learning. They:

• encourage students to make ideas and conjectures public so that the teacher can assess the ways in which learners are making sense of things and students can reflect on the reasonableness of the ideas,
• give students the opportunity to communicate their thinking in the various modes that are natural for them.

Effective mathematics and science teachers help students express their ideas. They:

• have students work in collaborative/cooperative groups, giving students many opportunities to interact with their peers, to listen to and react to others, and to clarify explanations of their own thinking,
• ask questions that provoke students' reasoning about the problems they encounter and challenge students to think by giving them opportunities to elaborate on their ideas,
• take care not to dominate the discussion, edit or restate students' ideas, but instead allow other students to comment on, question or disagree with each others' statements.

In orchestrating classroom discourse, teachers are sensitive to students' needs and know when and how to provide the support that is sometimes necessary to move the discussion along. They:

• decide which ideas to probe and what connections to make,
• know when to provide more information and when to hold back,
• know when to allow a question to remain unsolved and when some sort of closure is necessary.

Effective mathematics and science teachers monitor students' participation in classroom discourse. They:

• involve every student in discussions,
• make sensitive decisions about whose turn it is to participate and take care not to call only on students who seem to have the correct answer,
• model the respect for diverse ways of thinking they want their students to use in responding to different ideas,
• give students appropriate wait time to think without feeling pressure from others who might be able to respond more quickly,
• accept a variety of ways for students to contribute to the class' thinking.