| dc.description.abstract | This is an empirical, ethnographic study about middle school students’ mathematical joy in a formal math classroom. This study is situated in a year-long Research Practice Partnership with 6th grade mathematics teacher and 21 students in her 3rd block class. Through this collaboration, the teacher and I sought to design tasks to support students’ unique joyful mathematical engagement. We did this through an iterative design approach involving three phases of data collection and three analytic cycles. Qualitative open coding, case studies, and abductive postcoding analysis were conducted to determine: 1. what are some characteristics of joyful mathematical engagement? and 2. what conditions support students’ joyful mathematical engagement in a formal math classroom? Findings revealed that sociomathematical norms of this classroom characterized knowing and doing mathematics as product-oriented, competitive, compliant, and a complex negotiation of fun and stressful. Additionally, when students engaged in tasks that were intentionally designed to support mathematical reciprocity, many students across the class demonstrated joy while engaging in math learning in multifaceted ways (for example through humor, movement, debate, and encouragement) that represented their multifaceted well-being. This is not to generalize to say that we can design for all students’ mathematical joy by incorporating reciprocity or in fact any single dimensions of design. Joy that emerged for these students resulted from listening to students varied ways of communicating their experience with both humanizing and dehumanizing mathematical experiences in this cultural environment. It was by attending to them, treating them as human, listening to their stories, watching their grins and winces that we could see more clearly, albeit imperfectly, learn how to design more humanizing formal mathematical learning experiences that supported their unique joy. | |
