Selecting and sequencing students’ ideas: Teachers’ social considerations

Teacher participants were asked to choose three from a set of eight solutions to a task to feature in a whole-class discussion. Participants were asked to indicate whom they would invite to present each solution, from among higher-achieving girls and boys and lower-achieving girls and boys. Participants often indicated that they would first have students present the direct model or an error, that they would invite a lower-achieving girl to present a direct model, and that they would invite a higher-achieving student to present an error. Most indicated that they would invite a higher-achieving boy to present the solution with an unexpected geometric representation, usually at the end of the sequence. Participants' explanations reveal how gendered beliefs about mathematics shape this aspect of classroom instruction.