Students' Engagements Patterns during Mathematics Classroom Practice

Abstract

This paper sought to investigate students’ engagement patterns during mathematics classroom practice. Four research objectives were designed to guide the discussion in the paper. The qualitative case study approach was adopted to collect data from twelve Senior Secondary one and two students from two secondary schools in Nigeria for the study. Four mathematics teachers taught mathematics for a period of 15 weeks span across three years. A thematic narrative approach was adopted as a tool to analyse the data collected from the students. The results of the study suggested that, six different engagement patterns were observed by the students as present during their classroom practice. The students identified these patterns as teacher-centred engagement pattern, student-individualised engagement patterns, teacher-student engagement pattern, student-students engagement pattern, group engagement pattern and whole class engagement pattern. However, the findings of the study suggested that, four out of the six engagement patterns should be encouraged during classroom instruction. These engagement patterns are teachers-students, students-students, group-based and whole-class engagement patterns. It was also recommended that teachers who pay more attention to the teacher-centred and student-individualised engagement patterns during classroom practice should seek to create classrooms environment that will promote students’ positive engagement during mathematics classroom practice.