Abstract
Drawing on ecological psychology, this paper considers how student engagement is an accomplishment of the classroom system. Specifically, this paper presents an analysis of two teachers and their students who were using a project-based unit in their mathematics classes. The two teachers used identical curricular materials, but had dramatically different personal histories of teaching and different instructional practices. Our goal is to investigate the role of the teacher in supporting student engagement by considering the kinds of opportunities to learn that were presented by the teacher, and the relationship between those opportunities to learn and the ways their students engaged. Pragmatically, this paper contributes to our understanding of how teachers’ framing of activity significantly impacts the ways that students are likely to engage tasks. Theoretically, this paper highlights the interactional nature of learning, with the goal of clarifying why learning is not simply an individual accomplishment.
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Gresalfi, M.S., Barnes, J. & Cross, D. When does an opportunity become an opportunity? Unpacking classroom practice through the lens of ecological psychology. Educ Stud Math 80, 249–267 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-011-9367-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-011-9367-5