Discourse as a Catalyst for Facilitating Practitioner Research1

In this paper, I present the initial plans for a beginning collaborative research partnership (Grundy, 1998) involving myself, two graduate students, and nine middle school mathematics teachers who work with students aged ten to 14 This paper provides information about the guiding literature (on discourse, teacher beliefs, and practitioner research) and the project plans I hope to get critical feedback from this international audience of mathematics educators so that I can improve the plan prior to intense data collection during the upcoming academic year In this paper, I present the guiding literature and initial plans for a beginning collaborative research project The broad goals of the project are to examine: the nature of the discourse in nine middle school mathematics classrooms in the United States (US); the ways in which the participating middle school mathematics teachers ’ beliefs impact the discourse when working to enact reform-oriented2 mathematics teaching; and how this information can be used to incorporate practitioner research using concepts and tools of discourse analysis to improve mathematics instruction Introduction to the Projec