Jennifer M. Langer-Osuna

Toward a Model of Influence in Persuasive Discussions: Negotiating Quality, Authority, Privilege, and Access within a Student-Led Argument.

It is commonly observed that during classroom or group discussions some students have greater influence than may be justified by the normative quality of those students’ contributions. We propose a 5-component theoretical framework in order to explain how undue influence unfolds. We build on literatures on persuasion, argumentation, discourse, and classroom discussions to develop a framework that models how each participant’s level of influence in a discussion emerges out of the social negotiation of influence itself and the following 4 components that interact with it: (a) the negotiated merit of each participant’s contributions; and each participant’s (b) degree of intellectual authority, (c) access to the conversational floor, and (d) degree of spatial privilege. We then illustrate how the framework works by explaining how 1 student became unduly influential during a heated, student-led scientific debate. Finally, we close by outlining how our framework can be further developed to better understand and address differences in influence in classrooms and other learning contexts.

How Brianna Became Bossy and Kofi Came Out Smart: Understanding the Trajectories of Identity and Engagement for Two Group Leaders in a Project-Based Mathematics Classroom

This article addresses equity in mathematics classrooms through a focus on students’ co-constructed trajectories of identity and engagement in cooperative learning groups. I examine how two students who served as group leaders in a projects-based algebra classroom constructed markedly different trajectories of identity and engagement across the academic year. Results showed that group members differentially interpreted their respective project-related directives in gendered ways such that the female group leaders’ displays of authority were positioned as inappropriate, while the male group leaders’ displays were positioned as desirable.RésuméCet article se penche sur la question de l’équité dans les cours de mathématiques par le biais d’une analyse des parcours d’identité et d’engagement construits en collaboration par les étudiants, dans des groupes d’apprentissage coopératifs. J’analyse comment deux élèves, qui étaient les leaders de leur groupe dans un cours d’algèbre à projets, ont construit des parcours d’identité et d’engagement très différents tout au long de l’année scolaire. Les résultats montrent que les membres du groupe ont interprété les directives reçues dans le cadre du projet de façon différenciée en fonction de leur sexe: l’autorité du chef de groupe féminin a été jugée comme inappropriée, tandis que celle du chef de groupe de sexe masculin a été jugée comme positive.

The Social Construction of Authority Among Peers and Its Implications for Collaborative Mathematics Problem Solving

ABSTRACT This article describes a study of how students construct relations of authority during dyadic mathematical work and how teachers’ interactions with students during small group conferences affect subsequent student dynamics. Drawing on the influence framework (Engle, Langer-Osuna, & McKinney de Royston, 2014), I examined interactions when students appropriated their peers’ ideas during collaborative mathematical problem solving and noted that each moment tended to follow particular interactions around authority. Notably, social and intellectual forms of authority became linked in ways that were directly related to how students’ ideas and behaviors were evaluated by the teacher. I close by discussing how the study of authority and influence offers fertile analytic ground to generate new understandings about collaborative student work in mathematics classrooms.

From Getting “Fired” to Becoming a Collaborator: A Case of the Coconstruction of Identity and Engagement in a Project-Based Mathematics Classroom

This article investigates the coconstruction of student identity and engagement in the case of a 9th grader in a project-based algebra classroom that afforded students a great deal of autonomy. The focal student, Terrance, utilized classroom resources to serve both project-related and social functions as he interacted with his peers during multiweek projects. As a result, his positioning within his group and patterns of engagement in the mathematics projects shifted dramatically across the academic year. The article ends with a discussion of student autonomy as a potentially powerful feature of hybrid classrooms.

Rehumanizing the “Other”: Race, Culture, and Identity in Education Research

In this chapter, the authors examine the trajectory of the literature on race, culture, and identity in education research through the past century. The literature is first situated within its historical and conceptual foundations, specifically the dehumanizing legacy of scientific racism, the early efforts by African American scholars to rehumanize marginalized members of society, and the emergence of identity as a construct in the social sciences. The authors then explore the body of education research—from the mid 20th century to today—focused on the relationship between cultural and racial identities and students’ experiences with schooling. They close with a vision for the next era of research on this critical topic.

Student agency and counter-narratives in diverse multilingual mathematics classrooms : Challenging deficit perspectives

Mathematics classrooms around the world serve students who are learning the dominant language of instruction. These students’ forms of participation in mathematical activity have often been examined from deficit perspectives. Mathematics education research is in great need of counter-narratives to such prevailing deficit assumptions so that we can see how such learners productively use existing resources to engage in mathematics. In this chapter we examine potentially fruitful ways of framing identity and learning centered on student agency that can be brought to bear on the analysis of emergent multilinguals’ mathematical activity. We then illustrate the utility of agency-centered framings with vignettes of student interactions that focus on how emergent bilinguals used multiple linguistic resources in powerful ways. The vignettes are drawn from a variety of international mathematics classroom contexts and focus on students as creative users of linguistic resources in ways that serve a variety of functions during mathematical activity.

It’s Like You’re a Teacher! A Social Semiotic Analysis of Authority Relations Among High School Mathematics Students

This chapter draws from social semiotics to explore how recent trends in mathematics pedagogy affect classroom interaction. We perform a genre analysis on several excerpts of classroom interaction, drawn from classrooms “in transition,” from a more teacher-centered approach, toward approaches that invest students with authority to construct mathematics for themselves. We use these excerpts to show the challenge of shifting from a familiar genre to the more experimental student-centered pedagogies.