Building on student mathematical thinking in whole-class discourse: exploring teachers’ in-the-moment decision-making, interpretation, and underlying conceptions

Often, mathematics teachers do not incorporate whole-class discourse of students’ various ideas and solution methods into their teaching practice. Particularly complex is the in-the-moment decision-making that is necessary to build on students’ thinking and develop their collective construction of mathematics. This study explores the decision-making patterns of five experienced Dutch mathematics teachers during their novice attempts at orchestrating whole-class discourse concerning students’ various solution methods. Our goal has been to unpack the complexity of their in-the-moment decision-making during whole-class discourse through lesson observations and stimulated recall interviews. We investigated teacher decision-making adopting a model that combines two perspectives, namely (1) we explored student-teacher interaction with regard to building on student thinking and (2) we explored how the teachers based decisions during such interaction upon their own personal conceptions and interpretation of student thinking. During these novice attempts at orchestrating whole-class discourse, the teachers created many situations for students to articulate their thinking. We found that at certain instances, teachers’ in-the-moment decision-making resulted in opportunities to build on student thinking that were not completely seized. During such instances, the teachers’ decision-making was shaped by the teachers’ own conceptions of the relevant mathematics and by teacher conceptions that centered around student understanding and mathematical goals. Our findings suggest that teachers might be supported in their novice attempts at whole-class discourse by explicit discussion of the mathematics and of their conceptions with regard to student understanding and mathematical goals.

El discurso oficial de la clase media china: ansiedad, nacionalismo y populismo / The Official Discourse of the Chinese Middle Class: Anxiety, Nationalism and Populism

The media have played a key role in the dissemination of an official middle-class discourse that emerged in the People’s Republic of China two decades ago. The emergence and construction of a middle-class discourse in China will be analysed through news items published in Renmin Wang (People’s Daily Online), the digital version of the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in order to answer the question: why does the CCP promote an official middle-class discourse in China? The findings suggest that the Party-State legitimises its authority by taking different stances based on a populist nationalism that fosters a new identity consistent with neoliberal values, which goes hand in hand with the discourse of the middle class.

The role of ancient remains in the Sarmatian culture of early modern Poland

Visible material remnants of ancient cultures were, for a variety of historical reasons, not particularly abundant in the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795). The past monuments of these lands were not hewn in stone and marble but in timber, leaving behind no impressive structures to provoke the interest of subsequent generations. The dearth of material evidence did not, however, prevent generations of Polish historians and antiquarians from assigning Greco-Roman identities to local monuments. They were keen to offer tangible proof of the past glory of the land inhabited by the alleged descendants of the Sarmatians. In this paper, some of these monuments are explored, especially the Mounds of Krakus and Wanda near Cracow as well as an alleged tomb of Ovid in Vohlyna. The narratives fabricated around them as a part of the ideology of Sarmatism, a class discourse, which constructed an identity for the Polish nobility as the descendants of the ancient tribe of Sarmatians, are also examined.