The Influence of Teacher–Student Discourse on Students’ Mathematics Identity Development in Rural, Secondary Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

Attending to students’ mathematics identities is necessary to provide all students with the opportunity to learn mathematics. Studies of students’ mathematics identities must consider the context of the mathematics classroom. My overarching research question was, “How does the teacher to student discourse that takes place in rural, secondary mathematics classroom affect students’ mathematics identities?” This question was subdivided into research questions that guided the manuscripts comprising the chapters of this dissertation: 1. How do secondary mathematics teachers in rural schools position their students? (Chapter II) 2. How do students in rural, secondary schools describe themselves in the context of mathematics? (Chapter III) 3. How does the way secondary mathematics teachers in rural schools position their students facilitate students’ development of positive mathematics identities, if at all? (Chapter IV) To address these questions, I analyzed data from one teacher and five students in an Honors Algebra I classroom in a rural, secondary school. Data collected included video-recorded classroom observations, pre- and post-interviews of the teacher and the students, pre- and post-identity drawings from the students (whose narrations were audio-recorded), and follow-up questions from both the teacher and the students. In Chapter II, I analyzed the data from a positioning perspective on mathematics identity and found how the teacher positioned students by leveraging their thinking through questioning and her lesson facilitation. In Chapter III, I analyzed the data from an identity as narrative perspective and found themes across how the students described their mathematics identities. Several of the students also described boundaries between themselves and mathematics as part of their identities. In Chapter IV, I drew from both of these perspectives to understand how the teacher’s leveraging of student thinking through questioning and lesson facilitation affected the students differently based on their individual mathematics identities. The findings of this study were significant for mathematics teachers, mathematics teacher educators, and mathematics education researchers. Future studies should describe other contexts, include students who are in minority groups, make comparisons between different contexts, and provide additional evidence to support themes that emerge in students’ mathematics identities by collecting data longitudinally.