The current study explores how teachers report using enabling and extending prompts when teaching with sequences of challenging mathematical tasks. Twenty-nine early years primary school teachers completed a questionnaire following their participation in a professional learning project. Findings suggest that teachers': view prompts as important…

Student engagement in mathematics in the early secondary years can be fragile. Engagement in learning fluctuates in response to students' mathematics experiences and is underpinned by numerous adaptive and maladaptive factors. Thirty-seven 11-12 year old students (grades 6-7) responded twice to a questionnaire to measure shifts in their engagement…

The fear of making mistakes and avoidance of risks can create disabling anxiety and limit learning opportunities. However, it is possible to teach mathematics in ways that not only reduce student agency but also have the effect of excluding some students. This article proposes approaches that are intended to both foster student decision making and…

According to the self-determination theory, autonomy-supportive teaching is considered an effective approach to motivate students to learn. The present study investigates the effect of students' perceived autonomy support on math achievement over time, i.e. from grades 4 to 6, using a longitudinal survey administered in Chinese elementary schools.…

Mathematics teachers' identities profoundly influence how they interact with and position their students to learn mathematics. In this paper, we examine how a year-long teacher learning intervention supportive of student engagement in mathematics helped shift teachers' mathematics-related identities. We use an implied identity perspective as a…

Increasing student exposure to autonomy-supportive teaching approaches has been linked to enhanced student intrinsic motivation to learn. However, such approaches are rare in mainland Chinese science classrooms. An intervention-based study with quasi-experimental design and mixed methods was conducted to explore the impact of a 9-month-long…

Using growth modeling, this study examined trajectories of 'switching on' (aspirations) and 'switching off' (disengagement) in mathematics across middle school and high school. In addition, guided by principles under expectancy-value theory, the study sought to determine the extent to which patterns of growth differed by motivation (self-efficacy…

We started with a classic research question ("How do teachers motivate and engage middle year students in mathematics?") that is solidly underpinned and guided by an integration of two theoretical and multidimensional models. In particular, the current study illustrates how theory is important for guiding qualitative analytical…

This study explored the beliefs about student engagement in mathematics of three Year 5 and 6 teachers, focusing on the shifts that occurred during a 10-week intervention. Data obtained from teacher surveys, interviews, video-recorded workshop observations and artefacts from teachers' classrooms reveal variations in their reactions to the…

What teachers' think about student engagement influences the teaching practices they adopt, their responses to students and the efforts they make in the classroom. Interviews were conducted with 31 mathematics teachers from ten high schools to investigate their perceptions and beliefs about student engagement in mathematics. Teachers also reported…

Prompted by international concerns about school and postschool participation in mathematics, the authors of the present study sought to investigate factors predicting "switching on" and "switching off" in mathematics, operationalized through measures of future intent and disengagement, respectively. They drew from…

This study of 1,601 students in the middle years of schooling (Grades 5-8, each student measured twice, 1 year apart) from 200 classrooms in 44 schools sought to identify factors explaining gains and declines in mathematics engagement at key transition points. In multilevel regression modeling, findings showed that compared with Grade 6 students…

The phenomenon of the "middle-years dip" in mathematics engagement and achievement has been a cause of concern for over a decade. This paper presents an example of one upper-primary classroom identified as having higher than average levels of student engagement, with the purpose of documenting specific teaching strategies that align with…