Eric.ed.gov – Open-Ended Tasks in the Promotion of Classroom Communication in Mathematics

Mathematics programmes in basic education are currently undergoing reform in Portugal. This paper sets out to see how teachers are putting the new guidelines for the teaching of mathematics into practice, with particular emphasis on maths communication in the classroom. To achieve this, an experiment in teaching the topic “Sequences and Regularities” with open-ended tasks, using a qualitative and interpretative approach, is reported. Data were collected during two class observations, from two interviews and by analysing the activities of the students. An exploratory task was chosen in the first lesson and a investigative one in the second. One month separated the two lessons, and during this time the teacher read and discussed texts on mathematics communication. Observation of the first lesson showed that the communication in the classroom was mostly focused on the teacher, which provided little student-student and student-class interaction. In the second observed lesson, the teacher changed the attention she paid to what each student said and did, encouraging the students to ask each other and encouraged student-class and the student-student communication.