High school mathematics teachers’ inquiry-oriented approaches to teaching algebra

Abstract

Although there are suggested guidelines about teaching algebra from a reform perspective, what happens in the classroom depends on the teacher. This study investigated three experienced high school teachers’ inquiry-oriented approaches to teaching algebra with a focus on teaching systems of equations. It addressed two questions:

(1) What are the central features that characterize the teachers’ inquiry-oriented approaches?

(2) What are central features in their thinking that allow them to make sense of their approaches?

The findings show that the teachers’ approaches had common features consistent with theory of inquiry that classified them as inquiry-oriented. However, the differences in how these features were interpreted and enacted in each teacher’s classroom resulted in three different perspectives of their inquiry approaches with central features specific to each that afforded different types of learning of the algebra concepts. Four central features of the teachers’ thinking associated with the nature of the algebra concept, task, inquiry, and peer interactions were identified as bases of their sensemaking of their inquiry-oriented approaches. Although the key features of the approaches and the teachers’ thinking were identified in the context of teaching systems of equations, they could form a basis for consideration of inquiry teaching of other algebra or high school mathematics concepts.