From “Uh oh” to “I’m curious if”: Changes in Teachers’ Stance Over Time

Abstract

If teachers are to adapt lessons based on students’ ideas, they must first make sense of students’ ideas. In fact, a range of research has shown the importance of teachers taking an interpretive stance when discussing students’ thinking in order to position teachers to promote opportunities for students’ learning. Here we look at the extent to which teachers developed an interpretive stance toward students’ mathematical ideas when tagging moments of classroom video in an online system. We also examine key characteristics of teachers’ interpretive tags and shifts in the frequency in which these characteristics appeared in teachers’ interpretive tags over time.