Teacher Moves for Building a Mathematical Modeling Classroom Community

This study investigates the role of teacher talk moves in cultivating a mathematical modeling classroom community. From the models and modeling perspective, it explores how specific teacher talk moves promote student participation in modeling phases and the exchange of ideas with other students. Through a four-week after-school program involving eight secondary students, data were collected from small-group and whole-class discussions. The findings reveal that teacher talk moves can be categorized into three core types: eliciting students’ ideas, introducing key terms and ideas used in mathematical modeling, and encouraging students to take a position during discussions. These moves are shown to influence classroom discussion norms and facilitate the ways that students interact and reason with the mathematical modeling tasks. While the findings suggest that teacher talk moves can contribute to fostering a reflective learning environment where students collaboratively construct, analyze, and refine mathematical models, further research is needed to better understand the extent of their impact and how similar learning opportunities might arise through alternative instructional strategies. Future research should explore how these teacher moves can be implemented across different classroom contexts and extended periods to enhance modeling-based learning.