An Analysis on Communication in a Math Class - Based on Verbal Interactions -

수학수업에서 의사소통 분석 -언어상호작용을 중심으로-

From a social constructivists' perspective, knowledge is not transmitted by language but it is constructed by social interactions with others. That is, it is viewed in social constructivism that learning is a process in which knowledge is constructed by communicative interactions with more capable others. In this vein, a class might be analyzed and characterized in terms of interactional patterns of teacher-student and student-student in class. For this, a primary math class was selected and observed and it was analyzed by the Flanders category system to investigate the effects of the math teaching based on verbal interactions on the learning of math. The class was taught in a teacher-centered and direct way but in the class math knowledge was taught through univocal communications in the form of question-answer. The results of this study appeared to suggest that verbal interactional patterns should take place frequently in math teaching in the sequence of a teacher's questions$\to$students' extensive responses $\to$ positive feedback for the students' responses by the teacher $\to$ the acceptance of the students' responses $\to$ the teacher's explanation or students' questions. In other words, math might be taught more effectively through the verbal discourse patterns proposed in this study.