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Why do some mathematics lessons captivate high school students and others not? This study explores this question by comparing how the content unfolds in the lessons that students rated highest with respect to their aesthetic affordances (e.g., using terms like “intriguing,” “surprising”) with those the same students rated lowest with respect to their aesthetic affordances (e.g., “just ok,” “dull”). Using a framework that interprets the unfolding content across a lesson as a mathematical story, we examine how some lessons can provoke curiosity or enable surprise. We identify eight characteristics that distinguish captivating lessons and show how some, such as the average number of questions under consideration at any point in the lesson, are strongly related to student aesthetic experiences. In addition, the lessons that students described as more interesting included more instances of misdirection, such as when students’ false assumptions provide opportunities for surprising results. These findings point to the characteristics of future lesson designs that could enable more students to experience curiosity and wonder in secondary mathematics classrooms.
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EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN QUALITATIVE LESSON SCORES AND QUANTITATIVE QUALITIES OF INDIVIDUAL CODES
Describing and measuring instructional quality of mathematics lessons is a common goal amongst mathematics education researchers. Such work takes several forms such as classifying and coding instructional moves and student activity or providing high-level rubric-based scores in relation to categories. In this work, we share an innovative mixed methods approach to analyzing lesson data that includes both a time-based classification of instruction and an overall scoring component. Using the Math Habits framework, our project team analyzed a set of 97 fourth-eighth grade mathematics lessons including overall scores. From this qualitative analysis, we developed quantitative models to predict overall scores and better understand the ways that individual codes do or do not contribute to overall lesson score characterizations.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1814114
- PAR ID:
- 10439035
- Editor(s):
- Lischka, A. E.; Dyer, E. B.; Jones, R. S.; Lovett, J.; Strayer, J.; & Drown, S.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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