“Yep, I was thinking the same thing as her”, “I got the same”, or “That’s what I was going to say” are common strategies for deflecting attention or seeming to participate without contributing anything original. This may indicate a low level of confidence and/or confusion about the content of the discussion. Again, confidence will increase only with understanding and success.
The thinking-aloud process has been found to have a significant impact on raising achievement for low-achieving and special needs students. Both listening to others’ explanations and documenting one’s own thinking in a step-by-step process has been found to support understanding. A teacher may try responding to a piggyback statement like “I did the same as she did” with Great. Let’s go through that process together again. This way the student gets the practice through revoicing, and being guided through, a successful process whether they actually did do it that way or not.
Random guessing can be a task-avoidance strategy when a teacher poses a problem. Students may call out random numbers in the hope that the teacher will move on. Teachers may do so because it seems so obvious that it was a wild guess and there wasn’t any thinking to unpack or pathway to follow for understanding.
A student’s impulsive response can be a way to be seen to participate but not actually contribute. The student may also believe that what a teacher wants to hear is an answer, any answer, rather than wanting to hear thinking. Teachers need to be honest in their response to the student and to show that they see them as capable of an answer that shows more thought.
The development of effective mathematical ways of speaking within a classroom or within a group is crucial to supporting students to “become less preoccupied with finding the answers and more with the thinking that leads to the answers” (Anthony and Walshaw, 2009, page 19). Students may not be sure what thinking sounds like, or they may need practice in turning their ideas into words. Slowing things down and unpacking a problem before asking for responses can reduce impulsive responses. For example: Let’s look at the numbers and the action words in this problem and circle them. This might help us decide what we need to use to solve this.
Back to Resource 11: Addressing avoidance behaviours in mathematics classes