Classroom discourse of students in mathematics learning

Abstract

This research focuses on classroom discourse of students in mathematics learning. This study has addressed the questions: How teacher's and student's discourse in mathematics classroom? And how do teachers make the classroom discourse student friendly? To answer these research questions, I have selected the qualitative research design with ethnography approach. The study site of this study was Shree Nuwakot Secondary School, Nuwakot, Arghakhanchi. The participants of this study were two mathematics teachers and five students from grade nine and ten. Altogether, seven people were the research participants in this study. I used purposive sampling to select the participants for this study. Classroom observation guideline, interview guidelines and focus group discussion guideline were the main tools of this study. I analysed the information by using different theories to produce the information and draw the conclusion of this study. Through the analysis of the data, it was found that theoretically, teachers were aware about student centre methods that we have to use but practically they were not using in actual classroom and the teachers were not well prepared to practice lesson plan in actual classroom. Despite being well-known about to prepare, teachers use mono-cultural practice in multicultural classroom situation. Further, it was also concluded that present scenario of classroom discourse was more teacher centred. It was also concluded that by applying-cultural based pedagogy, using various strategies in teaching-learning activities in mathematics classroom, by avoiding rote memorization, by implementing co-operative learning and through multiple representations making classroom discourse students friendly.