A Study on the Reform of Mathematics Education from the Comparison of Classroom Culture

교실문화 비교를 통한 수학교육개혁에 관한 소고

Many teachers report familiarity with and adherence to reform ideas, but their actual teaching practices do not reflect a deep understanding of reform. Given the challenges in implementing reform, this study intended to explore the breakdown that may occur between teachers' adoption of reform objectives and their successful incorporation of reform ideals. To this end, this study compared and contrasted the classroom social norms and sociomathematical norms of two United States second-grade teachers who aspired to implement reform. This study is an exploratory, qualitative, comparative case study. This study uses the grounded theory methodology based on the constant comparative analysis for which the primary data sources were classroom video recordings and transcripts. The two classrooms established similar social norms including an open and permissive learning environment, stressing group cooperation, employing enjoyable activity formats for students, and orchestrating individual or small group session followed by whole group discussion. Despite these similar social participation structures, the two classes were remarkably different in terms of sociomathematical norms. In one class, the students were involved in mathematical processes by which being accurate or automatic was evaluated as a more important contribution to the classroom community than being insightful or creative. In the other class, the students were continually engaged in significant mathematical processes by which they could develop an appreciation of characteristically mathematical ways of thinking, communi-eating, arguing, proving, and valuing. It was apparent from this study that sociomathematical norms are an important construct reflecting the quality of students' mathematical engagement and anticipating their conceptual learning opportunities. A re-theorization of sociomathematical norms was offered so as to highlight the importance of this construct in the analysis of reform-oriented classrooms.