On Target?
Agency, Authority and identity
This set of targets concerns the agency, authority and identity in the mathematics classroom.
We ask three big questions:
In what ways do classroom activities support students in developing the disposition and capacity to engage with rich mathematics?
In what ways do classroom activities provide opportunities for students to make the mathematics their own?
How do classroom activities help students connect their personal identities with their mathematical experiences, so they can see themselves as mathematical sense makers?
Begin an interactive "target practice" by clicking on a target ABOVE.
This Dimension focuses on the extent to which students have opportunities to generate and share ideas, both in whole class and small group settings; the extent to which student contributions are encouraged, recognized and supported as part of regular classroom activity; and the extent to which student ideas are built upon as the classroom constructs its collective understandings. We define:
- Agency as the disposition and capacity to act: “I can do mathematics, and I’m willing to jump in and give it my best.”
- Ownership as taking possession of knowledge by making it one’s own. “I figured this out; it makes sense; it’s not simply what ‘they’ told me is true.”
- Identity as someone’s sense of who they are as a person. “I am a math person. I like math; it makes sense; and I can figure things out.” (People can have multiple identities. I am a math person, and I love to read, and I have a particular ethnic or religious identity, and…)
It goes without saying that our identities are shaped in the communities we belong to, and the interactions within them; our mathematics identities are shaped in large measure by our mathematics classroom experiences.
Many of the issues relevant to Dimension 2 (Cognitive Demand) and Dimension 3 (Equitable Access) are relevant here – students are much more likely to build positive mathematical identities when the mathematics is challenging but within reach, they feel safe venturing ideas, and the mathematics is personally meaningful. So as always, the question is, how can we open things up for deeper student engagement? Here we separate possibilities in actions for whole class and small groups, and when students are making presentations.
When we reflect on whole class or small group activities:
- How much “room” is there for student thinking and exploration? Can more room be built in, for example by think/pair/share activities? Is there time to persevere, and reap the rewards of such hard work?
- Are there opportunities for students to build on each other’s thinking? Can these be expanded?
- How is correctness determined? Is it by looking to external authority (teacher or text), or working things through? Can more authority be ceded to the students?
- Who initiates conversations? Can those conversations be made richer? Deeper? More participatory? In what ways?
- How long are students’ speech turns? Can they be expanded, deepened? In what ways?
- Do student ideas get built on? By whom? Can these patterns be expanded?
When we reflect on student presentations:
- How comfortable are the students taking control in front of the class? Can the students be further positioned and supported as leaders, with things to share?
- Whose math is it, the presenters’ or external authority’s? Can the presenters be further supported in explaining their own thoughts and ideas?
- Who’s the audience, the teacher or fellow students? Which students are invited into the conversation, in what ways? Can we support presenter-student dialogues be supported, further opening up A/O/I to the whole class?
Agency, Ownership, and Identity
The extent to which students are provided opportunities to “walk the walk and talk the talk” – to contribute to conversations about mathematical ideas, to build on others’ ideas and have others build on theirs – in ways that contribute to their development of agency (the willingness to engage), their ownership over the content, and the development of positive identities as thinkers and learners.