Exploring Relationships Between Setting Up Complex Tasks and Opportunities to Learn in Concluding Whole-Class Discussions in Middle-Grades Mathematics Instruction

This article specifies how the setup, or introduction, of cognitively demanding tasks is a crucial phase of middle-grades mathematics instruction. The authors report on an empirical study of 165 middle-grades mathematics teachers’ instruction that focused on how they introduced tasks and the relationship between how they introduced tasks and the nature of students’ opportunities to learn mathematics in the concluding whole-class discussion.