Redirecting, progressing, and focusing actions—a framework for describing how teachers use students’ comments to work with mathematics

Abstract

In order to describe and analyze teachers’ orchestrating of classroom discourse, detailed descriptions of teachers’ comments and questions are critical. The purpose of this article is to suggest new concepts that enable us to describe in detail how teachers use or do not use students’ comments to work with the mathematical content. Five teachers from upper primary school (grades five to seven, students aged 10 to 13) were studied. Beginning with the analysis of a pattern where the teacher gives a confirmation followed by a question that indicates a rejection, their practices form the basis for the development of 13 categories of teacher comments. These categories are then grouped into redirecting, progressing, and focusing actions. The categories and their groupings shed light on tools and techniques which these teachers use to make student strategies visible, to make students justify, apply and assess, to ensure progress towards a conclusion, or to redirect the students into alternative approaches. These findings can help us develop in the direction of a more profound understanding of how communication affects learning.