“It’s a Different Kind of Reading”

Abstract

Through a qualitative analysis of data collected over four years of design-based research on the implementation of a reform-oriented mathematics curriculum, this study describes two sixth-grade teachers' changing views of the role and place of reading in mathematics instruction. The findings reveal the evolution of the teachers' perspective on mathematics instruction from one that did not include reading toward one in which reading was viewed as integral to students' mathematics learning. The teachers' views on reading in mathematics at the end of the project lend empirical support to theoretical propositions for a disciplinary literacy approach to mathematics instruction. At the same time, their views nuance such propositions by highlighting differences between the reading demands of school mathematics texts and those of disciplinary texts.

How Do Teachers Develop and Enact a Disciplinary View of Literacy in Mathematics

“…In parallel, the teachers' perspective on the literacy demands of the curriculum changed from viewing those demands as obstacles to students' mathematics learning to viewing them as opportunities for conceptual development. Therefore, the teachers decided to work on developing students' ability to write and read mathematics texts (Doerr & Chandler-Olcott, 2009;Doerr & Temple, 2016).…”

“…As the teachers designed and implemented their writing plans, they concluded that students' ability to read mathematics texts was a prerequisite for their writing such texts and for their mathematics learning as well. Therefore, the teachers spent the summer work session after the third year of the project working with Helen to develop reading plans (Doerr & Temple, 2016).…”

“…Pause and check was required to understand exactly what the text said or to evaluate its correctness, and therefore it required close reading, rereading, and checking one's understanding with examples. Pause and check could be used in conjunction with picture it (constructing a visual representation) or with answer and sense to double-check that the question had been correctly understood and answered and that the answer made sense (Doerr & Temple, 2016).…”

“…As Ariadna explained, "if I teach [students] to reason, it will be impossible that [they] won't be able to answer some two-pennies worth of test questions" (Temple, 2008, p. 136). The Belmont teachers' initial resistance to the new standards-based curriculum was also motivated by the clash between the curriculum's epistemology on the one hand and their personal experience as mathematics learners (which they described as all rote) and their goal for students' mathematics learning (the acquisition of strong computational skills; Doerr & Temple, 2016) on the other hand. Unlike Ariadna's resistance, the Belmont teachers' was based on an insufficient understanding of what it means to engage in the practices of the discipline.…”

“…At the end of the project, Codruta, who was one of the graduate students on the research team, did her doctoral dissertation research in mathematics classrooms in Romania (Temple, 2008), and Helen, one of her dissertation committee members, helped Codruta make sense of her findings. The palpable outcomes of our col-laboration were two articles that we coauthored (Doerr & Temple, 2016;Temple & Doerr, 2012), which examined U.S. and Romanian mathematics teachers' understanding of the role of literacy in mathematics learning, and the ways they translated such understanding into classroom practice. As we worked on those articles, we came to the conclusion that the extent to which the teachers integrated literacy within mathematics instruction correlated not only with their knowledge of literacy but also with their understanding of the mathematical content that they were teaching.…”