The theme of this article is based on the idea of "revoicing," which is defined as "the reuttering of another person's speech through repetition, expansion, rephrasing, and reporting" (Herbel-Eisenmann p. 268). On the surface, the concept of revoicing seems like a clear one. As a teacher, I find myself doing it very often. The existing literature in mathematics education on the concept, sees it as pretty clear as well. Of course, that is the purpose of academic writing; to clarify complex phenomena in our journey toward understanding. This brings me back to last week's article, where we defined a simpler model to understand something larger, and more complex.
The article examines a "study group" of eight working teachers, who have all been involved in professional development opportunities. The teachers met in a "study group" to discuss particular academic research papers and their implications in the classroom. Although the topics were varied, the author's were concerned with any mention of "revoicing" during the discussions. What the authors found, after examining the recordings of the sessions, was that although revoicing seemed to be clear on the surface, when teachers considered it in their own classrooms, they found that these experiences "muddy" the clear water. Teacher's spoke of how they were concerned that the revoicing of a particular student's idea, might turn the student's idea into the teacher's. That is, the teacher revoicing the student might be somewhat controlling and authoritative. I thought to my own classroom, and my habit of frequently revoicing. I was particularly struck by the idea of having other student's revoice, rather than the teacher. This removes the authoritative nature (somewhat) of the teacher, and might lead to a more mathematical conversation in the classroom. This not only requires students to be particularly attentive during class, but could also lead to "not only revoicing student thought, but also extending upon it" ( Herbel-Eisenmann, p 273). Something that I aim for in my classroom is a mathematical conversation, but with the time constraint on my classes, I find it extremely difficult to do so. I am going to try to make this a goal in my teaching next week.
I definitely try to have students bring ideas into the conversation in the classroom, and often feel myself "clarifying" their statements (and basically just repeating what I've already said to explain a topic). I suppose I blame this on feeling like students often don't articulate their mathematical thought clearly, and I don't want to 'muddy the waters' for the rest of the class
ReplyDeletePerhaps a good alternative is to ask students to 'revoice' what they have heard (either from a teacher or from another student) as a way to find out what they actually heard from us.
This is a very interesting topic because I feel that students often times look to a teacher to revoice their ideas. I think students have become so accustomed to this idea where teachers are the ones that know everything and control every situation, and therefore students do not feel like they are in charge of their learning. They do not know how to even revoice their own words in some cases, which definitely leads to much bigger problems like students being in charge of their own learning and issues with authority. Hmm...I will be thinking about this a lot now in my own teaching....very insightful.
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