National mathematics standards and communicative competence: A sociolinguistic analysis of institutionalized and emergent forms of classroom discourse

Educational reforms which call for a restructuring of classroom participation patterns in order to achieve academic excellence and educational equity hinge on the theory that social and scholastic inequities among students can be redressed at the classroom level by concentrating on classroom discourse. The current reform of mathematics education spearheaded by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) subscribes to such an orientation. The particular NCTM Standard of "mathematics as communication" encourages mathematics teachers to promote open-ended, conversational discourse patterns in their classrooms. This study uses micro-ethnographic and sociolinguistic methods to examine mathematical discourse in K-2 classrooms where teachers have been trained to implement the NCTM Standards. It focuses specifically on questioning episodes between teachers and students. In this context the researcher has identified separate institutionalized and emergent forms of discourse that correspond to the interplay between behaviorist and constructivist approaches to learning in the mathematics classroom. Each form of discourse requires a distinct set of communicative competencies that teachers and students need to know in order to successfully set the NCTM Standards in motion. Educational reforms that aim to achieve academic excellence and educational equity by modifying classroom discourse so as to accommodate a constructivist approach to mathematics education need to encourage teachers to distinguish between institutionalized and emergent forms of classroom discourse for their sake and for the sake of their students.