Using vignettes to investigate mathematics teachers’ beliefs for promoting cognitive engagement in secondary mathematics classroom practice

Abstract

Promoting engagement is crucial for encouraging student participation, interest, and learning in mathematics. Student engagement has been conceptualized as interrelated types comprising behavioural, emotional, and cognitive characteristics. Cognitive engagement, our focus in this paper, relates to students’ psychological investment in learning and practices used to enhance learning, such as self-regulatory strategies and metacognitive processes. Although crucial for students’ learning, research suggests that teachers’ practices for promoting students’ cognitive engagement are not well understood. In this qualitative study, we investigated the beliefs of 40 secondary mathematics teachers across eight English schools concerning promoting cognitive engagement in mathematics classrooms, and whether teachers with different cognitive engagement beliefs differ in the features of classroom practice they attend to in relation to promoting student self-regulation and metacognition. We developed a Cognitive Engagement Framework (CEF) for the following purposes: (1) to develop vignettes that described the practices of two contrasting teachers (Teacher A and Teacher B), who differed in their use of specific self-regulation and metacognitive processes; and (2) to use as a tool for analysis. 17 participants identified with Teacher A who favoured a controlling style towards student strategy use such as activating knowledge, planning, and enacting and regulating strategies, and a passive approach towards students’ use of self-reflection. 14 participants identified with Teacher B who favoured promoting student autonomy for planning and enacting and regulating strategies, self-reflection, and acknowledged affective elements. In addition to its findings, the paper makes a methodological contribution by using ‘vignettes’ as a new way of investigating teachers’ beliefs, and a theoretical contribution through the development of the CEF.