To Activate, Expose and Elicit thinking : a three step journey Teacher actions and student thinking in 18 Swedish mathematics classrooms in upper secondary

Abstract: Today’s research, as well as current Swedish governance documents, stress the high importance of developing students’ abstract, individual and critical thinking in mathematics education. The needs for such quality thinking however stand in stark contrast to the ‘traditional mathematics education’, which cannot be expected to develop such thinking. This study suggests an evolutionary instead of revolutionary approach in leaving the old paradigm of ‘traditional education’ behind, since project support for such a transformation project is claimed to be lacking on central level while the feasibility of such a paradigm shift on individual (teacher or even school) level is claimed to be very low in today’s time-pressured reality. By investigating teacher actions which generate occurrences of activated, exposed and elicited student thinking, this study purports to suggest alternative ways forward. A series of semi-structured classroom observations, complemented with questionnaires and interviews, has therefore been carried out of 18 mathematics teachers in upper secondary level in Sweden. The study is based on empowerment theory (as well as an adaptation from the industry of an applied empowerment model), a triangulation mixed-method design was adopted and a thematic analysis, underpinned by a latent theoretical approach from an epistemologically constructionist perspective as described by Braun and Clarke (2006), was used. The study identified several occurrences of the aforementioned student thinking, as well as their corresponding teacher actions and proposes a way for organizing the actions as well as their outcome into an overarching model.