Recognizing The Interweaving Zone of Dialogic Teaching in a Mathematics Classroom in Singapore

Abstract

Despite awareness of its merits, reports on the use of dialogic teaching in mathematics classrooms in Singapore have been relatively scant. Furthermore, past research provided little recognition for the role of monologic type of interactions in the classroom where certain extent of teacher talk would be expected. This mixed method research thus firstly investigates how dialogic teaching is enacted in two Secondary 2 mathematics classrooms in Singapore. The collection of data involved two mathematics teachers and their corresponding classes from which lesson sequences on the topic of direct and inverse proportion were recorded and analysed. Data analysis was carried out through the use of a monologic-dialogic continuum framework. It revealed that while there was an overall dominance of monologic type of interaction during the various mathematics lessons there were some evidence of dialogic teaching espoused by the oscillatory swings between monologic and dialogic type of teacher-student interactions during the lessons. The discussions deliver an understanding to how this approach proved to be decisive in supporting classroom practice. Suggestions for future research were later provided.