Teachers’ structuring of mathematical inquiry lessons: shifting from “task-first” to “scaffolded inquiry”

Abstract

A three-phase 'task-first' lesson structure is frequently suggested when teaching mathematics through inquiry. We investigate how secondary school teachers of mathematics structure their inquiry lessons and examine how and why they deviate from a 'task-first' structure. We present detailed lesson observation data from three teachers participating in a year-long professional development programme focused on inquiry teaching. We track the developing structure of these teachers' inquiry lessons through minute-by-minute lesson analysis, describe how their lesson structures altered over time and explore why. Our data show that contextual constraints may explain why teachers departed from the 'task-first' lesson structure. In their inquiry teaching, two of the teachers adopted more scaffolded approaches, including the use of a sequence of smaller sub-tasks and teacher interventions. We argue that these modifications to a 'task-first' lesson structure are legitimate ways to support student learning through inquiry; indeed, that they may offer some advantages for inquiry teaching.

Inquiry research trends through bibliometric analysis (2020-2023)

“…Inquiry learning is a learning activity that maximally involves all students' abilities to seek and investigate something (objects, people, or events) systematically, critically, logically, analytically so that they can formulate their own findings with confidence (Calleja et al, 2023;Ruzaman, 2020., Novitasari & Iqbal, 2021. The success of the learning process is inseparable from the teacher's ability to develop learning models that are oriented towards increasing the intensity of effective student involvement in the learning process.…”