The Writing’s on the Board

Abstract

This article reports on an international study of the teaching of undergraduate mathematics in seven countries. Informed by rhetorical genre theory, activity theory, and the notion of Communities of Practice, this study explores a pedagogical genre at play in university mathematics lecture classrooms. The genre is mediational in that it is a tool employed in the activity of teaching. The data consist of audio/video-recorded lectures, observational notes, semistructured interviews, and written artifacts collected from 50 participants who differed in linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds; teaching experience; and languages of instruction. The study suggests that chalk talk, namely, writing out a mathematical narrative on the board while talking aloud, is the central pedagogical genre of the undergraduate mathematics lecture classroom. Pervasive pedagogical genres, like chalk talk, which develop within global disciplinary communities of practice, appear to override local differences across contexts of instruction. Better understanding these genres may lead to new insights regarding academic literacies and teaching.

The cinematic art of teaching university mathematics: chalk talk as embodied practice

“…This analysis allows the researcher to document differences between professors. For example, based on our study, novice professors are much more likely to orient themselves toward the board for a high percentage of lecture time, and to have fewer intervals of longer duration (Artemeva & Fox, 2011). The coding table (Table 1) also provides a means of documenting in a systematic way the apparent focus of the professor while talking, writing, and continuously moving and shifting his orientation to board and class.…”

“…Recent reconceptualizations of grounded theory are particularly suited to RGS research (Artemeva & Fox, 2011;Charmaz, 2006;Farkas & Haas, in press) because the grounded theory approach (GTA) is based on the recursive review of data for the purpose of identifying recurrent patterns, categories, and themes. As Haas notes (Burnett & Haas, 2007), "within GTA, theory has a particular character; it is conceptual work, not discourse divorced from action; that is, theory emerges in the incremental move from particulars to categories" (p. 32).…”

“…Inevitably, we also observed what differed across these classrooms and professors. Both Paré & Smart (1994) and Artemeva & Fox (2011) argue that the recurring features that define the genre cannot be considered separately from the idiosyncratic features of genre enactment. In the present study, we report our findings with regard to the video recordings of the lectures, highlighting what repeats.…”

“…As noted above, many students who are required to take mathematics courses at university recollect this recurring component of chalk talk as dominant in mathematics lectures. From the point of view of mathematics professors in our study, talking while writing on the board is essential to students' enculturation into the thinking and doing of mathematics (Artemeva & Fox, 2011). Such practice "reconstructs the stages, phases, and results of a prior activity [while] .…”

Modos de leer y escribir en Historia: perspectivas de alumnos y profesores de la formación docente inicial

“…En particular, algunos de estos estudios han subrayado que aprender contenidos en las materias del nivel superior no se favorece con cualquier modo de encarar la escritura, sino que es preciso proponer a los estudiantes la escritura de textos que les permitan apropiarse de las particularidades retóricas características de la producción de conocimiento de cada campo disciplinar (Artemeva, Logie y St-Martin, 1999;Artemeva y Fox, 2011;Blakeslee, 2007;Freedman y Adam, 1996). En este sentido, Carter y colaboradores (2007) muestran, a partir de su estudio con alumnos y profesores universitarios, la importancia de escribir para aprender a través de aprender a escribir en las disciplinas.…”