The IRE classroom discourse structure constrains students' everyday mathematical register, conjectures, and participation of lower socioeconomic groups¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · review r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2008 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? The initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) discourse structure constrains students' everyday mathematical register, their mathematical conjectures, and the participation of lower socioeconomic groups of students. → Na'ilah Suad Nasir 2008

Evidence¶

Na'ilah Suad Nasir 2008¶

Na'ilah Suad Nasir, Victoria Hand and Edd V. Taylor. (2008). Culture and Mathematics in School: Boundaries between "Cultural" and "Domain" Knowledge in the Mathematics Classroom and Beyond. Review of Research in Education, Vol. 32. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X07308962

q2 · i? · review · r2

The review reports, citing Lemke, Wood, and Heath, that the IRE structure — teacher poses a question, students respond, teacher evaluates — is a closed meaning-making system that "tends to constrain students' everyday mathematical register" and participation. Attributed to prior studies the review narrates; no effect sizes are printed.

"This struc ture tends to constrain students' everyday mathematical register (Lemke, 1990), their mathematical conjectures (Wood, 1992), and the participation of lower socioeco nomic groups of students (Heath, 1983)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Shifting away from traditional IRE recitation toward student participation in discussion improves student learning — a broader claim this one bears on
• Teacher discourse shifted toward creating new challenging situations (NI) and confirming repeats (R) in the interactive-whiteboard condition, versus providing requested information (IR) and clarification questions (Q) in the traditional-whiteboard condition — related
• Inquiry-based physics discussion supported peer co-construction of mechanistic explanations, distributing authority of knowledge and language among students — related
• Positioning students as sources increases productive participation in science discourse — a broader claim this one bears on
• After one year of TEFA professional development, videotaped lessons showed increased discussion time, more student-student interactions, less IRE interaction, and more varied discussion formats — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Productive discourse practices correlate with improved performance on standardized tests of reasoning — related
• Some classroom discussion approaches improve text comprehension, but gains are not uniform across approaches and more student talk alone does not produce them — related
• Everyday and invented terminology became formalized through classroom discussion, establishing a shared protocol for referring to strings — related